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.