22 SEPTEMBER 1849, Page 19

PILLAR'S STORIES OF THE TWO REBELLIONS TN SCOTLAND. * Ire the

higher walks of poetry the choice of a subject is held to be of great importance; and the aspirant to epic or tragic honours is warned to be careful of what he is about in his selection of a theme, without judgment respecting which his after labour will be in vain. This question is of greater importance for the novelist, on Horace's principle of the difficile communia. A man about to attempt an epic will be impressed with the importance of his task, and not choose a theme which has al- ready been successfully treated ; so that his subject will be new, if no- thing else. Prose fictionists seem, on the contrary, to consider the suc- cess of their predecessors as a reason why they should labour on their exhausted field. A remote country, a peculiar state of society, and a period of history unknown in its particulars to the reading public, may not make a readable book, for that must depend upon the writer ; but there will be freshness of matter, some information may be imparted, and when the author errs in his pictures of men and manners he is not quite so readily detected. With contemporary life or hacknied themes the reader is not only familiar, but he has the means of comparing the imitative representation with some artistic original. Mr. Fill= has committed this error in the choice of his subject. There is perhaps no more thoroughly exhausted epoch in all history than "the 'Forty-five." The piess has teemed with original memoirs, original documents, compiled histories and biographies, poetry, and romance, from soon after the actual event down to our own day. If the abortive insurrec- tion of 1715 has been less regarded, it is because it had little interest in it- self; though neither has that subject wanted commemorators both in prose and verse. A person selecting Highland manners, Jacobite loyalty, Ha- noverian vengeance, the kindness of woman, and the hairbreadth escapes of the unfortunate adherents of the Stuart,, should feel conscious that he can present the topics from some novel point of view, and give zest to his work by what the Germans call an "Idea." Ulm cannot do this, he will of necessity seem to fail, because he will not be able to come up to those conceptions which the reader already has in his mind. There is a further defect in the Stories of the Two Rebellions in Scotland. Their subjects are in themselves hardly large enough for fiction; and the writer has not imaginative comprehension sufficient to en- graft the variety and elevation of romance upon what seem to be in their origin mere matters of fact, and of rather a commonplace kind. Of the three stories, " The Badger's Cave" is the narrative of a young officer's

• Stories, Traditionary and Romantic, of the Two Rebellions in Scotland, in 1113 and l74.5. By D. A. Flues, M.A. Published by Bentley.

escape after the battle of Sheriffmnir, by being concealed in a cavern, and thence assisted to reach a vessel, through the instrumentality of two ladies. The mere story could have been told in a few pages ; but it is extended by minute particulars, that lengthen without varying the matter- of-fact—if a true tradition it is, as seems highly probable. The author takes credit to himself for avoiding some elements of interest in the loves and rivalries, that the elements obviously suggested ; but we think on a mistaken principle. It is right to eschew incongruous "effects," especially if obvious and hacknied ; but to reject evident opportunities of en- riching and varying a theme, is to substitute bareness for simplicity. "Duncan the Seeker" is a tale of 1745. The hero is driven crazy by the death of his father, and the atrocities inflicted upon his mother and sisters by Hawley's Dragoons after the war was over ; and he spends his life in seeking a treasure, intrusted to his father for the Chevalier, but the secret of whose hiding-place perishes, the survivor of those to whom the secret was intrusted expiring before he could indicate the spot. There are more variety and action in this tale than in the Badger's Cave, but it equally wants the largeness and purpose that distinguish the artist : the catastrophe besides is too unpleasant for fiction. " Eachain hiaceachain, or Colquhainziet Castle," is a tale connected with Charles Edward's escape, and the danger in which it involves Maceachain ; who, having been kindly arrested and kept safe by a Whig friend till after the battle of Calloden, evades his prison, plunges into danger, and is only saved by the evidence of identity breaking down on his trial in a farcical way. This story is the best of the three, from the number of the cha- racters, the variety of the action, and the more interesting nature of the historical and private events. There is, however, no avoiding the comparison we spoke of; and the reader will frequently be reminded of TVaverley in Golquhainziet Castle, and indeed in the other tales, not so much by direct imitation as the similarity of matter.

The safety of Major Drummond in the Badger's Cave is greatly facili- tated by the superstition of the peasantry ; a means, indeed, which is pushed rather too far, in the manner of a comedian making the most of a taking incident. The Major plays the flute, and the music is considered supernatural : the neighbouring laird is bedridden, and the Major, dressed in one of his suits, (supplied by the laird's daughter,) is continually taken for the old gentleman's fetch. One of these occasions is humorous enough to serve for an extract.

"Impatient of his prison, Drummond had one fine evening left his retreat some- what earlier than usual,' but as the gloamin' was begun, thought none would ken.' After duly visiting the lesser cave, which served him for larder, post-office, and all,' he was tempted to extend his walk some distance up the bank of the Keltie, where it is bare of wood, that he might breathe the air more freely than he was wont to do amid the stifling thickets of the glen below. It chanced that a shep- herd's wife from the braes of Leny had been that day to the lowlands for a burden of oat-straw wherewith to thatch her cow-house; and instead of going round by the bridge in order to shorten the distance, she resolved, in returning, to cross about half a mile farther up, by a ford which in the then state of the river was practi- cable . She had just, with kilted coats, entered the stream with this intention, when Drummond, not then or there expecting company, suddenly came in sight from behind a rock in his masquerade costume of taish; and the poor woman, ut- tering a scream of terror, fell into the current in a faint; and floating on her back on her bottle of strae, would inevitably have been carried over the fells and dashed in pieces, had not the ghost gallantly rushed to the rescue, and placed her and her burden in safety on the farther bank; finding it, however, expedient to decamp without loss of time, so soon as he perceived the drookit gudewife returning to her- self. At a late hour that night, more dead than alive, the poor woman reached her home, told her tale, took to her bed, fevered, and had nearly lost both her wits and her life. As reported by her, or rather as it had attained its climax in the process of transmission from mouth to mouth, thus ran the incident, which in the sober form of fact we have just narrated.

"Jenny Gow was returning from the strath on a Friday evening, with a bottle of straw upon her back. On entering the Foalsford for the purpose of crossing to the other side, the laird's taish suddenly made his appearance on the opposite bank, in his well-known walking-suit, and shaking his gold-headed cane threaten- ingly at Jenny, seemed to warn her against crossing at that place. Jenny, how- ever, courageously persisting in her purpose, no sooner had she reached the middle of the stream than the bogle seized her by the rope which fastened her burden round her waist, and springing aloft in air, dropt her, straw and all, souse into a linn; and then, not satisfied with this prank, flew with her to the top of the bridge, whence with herself and her bottle of thatch under his arm he shot the Great Fall, and, after trawling her several times tip and down the Devil's Kail- pot, the black unfathomed pool into which the torrent discharges itself, he laid her on the North bank of the river, a little above the falls, where, vanishing with an eldritch screech, he left her to recover her senses and dry her duds at leisure!"