'the hounds must have been totally ruined' by swimming to Ellen's Isle after the run. This sportsman also detected Fitz-James in his disguise, which Scott therefore deepened. He himself made Fitz-James's ride from Loch Vennachar to Stirling, in the interests of historical accuracy, and found it feasible.

The poem appeared, in May 1810, in a lordly quarto: Scott received, or should have received, 2000 guineas. But what with bills and Ballantynes, his guineas may have been more or less. Mr. Jeffrey was kind enough to 'think more highly, on the whole, of this than of either of its author's former publications.' Not because it had greater beauties, but because it had fewer faults.' He liked the Highland subject, which Scott was to make more human, probable, natural, and lifelike in Waverley, Rob Roy, and other novels.

Lockhart, very justly, calls The Lay' the most natural and original, Marmion the most powerful and splendid, and The Lady of the Lake the most interesting, picturesque, romantic, and graceful of his poems.'

It has not much antiquarianism, which the

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critics hated: there is little of the supernatural,' L except the Second Sight, and Brian's strange birth: and the supernatural' was a stumblingblock to criticism, even in The Ancient Mariner, to Charles Lamb. The metre was regular, not the wild mosstrooping stanzas, and the critics loved regularity as much as they hated Christabel. Scott defended octosyllabics, against the formal heroic verse, which, as he points out, is full of otiose adjectives. Ellis regretted the irregular cadences of The Lay, which suit that poem admirably, and are judiciously introduced by Scott into the Minstrel's description of the battle in The Lady of the Lake. But octosyllabics were a change, and were well adapted to a rapid narrative. If we merely took The Lady of the Lake at the estimate of superior modern critics, who have read about Verlaine in the magazines, if we only rated it as 'a Waverley novel in verse,' it would still be a very good novel. Few of Scott's are so succinct, or so well constructed. The action only occupies レ six days. On the first we have the Chase, and Fitz-James's welcome on Ellen's Isle. In the second Malcolm and Roderick Dhu quarrel, and

Malcolm leaves the Island. On the third the Fiery Cross is sped, and summons men from burial and bridal: the fourth day gives the Prophecy. Fitz-James returns to Clan-Alpine's realm and is sheltered by Roderick Dhu. Next day we have the scene of the maniac woman, and the combat between Roderick Dhu and Fitz-James, with the sports at Stirling, and the prowess of Douglas. The following sun brings tidings of the battle and the attack on Ellen's Isle, the death of Roderick, the éclaircissement, and the conclusion.

Every judicious reader should have recognised that Scott, and Scott alone, was the author of the Waverley novels. They are built, in prose, on the same lines as The Lady of the Lake. There is the same love of Highland chivalry← custom, and legend, the same liking for a generous king. Hero and heroine are the usual hero and heroine; a faint touch of coquetry and fickleness in Ellen is at once rebuked and mastered by her 'better self.' The hounds serve for a signature in novel and poem alike, as does the white horse of Wouvermans. The maniac woman, with her warning snatches of

old ballads, is Madge Wildfire with her warning snatches of ancient song. The deep and tender love of father and daughter is not better marked in Woodstock than in Douglas and Ellen. Humour, especially peasant humour, so pronounced a feature of the novels, the poem did not well admit of, but Frank Bothwell and Halliday, in Old Mortality, might have stepped out of the Guard-room of Canto VI. The Scott of the novels, and of his own hidden life, is apparent in the lines on Fitz-James's dreams.

'Then,—from my couch may heavenly might
Chase that worst phantom of the night !—
Again return'd the scenes of youth,

Of confident undoubting truth;

They come, in dim procession led,

The cold, the faithless, and the dead.'

He is thinking of the 'false true love' that broke his heart, though it was handsomely mended; he is always thinking of her. The whole story may be read between the lines, in a place so unlikely as his Quarterly review of Miss Austen; and the Journal tells us how the name which he had cut in runic characters on the grass below the Castle of St. Andrews had

power, thirty years later, to move his heart. Thus almost all of the Scott of the novels, all, we may say, but the humour, is present in The Lady of the Lake.

Critics may say that they wish he had told the story in prose, but the rapidity, and often the beauty and charm, of the verse can only be despised by a caprice of fashion. Prose could not render the spirit and magic of the opening:

'The stag at eve had drunk his fill,'

nor give us the magnificent picture of the Trosachs. The wild hermit, Brian, and the wilder legend of his birth, are better painted and told in rhyme. The journey of the Fiery Cross is poetry of the utmost speed and spirit, and the scenes of interrupted bridal and burial are selected and drawn with a master's hand and with unfailing tact. The scene of the maniac captive could not be better than its replica in Madge Wildfire's adventure, but it only yields to that most extraordinary and Shakespearian effort of genius. The combat is one of Scott's best single fights; the battle, as recited by the Minstrel, excels even among his