CHAPTER XII.

"But how on earth did you get into my new Stocks?" asked the Squire, scratching his head.

"My dear sir, Pliny the elder got into the crater of Mount Etna."

"Did he, and what for?"

"To try what it was like, I suppose," answered Riccabocca.

The Squire burst out a-laughing.

"And so you got into the Stocks to try what it was like. Well, I can't wonder--it is a very handsome pair of Stocks," continued the Squire, with a loving look at the object of his praise. "Nobody need be ashamed of being seen in those Stocks--I should not mind it myself."

"We had better move on," said the Parson drily, "or we shall be having the whole village here presently, gazing on the lord of the manor in the same predicament as that from which we have just extricated the Doctor. Now pray, what is the matter with Lenny Fairfield? I can't understand a word of what has passed. You don't mean to say that good Lenny Fairfield (who was absent from church by the bye) can have done anything to get into disgrace?"

"Yes, he has though," cried the Squire. "Stirn, I say--Stirn." But Stirn had forced his way through the hedge and vanished. Thus left to his own powers of narrative at secondhand, Mr Hazeldean now told all he had to communicate: the assault upon Randal Leslie, and the prompt punishment inflicted by Stirn; his own indignation at the affront to his young kinsman, and his good-natured merciful desire to save the culprit from the addition of public humiliation.

The Parson, mollified towards the rude and hasty invention of the beer-drinking, took the Squire by the hand. "Ah, Mr Hazeldean, forgive me," he said repentantly; "I ought to have known at once that it was only some ebullition of your heart that could stifle your sense of decorum. But this is a sad story about Lenny, brawling and fighting on the Sabbath-day. So unlike him, too--I don't know what to make of it."

"Like or unlike," said the Squire, "it has been a gross insult to young Leslie; and looks all the worse because I and Audley are not just the best friends in the world. I can't think what it is," continued Mr Hazeldean, musingly, "but it seems that there must be always some association of fighting connected with that prim half-brother of mine. There was I, son of his own mother--who might have been shot through the lungs, only the ball lodged in the shoulder--and now his wife's kinsman--my kinsman, too--grandmother a Hazeldean--a hard-reading sober lad, as I am given to understand, can't set his foot into the quietest parish in the three kingdoms, but what the mildest boy that ever was seen--makes a rush at him like a mad bull. It is FATALITY!" cried the Squire solemnly.

"Ancient legend records similar instances of fatality in certain houses," observed Riccabocca. "There was the House of Pelops--and Polynices and Eteocles--the sons of OEdipus!"

"Pshaw," said the Parson; "but what's to be done?"

"Done?" said the Squire; "why, reparation must be made to young Leslie. And though I wished to spare Lenny, the young ruffian, a public disgrace--for your sake, Parson Dale, and Mrs Fairfield's;--yet a good caning in private--"

"Stop, sir!" said Riccabocca mildly, "and hear me." The Italian then, with much feeling and considerable tact, pleaded the cause of his poor protégé, and explained how Lenny's error arose only from mistaken zeal for the Squire's service, and in the execution of the orders received from Mr Stirn.

"That alters the matter," said the Squire, softened; "and all that is necessary now will be for him to make a proper apology to my kinsman."

"Yes, that is just," rejoined the Parson; "but I still don't learn how he got out of the Stocks."

Riccabocca then resumed his tale; and, after confessing his own principal share in Lenny's escape, drew a moving picture of the boy's shame and honest mortification. "Let us march against Philip!" cried the Athenians, when they heard Demosthenes--

"Let us go at once and comfort the child!" cried the Parson, before Riccabocca could finish.

With that benevolent intention, all three quickened their pace, and soon arrived at the widow's cottage. But Lenny had caught sight of their approach through the window; and not doubting that, in spite of Riccabocca's intercession, the Parson was come to upbraid, and the Squire to re-imprison, he darted out by the back way, got amongst the woods, and lay there _perdu_ all the evening. Nay, it was not till after dark that his mother--who sate wringing her hands in the little kitchen, and trying in vain to listen to the Parson and Mrs Dale, who (after sending in search of the fugitive) had kindly come to console the mother--heard a timid knock at the door and a nervous fumble at the latch. She started up, opened the door, and Lenny sprang to her bosom, and there buried his face, sobbing loud.

"No harm, my boy," said the Parson tenderly; "you have nothing to fear--all is explained and forgiven."

Lenny looked up, and the veins on his forehead were much swollen. "Sir," said he sturdily, "I don't want to be forgiven--I ain't done no wrong. And--I've been disgraced--and I won't go to school, never no more."

"Hush, Carry!" said the Parson to his wife, who, with the usual liveliness of her little temper, was about to expostulate. "Good night, Mrs Fairfield. I shall come and talk to you to-morrow, Lenny; by that time you will think better of it."

The Parson then conducted his wife home, and went up to the Hall to report Lenny's safe return; for the Squire was very uneasy about him, and had even in person shared the search. As soon as he heard Lenny was safe--"Well," said the Squire, "let him go the first thing in the morning to Rood Hall, to ask Master Leslie's pardon, and all will be right and smooth again."

"A young villain!" cried Frank, with his cheeks the colour of scarlet; "to strike a gentleman and an Etonian, who had just been to call on _me_! But I wonder Randal let him off so well--any other boy in the sixth form would have killed him!"

"Frank," said the Parson sternly, "if we all had our deserts, what should be done to him who not only lets the sun go down on his own wrath, but strives with uncharitable breath to fan the dying embers of another's?"

The clergyman here turned away from Frank, who bit his lip, and seemed abashed--while even his mother said not a word in his exculpation; for when the Parson did reprove in that stern tone, the majesty of the Hall stood awed before the rebuke of the Church. Catching Riccabocca's inquisitive eye, Mr Dale drew aside the philosopher, and whispered to him his fears that it would be a very hard matter to induce Lenny to beg Randal Leslie's pardon, and that the proud stomach of the pattern-boy would not digest the Stocks with as much ease as a long regimen of philosophy had enabled the sage to do. This conference Miss Jemima soon interrupted by a direct appeal to the Doctor respecting the number of years (even without any previous and more violent incident) that the world could possibly withstand its own wear and tear.

"Ma'am," said the Doctor, reluctantly summoned away, to look at a passage in some prophetic periodical upon that interesting subject--"ma'am, it is very hard that you should make one remember the end of the world, since, in conversing with you, one's natural temptation is to forget its existence."

Miss Jemima blushed scarlet. Certainly that deceitful heartless compliment justified all her contempt for the male sex; and yet--such is human blindness--it went far to redeem all mankind in her credulous and too confiding soul.

"He is about to propose," sighed Miss Jemima.

"Giacomo," said Riccabocca, as he drew on his nightcap, and stepped majestically into the four-posted bed, "I think we shall get that boy for the garden now!"

Thus each spurred his hobby, or drove her car, round the Hazeldean whirligig.

FOOTNOTES:

[7] "_Entre tout, l'état d'une prison est le plus doux, et le plus profitable!_"

[8] Munito was the name of a dog famous for his learning (a Porson of a dog) at the date of my childhood. There are no such dogs now-a-days.

BIOGRAPHY.[9]

Although history and biography both relate to the affairs of men, and are employed in the narrative of human events, they are governed by opposite principles, and require, for their successful prosecution, different powers and habits of thought. The main object of history is the tracing out the growth of nations, the great events which lead to their rise or fall, the causes operating on the social body, which at one period conduct to power and greatness, at another induce weakness and decay. Biography is concerned with individual life. Its aim is to trace the annals, not of nations, but of persons; to portray, not the working of general causes on the progress of empires, but the influence of particular characters on their most interesting episodes. The former requires habits of general thought, and the power of tracing one common principle through a great variety of complicated details; the latter, close attention to individual incidents, and a minute examination of the secret springs of human conduct. The first is closely allied to the generalisations of the philosopher; the latter requires the powers of the dramatist. The two branches of composition, however, are nearly allied, and frequently run into each other. History generally finds its most interesting episodes, often its most important subjects, in the narrative of individual greatness; biography is imperfect unless, in addition to tracing the achievements of the individuals it records, it explains their influence upon the society among whom they arose.

What we call the histories of antiquity were, for the most part, only biographies, and they owe their principal interest to that circumstance. The _Cyropædia_ of Xenophon is a philosophical romance, clothed with the eloquence of an orator; the fragments which remain of Sallust, the rhetorical narrative of Quintus Curtius, are the avowed biographies of individual men. Even the regular histories of classical times owe their chief charm to the simplicity of the subject, in which one state or contest stands prominently forward, and the others are thrown into a shade which only renders the more striking the light thrown on one particular subject, or the efforts of individual greatness. Herodotus has earned his deathless fame by the narrative he has given of the great war between Persia and Greece, on which the destinies of mankind depended; Thucydides by his profound exposition of the strife of aristocracy and democracy in the contest between Lacedæmon and Athens. The long narrative of Livy has survived the floods of Time almost entirely from the charming episodes descriptive of character or manners which he has introduced, and the dramatic power with which he has narrated the exploits of individual men; and what has given Tacitus immortality, is neither any luminous views on the progress of mankind, nor any just appreciation of the causes of greatness in particular states, but the depth to which he has fathomed the real springs of action in particular men, and the terrible truth with which he has unveiled that most appalling of all spectacles--a naked human heart.

The great difficulty of history, as it must be written in modern times, arises from the multitude and complication of the events which have to be recorded. So intimately connected have the States of Europe been since the rise of modern civilisation, that he who writes the annals of one must write the history of all. The progress, internal and external, of all its powers must be brought forward abreast; and such is their number and importance, that not only is the historian oppressed with the variety and complication of his materials, but he finds it next to impossible to produce interest in the reader amidst such a sea of details; and often fails, from the impossibility of attaining that essential requisite in the rousing of human sympathy--unity of emotion. Add to this the infinity of subjects a historian even of an individual state must now embrace, and which almost overwhelm the exploits of particular men by their multitude and complication. Strategy, statistics, trade, navigation, commerce, agriculture, taxation, finance, currency, paper credit, poor laws, agriculture, socialism, chartism, form a few of the topics, any one of which would require volumes for its elucidation, yet none of which can be omitted without exposing the historian to the imputation, from some one or other, of having overlooked the most important part of his subject. So great is this difficulty, so extensive the embarrassment it produces, that it may safely be pronounced to be insurmountable by any effort, how great soever, unless the endeavours of the historian are aided by unity of interest in the subject, or overpowering greatness of influence in the characters with whom he has to deal. But it is, perhaps, only in the wars of the Crusades, of the Succession in Spain, and of the French Revolution, that such unity of interest is to be looked for, or such surpassing grandeur of character is to be found, from the achievements of a Richard Coeur-de-Lion, a Marlborough, or a Napoleon.

From this great difficulty, biography is entirely free, and thence the superior interest with which, when properly treated, works of that description are attended. We are so constituted that we must concentrate our interest; dispersion is fatal to its existence. Every novelist and romance-writer knows this; there must always be a hero and a heroine; but two or three heroes and heroines would prove fatal to the interest. Ariosto tried to divide the interest of the reader among the adventures of a dozen knights-errant; but even his genius proved unequal to the task, and he was obliged to concentrate the whole around the fabulous siege of Paris to restore the broken unity of his power. The great and signal advantage of biography is, that, from its very nature, it possesses that personal interest and individual character which the epic poet and novelist feel to be essential to the moving of the human heart, but which the historian so often finds himself unable to attain, without omitting some important parts of his subject, or giving undue prominence to the characters of individual men.

For this reason it is, that the most popular works which ever have been written have been biographies of illustrious men. No one would think of comparing the intellect of Plutarch to that of Tacitus, his eloquence to that of Cicero's, yet he has made perhaps a greater impression on the imagination of subsequent ages than either of these illustrious men. If we examine the images of the mighty of former days which are engraven on our minds, we shall find that it is not so much the pictured pages of Livy or Quintus Curtius, as the "Lives of Plutarch," which have given them immortality. We complain of his gossip, we lament his superstition, we smile at his credulity, but we devour his pages; and, after the lapse of seventeen hundred years, they remain one of the most generally popular works in existence. It is the same in modern times. No one would think of comparing Boswell, in point of intellect, to Johnson; in point of eloquence to Burke; in point of genius to Gibbon; yet he has produced a work superior in general interest to any of these illustrious men, and which is daily read by thousands, to whom the "Reflections on the French Revolution," the moral essays of the "Rambler," and the "History of the Decline and Fall," will for ever remain unknown.

