le of being made subservient to its legitimate purposes. They are
particularly unsuitable, too, to the age and character of the personages
to whom they relate; and, instead of forming the instruments of knightly
vengeance and redress, remind us of the machinery of a bad German novel,
or of the disclosures which might be expected on the trial of a
pettifogging attorney. The obscurity and intricacy which they
communicate to the whole story, must be very painfully felt by every
reader who tries to comprehend it; and is prodigiously increased by the
very clumsy and inartificial manner in which the denouement is
ultimately brought about by the author. Three several attempts are made
by three several persons to beat into the head of the reader the
evidence of De Wilton's innocence, and of Marmion's guilt; first, by
Constance in her dying speech and confession; secondly, by the abbess in
her conference with De Wilton; and, lastly, by this injured innocent
himself, on disclosing himself to Clara in the castle of Lord Angus.
After all, the precise nature of the plot and the detection is very
imperfectly explained, and we will venture to say, is not fully
understood by one half those who have fairly read through every word of
the quarto now before us. We would object, on the same grounds, to the
whole scenery of Constance's condemnation. The subterranean chamber,
with its low arches, massive walls, and silent monks with smoky
torches,--its old chandelier in an iron chain,--the stern abbots and
haughty prioresses, with their flowing black dresses, and book of
statutes laid on an iron table, are all images borrowed from the novels
of Mrs Ratcliffe [_sic_] and her imitators. The public, we believe, has
now supped full of this sort of horrors; or, if any effect is still to
be produced by their exhibition, it may certainly be produced at too
cheap a rate, to be worthy the ambition of a poet of original
imagination.

In the third place, we object to the extreme and monstrous improbability
of almost all the incidents which go to the composition of this fable.
We know very well that poetry does not describe what is ordinary; but
the marvellous, in which it is privileged to indulge, is the marvellous
of performance, and not of accident. One extraordinary rencontre or
opportune coincidence may be permitted, perhaps, to bring the parties
together, and wind up matters for the catastrophe; but a writer who gets
through the whole business of h