general organization; under which no Walter | as the inspired melody of a Burns: in a word, Scott could have been forwarded, or with all it is and continues in the voice and the work his other endowments could have been pro- of a nation of hardy, endeavouring, consider. ducible or possible. "Nature gives healthy ing men, with whatever that may bear in it, or children much: how much! Wise education unfold from it. The Scotch national character is a wise unfolding of this; often it unfolds originates in many circumstances; first of all, itself better of its own accord." in the Saxon stuff there was to work on; but next, and beyond all else except that, in the Presbyterian Gospel of John Knox. It seems a good national character; and, on some sides, not so good. Let Scott thank John Knox, for he owed him much, little as he dreamed of debt in that quarter! No Scotchman of his time was more entirely Scotch than Walter Scott: the good and the not so good, which all Scotchmen inherit, ran through every fibre of him.

Scott's childhood, school-days, college-days, are pleasant to read of, though they differ not from those of others in his place and time. The memory of him may probably enough last till this record of them become far more curious than it now is. "So lived an Edinburgh Writer to the Signet's son in the end of the eighteenth century," may some future Scotch novelist say to himself in the end of the twenty-first! The following little fragment of infancy is all we can extract. It is from an autobiography which he had begun, which one cannot but regret he did not finish. Scott's best qualities never shone out more freely than when he went upon anecdote and reminiscence. Such a master of narrative and of himself could have done personal narrative well. Here, if any where, his knowledge was complete, and all his humour and good-humour had free scope:

Add one other circumstance: the place where; namely, Presbyterian Scotland. The influences of this are felt incessantly, they stream in at every pore. "There is a country accent," says La Rochefoucault, "not in speech only, but in thought, conduct, character, and manner of existing, which never forsakes a man." Scott, we believe, was all his days an Episcopalean Dissenter in Scotland; but that makes little to the matter. Nobody who knows Scotland and Scott can doubt but Presbyterianism, too, had a vast share in the forming of him. A country where the entire people is, or even once has been, laid hold of, filled to the heart with an infinite religious idea, has "made a step from which it cannot retrograde." Thought, conscience, the sense that man is denizen of a universe, creature of an eternity, has penetrated to the remotest cottage, to the simplest heart. Beautiful and awful, the feeling of a heavenly behest, of duty god-commanded, overcanopies all life. There is an inspiration in such a people: one may say in a more special sense," the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding." Honour to all the brave and true; everlasting honour to brave old Knox, one of the truest of the true! That, in the moment while he and his cause, amid civil broils, in convulsion and confusion, were still but struggling for life, he "An odd incident is worth recording. It sent the schoolmaster forth to all corners, and seems my mother had sent a maid to take said, "Let the people be taught:" this is but charge of me, at this farm of Sandy-Knowe, one, and indeed an inevitable and compara- that I might be no inconvenience to the family. tively inconsiderable item in his great mes- But the damsel sent on that important mission sage to men. His message, in its true com- had left her heart behind her, in the keeping pass, was, "Let men know that they are men; of some wild fellow, it is likely, who had done created by God, responsible to God; who work and said more to her than he was like to make in any meanest moment of time what will last good. She became extremely desirous to rethrough eternity." It is verily a great mes- turn to Edinburgh; and, as my mother made sage. Not ploughing and hammering ma- a point of her remaining where she was, she chines, not patent digesters (never so orna- contracted a sort of hatred at poor me, as the mental) to digest the produce of these: no, in cause of her being detained at Sandy-Knowe. no wise; born slaves neither of their fellow-This rose, I suppose, to a sort of delirious afmen, nor of their own appetites; but men! | fection, for she confessed to old Alison Wilson, This great message Knox did deliver, with a the housekeeper, that she had carried me up man's voice and strength; and found a people to the craigs under a strong temptation of the to believe him. Devil to cut my throat with her scissors, and bury me in the moss. Alison instantly took possession of my person, and took care that her confidant should not be subject to any further temptation, at least so far as I was concerned. She was dismissed, of course, and I have heard afterwards became a lunatic.

