A poet, we
think, should never let his heroes contract such great debts to fortune;
especially when a little exertion of his own might make them independent
of her bounty. De Wilton might have been made to seek and watch his
adversary, from some moody feeling of patient revenge; and it certainly
would not have been difficult to discover motives which might have
induced both Clara and the Abbess to follow and relieve him, without
dragging them into his presence by the clumsy hands of a cruizer from
Dunbar.
In the _fourth_ place, we think we have reason to complain of Mr Scott
for having made his figuring characters so entirely worthless, as to
excite but little of our sympathy, and at the same time keeping his
virtuous personages so completely in the back ground, that we are
scarcely at all acquainted with them when the work is brought to a
conclusion. Marmion is not only a villain, but a mean and sordid
villain; and represented as such, without any visible motive, and at the
evident expense of characteristic truth and consistency. His elopement
with Constance, and his subsequent desertion of her, are knightly vices
enough, we suppose; but then he would surely have been more interesting
and natural, if he had deserted her for a brighter beauty, and not
merely for a richer bride.
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