To render biography, however, thus generally attractive, it is indispensable that its basis should be that first element in the narration of human action--TRUTH. Without this, it wants the great superiority of the narrative of real event over fictitious creations, how interesting soever they may be--that of recording what has actually occurred in real life. How important an element this is in awakening the sympathies of the human heart, may be seen even in children who, when particularly fascinated by any story they are told, invariably end by asking, "But is it all true?" The value of truth, or rather of what is "_vraisemblable_," is felt even in imaginary conceptions, which it is well known are never so attractive, or interest so powerfully, as when they most closely resemble the events and characters of actual existence. The real is, and ever must be, the only sure foundation of the ideal. Novels are most delightful when they approach nearest to what we behold around us in real life, while yet containing a sufficient blending of romance and sentiment, of heroism and magnanimity, to satisfy the higher aspirations of our being. Biography is most charming when it depicts with fidelity those characters, and records with truth those events, which approach nearest to that imaginary perfection to which every generous mind aspires, but to which none ever has attained, or ever will.

It has been said with truth, that the events which are suitable for epic poetry are such as are "probable but yet elevating." We are so constituted by our bonds to earth, that our chief interest must ever be derived from the virtues or the vices, the joys or sorrows, of beings like ourselves; but we are so filled with more ennobling thoughts and aspirations, by our destiny in Heaven, that we can be satisfied only by what points to a higher state of existence, and feel the greatest enjoyment by being elevated, either by the conceptions of fancy or the records of reality, to a nearer view of its perfection. If novels depict merely imaginary existences, they may charm for a season, like the knights of Ariosto, or the heroes of Metastasio; but they are too much in the clouds permanently to interest sublunary mortals. If they record merely the adventures of low, or the vulgarity of middle life, they may amuse for a season, like the characters of Smollett; but they will sink ere long, from the want of that indispensable lifeboat in the sea of time, an elevating tendency. It is characters like those of the _Iliad_, of Shakspeare, of Scott, and Schiller, which combine the well-known and oft-observed characteristics of human nature with the oft-imagined but seldom seen traits of heroism and magnanimity which border on the realms of the ideal that for ever fascinate the imagination, and dwell in the heart of man. The reason is, they contain enough of reality to tell us it is of humanity that the story is told, and enough of the ideal to make us proud of our connection with it.

The great and chief charm of biography is to be found in this, that it unites, from its very nature and object, those two indispensable requisites to durable popularity in works of fiction, and combines them with the value and the solid information of truthful narrative. It possesses the value of history, without its tedium--the interest of romance, without its unsubstantiality. It culls the flowers from the records of time, and casts into the shade all the accompanying weeds and briars. If a judicious and discriminating selection of characters were made--if those persons were selected for the narrative who have been most illustrious by their virtues, their genius, or their magnanimity, or, as a contrast, by their vices, and who have made the greatest and most durable impression on human affairs, a work might be produced exceeding any one of history in its utility, any of romance in its popularity. David Hume strongly advised Robertson, eighty years ago, instead of writing the _Life of Charles the Fifth_, to write a series of biographies, on the plan of Plutarch, for modern times; and it is, perhaps, to be regretted that the advice was not followed. Yet were the abilities of the Scotch Principal, great as they were, not such as peculiarly fitted him for the task. His mind was too philosophical and discursive to give it its chief interest. He wanted the dramatic turn, the ardent soul, the graphic power, the magnanimous disposition, which was essential to its successful accomplishment. A work in three thousand pages, or six volumes, recording the lives of fifty of the greatest and most illustrious men in Europe, from the days of Alfred to those of Napoleon, executed in the right spirit, and by a man of adequate genius, would be the most popular and elevating book that ever appeared in Modern Europe. Many such have been attempted, but never with any success, because they were not set about by the proper minds. To do justice to such an undertaking would require a combination of opposite qualities rarely to be met with in real life.

As biography deals with individual characters, and is relieved from the extended and perplexing subjects which overwhelm the general historian, it admits, in return, of an expansion into many topics which, although often in the highest degree amusing, and sometimes not a little interesting, would yet be felt to be misplaced in the annals of the great changes of nations or of the world. As the delineation of character is its avowed object, and the events of individual life its principal subject, it not only admits of but requires a thousand incidents and descriptions, which are essential to a right understanding of those characters, and form, as it were, the still life of the picture in which their features are to be portrayed. Such descriptions are not unsuitable to general history. Mr Macaulay has shown in his History that his observations on that head in the _Edinburgh Review_ were founded on a just appreciation of the object and limits of his art. But they must be sparingly introduced, or they will become tedious and unprofitable: if any one doubts this, let him _try_ to read Von Hammer's _History of the Ottoman Empire_, one-half of which is taken up with descriptions of dresses, receptions, and processions. But in biography we readily give admission to--nay, we positively require--such details. If they are not the jewels of history, they are the setting which adds to their lustre. They fill up our conception of past events; they enable us to clothe the characters in which we are interested in the actual habiliments in which they were arrayed; they bring before our eyes the dwellings, the habits, the mode of life, the travelling, the occupations of distant ages, and often give more life and reality to the creatures of our imaginations than could have been attained by the most laboured general descriptions, or the most emphatic assertions of the author.

For this reason, as well as on account of the known influence of individual character, rather than abstract principle, on the fair sex, there is no branch of historical composition so suitable for woman as biography; and Miss Strickland has shown us that there is none which female genius can cultivate with greater success. The general bent of the female mind, impressed upon it for the wisest purposes by its Creator, is to be influenced in its opinions, and swayed in its conduct, by individual men, rather than general ideas. When Milton said of our first parents--

"Not equal, as their sex not equal seemed: For valour he and contemplation formed; For beauty she, and sweet attractive grace; _He for God only, she for God in him_;"

He foreshadowed man as the appropriate historian of the general march of human events--woman, as the best delineator of individual character, the most fascinating writer of biography. The most gifted of her sex is a proof of this; for if a few men have exceeded Madame de Stael in the broad view she takes of human affairs, none have equalled her in the delineation of the deepest feelings and most lasting passions of the human heart. As it is the nature of woman's disposition to form an idol, (and it is for that very reason that she proves so attractive to that of man,) so, when she comes to composition, we rejoice to see her form idols of her heroes, provided only that the limits of truth are observed in their delineation, and that her enthusiasm is evinced in depicting the real, not in colouring the imaginary.

As graphic and scenic details are so valuable in biography, and give such life and animation to the picture which it exhibits, so we willingly accept from a female biographer, whether of her own or others' life, details which we could not tolerate in the other sex. When the Duchess of Abrantes, writing after the fall of Charles X., recounts in her charming memoirs the enchanting _Schall de Cachemire_, which excited her envy on the shoulders of Josephine--or tells us that at a certain ball in Paris, in 1797, she wore her blue satin dress and pearl ornaments, and at another, her pink silk, and diamonds, we perhaps smile at the simplicity which made her recount such things of herself; but still we gratefully accept them as characteristic of the costume or manners of the time. But we would never tolerate a male biographer of Murat, who should tell us that at a certain ball at Naples he wore his scarlet trowsers and black furred jacket, and on his coronation looked irresistible in his blue and silver uniform and splendid spare jacket;--not even though we know that in Russia he often returned to his lines with his sabre dripping wet with the blood of the Cossacks whom he had challenged and slain in single combat, and although the experience of all ages has confirmed the truth of Philopoemen's observation, that "to soldiers and women, dress is a matter of no small consequence."

Though details of this description, however, are valuable and admissible in biography, and come with peculiar propriety and grace from a female hand, it must be observed, on the other hand, that there is a limit, and a very obvious one, to the introduction of them, and that, if not inserted with caution, they may essentially injure the popularity or utility of a work. In particular, it is seldom safe to carry to any considerable length in the text the introduction of quotations from old histories or chronicles of the period, which often are filled with them to the exclusion of all other subjects. We know that such original documents have a great charm in the eyes of antiquarians or antiquarian biographers, the more especially if they have brought them to light themselves; but such persons learned in ancient lore constitute but a small fraction of the human race. The great body of readers, at least nineteen out of twenty, care nothing at all for such original authorities, but wish to see their import condensed into a flowing easy narrative in the author's own words. For this reason it is generally safest to give such original documents or quotations in notes or an appendix, and to confine quotations in the text to characteristic expressions, or original words spoken on very important occasions. Barante and Sismondi in France, Tytler in Scotland, and Lingard in England, have essentially injured the general popularity of their great and learned works, by not attending to this rule. The two Thierrys have chiefly won theirs by attending to it.

The great popularity and widely extended sale of Miss Strickland's _Queens of England_, almost equalling, we believe, that of any living author in this country, and much exceeding that of any prior writer, whether of her own or the other sex, in the same period in biography, is a proof both of the intrinsic excellence of that work, and the thirst which exists in the public mind for works of that description. We have long been of opinion that the narrative of human events might be rendered as popular in the outset, and far more and durably interesting in the end, than any works of fiction; and that the only reason why this has so seldom taken place, was because historical works were in general constructed on wrong principles. The great success which has recently attended historical composition in this country, especially in the case of Mr Macaulay's History and Miss Strickland's Lives, is a proof that this view of the subject is well founded. And of the two, biography, when supported by learning, and handled by genius such as both these learned writers possess, is much more likely to be generally popular than extended history, because it partakes more of the character of Romance, and possesses in a higher degree that _unity_ of interest which is the most essential element in all arts which aim at pleasing or fascinating mankind.

Scotland is a country peculiarly fortunate in the characters it presents for biographical genius. This arises from its physical weakness when compared to the strength of its formidable neighbour, and the resources which it has ever found in the persevering and indomitable character of its inhabitants. The former in every age of the wars with England has made its plains the seat of conflict; while the latter has always secured their success in the end, though often after fearful reverses, and always against tremendous odds. The proof of this is decisive. Scotland, after three centuries of almost incessant conflict, first with the arms, and then, more formidable still, with the gold of England, was still unsubdued when her monarchs ascended the English throne, and the rivalry of two noble nations was turned into the blissful emulation of peace. It is this combination of circumstances which has caused her history to be so prolific of incident, and has rendered, as strangers so often have remarked, every step in her surface historical. Her physical weakness filled it with incident--her moral strength with heroic incident. Go where you will, you meet with some traces of the great or the beautiful, the gifted or the fascinating, of former days. The ancient walls and castellated rocks of Edinburgh teem with historical recollections of the highest interest, which the kindred spirit of modern chivalry has done so much to illustrate.[10] In the short space of twenty miles--between Falkirk and Stirling--are four battlefields,[11] on each of which the fate of Britain was determined, or armies as numerous as those which met at Waterloo encountered each other. Lochleven exhibits the mournful prison of beauty: Niddry Castle, of her evanescent joys; the field of Langside, of her final overthrow. Cartlan Crags still show the cave of Wallace; Turnberry Castle the scene of Bruce's first victory; Culloden, the last battle-field of generous fidelity. Every step in Scotland is historical: the shades of the dead arise on every side: the very rocks breathe--

"Yet, Albyn, yet the praise be thine, Thy scenes and story to combine! Thou bid'st him who by Roslin strays, List to the tale of other days; Midst Cartlan Crags thou show'st the cave, The refuge of the champion brave; Giving each rock its storied tale, Pouring a lay for every dale, Knitting, as with a moral band, Thy native legends with thy land, To give each scene the interest high, Which Genius lends to Beauty's eye."

Miss Strickland's talents as a writer, and turn of mind as an individual, in a peculiar manner fit her for painting a historical gallery of the most illustrious or dignified female characters in that land of chivalry and of song. Her disposition is at once heroic and pictorial. She has the spirit of chivalry in her soul, and the colours of painting in her eye. She sympathises with all the daring spirit, the bold adventure, the chivalrous devotion, of the cavaliers of former days; and she depicts with not less animation and force the stately scenes of departed times--the dignified processions, the splendid ceremonials, the imposing pageants. She has vast powers of application, and her research is unbounded; but these qualities, so necessary as the foundation of a historian's fame, are in her united with the powers of painting and the soul of poetry, and dignified by the elevated objects to which they are directed. The incidents of individual life are of peculiar importance in Scottish annals, because, with the exception of two periods--the war of independence under Wallace and Bruce, and the national struggle for emancipation from Popish tyranny at the Reformation--there have seldom been what we now call _popular_ movements in Scotland. Everything, or next to everything, depended on individual character; the great game of the world was played by kings and queens, nobles and knights. On this great theatre the queens played, as they do everywhere, a most important part. The instruction of man in childhood, the object of his adoration in youth, of lasting influence in manhood, woman has, in modern Europe where her destiny was first fully developed, exercised an important sway, and more so than is generally supposed on national affairs. But nowhere has this influence been more strongly felt than in Scotland, where queens have appeared, whose beauty and misfortunes have become immortal in story, and been for ever engraven on the human heart by the hand of genius, and where the chivalrous and daring disposition of the country, the _perfervidum Scotorum ingenium_, at once penetrated some with the most devout adoration of their charms, and inspired others with the most vehement jealousy of their ascendency.

