“The wildest glen but this can show Some touch of nature’s genial glow: On high Benmore green mosses grow, And heath-bells bud in deep Glencroe, And copse on Cruachan Ben; But here, above, around, below, In mountain or in glen, Nor tree, nor shrub, nor plant, nor flower, Nor aught of vegetative power The weary eye may ken. For all is rocks at random strewn, Black waves, bare crags, and banks of stone, As if were here denied The summer’s sun, the spring’s sweet dew, That clothe with many a varied hue The bleakest mountain’s head;” would you believe it, that he introduces Deer—_fallow_ Deer! TALBOYS. “Call it not vain, they do not err Who say that, when the Poet dies, Mute nature mourns her worshipper, And celebrates his obsequies; Who say tall cliff and cavern lone For the departed bard make moan; That mountains meet in crystal rill, That flowers in tears of balm distil; Through his loved groves that breezes sigh, And oaks in deeper groan reply, And rivers teach their rushing wave To murmur dirges round his grave.” NORTH. And there the Last Minstrel should have ceased. What follows spoils all—fanciful, fantastic—not imaginative, poetical. The Minstrel is at pains to let us know that “Mute nature does _not_ mourn her worshipper!” that not “O’er mortal urn These things inanimate can mourn.” What, then, is the truth? To explain the mystery of flowers distilling tears of balm, we are told that “The maid’s pale shade, who wails her lot, That love, true love, should be forgot, From rose and heather shakes the tear Upon the gentle Minstrel’s bier—” The Phantom Knight shrieks upon the wild blast—and the Chief, from his misty throne on the mountains, fills the lonely caverns with his groans—while his “Tears of rage impel the rill! All mourn the minstrel’s harp unstrung, Their name unknown, their praise unsung!” Had Sir Walter been speaking in his own person he never would have written thus—nor thus contradicted and extinguished the Passion in the stanzas you so feelingly recited. But he puts the words into the lips of an old Harper improvising at a Feast—on which occasion anything will pass for poetry—even to the mind of the true Poet himself—but, believe me, it is sheer nonsense—and by power of contrast recalls Wordsworth’s profound saying—