And dug up, no doubt, quite fresh and lovely, like this new hero of yours, one hundred summers hence. I hope you will take care to be buried in the top-boots, by the by-they will gratify the speculators of the year two thousand and two.

TICKLER.

So Byron is, after all, to be buried in Greece-Quite right. His suspiration was originally from thence-his muse always spread a broader pinion whenever she hovered over the blue Egean. Proudly let him lie on Sunium ! loftily let his spirit gaze at midnight upon the rocks of Salamis!

ron.

ODOHERTY.

So be it. But I have still one word to say to you anent his Lordship of ByByron was by no means, Mr Timothy, the Jacobin Bard that you seem to hold him. I'll be shot if he ever penned one stanza without feeling the coronet.-Ay, ay, sir, he was indeed "Byron my Baron," and that to the backbone.

TICKLER.

You are quite right, ODoherty, and I would have said the same thing if Hogg had not interrupted me. The fact is, that Byron took the walk I mentioned, but he did not take it in that singleness of heart and soul with which the two other gentlemen took to theirs. No, sir, he was too good by nature for what he wished to be-he could not drain the blood of the cavaliers out of his veins he could not cover the coronet all over with the red night-cap-he could not forget that he was born a lord, a gentleman, an English gentleman, and an English lord ;-and hence the contradictoriness which has done so much to weaken the effect of his strains-hence that self-reproaching melancholy which was eternally crossing and unnerving him-hence the impossibility of his hearing, without a quivering pulse, ay, even after all his thundering trumpets about Washington, America, Republics, and fiddle-de-dees, the least echo of what he in his very last poem so sweetly alludes to

"The home

Heart ballads of green Erin or grey Highlands,

That bring Lochaber back to eyes that roam

O'er far Atlantic Continents or Islands

The calentures of music that o'ercome

All mountaineers with dreams that they are nigh lands

No more to be beheld but in such visions"

Hence the dark heaving of soul with which he must have written, in his Italian villezgiatura, that description of his own lost, forfeited, ancestral seat—I can repeat the glorious verses.

"It stood embosom'd in a happy valley,

Crown'd by high woodlands, where the Druid oak

Stood like Caractacus in act to rally

His host, with broad arms 'gainst the thunder-stroke;
And from beneath his boughs were seen to sally
The dappled foresters-as day awoke,
The branching stag swept down with all his herd,
To quaff a brook which murmur'd like a bird.

VOL. XVI.

4 Z

And sedges, brooding in their liquid bed; The woods sloped downwards to its brink, and stood With their green faces fix'd upon the flood. "Its outlet dash'd into a deep cascade, Sparkling with foam, until, again subsiding, 'Its shriller echoes-like an infant made

Quiet-sank into softer ripples, gliding Into a rivulet; and thus allay'd,

Pursued its course, now gleaming, and now hiding Its windings through the woods; now clear, now blue, According as the skies their shadows threw.

"A glorious remnant of the Gothic pile,

(While yet the church was Rome's) stood half apart In a grand arch, which once screened many an aisle. These last had disappear'd-a loss to art:

The first yet frown'd superbly o'er the soil,
And kindled feelings in the roughest heart,

Which mourn'd the power of time's or tempest's march,
In gazing on that venerable arch.

"Within a niche, nigh to its pinnacle,

Twelve saints had once stood sanctified in stone;

But these had fallen, not when the friars fell,

But in the war which struck Charles from his throne,

When each house was a fortalice-as tell

The annals of full many a line undone, The gallant cavaliers, who fought in vain For those who knew not to resign or reign.

"But in a higher niche, alone, but crown'd,

The Virgin Mother of the God-born child, With her son in her blessed arms, look'd round, Spared by some chance when all beside was spoil'd; She made the earth below seem holy ground.

This may be superstition, weak or wild,

But even the faintest relics of a shrine
Of any worship, wake some thoughts divine.
"A mighty window, hollow in the centre,

Shorn of its glass of thousand colourings,

Through which the deepen'd glories once could enter,
Streaming from off the sun like seraph's wings,
Now yawns all desolate: now loud, now fainter,
The gale sweeps through its fretwork, and oft sings
The owl his anthem, where the silenced quire
Lie with their hallelujahs quench'd like fire.
"But in the noontide of the moon, and when
The wind is winged from one point of heaven,

There moans a strange unearthly sound, which then
Is musical-a dying accent driven

Through the huge arch, which soars and sinks again.
Some deem it but the distant echo given

Back to the night wind by the waterfall,
And harmonized by the old choral wall.

