ges can receive no illustration from
any praises or observations of ours. It is superior, in our
apprehension, to all that this author has hitherto produced; and, with a
few faults of diction, equal to any thing that has _ever_ been written
upon similar subjects. Though we have extended our extracts to a very
unusual length, in order to do justice to these fine conceptions, we
have been obliged to leave out a great deal, which serves in the
original to give beauty and effect to what we have actually cited. From
the moment the author gets in sight of Flodden Field, indeed, to the end
of the poem, there is no tame writing, and no intervention of ordinary
passages. He does not once flag or grow tedious; and neither stops to
describe dresses and ceremonies, nor to commemorate the harsh names of
feudal barons from the Border. There is a flight of five or six hundred
lines, in short, in which he never stoops his wing, nor wavers in his
course; but carries the reader forward with a more rapid, sustained, and
lofty movement, than any Epic bard that we can at present remember.

From the contemplation of such distinguished excellence, it is painful
to be obliged to turn to the defects and deformities which occur in the
same composition. But this, though a less pleasing, is a still more
indispensable part of our duty; and one, from the resolute discharge of
which, much more beneficial consequences may be expected. In the work
which contains the fine passages we have just quoted, and many of nearly
equal beauty, there is such a proportion of tedious, hasty, and
injudicious composition, as makes it questionable with us, whether it
is entitled to go down to posterity as a work of classical merit, or
whether the author will retain, with another generation, that high
reputation which his genius certainly might make coeval with the
language. These are the authors, after all, whose faults it is of most
consequence to point out; and criticism performs her best and boldest
office,--not when she tramples down the weed, or tears up the
bramble,--but when she strips the strangling ivy from the oak, or cuts
out the canker from the rose. The faults of the fable we have already
noticed at sufficient length. Those of the execution we shall now
endeavour to enumerate with greater brevity.

And, in the _first_ place, we must beg leave to protest, in the name of
a very numerous class of readers, against the insufferable number, and
length and minut