were too completely subdued. Contemporary reviewing "We is usually of this kind: a critic must pick faults. talk in a foreign language to each other," said Scott of his professional critics, "as they do not understand what I call poetry," and what the universal voice of mankind calls poetry. A reviewer who shares the "local partialities " of the poet cannot be an unbiassed critic of the Lay. Every hill and burn and river, from Teviot stone to Eskdale, from White Combe to Eildon, has its voice, which bids me prefer the Lay to all Scott's other long poems. But, setting aside the patriotism of a child of Ettrick Forest, the style of the Lay seems to me the most varied, the manner the most intense, the action the most vigorous and concentrated, of all Scott's rhymed romances. The Page, far from being an excrescence, is the hinge on which all turns. Without the Page, there can be no story. Scott never was more rapid than in William of Deloraine's ride; never more awful than in the scene where the wizard is exhumed; never more tender than in his lovepassages here; above all, never more himself than in the wistful grace which clothes the form of the Latest Minstrel. For he himself was the last minstrel of many an old loyalty, the friend and poet of many a forlorn cause. And he wrote in the fulness of young strength and happiness; he wrote of what he loved best, the scenes that were dearest to him, as to his humble panegyrist of the days and deeds which most strongly affected his ardent and chivalrous nature. It was in November 1806 that Scott began Marmion at Ashestiel— November's sky is chill and drear, Ashestiel was his happiest home, and on the rolling Scott. Erskine might lecture him, but he was incorrigible. He tried again and again to be "correct," as in Rokeby, but he was obliged to let the demon of his genius master him. Of style he was never a votary; he had to say his say just as it came uppermost, and, of course, his works are now the one solitary example of literary matter enduring bravely in contempt almost of literary manner. Often interrupted by duties and occupations of all kinds, he had to "leave Marmion gasping upon Flodden Field," till he could find leisure "to knock him on the head with two or three thumping stanzas." Scott had never the leisure of a professional poet-a Tennyson or a Wordsworth. He was a teller of tales: the story was the thing with him. His taste was not offended, in verse or prose, by a few slovenly stanzas or paragraphs, thrown out as his mind was at work on great scenes to come. Southey thought the materials of Marmion better than those of the Lay, "but not so well fitted together," and he disliked the interruption of the Introductory Epistles. They can, of course, be read apart from the romance, and they supply us with the best portrait of Scott from his own hand- -of Scott and of the country which he loved. Wordsworth did not think that Scott's aim was that which he would have proposed to Scott. And that was nearly all that William Wordsworth had to say to his friend about his friend's poem. About his own, as Lockhart shows, Wordsworth could talk for ever. A sense of humour was not among the gifts of the worthy man. As for Jeffrey, I confess that I have not the patience to re-read his review. As Lockhart says, perhaps the day came when Jeffrey could not reflect on it "with perfect equanimity." This bantam, at the bottom of Parnassus, crowed in a language not understanded by Sir Walter. Political pique, personal vanity, possibly a dash of envy, entered into the review which, at that time, was the only literary organ regarded by men. When Jeffrey averred that Scott "throughout neglected Scottish feelings and Scottish characters," when he said that after reading about Angus and King James and Edinburgh, and the glorious and fatal day of Flodden, he plainly showed what spirit he was of. O, le grand homme, rien ne lui peut plaire! b The beginning of Marmion is very spirited and martial, though the bearings of the hero A falcon, on his shield, The knight, are bad heraldry-colour on colour. throwing "a chain of twelve marks' weight" to the pursuivants, reminds us of a dearer friend then unborn, the immortal Le Balafré, Ludovic Leslie. The introduction of the plot, in the herald's references to the duel with Wilton, is managed with skilful irony, for He who conquered in the right, is, of course, a felon warrior. The introduction of "Albany Featherstonhaugh," from Surtees's sham ballad, reminds us that the whole hinge of the plot, the duel with the spectre knight, is based on another supercherie of Surtees, a pinchbeck ghost story of his own invention, palmed off on the unsuspecting sheriff. "The MS. chronicle from which Mr. Cradocke took this curious extract cannot now be found in the Chapter Library of Durham." It is a case of aut Robertus aut Diabolus. When Marmion is bantered about the "gentle page" who was a gentle paramour," we see how little Scott shone in correcting. In the MS. Marmion "answer'd stern and high." In the printed poem he "made a calm reply." This