For the poor Lady Clare, she is a
personage of still greater insipidity and insignificance. The author
seems to have formed her upon the principle of Mr Pope's maxim, that
women have no characters at all. We find her every where, where she has
no business to be; neither saying nor doing any thing of the least
consequence, but whimpering and sobbing over the Matrimony in her prayer
book, like a great miss from a boarding school; and all this is the more
inexcusable, as she is altogether a supernumerary person in the play,
who should atone for her intrusion by some brilliancy or novelty of
deportment. Matters would have gone on just as well, although she had
been left behind at Whitby till after the battle of Flodden; and she is
daggled about in the train, first of the Abbess and then of Lord
Marmion, for no purpose, that we can see, but to afford the author an
opportunity for two or three pages of indifferent description.
Finally, we must object, both on critical and on national grounds, to
the discrepancy between the title and the substance of the poem, and the
neglect of Scotish feelings and Scotish character that is manifested
throughout.
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