"Others, that some original shape, or form

Shaped by decay perchance, hath given the power (Though less than that of Memnon's statue, warm In Egypt's rays, to harp at a fix'd hour)

To this grey ruin with a voice to charm.

Sad, but serene, it sweeps o'er tree or tower: The cause I know not, nor can solve; but such The fact:-I've heard it, once perhaps too much.

"Amidst the court a Gothic fountain play'd,
Symmetrical, but deck'd with carvings quaint-
Strange faces, like to men in masquerade,

And here perhaps a monster, there a Saint:

The spring gush'd through grim mouths, of granite made,
And sparkled into basins, where it spent

Its little torrent in a thousand bubbles,

Like man's vain glory, and his vainer troubles."

HOGG.

It is there-it is nowhere but there, that Byron's ghost will linger. Ye may speak about Greece, and Rome, and America; but his heart was, after all, among the auld mouldering arches and oaks of his forefathers. I would not, for something, stand ae hour of black night below the shadow of that awful auld Abbey. Ghosts indeed!-I could face the spectres of auld priests and monks enow, I daursay-but od, man, what a ghost of ghosts will Byron's be!

Well said, James Hogg-Go on.

TICKLER.

HOGG, (having drunk off a tumbler.)

I canna express what my feelings are as to some things-but I have them, for a' that. I ken naething about your grand divisions and sub-divisions, about old things and new things, and contemplative spirits and revolutionary spirits, and what not-but this I ken, sirs, that I canna bide to think that Byron's dead. There's a wonderful mind swallowed up somewhere-Gone! and gone so young!—and maybe on the very threshold of his truest glory, baith as a man and as a poet-It makes me wae, wae, to think o't. Ye'll laugh at me, Captain ODoherty; but it's as true as I'm telling ye, I shall never see a grand blue sky fu' of stars, nor look out upon the Forest, when all the winds of winter are howling over the wilderness of dry crashing branches, nor stand beside the sea to hear the waves roaring upon the rocks, without thinking that the spirit of Byron is near me. In the hour of awe-in the hour of gloom-in the hour of sorrow, and in the hour of death, I shall remember Byron!

TICKLER.

Euge! Let no more evil be said of him. Μα τας εν Μαθαθωνι τοςομαχευσάντας Peace be to the illustrious dead!

ODOHERTY.

By all means, gentlemen-by all manner of means. Here, then, fill your glasses to the brim-and rise up-To the Memory of Byron!

THE MEMORY OF BYRON !

1.

OMNES (rising.)

Air-The Last Rose of Summer.

LAMENT for Lord Byron,
In full flow of grief,

As a sept of Milesians

ODOHERTY, (Sings.)

Would mourn o'er their chief!
With the loud voice of weeping,
With sorrow's deep tone,
We shall keen o'er our poet,
"All faded and gone."

2.

Though far in Missolunghi
His body is laid;
Though the hands of the stranger
His lone grave have made;
Though no foot from Old England
Its surface will tread,
Nor the sun of Old England
Shine over its head;

3.

Yet, bard of the Corsair,
High spirited Childe;

Thou who sang'st of Lord Manfred
The destiny wild;

Thou star, whose bright radiance
Illumined our verse,

Our souls cross the blue seas,
To mourn o'er thy hearse.

4.

Thy faults and thy follies,
Whatever they were,
Be their memory dispersed
As the winds of the air;
No reproaches from me

On thy corse shall be thrown,
Let the man who is sinless
Uplift the first stone.

Very well, indeed, ODoherty; I am glad to see that you really have some feeling about you still. Oh yes, man, that is what everybody must feel.

ODOHERTY.

Feel what?-why, what a proper old humbug you are, after all!-(Sings.)

1.

Oh! when I am departed and passed away,

Let's have no lamentations nor sounds of dismay-
Meet together, kind lads, o'er a three-gallon bowl,
And so toast the repose of ODoherty's soul.

2.

Down, derry down.

If my darling girl pass, gently bid her come in,

To join the libation she'll think it no sin;

Though she choose a new sweetheart, and doff the black gown,
She'll remember me kindly when down-down-down-

Down, derry down.

Were you deep in for it about the battle, Tickler ?—I won five ponies on Spring-that was all I had done.

TICKLER.

I have cut the pugilistic mania ever since the Thurtell business-it quite disgusted me with the ring.