is weak; but who can agree with the genteel Jeffrey that venison pasties are vulgar, or that the wind which warms itself on Friar John's nose is more depraved than the breeze which took similar liberties with Bardolph's? Here Jeffrey finds "a debasing lowness and vulgarity, which, we think, must be offensive to every reader of delicacy." Henry IV. must be quite intolerable to students so very nice as this ideal whipper-snapper had in his eye. "The first presentment of the mysterious Palmer is laudable," says Jeffrey. Perhaps Scott thought so too, for he presented him again, in Ivanhoe. The powerful scene of the immurement, in canto ii., has, of course, no historical warrant. Whatever cruel deeds may have been done by individuals, the Church at no time permitted erring nuns to be bricked up, and so starve to death. Probably the legend has been produced by a vague memory of what was actually done to sinful vestals in ancient Rome, and by consequent misinterpretation of mural interments.1 The unlucky nun is made serviceable by her exposé of the motive of the tale, while her fierce and tameless courage forms a picture such as Scott rarely drew of woman. The ringing in Marmion's distant ear, on the night of her immurement, is a touch of superstition very characteristic of him who introduced the wraith in The Bride of Lammermoor. The scene of the hostelry Scott could have done better in prose, and the host's intercalated tale has the defect of most episodic tales, except that of Wandering Willie, in Redgauntlet. The incident of the nocturnal combat with the supposed spectral knight has not much to be said for it, except that the story could not get on without it. The psychology of Marmion's motives, however, is well explained: a fever in the blood, with a faint prick of superstition, spurred him forth. The glorious description of Edinburgh, the elegiac tenderness of the lines on boyish memories of Blackford Hill, introduce us to the splendid and sonorous close, the marshalled Scottish host, the king, so gallant and so notably fey, speeding with a light heart to a glorious and woeful death, within the forest of the Scottish spears. Here is the gist and charm of Marmion-here, in the historical tragedy, in the fate of Scotland, her king, and the Flowers of the Forest, not in the adventures of fictitious characters whom we scarcely learn to know, or care for much, in a versified romance. Fictitious personages, Wilton, Clare, and the rest, need (I venture to think) the detail and the atmosphere of prose. His heroes are never Scott's strong point, even in the Waverley Novels; his heroines vary; his villains, and his princes, and his young squires, like Harry Blount, are his best characters, apart from those humorous bailies and caddies who would have horrified Jeffrey "in a serious poem." Even Marmion we should have known better in a prose romance; and thus Scott's dramatic genius, his power of creating characters, is thwarted by 1 The truth has been set forth by the Rev. Herbert Thurston, S.J., in a controversy which arose out of a recent novel. the nature of his vehicle, in rhyme. But his chivalrous and patriotic passion, when he writes poetry, finds ample scope, and, in the close of Marmion, he comes nearest to the Homeric xápun. Mr. Matthew Arnold, indeed, complained of the "jerky" utterances of the dying Marmion, but the world has not agreed with his censure. Achilles or Tydeus' son would not have thought otherwise than Marmion, viewing the Scottish camp— For, by St. George, were that host mine, Not power infernal nor divine Should once to peace my soul incline, Like Cetewayo, Marmion feels the imperative instinctive craving "to wash his spears." Then comes the noble chord of colour, justly praised by Mr. Ruskin, black, green, and red, which hangs, like an ominous rainbow, over Scott's "own romantic town,' 'piled deep and massy, close and high." In the description of the Highland host 99.66 Loud were their clamouring tongues, as when simile With a Scott, perhaps unconsciously, repeats the very of Homer when he sings of the allies of Ilios. gallant speed and vigour Scott turns from the camp to the court, to James and the siren Lady Heron, with her ringing ballad of "Lochinvar," and again to the dark resentful Angus. It must be admitted that Jeffrey censured with justice the uninspired piece of explanation of the plot that follows. Scott hated "explanations," and verse is a very unfit medium for what is seldom other than dull, even in prose. The story of the forged papers, itself a notable blot in the composition, leads up but poorly to the portent that boded of Flodden. Very characteristic of Scott is the lament here over the ruined cross of Edinburgh, where King James VIII. had been proclaimed in 1745. The magistrates and Lords of Session removed the ancient monument in 1756. The pedestal of the Cross is now at Abbotsford, and we may stand on the steps whence King James the Eighth was proclaimed a hundred and fifty years ago. If we want to contrast a scene of personal romance as told by Scott |