of industry and accuracy necessary for such a task had risen in the interval. And the credit of this is

romances:

Romances in verse.

largely due to Scott himself. Three years later began the long series of original The Lay of the Last Minstrel (1805), Marmion (1808), The Lady of the Lake (1810), followed by others of which it is only necessary to mention The Lord of the Isles (1814). These were the rich harvest of his preliminary labours, the first free outpouring of the genius which, for the next five-and-twenty years, was to hold the world at his command.

The poems have inevitably been, to some extent, overshadowed by the prose-romances. But, as one turns their pages, the old spell comes over one again. The swift action, the sense of free air and sunshine, the vivid if not altogether accurate pictures of nature, the thrill of danger, the stir of battle, the passion of courage and loyalty, the love of country and of countryside, the recurring echo of the supernatural-all these things came from the inmost heart of Scott, and they still speak to the heart of the reader. In the subtler tones of romance he is doubtless lacking. He has not the magic touch, he has not the vivid colour, the command of mystery and of horror, which was the fairy-gift of Coleridge; he has not the poignant sense of "beauty, beauty that must die," which was the birthright of Keats; he has not the profound instinct of "old, unhappy, far-off things" which at moments visited Wordsworth. But these things are perhaps hardly compatible with the qualities which the three

earlier poems at any rate undoubtedly possess. And who shall say that these qualities are not worthy of admiration? It is true that the workmanship of the poems is commonly rough, and that, in particular, the rhythm is for the most part wanting in delicacy-a defect which the obvious echoes of Christabel in the opening canto of the Lay only throw out into greater prominence. But it must be remembered that, in themes of this kind, anything of "finesse" would have been the most unpardonable of errors; and that, if Scott erred, he erred at least on the right side. It must also be remembered that against the best of his lyrics and lyrical ballads-Lochinvar, for instance, or the Coronach or Proud Maisie, if an example may be taken from the novels-all such criticisms fall powerless to the ground. In the last of these especially the form is perfect, and, quite apart from the dramatic pathos, the lyric note rings out with a clearness which has seldom been surpassed.

Novels.

After the Lady of the Lake, the spring showed unmistakable signs of running dry; and the remaining Waverley poems, if not written to order, are too manifestly composed with an eye to the bills of Abbotsford. After the meteoric dawn of Byron (1813-14), Scott good - humouredly owned himself beaten "; but it was only to turn with unflagging zest to the fresh fields which he had discovered, almost by accident, in the latter year. Waverley, laid aside in 1805, was taken up again and finished in the June of 1814. And when Ballantyne came to announce the comparative failure

of the Lord of the Isles, he found the author at white heat over the pages of Guy Mannering.

The change of instrument and method was in every way for the good. In the cooler element of prose Scott sacrificed little or nothing-unless when he deliberately chose to do so-of the rapidity of action which had been among the chief charms of his poetry. And he gained a field for his consummate powers of pathos, humour, and human sympathy, which he certainly never found, and in all probability never could have found, in his verse-romances. It was now that for the first time he drew from the soil of his own country, a soil formed by slow deposits reaching far back into the past, the rich savour which had hitherto lain there almost unsuspected; that, through local associations and the accidents of history, associations and accidents which to him were inseparable from the deeper issues of imaginative creation, he found his way to the enduring passions and the eternal instincts which are everywhere the same. Of all the results, ultimately traceable to the revival of popular poetry and national tradition associated with the names of Percy and Herder, this was the most original and the most precious. And here Scott was not only pioneer, but master without a rival. The work of Wordsworth, on one side of it, has obvious affinities with his; but its origin was different, and it differs also in general effect.

If the rarer qualities in Scott's genius were all his own, its more obvious features establish his kinship

with a whole host of writers both in this country Affinities and and on the Continent. His affinity with influence. Southey and with Coleridge has already been noted. He was himself the first to own, and chivalrously to exaggerate, his debt to Miss Edgeworth. He pointed the way for Byron. But, above all, he left a profound mark upon the character of the novel. Of the historical novel he was the creator; though, in this country at any rate, he has not been altogether blessed in his successors. Those who have followed most closely in his steps have been manifestly unequal to the task; and those who have best succeeded-Thackeray, for instance, and perhaps George Eliot-have departed the most widely from the methods of their model. A yet more important effect of his influence was to restore to the novel the element of romance. At the time when Waverley appeared, the tendency of the novel was to become a mere picture of contemporary manners. This was seen in Miss Austen; it was seen a few years later in Galt. And, in the main, the strength of our novelists has always lain in this direction. It is perhaps thanks to Scott that the door has been kept open for more adventurous spirits. And, though the vein of unalloyed romance has been little worked, in two or three of our subsequent novelists, and those the greatest, it runs through the homelier metal of the groundwork, and transforms it.

If we turn to the Continent, we still find Scott at our side. In Germany his influence is less apparent

than elsewhere; chiefly because the romantic movement had there spent its force before he discovered the true secret of his powers. But it appears in Hauff's Lichtenstein, and it is strong on Wilibald Alexis, though he began by burlesquing the author whom in a few years he was to echo. With the romanticists of France and Italy on the other hand, the work of Scott bore incalculable fruit. It is enough to mention I Promessi Sposi in the one country, Notre Dame and the great romances of Dumas in the other. Even the Drama of both countries owes him a heavy debt. Carmagnola and Henri Trois, to say nothing of Cromwell and Le Roi s'amuse, could hardly have been written as they were, had it not been for the historical romances of Scott; and the same is true both of the dramas and the romances of Alexis Tolstoi in Russia.

To Moore (1779-1852) the descent is abrupt. Yet there was a time when he almost rivalled Scott and

Moore.

Byron in popularity. Nor is it altogether difficult to understand how this was. His facile talent, astonishing versatility, and ready wit were bound at any time to gain him a hearing; while his overflowing sentiment exactly fell in with the mood of an age which loved the luxury of feeling, but had not learned to feel either strongly or with truth. Moreover, he had an unerring instinct-an instinct born of his keen sociability, and sharpened by itfor playing precisely the tune to which the public was sure to dance; and he owed his vogue largely to tastes which greater men, such as Byron, had