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

CANTO 1.1 ROKEBY. 43
" Still from the purpose wilt thou stray!
Good gentle friend, how went the day? "XIII.
" Good am I deem'd at trumpet-sound,
And good where goblets dance the round,
Though gentle ne'er was join'd, till now,
With rugged Bertram's breast and brow.But I resume. The battle's rage
Was like the strife which currents wage,
Where Orinoco, in his pride,
Rolls to the main no tribute tide,
that instances of a culpable, and almost slovenly inattention
to the usual rules of diction and of metre, are more frequent
in this, than in any preceding work of Mr. Scott. In support
of this opinion, we adduce the following quotation, which
occurs in stanza xii.; and in the course of a description which
is, in some parts, unusually splendid-'Led Bertram Risingham the hearts,'
to'And, Cortez, thine, in Bertram's fame.'
"The author, surely, cannot require to be told, that the
feebleness of these jingling couplets is less offensive than
their obscurity. The first line is unintelligible, because the
conditional word'if,' on which the meaning depends, is neither expressed nor implied in it; and the third line is equally
faulty, because the sentence, when restored to its natural
order, can only express the exact converse of the speaker's
intention. We think it necessary to remonstrate against
these barbarous inversions, because we consider the rules of
grammar as the only shackles by which the Hudibrastic
metre, already so licentious, can be confined within tolerable
limits."]