In her delineation of individual character, Miss Strickland evidently takes the greatest pains to be impartial; and the multitude of new documents and facts which she has brought on both sides of the question in regard to her heroines, is a sufficient proof that this most laudable principle is a ruling one in her mind. But she would be something more or something less than mortal, if no trace of predilection was to be found in her pages. It is rather, however, in regard to families than individuals that this leaning is apparent. She is evidently inimical to the Tudor and friendly to the Stuart race. In this she only shares the feelings of the chivalrous and the enthusiastic of every age and country; for the leading qualities of the one were as calculated, on a retrospect, to inspire aversion as those of the other were to awaken sympathy. The first was selfish, overbearing, cruel, but often exceedingly able: the latter generous, unsuspecting, heroic, but sometimes sadly imprudent. Success at the time crowned the worldly wisdom of the one, and disaster, long-continued and crushing, at length punished the unhappy want of foresight of the other. But the results of the time are not always indicative of the opinion of futurity: and already the verdict of mankind has been secured in regard to the rival Queens who brought their fortunes into collision, by two pleaders of surpassing power in swaying the human heart. Scotland may be proud that one of these was found in the most gifted of her sons, whose genius has, in one of his most perfect historical novels, immortalised the prison of Lochleven and the field of Langside; and Germany may well exult in the reflection that the other appeared in that matchless genius who three centuries after her death imbibed, on the banks of the Saale, the very soul and spirit of the age of Mary in England, and has for ever engraven her heroic death, and the imperishable scenes of Fotheringay, on the hearts of men.[12]

Miss Strickland's partiality for the Stuart and aversion to the Tudor race, may be explained by another and still more honourable circumstance. It is the inevitable effect of a long course of injustice, whether in the rulers of men, or the judges of those rulers, the annalists of their lives, to produce in the end a reaction in the general mind. This is more particularly the case in persons like Miss Strickland, actuated by generous and elevated feelings, and who feel conscious of power to redress much of the injustice which the long-continued ascendency of a particular party, whether in religion or politics, has inflicted on the characters of History. Nowhere has this injustice been more strongly experienced than in Great Britain during the last two centuries. The popular party in politics, and the reformed in religion, having in both these countries, after a sanguinary struggle, been successful, and a family seated on the throne which embodied, and in a manner personified, both these triumphs, nearly the whole historians who treated of the period for a century and a half were entirely one-sided. When Hume wrote his immortal history, he complained, with justice, that for seventy years power, reward, and emolument had been confined to one party in the state, and that the sources of History had in consequence been irremediably corrupted. His rhetorical powers and impartial spirit did much to remedy the evil, but he had not industry and research sufficient to do the whole. Much was left to the just feelings, and generous because disinterested effort, of the high-minded who succeeded him in the path of historical inquiry. Mr Tytler's great and authentic _History of Scotland_, and Lingard's able and valuable, though one-sided, _History of England_, have gone far to give the opposite side of the picture which Malcolm Laing and Burnet had painted in so vehement a party spirit, and Macaulay has since continued with such remarkable historical power. But much remained yet to be done. Antiquarian industry, chivalrous zeal, have of late brought many of the concealed or suppressed treasures of History to light; and it is those which Miss Strickland proposes to embody in her _Queens of Scotland_.

Of the general plan which she proposes to adopt in this work, our author gives the following admirable account:--

"As long as Scotland, in consequence of bad roads and tedious travelling, remained a sort of _terra incognita_, vulgar prejudice prevailed among the ignorant and narrow-minded portion of society in England; but Scotland only required to be seen to be appreciated. Strong in native talent, rich in native worth, valiant, persevering, and wise, her sons have been ever foremost in the field of honourable enterprise, whether in deeds of arms, science, jurisprudence, or the industrial arts of peaceful life. In poetry, music, and song, she has certainly never been surpassed. It was, however, reserved for the genius of Sir Walter Scott to draw English hearts and English gold to Scotland, and to knit those bonds of brotherly regard which no act of legislature could do. His graphic pictures of Scotland and the Scotch acted like a spell of enchantment on the imaginations of the English. Those who were able to indulge the enthusiastic feelings which his writings had excited, crossed the Border, rushed into Highland glens, scaled Highland hills, congregated at Scotch hostelries, peeped into Scotch cottages, were invited to partake of Scotch hospitality--and found themselves in a land flowing with milk and honey, not merely in its festive character, but in its kindliness to strangers, which is the glory of all lands.

"Yet among the numerous visitors whom the sight-seeing instincts of this age of locomotion have rendered familiar with the ancient seats of Scottish regality, how few know anything about the Queens who once held their courts within the now deserted walls of Dunfermline, Falkland, Linlithgow, and Stirling!--gems which, even in their desolation, are surviving monuments of the graceful tastes of their founders, and incline the musing antiquary, who realises in fancy for a moment their pristine glory, to smite his breast and exclaim 'Ichabod!' With the exception of Windsor Castle, England has certainly no vestige of palatial architecture which may compare with the royal homes of Scotland, of whose former tenants a few particulars may be no less acceptable to the sons and daughters of the land, than to the southern stranger who visits them.

"The Maiden Castle, sitting enthroned on her dun rock, the Acropolis of Edinburgh, at once a relic and a witness of the immutable Past, is full of memories of eventful scenes connected with Queens whose hearts would have leaped with exultation could their eyes have looked on such a vision of national prosperity as the bright New Town, with its gay streets, and shops full of costly merchandise; its spacious squares, crescents, and noble public buildings, rising on the outer _ballium_ of that grim fortress whose base is now surrounded by green flowery gardens, for the joyance of a peace-loving generation. Mons Meg and her brethren have lost their vocation through the amended temper of the times, and hold sinecure posts in silence--their destructive thunders being superseded by the din of the railway trains bringing hourly freights of wealth and wisdom to the good town of Edinburgh and its inhabitants.

* * * * *

"Many original royal letters will be embodied in these volumes, with facts and anecdotes carefully verified. Local traditions, not unworthy of attention, have been gathered in the desolate palaces and historic sites where every peasant is an oral chronicler, full of spirit-stirring recollections of the past. These are occasionally connected with themes which were the fountains whence Sir Walter Scott drew his inspiration for the chivalric poetry and romance which has rendered Scotland classic ground. The tastes of those who were the rising generation, when the Waverley romances were the absorbing theme of interest in the literary world, have become matured. They require to have history rendered as agreeable without the mixture of fiction as with it; they desire to have it so written, without sacrificing truth to fastidiousness, that they may read it with their children, and that the whole family party shall be eager to resume the book when they gather round the work-table during the long winter evenings.

"Authors who feel as they ought to feel, should rejoice in seeing their productions capable of imparting pleasure to the simple as well as the refined; for a book which pleases only one grade of society may be fashionable, but cannot be called popular. That which interests peasants as well as peers, and is read with equal zest by children and parents, and is often seen in the hands of the operative classes, speaks to the heart in a language intelligible to a widely-extended circle of humanity, has written its own review, and needs no other."

In the last lines of these admirable observations, we doubt not Miss Strickland has, without intending it, foreshadowed the destiny of her own undertaking.

The work begins with the Life of Margaret Tudor, daughter of Henry VII. of England, and married at the early age of fourteen to James IV., the heroic and brilliant King of Scotland. This choice, in many respects, was fortunate, as it commences with the period when the fortunes of the two kingdoms became closely interlaced, and with the princess whose marriage with James was the immediate cause of the union of the two crowns on the same head, and the placing of the Stuart, and through it of the Hanoverian family, on the British throne.

The first chapter is occupied with the details of the journey of the royal bride from London to Edinburgh, which was somewhat a more tedious and fatiguing undertaking than it is now when performed by her descendant Queen Victoria, for it took above _three weeks_ to perform. The reception of the youthful princess at York, Newcastle, and Durham, where she was met and attended by the whole nobility and gentry of the northern counties, who accompanied her on her progress northward on horseback, gives occasion for several faithful and animated pictures. Her first day's journey in Scotland, however, brought her into ruder scenery, characteristic of the stormy life which lay before her; and she rested the first night at _Fastcastle_, then a stronghold of the Home family, now belonging to Sir John Hall of Dunglass, which modern genius, under a feigned name, has done so much to celebrate.

"Fastcastle is no other than the veritable Wolf-Crag Tower, celebrated in Scott's _Bride of Lammermoor_ as the abode of the Master of Ravenswood. It is seated on a lofty promontory, which commands the lonely indented bay of which St Abb's Head forms the extreme point to the right, with a wild array of rifted rocks terminating in the Wolf-Crag, which soars high in mid air above the fortress--black, gloomy, and inaccessible. The way by which the southern bride and her company reached this rugged resting-place lay across the Lammermuir, several miles of wild heath and treacherous bog, which no stranger might traverse in safety without guides well acquainted with the track. Before they entered on this pass, they had to descend a hill which was so steep and precipitous that, even within the last century, it was customary for the passengers by the mail-coach between Berwick and Edinburgh to alight and cross it on foot, while the carriage was taken off the wheels and carried over by a relay of men, stationed on the spot for that purpose. Of course the roads were not better in the beginning of the sixteenth century. Fastcastle is approached by one or two descents and ascents of this kind, and is separated from the mainland by a cleft between the rocks, which has to be crossed by a natural bridge formed of a ledge of rock, without rail or guard, with the vexed billows boiling and thundering sixty feet below.

"When the young Tudor Queen made her passage across this Al Arat of the Caledonian coast, she had the German Ocean before her, which beats against the rocky battlements and defences with which the basement of the castle is surrounded. One of these masses resembles the upturned keel of a huge man-of-war stranded among other fragments, which, like the relics of a former world, lay scattered at the foot of the precipice, with the wild breakers rushing through their clefts, forming a grand _jet-d'eau_, and tossing the light feathery foam on high. The larger rocks are the haunt of innumerable sea-birds. Fastcastle had formerly been the stronghold of some of those ferocious feudal pirates who may be regarded as the buccaneers of the Caledonian coast. Many a bloody deed had been perpetrated within its isolated and inaccessible circuit; but the festive solemnities and ceremonials that surrounded the royal bride allowed no leisure or opportunity for whispers of the dark tales and romantic traditions connected with its history."

Hitherto the Tudor princess had not seen her royal lover. Their first interview, and his personal appearance, are described in these characteristic lines:--

"James entered the presence of Margaret Tudor with his hawking-lure flung over his shoulder, dressed simply in a velvet jacket; his hair and beard, curling naturally, were rather long, his complexion glowing from the manly exercise he had just been engaged in. He was the handsomest sovereign in Europe, the black eyes and hair of his elegant father, James III., being softened in his resemblance to the blonde beauty of his Danish mother. Sir Walter Scott has drawn James IV.'s portrait _con amore_, and has not exaggerated the likeness--

'For hazel was his eagle eye, And auburn of the darkest dye His short curled beard and hair. Light was his footstep in the dance, And firm his stirrup in the lists, And oh, he had that merry glance Which seldom lady's heart resists.'"

The young Queen met her royal lord at the doorway of her great chamber. The King of Scotland uncovered his head and made a deep obeisance to her, while she made a lowly reverence to him. He then took her hand and kissed her, and saluted all her ladies by kissing them. It was noticed that he welcomed the chivalric Earl of Surrey with especial cordiality.

"Then the King of Scotland took the Queen on one side, and they communed together for a long space. She _held good manner_, [was unembarrassed;] and the King remained bare-headed during the time they conversed, and many courtesies passed between them. _Incontinent_ [immediately] the board was set and served. The King and Queen washed their hands with humble reverence, and after that set them down at table together."

