ng of the son and daughter of Henry
I. with their whole ship's company, except one survivor, Berold, the
butcher of Rouen, who relates the catastrophe. The subject of "The
King's Tragedy" is the murder of James I. by Robert Graeme and his men in
the Charterhouse of Perth. The teller of the tale is Catherine Douglas,
known in Scottish tradition as Kate Barlass, who had thrust her arm
through the staple, in place of a bar, to hold the door against the
assassins. A few stanzas of "The Kinges Quair" are fitted into the poem
by shortening the lines two syllables each, to accommodate them to the
ballad metre. It is generally agreed that this was a mistake, as was
also the introduction of the "Beryl Songs" between the narrative parts of
"Rose Mary." These ballads of Rossetti compare well with other modern
imitations of popular poetry. "Sister Helen," _e.g._, has much greater
dramatic force than Tennyson's "Oriana" or "The Sisters." Yet they
impress one, upon the whole, as less characteristic than the poet's
Italianate pieces; as _tours de force_ carefully pitched in the key of
minstrel song, but falsetto in effect. Compared with such things as
"Cadyow Castle" or "Jack o' Hazeldean," they are felt to be the work of
an art poet, resolute to divest himself of fine language and scrupulously
observant of ballad convention in phrase and accent--details of which
Scott was often heedless--but devoid of that hearty, natural sympathy
with the conditions of life from which popular poetry sprang, and wanting
the lyrical pulse that beats in the ballad verse of Scott, Kingsley, and
Hogg. In "The King's Tragedy" Rossetti was poaching on Scott's own
preserves, the territory of national history and legend. If we can guess
how Scott would have handled the same story, we shall have an object
lesson in two contrasted kinds of romanticism. Scott could not have
bettered the grim ferocity of the murder scene, nor have equalled,
perhaps, the tragic shadow of doom which is thrown over Rossetti's poem
by the triple warning of the weird woman. But the sense of the historic
environment, the sense of the actual in places and persons, would have
been stronger in his version. Graeme's retreat would have been the
Perthshire Highlands, and not vaguely "the land of the wild Scots." And
if scenery had been used, it would not have been such as this--a
Pre-Raphaelite background:

"That eve was clenched for a boding storm,
'Neath a toilsome moo