ODOHERTY.

Pooh! stuff of stuffs ;-you're getting crazy, I believe. I suppose you shut Redgauntlet, whenever you came to that capital murder of Nanty Ewart and Master Nixon-the best thing in the book, in my humble opinion.

HOGG.

An awfu' gruesome business, in truth. Weel, I think it's a very gude book, now, Redgauntlet. I consider it as a very decent novel. I read him through without stopping; and it was after supper, too, ere I got haud o' the chiel.

TICKLER.

Why, that's not the worst way of judging of such affairs, James. My case was pretty much the same. 'Tis a very excellent book, a spirit-stirring one, and a spirit-sustaining one. It never flags.

ODOHERTY.

I wish to God it had been written on in one even strain, no matter whether in the first or in the third person; but I hate all that botheration of Mr Latimer's narrative, Mr Fairford's narrative, and the Author of Waverley's narrative. Indeed it is obvious he had got sick of that stuff himself ere he reached the belly of the second volume, and had the sheets not gone to press, no doubt he would have altered it.

HOGG.

I really never noticed that there was onything out of the ordinary in this particular. I read it clean on, till I got baith sair een and a sair heart.

TICKLER.

Yes, yes these are mere trifles. Give me such a stream of narrative, and give me one such glorious fellow as Auld Willie, and I'm pretty well off, I calculate. What a most terrific piece of diablerie that is, the story of the old Baron and his Baboon. By Jupiter, they may talk of their Sintrams and their Devil's Elixirs as long as they please. That's the best ghost story ever I read. I speak for myself-and how gloriously the Fiddler tells it, which, by the way, is, all things considered, not the smallest part of the feat. To make a catwitted, old, blind creature like that tell such a tale, without for a moment using an expression out of his own character, and yet tell it with such portentous, thrilling energy, and even sublimity of effect-this, sirs, is the perfection, not of genius merely, but of taste and consummate art.

ODOHERTY.

Nanty Ewart for my money! Why, Byron might have written for fifty years without digging the fiftieth part so deep into the human heart-ay, even the blackguard human heart he is so fond of. The attempt to laugh-and the stammered" Poor Jess!"—and then that fearful sarcasm," he is killing me —and I am only sorry he is so long about it."-These, sir, are the undying qu'il mouruts that will keep this lad afloat, although he should write books enough to fill the James Watt steam-boat.

HOGG.

I kent Peter Peebles brawlies-I've seen the doited body gaun gaping about the Parliament-House five hundred times-I forget his real name though. Peter's really a weel-drawn character-he's a very natural delineation, to my fancy.

TICKLER.

Natural delineation! Well-drawn character, indeed!-Come, come, Jamie, he's a prince, a king, an emperor of characters. Give us one such a character, sir, and we will hoist you up till old Stodhard's ridiculous caricature be realized, and the top-boots of the Ettrick Shepherd are seen plaited in the most intimate and endearing familiarity with the point-hose of Will Shakespeare. He's quite as good, sir, as any Malvolio, or Slender, that was ever painted by the hand of man. I build, in the true Catholic phrase, super hunc Petrum.

ODOHERTY.

Nothing is so disgusting to me as the chat of these Cockneyfied critics about those books. Prating, prating about fallings off, want of respect for the public, absurd haste, repetitions of Meg Merrilees, &c. &c. &c.-I trouble them to shew me the man that can give us a Meg Dods, or a Clara Mowbray, or one of these characters we have just been discussing. Till then, I spurn their balaam with my heels.-The only person I really was sorry to see joining in the beastly stuff was Tom Campbell-but, to be sure, his dotage is sufficiently evident, from many things besides that.

TICKLER.

Ay, ay, poor Ritter Bann! He has gone down hill with a vengeance, to be

sure.

ODOHERTY.

Spurn we with our heels the Balaam and the Balaamites!-North, I suppose, will be squabashing them in the shape of a Review of Redgauntlet.

TICKLER.

Not he, i' faith. He was in a deuced rage with Ebony, for wanting him to have a review of it. He said he supposed the next thing would be to review Homer's Iliad, and the Psalms of David. And after all, Kit is so far righteverybody has read a book of that sort as soon as yourself, and there being nothing new in the kind of talent it displays, most people are just as able as any of us to make a decent judgment. When another Ivanhoe, or anything ranking as the commencement of another flight altogether, makes its appearance, then, no doubt, the old lad will touch the trumpet again--not I think,

till then.