er allowed to
enter the lists, as a knight, against his accuser. At all events, we are
positive, that an accuser, who was as ready and willing to fight as
Marmion, could never have condescended to forge in support of his
accusation; and that the author has greatly diminished our interest in
the story, as well as needlessly violated the truth of character, by
loading his hero with the guilt of this most revolting and improbable
proceeding. The crimes of Constance are multiplied in like manner to
such a degree, as both to destroy our interest in her fate, and to
violate all probability. Her elopement was enough to bring on her doom;
and we should have felt more for it, if it had appeared a little more
unmerited. She is utterly debased, when she becomes the instrument of
Marmion's murderous perfidy, and the assassin of her unwilling rival.

De Wilton, again, is too much depressed throughout the poem. It is
rather dangerous for a poet to chuse a hero who has been beaten in fair
battle. The readers of romance do not like an unsuccessful warrior; but
to be beaten in a judicial combat, and to have his arms reversed and
tied on the gallows, is an adventure which can only be expiated by
signal prowess and exemplary revenge, achieved against great odds, in
full view of the reader. The unfortunate De Wilton, however, carries the
stain upon him from one end of the poem to the other. He wanders up and
down, a dishonoured fugitive, in the disguise of a palmer, through the
five first books; and though he is knighted and mounted again in the
last, yet we see nothing of his performances; nor is the author merciful
enough to afford him one opportunity of redeeming his credit by an
exploit of gallantry or skill. For the poor Lady Clare, she is a
personage of still greater insipidity and insignificance. The author
seems to have formed her upon the principle of Mr Pope's maxim, that
women have no characters at all. We find her every where, where she has
no business to be; neither saying nor doing any thing of the least
consequence, but whimpering and sobbing over the Matrimony in her prayer
book, like a great miss from a boarding school; and all this is the more
inexcusable, as she is altogether a supernumerary person in the play,
who should atone for her intrusion by some brilliancy or novelty of
deportment. Matters would have gone on just as well, although she had
been left behind at Whitby till after the battle of Flodden; and she is
dag