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

42 ROKEBY. [CANTO I.
I could have laugh'd-but lack'd the timeTo see, in phrenesy sublime,
How the fierce zealots fought and bled,
For king or state, as humour led;
Some for a dream of public good,
Some for church-tippet, gown and hood,
Draining their veins, in death to claim
A patriot's or a martyr's name.Led Bertram Risingham the hearts,l
That counter'd there on adverse parts,
No superstitious fool had I
Sought El Dorados in the sky!
Chili had heard me through her states,
And Lima oped.her silver gates,
Rich Mexico I had march'd through,
And sack'd the splendours of Peru,
Till sunk Pizarro's daring name,
And, Cortez, thine, in Bertram's fame."-2
1 [MS.-" Led I but half of such bold hearts,
As countered there," &c.]
2 [The Quarterly Reviewer (No. xvi.) thus states the causes
of the hesitation he had had in arriving at the ultimate opinion, that Rokeby was worthy of the " high praise" already
quoted from the commencement of his article: " We confess,
then, that in the language and versification of this poem, we
were, in the first instance, disappointed. We do not mean to
say that either is invariably faulty; neither is it within the
power of accident that the conceptions of a vigourous and
highly-cultivated mind, should uniformly invest themselves
in trivial expressions, or in dissonant rhymes; but we do
think that those golden lines, which spontaneously fasten
themselves on the memory of the reader are more rare, and