r phraseology at least is faultless. A
poet, again, neither can nor ought to imitate, and when he is writing in
earnest the attempt is absolutely hopeless. For every poet has his own
style, and his own unmistakeable manner of thought and of expression,
which he cannot cast off at will. If he imitates, he ceases for the time
to be a poet, degenerates into a rhymster, and his flowers upon close
inspection will be found to have been fabricated from muslin.

Very blind indeed must be the man who could mistake "Sir James the Rose"
for an ancient Scottish ballad. Michael Bruce, the author, was more than
an ingenious person: he was also a poet, and had he lived a little
longer, and at a period when simplicity in composition was rated at its
true value, he would in all probability have executed something better.
But he wanted power, and that pathos which is indispensable for the
composition of a perfect ballad. Even Scott, when he attempted too close
an imitation, failed. The glorious fragment which we have already
quoted, "The Eve of Saint John," "Lochinvar," and others, are not to be
considered in the light of imitations, but as pure outbursts of his own
high chivalrous and romantic imagination. But the third part of "Thomas
the Rhymer" is an adaptation to, or continuation of the ancient
fragment, with which, however, in no respect can it possibly compare.
Indeed the old ballad stands almost isolated in poetry, for its wild
imaginative strain.

"She's mounted on her milk-white steed,
She's ta'en true Thomas up behind;
And aye, whene'er her bridle rung,
The steed flew swifter than the wind.

O they rade on, and further on;
The steed gaed swifter than the wind,
Until they reached a desart wide,
And every land was left behind.

"Light down, light down, now, true Thomas,
And lean your head upon my knee,
Abide and rest a little space,
And I will show you ferlies three.

"O see ye not yon narrow road,
So thick beset with thorns and briers?
That is the path of righteousness
Tho' after it but few inquires.

"And see ye not that braid, braid road,
That lies across the lily leven?
That is the path of wickedness,
Tho' some call it the road to heaven.

"And see ye not that bonny road
That winds about the fernie brae?
That is the road to fair Elf land,
Where thou and I this night maun gae.

"But, Tho