The entry of the royal pair into Edinburgh is thus described; and it seems to have been attended with one remarkable and characteristic circumstance, for she _rode behind her destined husband on the same horse_:--

"Half way to Edinburgh, James IV. was seen advancing with his company. He was this time attired in grand costume. 'His steed was trapped with gold, and round its neck was a deep gold fringe; the saddle and harness were of gold, but the bridle and head-gear of burnished silver. The King wore a jacket of cloth of gold, lined and bordered with violet velvet and fine black _bouge_ or _budge_ fur; his waistcoat was of violet satin, his _hoses_ of scarlet, his shirt confined with bands of pearl and rich stones; his spurs were long and gilt. He rode towards the Queen in full course, at the pace at which the hare is hunted. On seeing her, he made very humble obeisance, and, leaping down from his horse, he came and kissed her in her litter. Then mounting in his usual gallant fashion, without touching stirrup, a gentleman-usher unsheathed the sword of state, and bore it before his King in regal fashion. The Scottish sword was enclosed in a scabbard of purple velvet, whereon was written, in letters of pearl, _God my defende_. The like words are on the pommel, the cross, and the _chap_ also. The Earl of Bothwell bore this sword when the royal party reached Edinburgh town.'

"The King placed himself by the Queen's litter, and passed all the time conversing with her and entertaining her, as he rode by her side.

"'Before they entered Edinburgh, one of the King's gentlemen brought out a fair courser, trapped in cloth of gold, with crimson velvet, interlaced with white and red: the King went to the horse, mounted him without touching the stirrup in the presence of the whole company, then tried his paces--choosing to judge himself whether it were safe for his bride to ride on a pillion behind him, which was the mode in which he intended to enter the city.' Likewise he caused one of his gentlemen to mount behind him, as a lady would ride, to see whether the proud courser would submit to bear double or not.

"When he had concluded all his experiments, he decided that it was not proper to trust the safety of his bride to his favourite charger; 'so King James dismounted from him, and condescended to ride on the Queen's gentle palfrey. He mounted, and the Queen was placed on a pillion behind him.'"

The real tragedy and most interesting period of Margaret Tudor's life, is that which preceded and followed the fatal expedition to Flodden, to which the genius of Mr Aytoun has lately added such additional interest in his exquisite ballads. Miss Strickland has also been strongly moved by the same catastrophe.--

"There are traditions still current in the neighbourhood of the beautiful palatial ruin of Linlithgow relative to her parting with James IV.

"Near the King's bed-chamber, and a beautiful little apartment overlooking the lake, supposed to be his dressing-room, is a turnpike stair, at the corner of the east side of the quadrangle erected by James IV. This leads to a lofty turret or mirador, called by popular tradition 'Queen Margaret's Bower.' It is surrounded by a stone bench or divan, and had once a small stone table in the centre. Here the Queen spent in tears the live-long summer's day on which her husband left her to march against England. Here, too, she is said to have passed 'the weary night of Flodden fight,' expecting news of the engagement, which came at last, but too soon.

"The fatal field of Flodden not only made Queen Margaret a widow, but rendered Scotland desolate and almost desperate. All the hope that remained to the people of averting the fury of Henry VIII., and the cruelty of his successful general, centred solely in the Queen--being founded on the near relationship of herself and their infant King to the southern sovereign."

* * * * *

"The Queen convened such of the nobility as survived the red field of Flodden to meet the clergy at Perth immediately. So prompt were all their proceedings, that the young King was crowned at Scone, near that city, within twenty days of his father's death. It was called the Mourning Coronation; for the ancient crown of Scotland being held over on the baby-brow of the royal infant, most of the witnesses and assistants of the ceremony burst into an 'infectious passion' of sobs and tears. They wept not only their own recent losses on the battle-field, but their late monarch, 'who was,' as Buchanan says, albeit no commender of kings, 'dear to all men while living, and mightily lamented by his people at his death.'

"When the first agony of grief was abated at the loss of the King and the terrible slaughter of the best of the nobility and gentry who fought in the serried phalanx of spears about his person, the discovery was made by the Scottish people that no other injury was like to accrue from Flodden fight. It was, to all intents and purposes, one of those bad expenditures of human life called a drawn battle. Had it taken place on Scottish ground, it would have been reckoned another Bannockburn: the English must have retreated, (for they did so on their own ground,) and the Scots would have retained possession of the field. As it was, the English had the moral advantages of being an invaded people; and, as such, their success in making a great slaughter of those who were arrayed in battle on their soil, redounded more to their true glory than is the case in most great victories. But they did not purchase it easily. Stark and stiff as James IV. lay under heaps of slain, he kept possession of that well-stricken field. The despatch of Lord Dacre clearly proves that when the English left the field at nightfall, they were ignorant to whom the victory belonged. Then the Homes and other Border chieftains plundered the dead at their leisure; their countrymen strongly suspected that they slew their King, and turned the scale of victory against their countrymen. There is the more probability in this supposition when it is remembered how inflexibly James IV. had maintained justice on his Borders--therefore he had honestly won the enmity of those rapacious septs.

"Lord Dacre made an excursion of observation, with a party of cavalry, in the morning after the battle of Flodden, to ascertain who possessed the field; he saw the King of Scotland's formidable train of brass cannon dominant over the scene, but mute and motionless; the artillerymen gone; the Scottish cannon and the silent dead were solely in possession of the battle-ground. The thickest heaps cumbered it on the spot where the royal James and his phalanx had fought; the breathless warriors lay just as death had left them, for the marauding Borderers had not dared to pursue their occupation of stripping and plundering in the full light of day."

Queen Margaret, however, did not remain long inconsolable; she had too much of the disposition of her brother Henry VIII. in her to remain long without a husband; and she fixed her eyes on a handsome youth, the Earl of Angus, whom she soon afterwards married, to the no small annoyance of her brother and his subjects. Her marriage with him gave occasion to the following pleasing verses by Gawin Douglas, the uncle of the nobleman thus honoured by the smiles of royalty:--

"Amidst them, borne within a golden chair, O'er-fret with pearls and colours most preclair, That drawen was by hackneys all milk-white, Was set a queen as lily sweetly fair, In purple robe hemmed with gold ilk-where; With gemmed clasps closed in all perfite, A diadem most pleasantly polite, Sate on the tresses of her golden hair, And in her hand a sceptre of delight.

So next her rode in granate-violet, Twelve damsels, ilka ane on their estate, Which seemed of her counsel most secrete; And next them was a lusty rout, God wot! Lords, ladies, and full mony a fair prelate, Both born of low estate and high degree, Forth with their queen they all by-passed me, At easy pace--they riding forth the gate, And I abode alone within the tree."

Margaret's life, after her second marriage, was a series of adventures and disasters partly occasioned by the turbulent spirit and endless disorders of the times, partly by her own passions. She was a true Tudor in her disposition. Like her brother, "she spared no man in her lust, and no woman in her hate." When she died, at the age of forty-eight, she had already married four husbands, of whom _three were still alive_. She divorced, not beheaded, when she was tired of her lovers: in that respect she was better than Henry. By the second of these husbands she had a daughter, named Margaret, whose birth took place in the following circumstances, characteristic alike of the age and country:--

"The welcome message of Dacre arrived at Coldstream almost in the last minute that Queen Margaret could be moved. So desperately ill was she taken on the road, that her convoy were forced to stop by the way, and hurry her into Harbottle or Hardbattle Castle, one of the grimmest and gauntest stone-donjons that frowned on the English frontier. It was just then garrisoned by Lord Dacre in person, who had commenced the fierce war on the Borders to which the arrival of the Duke of Albany in Scotland had given rise. The portcullis of Harbottle was raised to admit the fainting Queen of Scotland; but not one Scot, man or woman, Lord Dacre vowed, should enter with her. Here was a terrible situation for Margaret. She was received into the rugged Border-fortress, October 5, and, after remaining in mortal agony for more than forty-eight hours, gave birth to a daughter, the Lady Margaret Douglas, whose name is familiar to every one on the pages of general history, as the immediate ancestress of our present royal family."

The death of Margaret Tudor suggests the following reflections to our author, the justice and beauty of which makes us regret that she does not more frequently speak in her own person, instead of the quaint style of ancient annalists.

"Some of Margaret Tudor's mistakes in government, it is possible, may be attributed to the fact that she is the first instance that occurs, since Christianity was established in the island, of regnant power being confided to the hands of a woman who was expected to reign as _femme seule_. She had no education, scarcely any religion, and was guided entirely by her instincts, which were not of an elevated character. Her misdeeds, and the misfortunes attributable to her personal conduct, gave rise to most of the terrible calamities which befell her descendants. Some persons among the aristocracy of Scotland followed her evil example of divorce, which caused long and angry litigation concerning the birthrights of their descendants. The fearful feud between the houses of Arran and Darnley-Stuart was of this kind, which deeply involved the prosperity of her granddaughter, Mary Queen of Scots. And that hapless Princess was likewise marked as a victim by the cold and crafty Ruthven, on account of his family interests being affected by Queen Margaret's marriages and divorces.

"A succession of tragedies, for three generations, was the consequence of Margaret Tudor's indulgence of her selfish passions. Nor are the woes attendant on contempt of the divine institution of marriage limited to the great ones of the earth. Many a domestic tragedy, though shrouded in the obscurity of every-day life, may be traced to the same cause. Sorrow enters with sin; it desolates the peace of home; and unoffending children suffer for the evil of their parents, whenever persons are found to break, either by wilful passions or litigious contest, the earliest law given by the Almighty."

The second Life in the volume is that of Magdalene of Valois, the beautiful first Queen of James V., the brevity of whose reign of _forty_ days in Scotland was the subject of such lamentation to the country. James went to Paris, in the true spirit of chivalry, to choose and win a Queen in person; and after a rapid and somewhat discreditable homage to Mary of Vendôme, on the banks of the Loire, his inconstant affections were at length fixed by Magdalene daughter of Francis I., whom he soon after married, and who became his much loved but short-lived Queen. Their entrance into Scotland is thus described:--

"The royal voyagers made the port of Leith, Saturday, May 19, being the fifth day from their embarkation, and Whitsuneve. They landed at the pier amidst the acclamations of a mixed multitude of loving lieges of all degrees, who came to welcome their sovereign home, and to see their new Queen. Magdalene endeared herself for ever to the affections of the people by the sensibility she manifested on that occasion; for when 'she first stepped on Scottish ground, she knelt, and, bowing herself down, kissed the moulds thereof for the love she bore the King, returned thanks to God for having brought the King and her safely through the seas, and prayed for the happiness of the country.' This was indeed entering upon her high vocation, not like the cold state puppet of a public pageant, but in the spirit of a queen who felt and understood the relation in which she stood both to the King and people of that realm. A touching sight it must have been to those who saw that young royal bride thus obey the warm impulse of a heart overflowing with gratitude to God, and love to all she then looked upon. The venerable Sir David Lindsay of the Mount, and other contemporary poets, who were so soon to hang elegiac wreaths of mournful verse on the early bier of her who then stood among them in her fragile and almost unearthly loveliness, radiant with hope, and joy, and happy love, called her 'the pleasant Magdalene,' and 'the sweet Flower of France.'

"King James blithely conducted his Queen to his palace of Holyrood; and, to increase the universal satisfaction which her appearance and manners had given, the auspicious news quickly spread through Edinburgh, that she was likely to bring an heir to Scotland. Great were the rejoicings in consequence. The ancient prediction 'that the French wife should bring a child the ninth in degree from the left side of the stem of Bruce, that should rule England and Scotland from sea to sea,' was revived in anticipation of the offspring of James V. of Scotland by Magdalene of France, although it would only have been the eighth in descent from that illustrious stock."

Her premature and lamented death is recorded in these feeling paragraphs:--

"The early death of Magdalene was not only a misfortune to her royal husband, but a serious loss to Scotland, and even to Christendom, on account of the enlightened views she had received on the all-important subject of religion. Brantôme tells us that 'she was very deeply regretted not only by James V. but by all his people, for she was very good, and knew how to make herself truly beloved. She had a great mind, and was most wise and virtuous.' The first general mourning ever known in Scotland was worn for her, and her obsequies were solemnised with the greatest manifestation of sorrow of which that nation had ever been participant. The lamentations for the premature death of this youthful Queen, and the hopes that perished with her of an heir of Scotland, appear to have been of a similar character to the passionate and universal burst of national sorrow which, in the present century, pervaded all hearts in the Britannic empire, for the loss of the noble-minded Princess Charlotte of Wales and her infant.

'How many hopes were borne upon thy bier, O stricken bride of love!'

"The epitaph of this lamented Queen was written by Buchanan in elegant Latin verse, of which the following is a translation:--

'MAGDALENE OF VALOIS, QUEEN OF SCOTLAND, DIED IN THE XVI YEAR OF HER AGE.

'I was a royal wife, from monarchs sprung, A sovereign's daughter, and in hope to be The royal mother of a regal line; But lest my glory should exceed the height Of mortal honour, Death's invidious dart Hath laid me in my morning freshness here. Nature and virtue, glory, life, and death, Strove to express in me their utmost power. Nature gave beauty; virtue made me good; Relentless death o'er life too soon prevail'd. But my fair fame shall flourish evermore, To compensate for that brief mortal span By lasting meed of universal praise.'"

