Caroline), who was then in high favour with Tories, as the victim of their rivals' patron. "Monk" Lewis, however, who had first introduced Scott to the English literary world, was the lady's chief lion. "Of course I was only a second-rate conjurer," writes Scott to Lady Abercorn.

The Prince had spoken of him "in terms of considerable bitterness"; no doubt as a Quarterly reviewer, so that he had little chance, he thought, of being the Poet Laureate of the next reign. And yet within a few years, when the Regent had turned his back upon the friends of his youth, that very position was actually offered to the former protégé of Dundas and present friend of Canning. On his way back North, Scott stopped with the same friend at his beautiful Yorkshire home, and charmed with the scenery and with Morritt's stories of the Cavaliers, formed the design of the poem of Rokeby. But before proceeding with this, perhaps the most brilliant of his failures, he was yet to win his most conspicuous poetical success with another work.

Though The Lady of the Lake was, according to its author, "a very sudden thought," it is pretty certain that the idea of a Highland poem had long been simmering in his brain; and on his return from London he sought and obtained inspiration by a visit to Loch Katrine and Loch Lomond, where he revived youthful memories. The first canto describing the chase was read to a party of friends, which included Lady Douglas and Lady Louisa Stuart, immediately after its composi

tion; and Fitzjames's rapid ride from Loch Vennachar to Stirling was tried in action before being set down in verse. The complete poem was ready for publication by the following spring, and was then issued by the newly established Edinburgh firm. The sale exceeded that of any purely literary work that had ever been issued, and no less than three separate dramatisations were made, one of which the poet saw performed at Edinburgh with his friend Terry as the Highland chief. An even more striking evidence of its popularity was the immense increase in the number of visitors to Loch Katrine and the Trossachs. Scott was immensely diverted at receiving from the worthy editor of the Statistical Account of Scotland a letter in which, although he laid claim to having first "brought into notice" the beauties of the locality, he proved by his own favourite figures that the effect of praise in verse compared to praise in prose is as 3 to 1! It cannot, indeed, be doubted that the Highlands were "discovered" by the author of The Lady of the Lake and Waverley. Yet, although the poem will always retain the popularity which it so deservedly won for itself by the tender and graceful fidelity of its descriptive touches, the present writer is inclined to rank it below both Marmion and the Lay, and this in spite of the fact that the account of the fight between Roderick and Fitzjames is one of of verse which have dwelt in his memory

those passages since boyhood.

The defects of the work come out clearly in the poet's

own letters written during its progress. Incident was relied upon for its strength, and with no slight success; yet he admits that the battle should never have taken place, all the principal personages being away from the scene of action. Brian, the wild hermit introduced so elaborately in the middle of the poem never to be heard of again, was to have perished picturesquely in the fight as well as some of the other leading characters. Still, the fact that this misplaced battle drew cheers from British soldiers, who heard it read to them by the poet's friend Adam Ferguson while actually under the French fire, may go some way to justify its introduction. Worse than the faults mentioned is the author's admissiononly too true that Malcolm Graeme is but a walking gentleman who was made to swim the lake in order to give him something to do. He is overshadowed, even as lover, by the admirably drawn figure of Fitzjames, who appears later as later as James V., the "King of the Commons," and is made much more of than is his father in Marmion. Then, too, the latter in his turn, as Scott saw clearly, was in continual danger of being outshone by black Sir Roderick, who therefore had to die in order that his creator's hereditary sympathies with robber chiefs should not get the better of his purposed dénouement and prevent the royal lover from duly displaying his generosity. One of the most striking incidental passages, namely that connected with the mad Lowland captive who warns Fitzjames of his guide's treachery and dies in his sight, was founded on a rencontre which Scott had

in the Pass of Glencoe; and the poem, as a whole, is full of personal experience.

It is not surprising that comparisons should now begin to be made between Scott and Burns, the great poet of the generation before him. James Ballantyne, who asked Scott for his own view as to their respective merits, received the reply: "There is no comparison whatever we ought not to be named in the same day —a self-criticism as just as it was modest. Burns, with all his faults, is a sacer vates, one of the inspired immortal singers of the world. Scott is a teller of romantic stories in rattling good verse-merely that and nothing more, to speak sternly and truly. Scott, as a boy, once in company saw the elder poet, and recalled with enthusiasm the expression of his gratitude at receiving from himself the name of the author of some lines which had interested him.

The little Scotts knew not that their father was a popular poet, though the elder ones saw much of him, and he gave at least an hour of his busy day to his son Walter's Latin. The boy, when asked by one of his "uncles" why he thought people made more of his papa than of any of them, answered, after a little deliberation: "It's commonly him that sees the hare sitting"-a merited compliment to Scott's keen eye. This young sporting character resented being called by a schoolfellow "The Lady of the Lake," which to him meant simply being compared to a lassie-in his sight the meanest of

creatures.

F

CHAPTER VII

REMOVAL TO ABBOTSFORD, AND LAST POEMS

W

HILE proceeding steadily with his Life and Works of Swift, Scott hesitated as to the subject of the poem which should follow The Lady of the Lake. His visit to the Western Highlands and the Hebrides in the autumn of 1810 suggested a Highland topic; but The Lord of the Isles -his last and weakest metrical composition on a large scale was barely sketched and put by till after the removal to Abbotsford and the accomplishment of two somewhat happier productions. His imagination, however, was much impressed with the great cave of Staffa, where he was saluted by a boatman in Gaelic as "the great bard of the Lowland border," and informed that a pillar of the cavern was henceforth to bear that name. Though delighting in the wildest and boldest expressions of nature's beauty, Scott found the grandeur of these isles somewhat sombre, and has set down their effect on his mind in a remarkable passage in one of his letters.

"Few or no trees," he writes, "huge barren hills wrapp'd in endless mist, torn by unceasing cataracts, where the waters bear no more proportion to the excavations and ravines which