THE SONG OF THE SOU-WESTER.

The sun was lost in a leaden sky,

And the shore lay under our lee; When a great Sou'-Wester hurricane high

Came rollicking up the sea.

He played with the fleet as a boy with boats

Till out for the Downs we ran, And he laughed with the roar of a thousand throats

At the militant ways of man:

Oh! I am the enemy most of might,
The other be who you please!
Gunner and guns may all be right
Flags a-flying and armour tight,
But I am the fellow you've first to
fight-

The giant that swings the seas!

A dozen of middies were down below Chasing the X they love,

While the table curtseyed long and slow,

And the lamps were giddy above. The lesson was all of a ship and a shot,

And some of it may have been true, But the word they heard and never forgot

Was the word of the wind that blew:

Oh! I am the enemy most of might, &c.

The Middy with luck is a Captain soon,
With luck he may hear one day
His own big guns a-humming the tune
""Twas in Trafalgar's Bay."

But wherever he goes, with friends or foes,

And whatever may there befall, He'll hear for ever a voice he knows For ever defying them all:

Oh! I am the enemy most of might, &c.
Henry Newbolt.

The Spectator.

RAIN IN OXFORD.

Last night upon my roof the raindrops fell

With windy patter, sudden, loud and sweet;

The din of many waters filled the street,

Of little rushing streams innumerable; From spout and dripping eaves they poured pell-mell,

Then hurried onwards with their eddies fleet,

To wash the dust away, and all the heat

That long had held the city in its spell. Half in a dream I heard the passing shower;

Beyond the town I floated on the breeze,

I felt the meadows freshen in that hour,

The cool and happy shiver of the trees. I heard the raindrops falling, barren dower!

On shadowy streams, and tranquil

summer seas.

THE DIVINE DISCONTENT.

Why are you vexed, O soul, that your house

-Your house of clay-
No longer contents you?
O hasten away!

What do you here?
Does a tear.

Falling on dust, delay you?
Or a song stay you?
Cling not to Earth,
-Rest not there,-
When the land of your birth
Is so near.

Let not Body or Mind
With Fear or Joy bind
You down. Do you say
Still, "Alas for the Heart!"
That broken clay cup
From which the Divine
Life-giving Wine
Was offered up

Fouled with Earth's dust

For the lips of Love and the lips of Lust?

Grieve not, O Soul,

That the earthern bowl

Lies broken.

When Byron and Scott were approaching, one of them the end of his life, and the other of his prosperity, they exchanged in a monumental correspondence the princely compliments of literary diplomacy; and Byron, who, though he had then disclaimed the quarrel of "English Bards" with "Scotch Reviewers," was engaged more deeply than ever in defending the Augustan manner of Pope against the fashions which he himself had helped Scott and others to introduce; Byron, than whom few men have been more independent of fashion and of flattery, affirmed that he found no one of whose superiority Sir Walter could reasonably be jealous, either among the living or. all things considered, among the dead. It is certain, from the principles and practice of Byron as a critic, that in this judgment he regarded form as well as substance, technical merit not less, perhaps even more, than abundance of imagination and invention; certain also, that it was upon the prose of the romances that he built his judgment, rather than upon the metrical merit, already questionable, of "Marmion" and "The Lady of the Lake." And after the lapse of a century, when there is no more any question of living and dead, and the measure of Scott is to be taken solely by the standard of what is common to good work universally, the opinion of Byron may still stand as defensible. It is true that Scott's works show the mark of his rapidity, and that in average pieces of narrative he is not fastidious in expression or always correct. It has been said, and may perhaps be said with as much truth as is demanded

1. "The Waverley Novels."

2. "Memories of Sir Walter Scott." By James Skene. Edited by Basil Thomson. London: Murray, 1909.

3. "Sir Walter Scott's Friends." By Florence MacCunn. London: Blackwood, 1909.

from an epigram, that in average pieces of his prose "he has no style at all." But it is also true that in the great moments to which those rapid sketches are subsidiary, in the pinnacles for which the scaffolding is somewhat hazardously piled up, he displays not only a touch of hand peculiar to himself, but also perfect command of sound construction, a sure hold upon those principles of speech-call them rules, practices, or what you willwhich come from the deepest parts of humanity, and are common to all that succeed in this kind. A mind not sensible to the effects of Scott, when he intends effect, would have to seek satisfaction somewhere else than in literature as it has been practised by all Europe (to take the narrowest limit) from Homer to this day. And it is to be added that even the unpretentious freedom of his ordinary manner has a value in its place by way of relief and contrast.

A signal instance of both qualities may be found in the scene which lays the corner-stone of "Guy Mannering"the denunciation of the landowner and magistrate, Bertram of Ellangowan, by the gipsy witch, Meg Merrilies. The little band to which she belongs, after having been protected and encouraged for many generations in a precarious settlement upon Bertram's estate, have now been expelled, in a capricious fit of reform, by the summary process of pulling down their miserable tenements. The author of this improvement, little content with his severity, absents himself on the day of execution; but as he rides home, he meets the emigrant families in painful procession upon the confines of his property. To the sufferers his act naturally appears tyrannous, a provocation of the higher powers of providen

tial justice; nor is it beyond common reckoning to divine that, in a country and among a population not very orderly, the defiance of such enemies may lead to disaster. Of such feelings and prognostications, raised to the tone of prophecy by the ambiguous pretensions of a witch-wife, Meg Merrilies makes herself the voice. The sequel of the story turns, as will be remembered, upon the fulfilment of her prophecy, to which, in the natural course of things, she contributes a great and, in the end, a dominant influence. The conception of her character is the key to the whole design; and here, in the scene of the prophecy, is the leading note upon which the whole depends.

