effects of sound and of rhythm. It is a little matter, perhaps, that the more commonplace uses of echo and repetition-burn the blither'. . . 'stable your stirks' . . . 'wad hae wanted bread ere ye had wanted'—are used, and are forborne, with rare economy. But it is no little matter, it is rather the very essence of poetry, when the paired sounds touch, just touch without crossing, the confine of sobs: What do ye glower after our folk for?' . . . 'the wife and the babe, that ye have turned out o' their bits o' bields'. . . 'God . . . make them kind to the poor, and better folk than their father.' Pathos with dignity can do

no more.

From sound to rhythm is perhaps scarcely a distinguishable transition; but it is from the rhythm of this passage, from the melody proper, that, for my own part, I get the greatest delight. Here again there is no end to the possible remarks. Most obvious is a device, which is a favourite with Burke; though, when I say 'device, I do not mean that Burke always, or perhaps ever, thought of it. The consciousness of the artist is generally an open question. Be that as it may, the trick is this. Everybody who takes lessons in English prose-composition soon gets a warning to avoid blank verse.' The precept is sound and important. That rhythm, from its familiarity, easily catches the ear; in prose it is mostly purposeless; and nothing is more vexatious than rhythm without a purpose. But regularity is the ground of variation, and the supreme end of artistic rules is to be broken with proper effect. Here, in our speech, the blank-verse rhythm is scrupulously excluded. Not any group of words suggests it, except one, where it is strongly marked. Our bairns are hinging at our weary backs' is a verse of five accents, and a good one, better, I should say, than any of Queen Margaret's in the play. And, as any one may see at a glance, it is placed as it should be, where, by a slight touch of pomp, it sustains the complaint of the vagabond above the suspicion of mendicancy.

Many other like delicacies there are; indeed every clause and phrase will bear and repay examination. But the best of all is kept for the close:

'And now, ride e'en your ways; for these are the last words ye'll ever hear Meg Merrilies speak, and this is the last reise that I'll ever cut in the bonny woods of Ellangowan.'

Here are two points principally to remark. It cannot escape notice that, for some reason, the introduction of the speaker's name, 'Meg Merrilies,' is here strangely impressive, and that the sentence seems to hinge and to swing upon it. Every one perceives this; and the cause, though less obvious, may be ascertained. We have already noted that the vocabulary of the speech, as is usual with Scott on such occasions, is extremely simple, and almost exclusively English in the strictest sense of the name. Now this vocabulary, with many merits, has, for the composer, some defects, and not least among them this-that, consisting almost wholly of monosyllables and dissyllables, it supplies hardly ever a succession of syllables, not even so much as a pair, absolutely without accent, and therefore falls naturally into an up-and-down jog, without those pleasant trisyllabic movements which in prosody are called dactylic. Introduce the elements which, in later times, our writers borrowed from Latin, and dactyls (or rather quasi-dactyls) spring up in abundanceirregular, accessible, limited, principal, precipitous, general, singular these, and more, may be picked from the paragraphs, written in the common language of literature, which precede the speech of the gipsy, and have been cited above. But in the speech itself, nothing of the sort. With the vocabulary of the gipsy, the thing is hardly possible. Such combinations as what do ye,'' wife of an,' 'babe that was,' are the nearest approach; and they differ materially in rhythm from principal or singular. But in 'Meg Merrilies' we do get an English triplet, the sole triplet of syllables, within one word, which the speech presents; and Scott, with an instinct sharpened by practice, seizes upon this by-gift of his own invention to swing off the finale with the desirable roll.

Partly alike is the music of the last words, alike in this, that, in the proper name Ellangowan,' we have again a valuable element seldom provided by pure English-a quadrisyllable with two equal accents, our nearest equivalent for the double trochee, such as comprobavit, so beloved by pupils of Cicero. It is the only such form in the speech. But here we have another thing to note. However well we may love our native tongue, we must allow that, as compared with some others, or with almost any other, its word-groups are

seldom musical. You cannot have everything at once. Our fathers chose for us that we should talk mostly in monosyllables, a good way, but not musical. The collision of hard sounds must at this rate be incessant, and very harsh collisions will hardly be kept out. Scott himself, writing pure English, cannot avoid them, and wisely does not try, for the constriction of such a rule would be deadly. But the result is what it must be, a 'music' bad or poor. No one, I suppose, will say that, taken as mere sound, there is any pleasure in such combinations as quenched seven smoking hearths, . . . at Derncleugh, . . hearthstane, scratched, . . . and the blackcock, babe that's, . . . and the like everywhere. There is no help for it. But what then is the artist to do? Why, do like an artist, turn stones to stepping-stones-offer, at some chosen place, the good gift which will take more value from his very poverty. The close of the speech, the last sentence, runs almost without a trip, and the final clause, as a bit of prosody, might challenge Italian or Greek:

.

