The comparison is inconsiderate. Sir Walter pursued the
customary and very natural course of conducting an action, presenting
various turns of fortune, to some outstanding point on which the mind
might rest as a termination or catastrophe. The course I attempted to
pursue is entirely different. Everything that is attempted by the
principal personages in the 'White Doe' fails, so far as its object is
external and substantial: so far as it is moral and spiritual, it
succeeds. The heroine of the poem knows that her duty is not to
interfere with the current of events, either to forward or delay them;
but--

'To abide
The shock, and finally secure
O'er pain and grief a triumph pure.'

This she does in obedience to her brother's injunction, as most suitable
to a mind and character that, under previous trials, had been proved to
accord with his. She achieves this, not without aid from the
communication with the inferior creature, which often leads her thoughts
to revolve upon the past with a tender and humanising influence that
exalts rather than depresses her. The anticipated beatification, if I
may so say, of her mind, and the apotheosis of the companion of her
solitude, are the points at which the poem aims, and constitute its
legitimate catastrophe; far too spiritual a one for instant or
widely-spread sympathy, but not therefore the less fitted to make a deep
and permanent impression upon that class of minds who think and feel
more independently than the many do of the surfaces of things, and
interests transitory because belonging more to the outward and social
forms of life than to its internal spirit.

How insignificant a thing, for example, does personal prowess appear,
compared with the fortitude of patience and heroic martyrdom; in other
words, with struggles for the sake of principle, in preference to
victory gloried in for its own sake!

[To these remarks may be added the following, in a letter from the
writer to his friend Archdeacon Wrangham:

'Thanksgiving Day, Jan. 1816.
Rydal Mount.

'MY DEAR WRANGHAM,

'You have given me an additional mark of that friendly disposition, and
those affectionate feelings which I have long known you to possess, by
writing to me after my long and unjustifiable silence.

* * * * *

'Of the "White Doe" I have little to say, but that I hope it will be
acceptable to t