"The poetry of WALTER SCOTT has been _superseded_ by his prose, yet it fills no unimportant niche in the literary history of the last half century, and may be read, _at least once in life_, with great pleasure. Marmion, The Lay of the Last Minstrel, &c., cannot, indeed, be companions of those Sabbath hours of which the weariest, dreariest life need not be destitute, for their bearing is _not upon the true life of man_, his immortal life." (If Mrs Fuller wrote in the language of the conventicle this would be intelligible; but she does not; what does she mean?) "Coleridge felt this so deeply, that in a lately published work, he is recorded to have said, 'not twenty lines of Scott's poetry will ever reach posterity; it has relation to nothing.'" (Vol. i. p. 63.) If Coleridge said this in the haste and vivacity of conversation, it was great in justice to his memory to record and print it. "Not twenty lines!"--"relation to nothing!" Why, there are scores of lines in his earliest poem alone, which will ring long in the ears of men, for they have relation to the simple unalterable, universal feelings of mankind. "Oh, said he that his heart was cold!" We will not believe it. We are tempted to answer with a torrent of quotation; but this is not the place. "To one who has read," continues Mrs Fuller, "Scott's novels first, and looks in his poems for the same dramatic interest, the rich humour, the tragic force, the highly wrought, yet flowing dialogue, and the countless minutiae in the finish of character, they must bring disappointment." He who looks for all and exactly the same things in the poems which he had found in the novels, will assuredly, like other foolish seekers, be disappointed. Sir Walter Scott did not put his Bailie Nicol Jarvie nor his Andrew Fairservice into rhyme; nor does a lay of border chivalry embrace all that variety of character, or of dialogue, which finds ample room in the historical romance. Amongst a certain class of critics, it has been long a prevailing humour to decry one Alexander Pope. Mrs Margaret Fuller is resolved that if not first in the field against this notorious pretender, no one shall show greater hardihood than herself in the attack upon him. It is one of those occasions when, though surrounded by a goodly company of friends, she yet finds opportunity for an individual act of heroism. They are but a few words she utters--but match them if you can! We do not flinch, we Amazonian warriors. It is _a-propos_ of Lord Byron that she takes occasion to point a shaft, or rather to throw her battle-axe, at the head of this flagrant impostor. The whole passage must be quoted: