High placed in hall a welcome guest,
He poured to lord and lady gay,

The unpremeditated lay:

Old times were changed, old manners gone;
A stranger filled the Stuart's throne;

The bigots of the iron time

Had called his harmless art a crime.
A wandering harper, scorned and poor,
He begged his bread from door to door,
And tuned, to please a peasant's ear,
The harp a king had loved to hear.'

Scott's love of country was like the passion of a lover for his bride. His fervid patriotism is inspirational in these famous lines: Breathes there a man with soul so dead,

Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!

Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned,
As home his footsteps he hath turned
From wandering on a foreign strand!
If such there breathe, go, mark him well;
For him no minstrel raptures swell;
High though his titles, proud his name,
Boundless his wealth as wish can claim;
Despite those titles, power, and pelf,
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,

And, doubly dying, shall go down

To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonoured, and unsung.'

The same rapid movement, the same animated variety of scenery and incident, appear in the greater poem of Marmion. The battle scene and death of the hero are among its most spirited passages. The following is a fine piece of description:

'Day set at Norham's castled steep,
And Tweed's fair river, broad and deep,
And Cheviot's mountains lone:
The battled towers, the donjon keep,
The loophole grates where captives weep,
The flanking walls that round it sweep,
In yellow lustre shone.
The warriors on the turrets high,
Moving athwart the evening sky,

Seemed forms of giant height:
Their armor, as it caught the rays,
Flashed back again the western blaze,
In lines of dazzling light.

St. George's banner, broad and gay,
Now faded as the fading ray,

Less bright, and less, was flung;
The evening gale had scarce the power
To wave it on the donjon tower,
So heavily it hung.
The scouts had parted on their search,
The castle gates were barred;
Above the gloomy portal arch,
Timing his footsteps to a march,
The warder kept his guard,
Low humming, as he paced along,
Some ancient Border gathering-song.'

Here and there we find a well remembered passage, to instruct

or elevate by its sentiment:

'O woman! in our hours of ease,

Uncertain, coy, and hard to please,

And variable as the shade

By the light quivering aspen made;

When pain and anguish wring the brow,

A ministering angel thou!'

Of the same chivalric type, but more richly picturesque, as well as more regular and interesting in plot, is the Lady of the Lake, the most popular of the author's poems. The press could hardly keep pace with the demand. The post-horse duty rose in Scotland to an extraordinary degree, from the eagerness of travellers to visit the localities described. If the other may be styled courtly, sounding, and stirring, this may be called tender, gentle and domestic. The following are illustrations of its deeper meaning and subtler interest:

And:

'At first the chieftain to his chime,
With lifted hand, kept feeble time;
That motion ceased; yet feeling strong
Varied his look as changed the song:

At length no more his deafened ear

The minstrel's melody can hear:

His face grows sharp; his hands are clenched
As if some pang his heart-strings wrenched;
Set are his teeth, his fading eye

Is sternly fixed on vacancy.

Thus, motionless and moanless, drew

His parting breath stout Roderick Dhu.'

'He is gone on the mountain,

He is lost to the forest,
Like a summer-dried fountain
When our need was the sorest.
The font reappearing,

From the rain-drops shall borrow,
But to us comes no cheering,
To Duncan no morrow!
The hand of the reaper
Takes the ears that are hoary,
But the voice of the weeper
Wails manhood in glory.

The autumn winds rushing,
Waft the leaves that are searest,
But our flower was in flushing,
When blighting was nearest.
Fleet foot on the correi,
Sage counsel in cumber,
Red hand in the foray,

How sound is thy slumber!
Like the dew on the mountain,
Like the foam on the river,

Like the bubble on the fountain,
Thou art gone, and forever!'

Thenceforth his popularity as a poet sensibly declined, a fact due in part to unfortunate choice of subject, in part to exhaustion of the particular vein, and in part to the eclipsing radiance of a new star,- Byron,-who now drew attention, for the first time, from the outward form of man and nature to the secret recesses of soul. Returning, therefore, to his former notion of illustrating the manners of the past in prose, as he had done in verse, he found among some old lumber in the attic an incomplete manuscript thrown aside nearly ten years before, and in 1814 presented

anonymously to the world the first of his long series of descriptive and historical novels,-Waverley. Pouring after it, came the flood of its successors. The following, including historical epochs and dates, is a tabular view of the vast and varied cycle which made the 'Great Unknown,' as he was called, the wonder of his

age:

The latter class, differing from the former mainly in a less close attachment of the narrative to history, relate chiefly to Scottish scenery and character. In addition to this prodigious amount of labor, he wrote much of a miscellaneous nature for reviews, edited Dryden and Swift, produced numerous works in the departments of criticism and biography; among them, Life of Napoleon, Tales of a Grandfather, Demonology and Witchcraft. Was ever such activity known, combined with such general excellence in the results?

