Page:Buke of the Howlat.djvu/36

Rh the details are occasionally amusing, it is still confessedly a dull performance, exhibiting, neither in conception nor execution, any extraordinary degree of poetical talent. But dull as the poem generally may be, there is a redeeming beauty in the episode of James, Lord of Douglas; and it might be difficult to point out any similar passage in our old poetical writers, in which animated description is combined with so much tenderness and feeling. Moreover, the poem is remarkable for its language, no less than for its versification, in the structure of which, it bears a marked resemblance to some of the more ancient of our metrical romances; although the style is neither so difficult nor so obscure as that of Golagrus and Gawane, or of Raulf Coilyear, the romances more especially alluded to. If, after what has been stated, any reader is inclined to believe that this poem contains a covert satire on James II., with regard to his ambitious dispositions, he must at least concede, that the satire is not of the most pungent and caustick nature. But such a notion really derives little, if any, support from the poem itself, in which we can find no direct allusions either to the personal character of the King, or to the state of Scotland in his reign; nor does the situation of James, at any period of his life, accord with that implied by the adoption of such an