tory wooing of Lady
Clare. Those, and all the prodigies and miracles of the story, we can
excuse, as within the privilege of poetry; but, the lucky chances we
have already specified, are rather too much for our patience. A poet, we
think, should never let his heroes contract such great debts to fortune;
especially when a little exertion of his own might make them independent
of her bounty. De Wilton might have been made to seek and watch his
adversary, from some moody feeling of patient revenge; and it certainly
would not have been difficult to discover motives which might have
induced both Clara and the Abbess to follow and relieve him, without
dragging them into his presence by the clumsy hands of a cruizer from
Dunbar.

In the _fourth_ place, we think we have reason to complain of Mr Scott
for having made his figuring characters so entirely worthless, as to
excite but little of our sympathy, and at the same time keeping his
virtuous personages so completely in the back ground, that we are
scarcely at all acquainted with them when the work is brought to a
conclusion. Marmion is not only a villain, but a mean and sordid
villain; and represented as such, without any visible motive, and at the
evident expense of characteristic truth and consistency. His elopement
with Constance, and his subsequent desertion of her, are knightly vices
enough, we suppose; but then he would surely have been more interesting
and natural, if he had deserted her for a brighter beauty, and not
merely for a richer bride. This was very well for Mr Thomas Inkle, the
young merchant of London; but for the valiant, haughty, and liberal Lord
Marmion of Fontenaye and Lutterward, we do think it was quite
unsuitable. Thus, too, it was very chivalrous and orderly perhaps, for
him to hate De Wilton, and to seek to supplant him in his lady's love;
but, to slip a bundle of forged letters into his bureau, was cowardly as
well as malignant. Now, Marmion is not represented as a coward, nor as
at all afraid of De Wilton; on the contrary, and it is certainly the
most absurd part of the story, he fights him fairly and valiantly after
all, and overcomes him by mere force of arms, as he might have done at
the beginning, without having recourse to devices so unsuitable to his
general character and habits of acting. By the way, we have great doubts
whether a _convicted_ traitor, like De Wilton, whose guilt was
established by written evidence under his own hand, was ev