The chapter (viii) containing it will throughout repay study; but for our present purpose we may begin with the two paragraphs which immediately precede the denunciation itself. The first gives the psychology of the situation, describing, without affectation of subtlety, the uncomfortable feelings of the magistrate, who has just undergone, from the passing caravan, the novel experience of resentment and hatred.

His sensations were bitter enough. The race, it is true, which he had thus summarily dismissed from their ancient place of refuge, was idle and vicious; but had he endeavored to render them otherwise? They were not more irregular characters now than they had been while they were admitted to consider themselves as a sort of subordinate dependents of his family. Some means of reformation ought at least to have been tried before sending seven families at once upon the wide world, and depriving them of a degree of countenance which withheld them at least from atrocious guilt. There was also a natural yearning of heart on parting with so many known and familiar faces; and to this feeling Godfrey Bertram was peculiarly accessible, from the limited qualities of his mind,

which sought its principal amusements among the petty objects around him. As he was about to turn his horse's head to pursue his journey, Meg Merrilies, who had lagged behind the troop, unexpectedly presented herself.

Manifestly we have here no research of style, "no style at all" in the sense which the word "style" has for the critic or the conscious artist. In vocabulary, phrasing, the cast and turn of sentences, there is as little character and stamp as the individuality of authorship may well admit. If anything is to be praised it is a certain plain gravity, proceeding partly from this very absence of pose. And there are negligences which are almost faults. "To render them otherwise. . . ; depriving them of a degree of countenance from the limited qualities of his mind ; to turn his horse's head to pursue his journey ; these and other phrases might be improved, and would not have satisfied a punctilious composer. But, on the other hand, there is no hitch, nothing to stumble at, and we are put without strain in full possession of the meaning.

The next paragraph is much more important and characteristic, and, as

a

But

Sixth," especially the final scenes, the figure of Meg Merrilies is more than once associated.1 The particular passage, to which he directs us, we will presently quote, for it is even more pertinent than his words imply. for the moment we note only, as a fact, his theatrical prepossession, and now present in this light what we are justified in calling his stage-directions: She was standing upon one of those high precipitous banks which, as we before noticed, overhung the road; so that she was placed considerably higher than Ellangowan, even though he was on horseback; and her tall figure, relieved against the clear blue sky, seemed almost of supernatural stature. We have noticed that there was in her general attire, or rather in her mode of adjusting it, somewhat of a foreign costume, artfully adopted perhaps for the purpose of adding to the effect of her spells and predictions, or perhaps from some traditional notions respecting the dress of her ancestors. On this occasion she had a large piece of red cotton cloth rolled about her head in the form of a turban, from beneath which her dark eyes flashed with uncommon lustre. Her long and tangled black hair fell in elf-locks from the folds of this singular head-gear. Her attitude was that of a sibyl in frenzy, and she stretched out in her right hand a sapling bough, which seemed just pulled.

Considering this from a practical point of view, as a catalogue of points which the reader is to focus as a preparation of the eye for the delivery of the tirade that follows, we may pronounce it beyond improvement. Nothing is neglected or slurred; posture and colors, properties and accessories, suggestions, duly vague, of history or literature, all is prescribed; the least lively imagination must be ready to work on such terms; and the tableau could be set, one almost fancies that it could be painted, by an amateur. But for style-the conscious stylist 1 See the motto to chapter liv.

might say again that there is none. The whole method is the very negation of art, in so far as art is said to lie in the concealment of the mechanical process. Stevenson, for example, would have cancelled a chapter, and that not once but twice or thrice, sooner than leave such a paragraph in such a state. He actually cited another passage of "Guy Mannering," and might have cited this, for proof of his master's indifference to such scruples as consumed his own days and weeks. Scott wants, at this moment, certain details of scenery and costume; and, with perfect simplicity, he now recapitulates them, or now puts them in. They ought, perhaps, to be ready beforehand; or at least that is the more artistic way, the way of Stevenson, and of Dumas when he is on his mettle. The points might have been so touched and emphasized before that to collect them now would be needless. But Scott will not be troubled with anything so unpractical. "Those high precipitous banks," which overhang the road, "we before noticed," says the author. "Banks" we may have noticed. That they should be high and steep he himself has not before seen; but as height now proves to be necessary, he simply raises them. The "clear blue sky" is similarly imported, and without the least preparation. The red turban comes rightly enough, and, as a property, is of the best; but it is put in with so much fumbling-we have noticed... or rather or perhaps

on this occasion-that we seem to be watching a sketcher while he changes his brushes for a tint.

From these two paragraphs, taken separately or singly, no one, we suppose, could receive direct pleasure; and, if the history of literature has any lessons, assuredly no such work would, by itself, have roused the admiration of the world. The effect of it all is just to excite expectation, which, as the lit