Mary of Lorraine, daughter of the great Duke of Guise, and a lineal descendant of Charlemagne, was the second Queen of James V.: she is peculiarly interesting, as her daughter was Queen Mary; and she was the ancestress of our present illustrious sovereign. We have room only, however, for one extract:--

"'Let us,' says an eloquent French writer of the present day, 'enter the grand gallery of the Chateau d'Eu, and contemplate the noble portraits of the line of Guise. There we shall view that old Claud of Lorraine, clad in his heavy cuirass, bearing his long sword, first dyed in blood at Marignan, having for his cortege and companions his six glorious sons; then we shall see Francis of Lorraine, rival of the Emperor Charles the Fifth, and conqueror of Calais; near him that Cardinal of Lorraine, eloquent as an orator, gallant and magnificent as a prince, yet an ambitious and cruel priest. And there is the grandchild of Duke Claud, Mary Stuart, angel of grief and poesy, whose charming head bore a crown-regnant, and yet fell beneath the axe of the executioner.'

* * * * *

"The Duke and Duchess of Longueville were both present at the bridal of James V. and Magdalene of France. Little did the Duchess imagine, when she, as the wife of the representative of the brave Dunois, and the eldest daughter of the house of Guise-Lorraine, proudly took high place among the great ladies of France, near the person of the royal bride, that the crown-matrimonial of Scotland--never to be worn by her on whose finger she saw the enamoured bridegroom place the nuptial ring--was destined to encircle her own brow. Far less could she have believed, even if it had been predicted to her, that from her union with that Prince should proceed a line of sovereigns who would reign not only over the Britannic isles from sea to sea, but whose empire, far exceeding that of her mighty ancestor Charlemagne, should extend over India, a considerable section of America, and include vast portions of the habitable globe whose existence was then unknown. Before the anniversary returned of the day that witnessed the nuptials of James and Magdalene, all these apparently impossible events were in an active state of progression."

Miss Strickland has announced in her Preface that two volumes are to be devoted by her to the life of Queen Mary; and that great light has been thrown upon that interesting subject by the important original letters which Prince Labanoff's recent researches and publication have brought to light. We look with impatience for the fulfilment of the promise; for, although nothing can exceed in pathos and interest Mr Tytler's entrancing account of the captivity and death of that celebrated and heroic princess, yet we are well aware that much light has since his time been thrown on the subject, by the zealous labours of chivalrous antiquaries. That she may succeed in vindicating her memory from much of the obloquy which, despite her many great and noble qualities, and matchless charms of person and manner, still oppresses it, is, we need hardly say, our most anxious wish; and if any one can do it, it is herself. But we confess we have little expectation that it is possible even for her chivalrous mind and untiring industry to effect the object. Our _present_ view of this interesting question is as follows:--The strength of the case against Queen Mary, during her reign in Scotland, is such that it remains much the same upon the admitted and incontestible facts of history, though all the disputed points were decided in her favour. No original letters of hers, or others which can be produced--no complete disproval of those which were charged, we believe falsely and treacherously, against her--can do away with her _acts_, whatever light they may throw upon her motives, or the unparalleled network of treachery, selfishness, and duplicity, with which she was surrounded. Can it be reasonably hoped that any subsequent effort of industry or ability will be able to do more for Queen Mary's memory than has been done by her gifted dramatic biographer Schiller, who, in the awful scene of her last confession to the priest in prison, immediately before being conducted to the block, makes her admit her failings in the indulgence of undue hatred against some, and impassioned love to others; and recount, with sincerity, her stings of conscience for having permitted the King, her husband, to be put to death, and thereafter loaded with favours and bestowed her hand on the party charged with his murder? It is hopeless to deny the magnitude of these delinquencies, though men, at least, should view them with an indulgent eye; for they arose, as Schiller makes her say, on that dread occasion, from the self-forgetfulness and generous feelings which led her to trust in a sex by whom she was forsaken and betrayed.[13] Such is our present view of the case; but we have every confidence in Miss Strickland's powers and research, and shall impatiently await the new light she will doubtless throw on that most fascinating and tragic of all biographies.

The truth appears to be, that Mary was a mixed character: no uncommon thing in every age, and especially so in that disastrous and profligate one in which Mary's lot was cast. She was as charming and heroic as her most impassioned advocates would represent, and as impassioned, and in one matter guilty, as her worst enemies allege. Her virtues, however, were her own; her delinquencies, of the religion in which she had been bred, and the age in which she lived. It was the age, and she had been bred in the court, which witnessed the successive murders of the Duke of Guise and the Admiral Coligni at the court of France; the Massacre of St Bartholomew by a French king, and the fires of Smithfield lighted by an English queen. To one period, and that the most interesting of her life, unmixed praise may be given. From the day of her landing in England, her conduct was one of dignity, innocence, and heroism; and if her previous life was stained by the imputation of having _permitted_ one murder, suggested to herself by despair, and recommended by others from profligacy, she expiated it by being the victim of another, suggested by jealousy, executed by rancour, and directly ordered by a cruel relative and a vindictive rival.

If there is any blemish in the very interesting volume, of which our limits will only permit a more cursory notice than its high merits deserve, it is to be found in the too frequent use of quotations from old authorities or original letters _in the text_, and the mosaic-like appearance which is often given to her pages, by the introduction of quaint and antiquated expressions drawn from contemporary writers in the body of the narrative. We are well aware of the motive which has led to this, and we respect it as it deserves: it arises from the wish to be accurate and trustworthy, the anxious desire to make her Lives a faithful transcript of the times--to exhibit their very "form and pressure." The object was good, the desire was laudable; but it is quite possible to be carried too far, even in working out the most praiseworthy principle. Long accounts of dresses, decorations, and processions; entries of expenses in Treasurers' accounts; even original letters, unless on very particular occasions, are the materials of biography, but they are not biography itself. It is _living_ character, not still life, which we desire to see delineated: the latter is the frame of the picture, but it is not the picture itself. Such curious details are characteristic, generally amusing, often interesting; but they, in general, do better in foot-notes than in the body of the narrative. We must admit, however, that Miss Strickland has exhibited equal judgment and skill in the manner in which she has _fitted in_ those contemporary extracts into the body of the narrative, and the selection she has made of such as are most curious and characteristic of the times. By many, we are well aware, they will be considered as not the least interesting part of her very interesting volumes. It is the principle of introducing them in the _text_ that we wish her to reconsider. Unity of composition is not less essential to the higher productions of art, in history or biography, than in painting or the drama; and Miss Strickland writes so powerfully, and paints so beautifully, that we cannot but often regret when we lose the thread of her flowing narrative, to make way for extracts from a quaint annalist, or entries from the accounts of a long-forgotten exchequer.

FOOTNOTES:

[9] _Lives of the Queens of Scotland._ By AGNES STRICKLAND. Vol. I. William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh and London.

[10] Mr Aytoun's noble _Lyrical Ballads_, and Mr Grant's admirable _History of the Castle of Edinburgh_.

[11] Falkirk, Torwood, Bannockburn, Stirling Bridge.

[12] Schiller, in his noble drama of _Maria Stuart_.

[13]

"Ach! nicht durch hass allein, durch sund' ge Liebe Noch mehr hab' Ich hochste Gott beleidigt. Das Eitle herz ward zudern Mann gezogen, Der treulos mich verlassen und betrogen."

"Ah! not through hatred only, but still more through sinful love, have I offended Almighty God! My tender heart was too strongly drawn to man, by whose faithlessness I have been forsaken and betrayed."--_Maria Stuart_, Act v. scene 7.

THE LAY OF THE NIEBELUNGEN.[14]

Wolf, the learned German, was certainly very far wrong--as Germans in their endless speculations are apt to be--when he set himself to explain the _Iliad_ without Homer; an attempt which, to our British ears, generally sounded pretty much as profane as to explain the world without God, or, according to Cicero's simile against the Epicureans, to explain the existence of a book by the mere accidental out-tumbling of alphabetic counters on the ground. The _Iliad_ could not have existed without Homer--so the rude instinct of the most unlearned and most unmetaphysical English Bull declared against the cloud-woven theories and the deep-sunk lexicographical excavations of the famous Berlin professor; and the rude instinct, after much philological sapping and mining, stands ground. But Wolf did not labour in vain. Though he did not take the citadel, he made breaches into many parts of our classical circumvallation, formerly deemed most strong, and made us change, in great measure, the fashion of our fortifications. In the same manner Niebuhr, with his knotty club, made sad havoc among the waxen images of the old Romans, which the piety of Livy--taking them for genuine granite statues--had set forth with such a wealth of fine patriotic elocution; but after all this work of destruction, Rome still remains with its Tiber, and, in the minds of most sane persons, Romulus also, we imagine; while the great Julius shines a kingly star every inch, as much after Niebuhr's strong brush as before. What, then, was the great truth by virtue of which--as stupid sermons are redeemed by a good text--Wolf, with his startling anti-Homeric gospel, made so many proselytes, and such fervid apostles, among the learned and the poetic of his countrymen? Plainly this, that he seized with a keen glance, and a grand comprehensiveness, the minstrel character of the POPULAR EPOS of early ages, as distinguished from the more artificial and curiously-piled compositions of more polished times, bearing the same name. Wolf was wrong--say mad, if you please--in asserting that Pisistratus, with a whole army of such refurbishers of old wares as Onomacritus, could have put together such a glowing vital whole as the _Iliad_; but he was right, and altogether sound, when he looked upon the great Epic song of the wrath of Achilles as a thing essentially different, not only in degree, but in kind, from the _Æneid_ of Virgil, or the _Paradise Lost_ of our Milton. Many men of learning and taste, from Scaliger downwards, have instituted large and curious comparisons between the great national Epos of the Greeks, and that of the Romans; but the comparison of things that have a radically different character can seldom produce any result beyond the mere expression of liking and disliking; as if, among critics of trees, one should say, _I prefer a bristling pine_, while another says, _Give me the smooth beech_. Or, a result even more unsatisfactory might be produced. Starting from the beech as a sort of model tree, a forest critic, predetermined to admire the pine also, might spin out of his brain a number of subtle analogies to prove that a pine, though bearing a different name, is, in fact, the same tree as a beech, and possesses, when _more_ philosophically considered, all the essential characteristics of this tree. You laugh?--but so, and not otherwise, did it fare with old Homer, at the hands of many professional philologists and literary dilettantes, who, with a perfect appreciation of such works of polished skill as the _Æneid_ and the _Jerusalem Delivered_--as being akin to their own modern taste--must needs apply the same test to take cognisance of such strange and far-removed objects as the _Iliad_ and _Odyssey_. Such transference of the mould that measures one thing to another, and an altogether different thing, is indeed a common enough trick of our every-day judgments; but it is, nevertheless, a sort of criticism altogether barren of any positive results, and which ends where it begins--in talk. To the character and certainty of a science, it can assuredly have no claim. If you wish to descant with any beneficial result upon roses, pray compare one English rose with another, and not with a Scotch thistle. Bring not the fine city dame into contact with the brown country girl; but let Lady B's complexion be more delicate than Lady C's, and the brown of Bessie be more healthy than that of Jessie. Jessie, if you will consider the matter, has nothing in common with Lady B, except this, that she is a woman. As little has Homer in common with Virgil, or Tasso, or Milton. With whom, then, is Homer to be compared? A hundred years ago, Voltaire, with all his wit, could not have answered that question--the whole age of European criticism of which Voltaire was the oracle and the god could not have answered it; but thanks--after the Percy Ballads, and Cowper, and Wordsworth, and Southey, and Burns--to Frederick Augustus Wolf, that question we can answer now in the simplest and most certain way in the world, by pointing to the famous Spanish CID, and the old Teutonic LAY of the NIEBELUNGEN.