'And this is the last reise that I'll ever cut in the bonny woods of Ellangowan.'

With Scott, as with all artists in English, the contrast between the various elements in our heterogeneous lexicon, the mixture and opposition of them, is a main principle. Most often, as in the case of Meg Merrilies, he recurs for solemnity to the pure Teutonic, fashioning of course his personages accordingly. The reader will expect here the pleasure of comparing Meg's malediction with its not less admirable pendant, the gipsy's farewell to Derncleugh. I will cite it therefore, but spare my comment, which, after what has been said, will easily be conceived and supplied:

'She then moved up the brook until she came to the ruined hamlet, where, pausing with a look of peculiar and softened interest before one of the gables which was still standing, she said, in a tone less abrupt, though as solemn as before : "Do you see that blackit and broken end of a sheeling ?— There my kettle boiled for forty years-there I bore twelve buirdly sons and daughters. Where are they now?-Where are the leaves that were on that auld ash-tree at Martinmas ? -the west wind has made it bare-and I'm stripped too.-Do

you see that saugh-tree?—it's but a blackened, rotten stump now-I've sat under it mony a bonnie summer afternoon, when it hung its gay garlands ower the poppling water-I've sat there, and" (elevating her voice) "I've held you on my knee, Henry Bertram, and sung ye sangs of the auld barons and their bloody wars. It will ne'er be green again, and Meg Merrilies will never sing sangs mair, be they blithe or sad. But ye'll no forget her?-and ye'll gar big up the auld wa's for her sake?-and let somebody live there that's ower guid to fear them of another world. For if ever the dead came back amang the living, I'll be seen in this glen mony a night after these crazed banes are in the mould."'

With the imported parts of our language, imported chiefly from Latin, as well as with the primitive parts, Scott could make masterly play when he chose. An example is to be found in that incomparable story, which makes a detached episode in 'Redgauntlet,' under the title of Wandering Willie's Tale.' Stevenson in 'Catriona has testified his admiration of it by exerting his utmost strength to produce a parallel, and with as much success as could be hoped. One cannot mention Scott's story, even for the purpose of technical illustration, without turning aside to praise its general excellence. In its kind it has perhaps not a rival in English literature or anywhere else. To tell, and to refute in the telling, a legend of the supernatural, is an ancient and popular trick, but never perhaps has been performed with such delicate balance of gravity and humour. In substance the tale is simple. A certain landlord, Sir Robert Redgauntlet, a former persecutor of the Covenanters (the date is about 1700), has a retainer and tenant who waits upon him to pay certain arrears of rent. In the midst of the business the Laird is taken with a fit, of which he almost instantly dies; and the debtor in the confusion departs without, as he believes, having got a receipt. The money too is not to be found, and the heir demands a second payment. The honest defaulter, half mad with despair and drink, wanders at night to the grave of his late landlord; and there, after a dream in which he visits the dead man, he wakes with the receipt in his hand. Payment being thus proved, the disappearance of the money is soon traced to the theft of a monkey, which was present at the time of the transaction. With

singular skill and power Scott shows how, from these not wonderful incidents, has grown in the course of a generation an awful story of retribution and reward. About the true facts there is no doubt. To establish the supernatural version it would of course be essential to show that the receipt was got, and not merely found, by the debtor on the night alleged, that is to say, after the death and burial of the payee. The receipt itself, the document, was so dated! So at least we are told; but the paper was immediately destroyed! Everything therefore turns on the question whether the debtor took such a paper from the room at the time of the payment, or whether, as he supposed, he did not. And most unfortunately our informant, the debtor's grandson, actually gives, though he is not in the least aware of it, two accounts of the transaction, which differ totally at the critical point. The thing is a delightful example of Scott's profound acquaintance with story-telling men, and the masterly use which he made of it; and the passages will serve, as well as any, for specimens of the narrator's language and style. Here is his first account of the payment:

'My gudesire, with as gude a countenance as he could put on, made a leg, and placed the bag of money on the table wi' a dash, like a man that does something clever. The Laird drew it to him hastily-"Is it all here, Steenie, man?"

""Your honour will find it right," said my gudesire.

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""Here, Dougal," said the Laird, gie Steenie a tass of brandy downstairs, till I count the siller and write the receipt."

'But they werena weel out of the room when Sir Robert gied a yelloch that garr'd the Castle rock. Back ran Dougal -in flew the livery-men-yell on yell gied the Laird, ilk ane mair awfu' than the ither. My gudesire knew not whether to stand or flee, but he ventured back into the parlour. . [His] head was like to turn. He forgot baith siller and receipt, and down stairs he banged,' etc.

Now upon this showing it is plain, both that the receipt could easily be written, and that the debtor could easily take it away unawares; and, given these facts, no reasonable person would doubt that the whole story should be so understood and explained. But presently we have the interview between the debtor and Sir Robert's heir (Sir John), when, of course, the cir