The poetical works of Sir Walter Scott, with memoir of the author.

CANTO VI.] THE LAST MINSTREL. 205
Resistless flash'd the levin-brand,
And fill'd the hall with smouldering smoke,
As on the elvish page it broke.
It broke, with thunder long and loud,
Dismay'd the brave, appall'd the proud,From sea to sea the larum rung;
On Berwick wall, and at Carlisle withal,
To arms the star led warders sprung.
When ended was the dreadful roar,
The elvish dwarf was seen no more!
1 [," The Goblin Page is, in our opinion, the capital deformity of the poem. We have already said the whole machinery
is useless; but the magic studies of the lady, and the rifled
tomb of Michael Scott, give occasion to so much admirable
poetry, that we can on no account consent to part with them.
The page, on the other hand, is a perpetual burden to the
poet, and to the readers; it is an undignified and improbable
fiction, which excites neither terror, admiration, nor astonishment, but needlessly debases the strain of the whole work,
and excites at once our incredulity and contempt. He is not
a'tricksy spirit,' like Ariel, with whom the imagination is
irresistibly enamoured, nor a tiny monarch, like Oberon, disposing of the destinies of mortals; he rather appears to us to
be an awkward sort of a mongrel between Puck and Caliban, of a servile and brutal nature, and limited in his powers
to the indulgence of petty malignity, and the infliction of
despicable injuries. Besides this objection to his character,
his existence has no support from any general or established
superstition. Fairies and devils, ghosts, angels, and witches,
are creatures with whom we are all familiar, and who excite
in all classes of mankind emotions with which we can easily
be made to sympathize. But the history of Gilpin Horner
was never believed out of the village where he is said to have
made his appearance, and has no claims upon the credulity
of those who were not originally of his acquaintance. There