To the Cid, we may presume that those of our readers who love popular poetry, and are not happy enough to know the sonorous old Castilian, have been happily introduced by the great work of Southey. But, with respect to the other great popular Epos of Western Europe, we suspect Mr LETTSOM is only too much in the right when he says, that this venerable monument of the old German genius is "so little known amongst us, that most ordinary readers have not so much as heard of it. Even amongst the numerous and increasing class of those who are acquainted with German, few pay attention to the ancient literature of Germany: they are generally conversant only with the productions of the day, or, at farthest, with those of the most celebrated authors." So, indeed, it must be; the necessary business and amusements of life leave but few of us at liberty to follow the example of the learned Germans, and refuse to look at Helen before we have critically investigated the history of Jove's amours, and of Leda's egg. So much the more are we beholden to gentlemen like the present translator, who, by the patient exercise of those pious pains which are the pleasure of poets, put us into the condition of being able to hear the notes of that strange old Teutonic lyre prolonged through the aisles of an English echo-chamber. Mr Lettsom has done a work, much wanted for the English lover of poetry, honestly and well: this we can say from having compared it in various places with a prose translation of the old German poem, published at Berlin in 1814;[15] also from the distinct recollection which we have of the character and tone of the modern German version of Marbach, which we read for the first time several years ago. But Mr Lettsom's translation bears also internal evidence of its excellence: there is a quiet simplicity and easy talkative breadth about it, characteristic no less of the general genius of the Germans than of the particular mediæval epoch to which it belongs. With a perfect confidence, therefore, in the trustworthiness of the present English version, we proceed to lay before our readers a rapid sketch of the Epic story of the Niebelungen, accompanied with such extracts as may serve to convey an idea of the general tone and character of the composition.

At Worms, upon the Rhine, (so the poem opens,) there dwelt three puissant kings--Gunther and Gernot and Gieselher--three brothers, of whom Gunther was the eldest, and, in right of primogeniture, swayed the sceptre of Burgundy.[16] These kings had a sister named Kriemhild, the real heroine and fell female Achilles of the Epos; for though she is as gentle and mild as a Madonna till her love is wounded, after that she nourishes a desire of vengeance on the murderers of her husband, as insatiate and inexorable as that which the son of Peleus, in the _Iliad_, nurses against the son of Atreus for the rape of the lovely Briseis. In fact, as the great work of Homer might be more fully designated _the wrath of Achilles_, so the most significant designation for this mediæval Iliad of the Germans would be _the revenge of Kriemhild_. After naming these, and other notable personages of the Burgundian court at Worms, the poet makes use of a dream, as Æschylus in the _Agamemnon_ uses an omen, to open up, in a fitful glimpse of prophecy, the general burden and fateful issue of his tale.

"A dream was dreamed by Kriemhild, the virtuous and the gay, How a wild young falcon she trained for many a day, Till two fierce eagles tore it; to her there could not be In all the world such sorrow as this perforce to see.

To her mother Uta at once the dream she told; But she the threatening future could only thus unfold-- 'The falcon that thou trainedst is sure a noble mate; God shield him in his mercy, or thou must lose him straight.'

'A mate for me! What say'st thou, dearest mother mine? Ne'er to love, assure thee, my heart will I resign. I'll live and die a maiden, and end as I began, Nor (let what else befall me) will suffer woe for man.'

'Nay!' said the anxious mother, 'renounce not marriage so; Wouldst thou true heartfelt pleasure taste ever here below, Man's love alone can give it. Thou'rt fair as eye can see: A fitting mate God send thee, and naught will wanting be.'

'No more,' the maiden answered, 'no more, dear mother, say; From many a woman's fortune, this truth is clear as day, That falsely smiling pleasure with pain requites us ever. I from both will keep me, and thus will sorrow never.'

So in her lofty virtue, fancy-free and gay, Lived the noble maiden many a happy day; Nor one more than another found favour in her sight; Still, at the last, she wedded a far-renowned knight.

He was the self-same falcon she in her dream had seen, Foretold by her wise mother. What vengeance took the queen On her nearest kinsmen, who him to death had done! That single death atoning died many a mother's son."

With these words ends the very short first canto, or, in the phraseology of the bard, "adventure" of the poem. The second introduces us to the most prominent male character in the first part of the poem--for it is divided into two distinct parts or acts--the famous SIEGFRIED, "with the horny hide," as the old German chap-book has it, which any of our readers may have for a groschen or two in Leipzig, and not more, we suppose, than a sixpence here.

"In Netherland there flourished a prince of lofty kind, (Whose father hight Siegmund, his mother Siegelind) In a sumptuous castle, down by the Rhine's fair side; Men did call it Xanten; 'twas famous far and wide."

This princely youth, who, like the Spanish Cid, is perfect even to the smallest hair on his beard, after having employed his early days, like ancient Hercules and Theseus, in attacking and overcoming every sort of terrible monster, in bestial or human guise, that came in his way, is dubbed knight with the stroke of the chivalrous sword, in due form, and a festival is held in honour of the event, the description of which occupies the "second adventure." Like a dutiful son, as well as a fearless knight, he will accept no royal honours, or share in the official dignities of government, so as long as his father and mother live.

"While Siegelind and Siegmund yet lived and flourished there, Full little recked their offspring the royal crown to wear. He only would be master, and exercise command, 'Gainst those whose pride o'erweening disturbed the peaceful land.

None ventur'd to defy him; since weapons first he took, The bed of sloth but seldom the noble knight could brook! He only sought for battles: his prowess-gifted hand Won him renown eternal in every foreign strand."

But even the sturdy mail-clad heroes of mediæval knighthood sometimes tired of "battles;" and when they were thus aweary, they had one other serious occupation, and that, of course, was love. With the entrance on this new career, the third adventure is occupied.

"'Twas seldom tear or sorrow the warrior's breast assayed; At length he heard a rumour how a lovely maid In Burgundy was dwelling, the fairest of the fair; For her he won much pleasure, but dash'd with toil and care."

Siegfried opens his determination to his parents to follow the fortune of this rumour, and take to wife none other than--

"The bright Burgundian maiden, best gem of Gunther's throne, Whose far-renowned beauty stands unapproached alone."

This resolution, of course, as is the fortune of true love, meets with opposition, at first, from the parents of the youth; but with a calm and decided answer, such as true love knows how to give, the difficulty is overcome.

"Dearest father mine, The love of high-born women for ever I'll resign Rather than play the wooer but where my heart is set."

Forthwith, therefore, he sets out on an expedition to Worms, predetermined, after the common fashion of mediæval love-romances, to marry the woman whom he had never seen; for in these matters, rumour, it was thought--that plays so falsely elsewhere--could not err. To make the necessary impression on so mighty a king as Gunther, the Prince of the Netherland is pranked out most gorgeously with all that woman's needle can produce of chivalrous embroidery; and, thus accoutred,--

"On the seventh fair morning, by Worms along the strand, In knightly guise were pricking the death-defying band; The ruddy gold fair glittered on every riding vest; Their steeds they meetly governed, all pacing soft abreast.

Their shields were new and massy, and like flame they glowed; As bright, too, shone their helmets; while bold Siegfried rode Straight to the court of Gunther to woo the stately maid. Eye never looked on champions so gorgeously arrayed.

Down to their spurs, loud clanging, reached the swords they wore; Sharp and well-tempered lances the chosen champions bore; One, two spans broad or better, did Siegfried sternly shake, With keen and cutting edges grim and ghastly wounds to make.

Their golden-coloured bridles firm they held in hand: Silken were their poitrals: so rode they through the land. On all sides the people to gaze on them began; Then many of Gunther's liegemen swift to meet them ran."

Then follows the formal reception at the court of Worms, and, as on all great festival occasions in those days, a tournament is held, where the stranger knight, of course, acquits himself like a god rather than a man, to the admiration of all beholders, but specially of the gentle ladies, who, on occasions when propriety did not allow them publicly to appear, enjoy the dear delight of gazing on bearded swordsmen even more exquisitely from behind a window.

"At court the lovely ladies were asking evermore, Who was the stately stranger that so rich vesture wore, At once so strong of presence and so strong of hand? When many a one gave answer, 'Tis the King of Netherland.'

He ever was the foremost, whate'er the game they played. Still in his inmost bosom he bore one lovely maid, Whom he beheld had never, and yet to all preferred; She too of him, in secret, spoke many a kindly word.

When in the court contending, fierce squire and hardy knight, As fits the young and noble, waged the mimic fight, Oft Kriemhild through her windows would look, herself unseen-- Then no other pleasure needed the gentle Queen."

But though Kriemhild saw Siegfried through the window, Siegfried remained with Gunther a whole year,

"Nor all that weary season a single glimpse could gain Of her who after brought him such pleasure and such pain."

Like the disciples of Pythagoras, the amorous knights of those days had first to serve a long apprenticeship of the severe discipline of abstinence, before they were permitted to kiss the hand of beauty, or to meet even its distant glance. The fourth adventure, therefore, goes on to tell how Siegfried showed his prowess by fighting with the Saxons, who had come under the guidance of their king, Ludeger the Bold, and leagued with him King Ludegast of Denmark, to attack the realm of the Burgundians. Coming home, like a Mars-subduing Diomede, from this fierce encounter, the knight of the Netherland is at length deemed worthy to be introduced to his destined fair. Another tourney is held, at which Kriemhild publicly appears.

"Now went she forth the loveliest, as forth the morning goes, From misty clouds out-beaming: then all his weary woes Left him in heart who bore her, and so long time had done. He saw there stately standing the fair, the peerless one.

Many a stone full precious flashed from her vesture bright; Her rosy blushes darted a softer, ruddier light. Whate'er might be his wishes, each could not but confess He ne'er on earth had witnessed such perfect loveliness.

As the moon arising out glitters every star, That through the clouds so purely glimmers from afar, E'en so love-breathing Kriemhild dimmed every beauty nigh. Well might, at such a vision, many a bold heart beat high."

With not less of serene beauty, and a quiet naturalness that is peculiar to him, the old bard describes the feelings of Siegfried on first coming within the sweet atmosphere of woman's love.

"There stood he, the high-minded, beneath her star-bright eye, His cheek as fire all glowing; then said she modestly, 'Sir Siegfried, you are welcome, noble knight and good!' Yet loftier at that greeting rose his lofty mood.

He bowed with soft emotion, and thanked the blushing fair; Love's strong constraint together impelled the enamoured pair; Their longing eyes encountered, their glances, every one, Bound knight and maid for ever; yet all by stealth was done.

That in the warmth of passion he pressed her lily hand, I do not know for certain, but well can understand. 'Twere surely past believing they ventured not on this; Two loving hearts, so meeting, else had done amiss.

No more in pride of summer, nor in bloom of May, Knew he such heart-felt pleasure as on this happy day, When she, than May more blooming, more bright than summer's pride, His own, a dream no longer, was standing by his side.

Then thought full many a champion, 'Would this had happ'd to me, To be with lovely Kriemhild, as Siegfried bold I see, Or closer e'en than Siegfried; well were I then, I swear,' None yet was champion who so deserved a queen."

Thus far well. But his probation was not yet finished. Before finally joining hand and heart with the peerless sister of King Gunther, Siegfried must assist her brother in a yet more difficult work than anything that he had hitherto achieved--in gaining the love of Brunhild, a doughty princess of Iceland, "far beyond the sea," who, being of a masculine temper and strength, had determined to submit herself to no male lord who had not proved himself worthy to wield the marital sceptre, by actually mastering his spouse in strong physical conflict.

"There was a queen high-seated afar beyond the sea, None wielded sceptre a mightier than she; For beauty she was matchless, for strength without a peer; Her love to him she offered who could pass her at the spear.

She threw the stone, and bounded behind it to the mark; At three games each suitor, with sinews stiff and stark, Must conquer the fierce maiden whom he sought to wed, Or, if in one successless, straight must lose his head.

E'en thus for the stern virgin had many a suitor died. This heard a noble warrior, who dwelt the Rhine beside, And forthwith resolved he to win her for his wife; Thereby full many a hero thereafter lost his life."

Doubtful of his single strength to subdue so mettlesome a maid, Gunther enters into a compact with Siegfried to assist him in his enterprise--_by fair means or foul_, as it appears; and in this evil compact, and the underhand work to which it gives rise, lies already visible before the unveiled eye of the reader, the little black spot on the fair blue of the epic sky, which is destined (and the bard is ever forward to hint this catastrophe,) at a day though distant yet sure, to dilate into a wide-spreading cloud, and to burst in a fearful deluge that shall sweep hundreds and thousands of the guilty and the guiltless into destruction. This is neither more nor less than the dark old doctrine of retribution, which in the Greek tragedians, and especially Æschylus, plays so awful a part; only with this difference, that in the Niebelungen, as in the Odyssey, the punishment overtakes the offending parties, and not, as in the tragedians, their sons and grandsons. But to proceed: Siegfried, like Jack the Giant-killer, though commencing his career as a single mortal with no miraculous power, had in the course of his chivalrous exploits, and as the reward of his extraordinary prowess, got possession of certain wonder-working instruments, that rendered him, when he chose to use them, sure of victory against mere mortal strength. With the aid of these, Siegfried, for the sake of the love of Kriemhild, had determined (secretly and unfairly) to assist Gunther in subduing the stout Brunhild.

