The Sun.
London, England, 1856-09-30 00:00:00

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DON, TJESA EV E IN G. 8-P_P i7E3I_I3ER 30,

AYTOUN'S NEW POEM.

ansiness done
this day

And many a cottage rings to•r;ight
With many a merry strain :
Young boys and gir:s run laughing by,
Their hearts and ryes elate ;
I can but think on mine and sigh,
For I am desolate," &c.—GriPt.
What shall we say of that (doubtless unwitting)
recollection of Buses ?

"They range at will the memntain paths,
They hear the falcon cry ;
And berp, within a loath ly
A fettered slave am I."—Bothwell.
"The gowan blocms upon the bill, the primrose by the
brae ;
The hawthorn's budding in the glen and calk white is
the s,lae ;
• The ra.:anest hind in a' Scotland may rove thy sweets

ainanz,
lint I, the Queen of a' Saotlan,l, matm lie in prison
strang."—Burns.
What of that other transcript from the Laureate ?
" Ho told me of her breaking heart,
Of bitter tears she shed,
Of the sad cry she raised to heaven,
'0 God 1 that I were dead r"--Bothwell.
As everybody knows—literally the refrain of Mr.
Tennyson's Marianna in the floated Grange.
Precisely as that other passage—
" Ring on, ye bells ! Let others throng, &e.
Ring on fur them ! I hear you well, &c."

—Bothwell.
is but the reiteration of the dulcifluous and well-
remembered
" Ring out, wild belle, to the wild sky !
Ring out the old, ring in the new
Bing out the false, riug in the true, &c.'?
—ln emoriam.
Precisely, too, as that outburst in Bothwell,
"By heaven it was a glorious sight," ,bc,,
is the dim echo of
" But, oh 'twas a glorious sight to see
The charge of the Christian chivalry !"
What most amaze us, however, among these evi-
dently unconscious transcripts by Professor Aytoun
are the two hereafter particularised, one from Scott,
the other from Byron. To wit— '
" 0, never rest your faith on wort;
Pens are for priests ; trust nought but swords."
"Let women, Edward, war with words, Bothwdl.
With curses monks, but men with Is w °Hs. "
—Sir Walter.

And, to crown all—
" There is a peak of guilt so high
That those who reach it stand above
The sweep of dull humanity,
The trail of passion and of love.
The lower clouds that dim the heavens
Touch not the nr,untain's hoary crown,
And on the summit, thunder•riven
God's lightning only smites them down 1"

"He who ascends to mountain-tops will findßothwell.
The loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds and snow ;
He who surpasses or subdues mankind
/anal; look down on the hate of those bolo w.
Though high above the sun of glory glow
And far beneath the earth and ocean spread,
Round him are icy rocks, and keenly blow
Contending tempests round his naked head :
And thus reward the toils which to those summits lead."
Harold.
As Lord Byron himself, however,Childe
used jocosely
to contend when subjected to similar accusations—
plagiarisms are proofs positive, first of all, of a
man's extensive reading, and, secondly, of his re-
tentive memory ! Apart from all such casual evi-
dences of either of these enviable capacities on the
part of Professor Aytoun, Bothwell abounds, hardly
less than the Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers, with
tokens of those many rare intellectual powers
which in their peculiar and forceful combination
constitute our author's distinguishing characteris-
tic. That characteristic of poetic fire, energy, en-
thusiasm, or impulsiveness, which tends to associate
his genius in our minds with thou, of a Tyrimus or
a Campbell. It is the conspicuous charm of his
heroic song—that deep, sad, earnest passion which
seems to throb in its very rhythm, and to vibrate
in the manly and sonorous rhyme marking the
measure of each musical cadence. Throughout the
whole of this laboriously-sustained monologue,
Bothwell, Booth to say, is the not unbefitting
exponent of that lyric enthusiasm which is, so to
speak, the origin of the dynamic force, of the
hidden motive power setting in play Professor
Aytoun's imagination. Whether the lawless cap-
tive is listening awe-fully while—
" . . the midnight chimes proclaim
The hallowed season come,
When .Heaven's broad gates are opened wide,
Acd Hell's loud roar is dumb."
Or remembers with scornful' indignation how it
came to pass that Darnley neglected his beautiful
Queen for Queans far less beautiful--
. " Lett her, with base unmanly threat,
Alone to weep and pine ;
That he might lie in 1221x101,2 lap., -
And hiccup o'er his wine."
Whether at another moment he is unatterin,g to
himself, as it were, with ground teeth and flashing
eyes—