mistic threnes to a poem like 'Marmion' or like 'Rosabelle,' is of the same order as a preference of Shelley to Shakespere. If there be nothing in the poetry left by Scott that appeals to the immortal part of man, then must Chaucer, who 'fleets the time carelessly,' be removed from the roll of the masters, as also the Shakespere of the early comedies; for they teach us no gospel save the gospel of healthy delight in all pure and wholesome things, in all things that gladden the eye or quicken the pulse with elemental joys. Only the man in whose veins runs not human blood, but some thin spiritual or intellectual ichor, can deny Scott's right to noble place among the poets. It cannot be argued that he supplies nourishment for all moods of mind; neither is any other, save Shakespere, able to supply it. Who cares for Milton or Wordsworth when the pulses throng with the mere delight of living? How would Shelley sound, if read aloud, as Scott has been read, to soldiers in the midst of battle? * 'The rude man,' quotes Carlyle from some other writer, 'requires only to see something going on. of more refinement must be made to feel. complete refinement must be made to reflect.' disputable; but it does not at all militate against the poetry of Scott that it is enjoyed by some people who cannot enjoy, let us say Browning. There is, too, a class of people who enjoy Browning and fondly imagine that, in so doing, they are lovers of the finer aspects of poetry, when it may well be that they are merely students of psychology or metaphysics. Like most poets Scott only reached the rare, the memorable, the perfect at intervals; let us freely grant it, at long intervals. He might, had he been a less hasty workman, have reached it oftener, though that is doubtful. As it is Lockhart's Life of Scott, vol. iii. p. 327. * The man The man of This is in in ballad poetry he is incomparably first of English poets, and in a dozen of his best lyrics we have the intensity and simplicity, the unforgetable melody of song that cannot die. It is enough. Many a brightly shining poetic name is associated in our minds with but very few such immortal poems. Gray did no more, Goldsmith did no more, Burns did no more, nor Keats, nor Coleridge. The poetic reputation of Scott is with these, and, as Mr Swinburne would phrase it, he has his station for all time among the greater and the lesser stars.' The characterisation in the poems is secondary to the incident and picturesque elements: it is sharper and clearer in the novels, though never subtle or deep-reaching. The refinements of soul-dissection or the therapeutics of mental disease were not branches of his art, and he rather shirked any contact with conditions that showed symptoms of abnormality, that were not in the ordinary way of life. When such conditions are introduced they are slightly treated and never analysed. The theological novel had not been discovered in Scott's time; had it been he would have shunned it as the plague. As Bagehot says in his admirable critique on the Waverley Novels, 'The desire to attain a belief, which has become one of the most familiar sentiments of heroes and heroines, would have seemed utterly incongruous to the plain sagacity of Scott, and also to his old-fashioned art. Creeds are data in his novels; people have different creeds, but each keeps his own.' Scott preferred the life of the outward world, where a choice had to be made, to the life of the inward. 'Life could not be endured,' he once said, 'were it seen in reality.' Scott was aware of, though he disliked to touch upon, the problem in its darker phases. He preferred to keep his eye on the surface of things, and what an eye he had for the brave display of splendid squadrons, the presence and princely look of a hero, the beauty of face and grace of movement of a girl, the colours of nature among his own 'honest grey hills.' For the inner graces of the mind, for 'the mystery that underlies all beauty,' he had not the same keen or appreciative sense. He preferred the outward world, and he is a poet of the outward world; in some respects, as for instance in boldness of handling his subjects, like Byron, but superior to him in hurried frankness of style.' 'Marmion,' we are told, was partly composed on horseback, and the poem, as has often been noticed, reproduces the rush and buoyant swing of a striding steed. With Scott, as with Chaucer, we are up with the sun and out in the morning air. The smoke and dust of the city, with its ledgers and its bargains are behind us, and our minds are carried at sight of ruined castle or field of ancient fight to a time when men's lives were lived on mountain side or within fortress walls, a time when bargains were driven with the sword, and the commercial principle was 'That they should take who have the power, Doubtless, the charm with which Scott invests these times is a misleading charm. We know that, however delightful they may now seem to us, these times were not as good as our own much-abused and tiresome times. We are the victims of a delusion, and we know it. We give ourselves to it, because it is a pleasant delusion. We forget willingly that cruelty and injustice overshadowed and rendered miserable the lives of by far the greater number of the people; that, whatever might be the pleasures of the life of a knight or of a lady, and they were not unalloyed, the peasant and the common soldier were in no such happy case. But it is, after all, a delusion in which no poison lurks. To enjoy the life in imagination, or that side of it which is presented to us, which had its indisputably noble and picturesque aspects-this is surely the most harmless of innocent imaginings. But, to Carlyle, it is an ignoble lulling of ourselves to false though pleasant dreams. 'The reader sighed, "Oh, that I too had lived in those times, had never known these logic-cobwebs, this doubt, this sickliness; and been and felt myself alive among men alive!" So far, the impeachment is not a heavy one; we may plead guilty to such occasional lapses from a wise and permanent preference for doubt and sickliness, which are realities and present, to heroisms and an heroic age which are fanciful and remote. But 'It was for the reader, not the El Dorado only, but a beatific land of Cockaigne and Paradise of DoNothings. The reader, what the vast majority of readers. so long to do, was allowed to lie down at his ease and be ministered to. What the Turkish bath-keeper is said to aim at with his frictions and shampooing and fomentings, more or less effectually, that the patient, in total idleness, may have the delights of activity-was here to a considerable extent realised. The languid imagination fell back into its rest; an artist was here who could supply it with high-painted scenes, with sequences of stirring action, and whisper to it, "Be at ease, and let the tepid element be comfortable to thee."" It would have been a hazardous venture to speak in Carlyle's presence of art for art's sake. But direct didacticism is painfully ineffective in poetry. There is much discouragement in the fact that moral precept, more especially when obvious and unassailable, ་ is abhorred by the Muses as a vacuum is abhorred by Nature; they have their own methods, but among the Nine there is no free use of the Pulpit. Consider a poem of Scott's which cannot by any dexterous management be made to yield a spiritual lesson-'The Gathering Song of Donald the Black.' Matthew Arnold spoke of 'The Lays of Ancient Rome' as 'pinchbeck ballads ;' perhaps this and kindred pieces are 'pinchbeck ballads.' It may, at least, be safely said that the most skilful interpreter will find it difficult to extract from it any 'gospel-tidings.' Laying aside any claim for it as high poetry, it is a poem capable of giving a quickened sense of life, it affords pleas ure. The pleasure afforded is not an immoral pleasure; and if innocent, are the sources of innocent pleasure so numerous that one can be spared? He is no lover of humanity who would not have them tenfold increased. Serious as life is, let us be on our guard lest we impoverish ourselves, let us go warily when we would purchase out abuses,― 'Nor deem that localised Romance Ah, no! the visions of the past Life as she is our changeful Life, With friends and kindred dealing.' Carlyle himself was far from blind to the real worth of Scott. While he withheld from him the praise he rightly judged the highest-the praise that belongs to those who have lifted their fellows nearer the heaven of divine truthhe recognised the nobility of the man. Yet, on the other |