eedingly unequal writer, who in his long poems chiefly, and not too
happily, followed Scott, but who in the fairy poem of "Kilmeny"
displayed an extraordinary command of a rare form of poetry, and who has
written some dozens of the best songs in the language. The best, but
only a few of the best, of these are "Donald Macdonald," "Donald
M'Gillavry," "The Village of Balmanhapple," and the "Boy's Song." In
prose he chiefly attempted novels, which have no construction at all,
and few merits of dialogue or style, but contain some powerful passages;
while one of them, _The Confessions of a Justified Sinner_, if it is
entirely his, which is very doubtful, is by far the greatest thing he
wrote, being a story of _diablerie_ very well designed, wonderfully
fresh and enthralling in detail, and kept up with hardly a slip to the
end. His other chief prose works are entitled _The Brownie of Bodsbeck_,
_The Three Perils of Man_, _The Three Perils of Woman_, and _Altrive
Tales_, while he also wrote some important, and in parts very offensive,
but also in parts amusing, _Recollections of Sir Walter Scott_. His
verse volumes, no one of which is good throughout, though hardly one is
without good things, were _The Mountain Bard_, _The Queen's Wake_,
_Mador of the Moor_, _The Pilgrims of the Sun_, _Jacobite Relics_ (some
of the best forged by himself), _Queen Hynde_, and _The Border Garland_.

A greater writer, if his work be taken as a whole, than any who has been
mentioned since Keats, was Walter Savage Landor, much of whose
composition was in prose, but who was so alike in prose and verse that
the whole had better be noticed together here. Landor (who was of a
family of some standing in Warwickshire, and was heir to considerable
property, much of which he wasted later by selling his inheritance and
buying a large but unprofitable estate in Wales) was born at Ipsley
Court, in 1775. He went to school at Rugby, and thence to Trinity
College, Oxford, at both of which places he gained considerable
scholarship but was frequently in trouble owing to the intractable and
headstrong temper which distinguished him through life. He was indeed
rusticated from his college, and subsequently, owing to his extravagant
political views, was refused a commission in the Warwickshire Militia.
He began to write early, but the poem of _Gebir_, which contains in germ
or miniature nearly all his characteristics of style, passed almost
unnoticed by the public, tho