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"Norman," she said, in a clear, low voice, "I want to tell you that I overheard all that you said to the Duchess of Aytoun. I could not help it I was so near to you." She was taking the difficulty into her own hands! He felt most thankful. "Did you, Philippa? I thought you were engrossed with the gallant captain." "Did you really and in all truth mean what you said to her?" she asked.
"The Laird of Lag," by Lieut.-Col. Fergusson, pp. 7-11. His "History of the Sufferings of the Church of Scotland" was first published in 1721. This confusion was first pointed out by Aytoun in an appendix to the second edition of his "Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers." Claverhouse to Linlithgow, December 28th, 1678. These letters are all quoted from Napier's book.
It must, too, be conceded that hitherto we have no rising, or nearly-risen poet, who answers fully to our ideal. Macaulay and Aytoun are content with being brilliant ballad-singers they never seek to touch the deeper spiritual chords of our being.
In his "Inkerman," a stirring ballad, which every American boy of a former age knew by heart, there was an echo of the "Lays of Ancient Rome," of the "Lays" of Scott and Aytoun, while in the more ambitious "Christine" , there was the accent of the genuine poet, something that recalled the "Christabel" of Coleridge.
On the other hand, I have had no hesitation about omitting David Moir, Felicia Hemans, Aytoun, Sir Edwin Arnold, and Sir Lewis Morris. I have included John Keble in deference to much enlightened opinion, but against my inclination. There are two names in the list which may be somewhat unfamiliar to many readers.
"That ye have power, and passion, and a sound As of the flying of an angel round The mighty world; that ye are one with time!" Here, I can't but think, is imagination. Mr. Aytoun, however, noted none of those passages, nor that where, in tempest and thunder, a shipwrecked sailor swims to the strange boat, sees the Living Love and the Dead, and falls back into the trough of the wave.
There was, in the following year, an unimportant border skirmish; but with the Peace of Aytoun ended this attempt of the Scots to support a pretender to the English crown. The first Scottish interference in the troubles of Lancaster and York had been on behalf of the House of Lancaster; the story is ended with this Yorkist intrigue.
However, he lifts the tombstone "as it were lightsome as a summer gladness." "A summer gladness," remarks Mr. Aytoun, "may possibly weigh about half-an- ounce." Julio came on a skull, a haggard one, in the grave, and Mr. Aytoun kindly designs a skeleton, ringing a bell, and crying "Dust ho!" Now go, and give your poems to your friends! Finally Julio unburies Agathe:
They met like a blighted Isabella and Lorenzo: "They met many a time In the lone chapels after vesper chime, They met in love and fear." Then, one day, "He heard it said: Poor Julio, thy Agathe is dead." She died "Like to a star within the twilight hours Of morning, and she was not! Some have thought The Lady Abbess gave her a mad draught." Here Mr. Aytoun, with sympathy, writes "Damn her!"
His only political feeling had been hitherto a sentimental Jacobitism, not more or less respectable than that of Scott, Aytoun, and the rest of what George Borrow has nicknamed the "Charlie over the water" Scotchmen.
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