"I have heard strange stories of wild dwarfs, how they fare: They dwell in hollow mountains; and for protection wear A vesture, that hight cloud-cloak, marvellous to tell; Whoever has it on him, may keep him safe and well

From cuts and stabs of foemen; him none can bear or see As soon as he is in it, but see and hear can he Whate'er he will around him, and thus must needs prevail; He grows besides far stronger: so goes the wondrous tale.

And now with him the cloud-cloak took fair Siegelind's son, The same the unconquered warrior, with labour hard, had won From the stout dwarf Albrecht, in successful fray. The bold and ready champions made ready for the way.

So, as I said, bold Siegfried the cloud-cloak bore along; When he but put it on him, he felt him wondrous strong: Twelve men's strength then had he in his single body laid. By trains and close devices he wooed the haughty maid.

Besides, in that strange cloud-cloak was such deep virtue found, That whosoever wore it, though thousands stood around, Might do whatever pleased him, unseen of friend and foe: Thus Siegfried won fair Brunhild, which brought him bitterest woe."

In order the more surely to afford his necessary aid, Siegfried appeared among the attendants of Gunther, in the character of a subordinate vassal. Having thus arranged matters, they set out for the far island of the sea. And here, as in many other passages, it is noticeable with what a childlike, almost girlish delight, the old bard expatiates on the gay dress of his mighty men. He evidently did not live in an age when a Napoleon would have sought to make an impression on the vulgar by "wearing the plain dress of the Institute;" nor has he the slightest conception of the soul of poetry beating in a breast of which the exterior vesture is the "hodden grey," or the plain plaid of our Scotch Muse. We shall quote this one passage to serve for many similar, with which the poem is studded:--

"So with kind dismissal away the warriors strode; Then quick the fair queen summon'd, from bow'rs where they abode, Thirty maids, her brother's purpose to fulfil, Who in works of the needle were the chief for craft and skill.

Silks from far Arabia, white as driven snow, And others from Zazamanc, green as grass doth grow, They deck'd with stones full precious; Kriemhild the garments plann'd And cut them to just measure, with her own lily hand.

Of the hides of foreign fishes were linings finely wrought, Such then were seen but rarely, and choice and precious thought, Fine silk was sewn above them, to suit the wearers well, Now of the rich apparel hear we fresh marvels tell.

From the land of Morocco and from the Libyan coast, The best silk and the finest is worn and valued most By kin of mightiest princes; of such had they good store: Well Kriemhild show'd the favour that she the wearers bore.

E'er since the chiefs were purposed the martial queen to win, In their sight was precious the goodly ermelin. With coal-black spots besprinkled on whiter ground than snow, E'en now the pride of warriors at every festal show.

Many a stone full precious gleam'd from Arabian gold; That the women were not idle, scarcely need be told. Within seven weeks, now ready was the vesture bright, Ready too the weapons of each death-daring knight."

With the arrival of the kingly travellers, and their reception at Iceland, we cannot afford to detain ourselves. Suffice it to say, that, by the aid of the secret invisible cloak (_Tarnkappe_) of Siegfried, and his good sword Balmung, Gunther is greeted by the vanquished Brunhild as her legitimate lord and master; and sails back with him to Worms, where she is most hospitably and magnificently received by her mother-in-law, dame Uta, and her now sister, the lovely Kriemhild. A double marriage then takes place; that of King Gunther with Brunhild, and that of Siegfried with Kriemhild; and the festivities which then took place furnish the poet with another opportunity for exercising his descriptive powers, and displaying the sunny joyousness of his social nature. Herein, as in many other points, he is quite Homeric; a certain magnificence and amplitude in the common acts of eating and drinking being as essential to his idea of poetry as the luxuriant energy of more lofty functions. But in the midst of this connubial hilarity, the black spot of destiny begins perceptibly to enlarge into a threatening cloud; and the stately Brunhild begins to show herself as possessed by that pride which the wise man tells us was not made for man, and which, wherever it is harboured, is not long of banishing love, confidence, peace, and happiness from palace as from cabin. The haughty spouse of Gunther looks with an evil eye at Siegfried, whom she had known only in his assumed character as vassal of her husband, judging it an affront that her sister-in-law should be given away to a mere vassal. The respect with which the hero of Netherland is treated by her husband, and the whole court, she cannot and will not understand. Either he is a vassal, and then her pride is justly offended at the unequal match; or he is not, and then Gunther had deceived her with regard to the true character of his companion--and there must be some mystery beneath this, which, as a true daughter of Eve, she can have no rest till she unveils. Possessed by these feelings, she takes a course worthy of the masculine character for which she had early been so notable. On the marriage-night she resumes her old virgin obstinacy, and will not be tamed:--

"'Sir knight,' said she, 'it suits not--you'd better leave me free From all your present purpose--it must and shall not be. A maid still will I keep me--(think well the matter o'er) Till I am told that story.' This fretted Gunther sore."

Alas, poor Gunther! So has it ever fared with men who marry women with beards. The embrace-less bride took a cord, which she wove strong and tough about her wrist, and with that

"The feet and hands of Gunther she tied together all, Then to a rail she bore him, and hung him 'gainst the wall, And bade him not disturb her, nor breathe of love a breath; Sure from the doughty damsel he all but met his death."

In this dilemma Siegfried with his invisible cloak was again called in, and did strange service a second time in helping Gunther to subjugate his refractory yoke-fellow. Brunhild then became tame, and, like Samson, lost her wondrous strength; while Siegfried, as a sort of memorial of this notable service, secretly abstracted and brought with him a golden ring which the stately lady used to wear on her fine finger, and likewise the girdle with which she had tied her lord; and both these, in an evil hour, he gave to his wife--"a gift that mischief wrought," as we shall presently see.

After these achievements, the horny hero retired home to the land of his father Siegmund and his mother Siegelind; and after remaining ten years with him, "the fair queen, his consort, bore him at last an heir." All this time the haughty spirit of Brunhild was brooding over the deep wrong.

"Why should the lady Kriemhild herself so proudly bear? And yet her husband Siegfried, what but our man is he? And late but little service has yielded for his fee."

And to clear up this matter, as well as for the sake of old kindness, an invitation is sent by King Gunther to the heroine in Netherland, which is accepted. Siegfried and Kriemhild, and the hoary-headed old Siegmund, come with a great company to Worms, and are entertained in the sumptuous fashion that, as before remarked, the material old minstrel describes with so much zest.

"Sore toiled the chief cook, Rumolt; Oh! how his orders ran Among his understrappers! how many a pot and pan, How many a mighty caldron retched and rang again! They dressed a world of dishes for all the expected train."

The high festal was kept for eleven days; but the loud merriment, which so luxuriantly was bellowed forth to Siegfried's honour, failed to deafen the evil whisper of pride and jealousy in the dark heart of Brunhild.

"Then thought Queen Brunhild, 'Silent I'll no longer remain; However to pass I bring it, Kriemhild shall explain Wherefore so long her husband, who holds of us in fee, Has left undone his service: this sure shall answered be.'

So still she brooded mischief, and conned her devil's lore, Till she broke off in sorrow the feast so blythe before. Ever at her heart lay closely what came perforce to light; Many a land she startled with horror and affright."

The cloud thickens; and the first thunder-plump, prophetic of the destined deluge, will immediately burst. Jealousy is a spider that never wants flies. In the midst of the tilting and junketing, the two queens--as queens, like other idle women, will sometimes do--began to discourse on the merits of their respective husbands; in the course of which conversation, the most natural thing in the world was that Brunhild should proclaim her old cherished belief that Siegfried, as a mere dependent vassal, could never be put into comparison with Gunther, who was his king and superior. On this, Kriemhild, whose gentleness, where the honour of her lord was concerned, fired into lionhood, gave the retort with a spirit more worthy of Brunhild than herself. She said that, to prove her equality with the wife of Gunther, she would walk into the cathedral publicly before her; and she did so. This was bad enough; but, following the inspiration of her womanly wrath once roused, she divulged the fatal fact of her possession of Brunhild's ring and girdle--expressing, at the same time, plainly her belief that her husband Siegfried could not have come by these tokens in any way consistent with the honour of the original possessor. Here now was a breach between the two queens, that no human art could heal. In vain was Siegfried appealed to by Gunther, to testify to the chastity of Brunhild.

"'Women must be instructed,' said Siegfried the good knight, 'To leave off idle talking, and rule their tongues aright. Keep thy fair wife in order, I'll do by mine the same; Such overweening folly puts me indeed to shame.'"

"Hasty words have often sundered fair dames before."

The haughty princess of Iceland now perceives that she had from the beginning been practised upon by Gunther, and that Siegfried had performed the principal part in the plot. Against him, therefore, she vows revenge; and, in order to accomplish his purpose, takes into her counsels HAGAN chief of Trony, one of the most prominent characters in the poem, and who in fact may be looked on as the hero of the second part, after Siegfried has disappeared from the scene. This Hagan is a person of gigantic energy and great experience, but utterly destitute of gentleness and tenderness; all his aims are selfish, and a cold calculating policy is his highest wisdom. Conscience he seems to have none; and, except for a purpose, will scarcely trouble himself to conceal his perpetration of the foulest crimes. He has the aspect of Napoleon--as he is painted by the graphic pencil of Emerson. Like Napoleon, he never hesitates to use falsehood to effect his ends. Pretending extraordinary friendship for Kriemhild, he worms from her the secret of her husband's invulnerability, or rather of his vulnerability--like Achilles--on only one part of the body.

"Said she 'My husband's daring, and thereto stout of limb; Of old, when on the mountain he slew the dragon grim, In its blood he bathed him, and thence no more can feel In his charmed person the deadly dint of steel.

Still am I ever anxious, whene'er in fight he stands, And keen-edged darts are hailing from strong heroic bands, Lest I by one should lose him, my own beloved mate-- Ah! how my heart is beating still for my Siegfried's fate.

So now I'll tell the secret, dear friend, alone to thee-- For thou, I doubt not, cousin, will keep thy faith with me-- Where sword may pierce my darling, and death sit on the thrust: See, in thy truth and honour, how full, how firm my trust.

As from the dragon's death-wounds gushed out the crimson gore, With the smoking torrent the warrior washed him o'er; A leaf then 'twixt his shoulders fell from the linden bough-- There only steel can harm him; for that I tremble now.'"

Possessed of this secret, Hagan finds it easy to watch an opportunity for despatching him. A hunting party is proposed; and when the hunters are dispersed in the tangled wilds of the Wask (Vosges) forest, Hagan, with Gunther, who was accessory, secretly draws Siegfried aside to refresh himself, after hard sport, from the clear waters of a sylvan well; and, while he is kneeling down, transfixes him between the shoulders on the fatal spot with a spear. Then--

"His lively colour faded; a cloud came o'er his sight; He could stand no longer; melted all his might; In his paling visage the mark of death he bore: Soon many a lovely lady sorrowed for him sore.

So the lord of Kriemhild among the flowerets fell; From the wound fresh gushing his life's blood fast did well. Then thus, amidst his tortures, even with his failing breath, The false friends he upbraided who had contrived his death.

Thus spake the deadly wounded, 'Ay! cowards false as hell, To you I still was faithful; I served you long and well; But what boots all! for guerdon, treason and death I've won: By your friends, vile traitors! foully have you done.

Whatever shall hereafter from your loins be born, Shall take from such vile fathers a heritage of scorn. On me you have wreaked malice where gratitude was due; With shame shall you be banished by all good knights and true.'

With blood were all bedabbled the flowerets of the field, Some time with death he struggled, as though he scorned to yield, Even to the foe, whose weapon strikes down the loftiest head At last, firm in the meadow, lay mighty Siegfried dead."

The death of Siegfried is the catastrophe of the first part of the poem. Kriemhild laments the death of her peerless knight with a love more than the love of common women, and which feeds itself on the intense hatred of the murderer, and the inly-cherished expectation of revenge. The hoary old Siegmund returns home in silent sorrow, for he is too weak to offer resistance; and, to complete the matchless wrong, the thorough-working, never-hesitating Hagan takes unjust possession of "the Niebelungen treasure"--a famous hoard bestowed by Siegfried on his wife--thus depriving the fair widow of the means of external munificence, as he had formerly stopt her source of inward consolation. Not avarice, but policy, was Hagan's motive for this, as for all his crimes. He was never a villain without a reason.

