lads_--a collection of parodies and light poems of all kinds written
in conjunction with Sir Theodore Martin, and one of the pleasantest
books of the kind that the century has seen--and the more serious _Lays
of the Scottish Cavaliers_, both dating from the forties, the
satirically curious _Firmilian_ (see below), 1854, and some _Blackwood_
stories of which the very best perhaps is _The Glenmutchkin Railway_.
His long poem of _Bothwell_, 1855, and his novel of _Norman Sinclair_,
1861, are less successful.

The _Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers_, on which his chief serious claim
must rest, is an interesting book, if hardly a great one. The style is
modelled with extreme closeness upon that of Scott, which even Sir
Walter, with all his originality and genius, had not been able always to
preserve from flatness. In Aytoun's hands the flats are too frequent,
though they are relieved and broken at times by really splendid bursts,
the best of which perhaps are "The Island of the Scots" and "The Heart
of the Bruce." For Aytoun's poetic vein, except in the lighter kinds,
was of no very great strength; and an ardent patriotism, a genuine and
gallant devotion to the Tory cause, and a keen appreciation of the
chivalrous and romantic, did not always suffice to supply the want of
actual inspiration.

If it had been true, as is commonly said, that the before-mentioned
_Firmilian_ killed the so-called Spasmodic School, Aytoun's failure to
attain the upper regions of poetry would have been a just judgment; for
the persons whom he satirised, though less clever and humorous, were
undoubtedly more poetical than himself. But nothing is ever killed in
this way, and as a matter of fact the Spasmodic School of the early
fifties was little more than one of the periodical outbursts of poetic
velleity, more genuine than vigorous and more audacious than organic,
which are constantly witnessed. It is, as usual, not very easy to find
out who were the supposed scholars in this school. Mr. P. H. Bailey, the
author of _Festus_, who still survives, is sometimes classed with them;
but the chief members are admitted to have been Sydney Dobell and
Alexander Smith, both remarkable persons, both failures of something
which might in each case have been a considerable poet, and both
illustrating the "second middle" period of the poetry of the century
which corresponds to that illustrated earlier by Darley, Horne, and
Beddoes.

Of this pair, Sydney Dobell had