Style.-Always easy and graphic, full of grace and glowing brightness, though never polished, proverbially careless and incorrect, as of one who looked only at broad and general effects, and was studious not so much of melody as of pictures. In verse,

flowing and vivid; an imitation, to some extent, of the irregular form adopted by the early minstrels. The prevailing measure is the octosyllabic, so well suited to a rapidly-succeeding variety of emotions.

The picturesque would seem to have been his forte. the magnificent descriptions of sunset, sea, and forest:

Witness

"The sun was now resting his huge disk upon the edge of the level ocean, and gilded the accumulation of towering clouds through which he had travelled the livelong day, and which now assembled on all sides, like misfortunes and disasters around a sinking empire and falling monarch. Still, however, his dying splendour gave a sombre magnificence to the massive congregation of vapours, forming out of the unsubstantial gloom the show of pyramids and towers, some touched with gold, some with purple, some with a hue of deep and dark red. The distant sea, stretched beneath this varied and gorgeous canopy, lay almost portentously still, reflecting back the dazzling and level beams of the descending luminary, and the splendid colouring of the clouds amidst which he was setting Nearer to the beach, the tide rippled onward in waves of sparkling silver, that imperceptibly, yet rapidly, gained upon the sand.''

And:

'The sun was setting upon one of the rich glassy glades of the forest. Hundreds of broad-headed, short-stemmed, wide-branched oaks, which had witnessed, perhaps, the stately march of the Roman soldiery, flung their gnarled arms over a thick carpet of the most delicious greensward; in some places they were intermingled with beeches, hollies, and copsewood of various descriptions, so closely as totally to intercept the level beams of the sinking sun; in others, they receded from each other, forming those long sweeping vistas, in the intricacy of which the eye delights to lose itself; while imagination considers them as the paths to yet wider scenes of silvan solitude. Here the red rays of the sun shot a broken and discoloured light, that fell partially upon the shattered boughs and mossy trunks of the trees; and there they illuminated, in brilliant patches, the portions of turf to which they made their way. A considerable open space in the midst of this glade seemed formerly to have been dedicated to the rites of Druidical superstition; for on the summit of a hillock, so regular as to seem artificial, there still remained part of a circle of rough unhewn stones, of large dimensions. Seven stood upright; the rest had been dislodged from their places, probably by the zeal of some convert to Christianity, and lay, some prostrate near their former site, and others on the side of the hill. One large stone only had found its way to the bottom, and in stopping the course of a small brook which glided smoothly round the foot of the eminence, gave, by its opposition, a feeble voice of murmur to the placid and elsewhere silent streamlet.' 2

Rank. In poetry, the great modern troubadour. Though not of the illustrious few of the first class, he is the most eminent in minstrelic power. To Wordsworth, Shelley, and Byron, he is inferior in the perception of the spiritual mysteries of the universe; superior in creative conception, or the comprehensiveness which freed him from personal prejudices in describing life and manners, and which enabled him to represent, not one man, but collective human nature. In the refined processes of imagination and feeling, as poet or novelist, he is confessedly deficient, while

he has something in common with Shakespeare in the power of rendering palpable the remote, and idealizing the actual. Profound analysis there is not. In the delineation of character and scenery he devotes himself comparatively to the exterior, having neither the talent nor the leisure to reach the depth. The world which he exhibits is not of the highest art, true at once to the particular and the universal. Call it either modern, enlightened by the far-setting sun of chivalry; or Middle Age, sifted of its harsher features, softened and transfigured by the present. In the power of simple narration he is almost unequalled. Over every scene he pours the full tide of exuberant existence, and makes it live and glow. Writing with great rapidity, he aimed, in his plots, at no more than picturesque arrangement. The bravery of his struggle raises him as high among the heroes of his race as does his genius among its writers.

Character. The temper of his mind was spirited, active, objective, chivalrous. He had a peculiar affinity with historic forces. His tastes and habits were antiquarian. He wished to be the founder of a distinct branch. His establishment was on the feudal scale; his house was fashioned in imitation of the ancient castles. His museum and grounds were adorned with relics. The tunes he loved were the simple notes of his native minstrelsy. As was remarked above, he could seize readily the sensible, significant features of objects, but had little spiritual penetration into their sources, relations, and issues. He said himself, in expressing his admiration of Miss Austen:

The big bow-wow strain I can do myself, like any now going, but the exquisite touch which renders ordinary commonplace things and characters interesting, from the truth of the description and the sentiments, is denied to me.'

Though an aristocrat and a Tory, he loved men from the bottom of his heart. None ever treated his inferiors with greater kindness. His domestics served him gladly because they loved him. His shining face diffused its exhilarating glow wherever it appeared. His manners were spontaneous. 'Give me an honest laugher,' he said. 'Sir Walter,' said one of his old retainers, 'speaks to every man as if he were his blood-relation.' It was in his own home that his benevolence found its proper theatre for expansion. He delighted to collect his tenantry around him convivially. He watched over the education of his children,