"'A prudent man,' said Hagan, 'not for a single hour, Would such a mass of treasure leave in a woman's power. She'll hatch, with all this largess, to her outlandish crew, Something that hereafter all Burgundy may rue.'"

A deep desire of revenge now takes possession of the once gentle mind of Kriemhild; and all the milk of her affections is metamorphosed into gall. The best things, it is proverbially said, when abused, become the worst; and so the revenge of Kriemhild, revealed in the second part of an essentially Christian poem, works out a catastrophe far more bloody than the warlike wrath of the heathen Pelidan, or the well-calculated retribution worked by the bow of the cunning Ulysses,--

"For Earth begets no monster dire Than man's own heart more dreaded, All-venturing woman's dreadful ire When love to woe is wedded."

We have now finished a rapid outline of nineteen adventures of the Niebelungen Lay; and there are thirty such divisions in the whole poem. Our space forbids us to detail what follows with equal fullness; but the extracts already given will have been sufficient to give the reader a fair idea of the general character of the composition. A brief summary of the progress of the story, till it ends in the sanguinary retribution, may therefore content us.

For thirteen years after the death of Siegfried, Kriemhild remained a widow. At the end of that period a knightly messenger, Sir Rudeger of Bechelaren, came from Etzel, King of the Huns, requesting the fair sister of King Gunther to supply the place of his queen, "Dame Helca," lately deceased. Nursing silently the religion of sorrow, the widow at first refused steadfastly to give ear to any message of this description; Hagan also, with his dark far-seeing wisdom, gave his decided negative to the proposal, knowing well that, beneath the calm exterior of time-hallowed grief, the high-hearted queen, never forgetting by whose hand her dear lord had fallen, still nursed the sleepless appetite for revenge. The brothers of the king, however, his other counsellors, and Dame Uta, urged the acceptance of the proposal, with the hope thereby, no doubt, of compensating in some degree to the royal widow for the injury at whose infliction they had connived. But all this moved not Kriemhild; only the distinct pledge given by Rudeger that he would help her, when once the sharer of King Etzel's throne, to avenge herself of all her enemies, at length prevailed. She married a second husband mainly to acquire the means of avenging the death of the first. Under the protection of Margrave Rudeger therefore, and with bad omens only from the lowering brows of Sir Hagan, the widow of Siegfried takes her departure from Worms, and proceeding through Bavaria, and down the Danube--after being hospitably entertained by the good bishop Pilgrin of Passau--arrives at Vienna, where she receives a magnificent welcome from "the wide-ruling Etzel," and his host of motley courtiers, pranked with barbaric pomp and gold, that far outshone the brightest splendour of the Rhine. Polacks and Wallachians, Greeks and Russians, Thuringians and Danes, attend daily, and do knightly service in the court of the mighty King of the Huns. The marriage feast was held for seventeen days with all pomp and revelry; and after that the happy monarch set out with Kriemhild for his castle at Buda. There he dwelt "in proudest honour, feeling nor woe nor sorrow," for seven years, during which time Kriemhild bore him a son, but only one, whom the pious wife prevailed with her lord to have baptised after the Christian custom. Meanwhile, in her mind she secretly harboured the same deep-rooted determination of most unchristian revenge; and towards the dark Hagan delay only intensified her hatred. Accordingly, that she might find means of dealing back to him the blow which he had inflicted on her first husband, she prevailed on Etzel to invite her brothers, with their attendants, and especially Hagan, to come from the far Rhine, and partake the hospitality of the Huns in the East. This request, from motives partly of kindness, partly of curiosity, was at once responded to by all: only, as usual, the dark Hagan stands alone, and prophesies harm. He knew he had done a deed that could not be pardoned; and he foresaw clearly that, in going to Vienna, he was marching into a lion's den, whence, for him, certainly there was no return. But, with a hardihood that never deserts him, if for no other reason than that no one may dare to call him a coward, he goes along with the doomed band, the only conscious among so many unconscious, who were destined to turn the halls of Hunnish merriment into mourning, and to change the wine of the banqueters into blood. So far, however, his dark anticipations prevailed with his unsuspecting comrades, that they marched in great force and well armed; so that when, after encountering some bloody omens on the long road, they did at length encounter the false fair welcome of the injured queen, they were prepared to sell their lives dearly, and to die standing. No sooner arrived than they were well advertised by the redoubted Dietrich of Bern, (Verona,) then attached to Etzel's court, of the temper of their hostess, and of the deathful dangers that awaited them behind the fair show of regal hospitality. This information only steeled the high heart of Hagan the more to meet danger in the only way that suited his temper, by an open and disdainful defiance. He and his friend Volker, the "valiant gleeman," who plays a distinguished part in the catastrophe of the poem, doggedly seated themselves before the palace gate, and refused to do homage to the Queen of the Huns in her own kingdom; and, as if to sharpen the point of her revenge, displayed across his knees his good broadsword, that very invincible _Balmung_ which had once owned no hand but that of Siegfried. This display of defiance was a fitting prelude to the terrible combat that followed. Though the knight of Trony was the only object of Lady Kriemhild's hatred, connected as he was with the rest of the Burgundians, it was impossible that the sword should reach his heart without having first mowed down hundreds and thousands of the less important subordinates. Accordingly, the sanguinary catastrophe of the tragedy consists in this, that in order to expiate the single sin of Hagan--proceeding as that did originally out of the false dealing of Siegfried, and the wounded pride of Brunhild--the whole royal family of the Burgundians or Niebelungers are prostrated in heaps of promiscuous slaughter with their heathen foemen, the Huns. The slaughter of the suitors, in the twenty-second book of the Odyssey, is ferocious enough to our modern feelings; but the gigantic butchery with which the Niebelungen Lay concludes out-purples that as far as the red hue of Sylla's murders did the pale castigation of common politicians. Eight books are occupied in describing the details of this red ruin, which a woman's revenge worked; and the different scenes are painted out with a terrific grandeur, that resembles more the impression produced by some horrid opium dream than a human reality. Victim after victim falls before the Titanic vastness of the Burgundian heroes--Gunther, and Gernot, and Gieselher, the valiant gleeman Volker, who flourishes his broadsword with a humorous ferocity, as if it were his fiddlestick, and, above all, the dark Hagan himself:

"Well grown and well compacted was that redoubted guest; Long were his legs and sinewy, and deep and broad his chest. His hair, that once was sable, with grey was dashed of late, And terrible his visage, and lordly was his gait."

Finding her first attempt at midnight assassination fail, the Queen first commits her cause to Bloedel, the brother of Etzel; but in an instant his head was severed from his body by the might of Sir Dankwart. A terrible massacre ensues, during which the banqueting hall of King Etzel is turned into a charnel-house. Then Iring, the Danish Margrave, falls in single combat with Hagan. An infuriate rush is now made by the Huns against the Burgundians, who had fortified themselves in the hall; but against such men as Dankwart, Hagan, and Volker, they avail no more than hail against the granite rock.

"Thereafter reigned deep silence, the din of war was hushed; Through every crack and cranny the blood on all sides gushed From that large hall of slaughter; red did the gutters run. So much was through their prowess by those of Rhineland done."

Kriemhild then, finding all her efforts with the sword baffled, sets fire to the hall; but, the roof being vaulted, even this application of the terror that scared Napoleon from Moscow, did not subdue the Promethean endurance of the Burgundians. The noble Margrave Rudeger is at last appealed to, as bound by his promise made to Kriemhild at Worms to prosecute the bloody work of her revenge to the last; but he also, with five hundred of his men, falls in the bloody wrestling, and with him his adversary Gernot, the brother of Gunther. Last of all, the haughty defiant spirit of the unsubdued Hagan draws, though unwilling, the redoubted Dietrich of Bern into the fight; and before his might Hagan himself is not slain, but taken captive, that he may be reserved to glut the private appetite of the sanguinary queen. "_Bring me here John the Baptist's head in a charger!_" Nothing less than this will satisfy the terrible revenge of Kriemhild. With her own hand she lifts up the terrible sword Balmung, and, meeting Hagan face to face in the dark prison, and charging him hot to the heart with his deadly wrongs, severs the head from his body. Kriemhild's revenge is now complete. But the revenge of Him who rules above required one other blow. This was immediately executed by the aged master Hildebrand, one of Dietrich's company. And the poem concludes, like a battle-field, many to weep for, and only a few to weep.

"There now the dreary corpses stretched all around were seen; There lay, hewn in pieces, the fair and noble queen. Sir Dietrich and King Etzel, their tears began to start; For kinsmen, and for vassals, each sorrowed in his heart.

The mighty and the noble there lay together dead; For this had all the people dole and drearihead. The feast of royal Etzel was thus shut up in woe. Pain in the steps of pleasure treads ever here below."

On the singular poem, of which a brief but complete outline now stands before us, many remarks of a critical and historical nature might be made; but we confine ourselves to three short observations, and with these leave the matter to the private meditations of the reader. _First_, that the poem is not "snapt out of the air," as the Germans say, but has a historical foundation, seems sufficiently manifest--Etzel being plainly the famous Attila, Dietrich, Theodoric the Goth, and counterparts to Siegfried and Gunther being producible from the early history of the Franks.[17] Besides this, it is perfectly plain, from the analogy of the Cid, and other popular poetry of the narrative character, that not religious allegory--as some Germans would have it--but actual, though confused and exaggerated history, is the real staple of such composition. The nucleus of the story of the Burgundian Kings, and the revenge of Kriemhild, belongs, probably, to the century following that in which Attila was so prominent a character. But the complete poem, in its present shape, is not later than the thirteenth century. Its author is not known.

_Secondly_, the lay of the Niebelungen is extremely interesting, as disproving, so far as analogy may avail to do so, the Wolfian theory above alluded to, of the composition of the _Iliad_ out of a number of separate ballads. Lachmann has tried the same process of disintegration with the unknown Homer of his own country; but a sound-minded Englishman needs but to read the poem as it has been given us, for the first time, complete by Mr Lettsom,[18] in order to stand aghast at the extreme trouble which learned men in Germany often give themselves, in order to prove nonsense. "_Nihil est tam absurdum quod non scripserit aliquis Germanorum._"

_Thirdly_, as a poetical composition, the Lay of the Niebelungen will not bear comparison for a moment with the two great Greek works of the same class; it is even, in our opinion, inferior to its nearest modern counterpart, the _Cid_. The author of the _Iliad_ possessed a soul as sunny and as fiery as those lovely island-fringed coasts that gave him birth; and in describing battles he rushes on himself to the charge, like some old French-eating Marshal Blucher, the incarnation of the whirlwind of battle which he guides. Our German minstrel takes matters more easily, and, while his pen revels in blood, sits all the while in his easy chair, rocking himself delectably, and, like a true German, smoking his pipe. His quiet serene breadth is very apt to degenerate into Westphalian flats and sheer prosiness. When, again, he would be sublime and stirring, as in the bloody catastrophe, he is apt to overshoot the mark, and becomes horrible. His heroes are too gigantic, and do things with a touch of their finger which no Homeric hero would have dreamt of without the help of a god. The fancy, also, of the old German is very barren and monotonous, as compared with the wealthy Greek. His similes are few; he has no richness of analogy. Nevertheless, the Niebelungen Lay remains for all Europe a very notable poem--for all lovers of popular poetry an indispensable study. Whatever else it wants, it has nature and health, simplicity and character about it; and these things are always pleasurable--sometimes, where a taint of vicious taste has crept in, your only curatives.

FOOTNOTES:

[14] _The Fall of the Niebelungers_; otherwise the Book of Kriemhild: a translation of the _Niebelunge Nôt_, or _Niebelungen Lied_. By WILLIAM NANSON LETTSOM. London: Williams and Norgate, 1850.

_Ueber die Iliade und das Niebelungen Lied._ Von KARL ZELL. Karlsruhe: 1843.

[15] _Das Niebelungen Lied_; in's hoch Deutsche übertragen. Von AUGUST ZEUNE. Berlin: 1814.

[16] These Burgundians are, in the second part of the poem, also called the _Niebelungen_, which epithet, however, in the first part, is applied to certain distant Scandinavian vassals of Siegfried. The origin of this name has caused much dispute amongst the learned.

[17] In the year 436, Gundicarius, king of the Burgundians, was destroyed with his followers by the Huns; and this event is supposed to be represented by the catastrophe of the Niebelungen.--LETTSOM, Preface, p. 4, and ZELLE, p. 370.

[18] The translation by _Birch_, published at Berlin in 1848, follows Lachmann's mangled text, and is otherwise very inferior to Mr Lettsom's.

ADDITIONAL CHAPTERS FROM THE HISTORY OF JOHN BULL.