Of such an achievement, we say, were it to be made once only, the results are immense. Thought, in such a country, may change its form, but cannot go out; the country has attained majority; thought, and a certain spiritual manhood, ready for all work that man can do, endures there. It may take many "It is here, at Sandy-Knowe, in the residence forms: the form of hard-fisted, money-getting of my paternal grandfather, already mentionindustry, as in the vulgar Scotchman, in the ed, that I have the first consciousness of existvulgar New Englander; but as compact de-ence; and I recollect distinctly that my situa veloped force and alertness of faculty, it is tion and appearance were a little whimsical. still there; it may utter itself, one day, as the colossal skepticism of a Hume, (beneficent this too, though painful, wrestling, Titan-like, through doubt and inquiry towards new belief;) and again, some better day, it may utter itself

Among the odd remedies recurred to, to aid my lameness, some one had recommended that so often as a sheep was killed for the use of the family, I should be stripped, and swathed up in the skin warm as it was flayed from the

unsophisticated regions, which constitutes the chief charm of one of the most charming of his prose works. But how soon he had any definite object before him in his researches, seems very doubtful. He was makin' himsell a' the time,' said Mr. Shortrecd; but he didna ken maybe what he was about till years had passed: at first he thought o' little, I dare say, but the queerness and the fun.'

carcass of the animal. In this Tartar-like habiliment I well remember lying upon the floor of the little parlour in the farm-house, while my grandfather, a venerable old man with white hair, used every excitement to make me try to crawl. I also distinctly remember the late Sir George M'Dougal of Mackerstown, father of the present Sir Henry Hay M'Dougal, joining in the attempt. He was, God knows how, a relation of ours; and I still recollect him in "In those days,' says the Memorandum behis old-fashioned military habit, (he had been fore me, 'advocates were not so plenty—at least Colonel of the Greys,) with a small cocked-about Liddesdale;' and the worthy Sheriff-subhat deeply laced, an embroidered scarlet waist- stitute goes on to describe the sort of bustle, coat, and a light-coloured coat, with milk-not unmixed with alarm, produced at the first white locks tied in a military fashion, kneel- farm-house they visited, (Willie Elliot's at ing on the ground before me, and dragging his Millburnholm,) when the honest man was inwatch along the carpet to induce me to follow formed of the quality of one of his guests. it. The benevolent old soldier, and the infant When they dismounted, accordingly, he rewrapped in his sheep-skin, would have afford-ceived Mr. Scott with great ceremony, and ined an odd group to uninterested spectators. sisted upon himself leading his horse to the This must have happened about my third stable. Shortreed accompanied Willie, how. year, (1774,) for Sir George M'Dougal and my ever, and the latter, after taking a deliberate grandfather both died shortly after that period. peep at Scott, out by the edge of the door -Vol. i. pp. 15—17. cheek,' whispered, Weel, Robin, I say, de'il We will glance next into the "Liddesdale hae me if I's be a bit feared for him now; he's raids." Scott has grown up to be a brisk-heart- just a chield like ourselves, I think.' Half-aed jovial young man and advocate: in vaca-dozen dogs of all degrees had already gathertion time he makes excursions to the High-ed round the advocate,' and his way of relands, to the Border Cheviots and Northum- turning their compliments had set Willie Elliot berland; rides free and far, on his stout gal- at once at his case. loway, through bog and brake, over the dim "According to Mr. Shortreed, this good man moory debatable land,-over Flodden and other of Millburnholm was the great original of fields and places, where, though he yet knew Dandie Dinmont." "They dined at it not, his work lay. No land, however dim Millburnholm; and, after having lingered over and moory, but either has had or will have its Willie Elliot's punch-bowl, until, in Mr. Shortpoet, and so become not unknown in song. reed's phrase, they were 'half-glowrin,' mountLiddesdale, which was once as prosaic as mosted their steeds again, and proceeded to Dr. Eldales, having now attained illustration, let us glance thither-ward: Liddesdale too is on this ancient Earth of ours under this eternal Sky; and gives and takes, in the most incalculable manner, with the Universe at large! Scott's experiences there are rather of the rustic Arcadian sort; the element of whiskey not want ing. We should premise that here and there a feature has perhaps been aggravated for effects' sake:

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liot's at Cleughhead where (for,' says my Memorandum, folk were na very nice in those days,') the two travellers slept in one and the same bed-as, indeed, seems to have been the case with them throughout most of their excursions in this primitive district. Dr. Elliot (a clergyman) had already a large MS. collection of the ballads Scott was in quest of." "Next morning they seem to have ridden a long way for the purpose of visiting one 'auld During seven successive years,” writes Mr. Thomas o' Tuzzilehope,' another Elliot, I supLockhart, (for the autobiography has long since pose, who was celebrated for his skill on the left us.) "Scott made a raid, as he called it, Border pipe, and in particular for being in posinto Liddesdale with Mr. Shortreed, sheriff-sub- session of the real lil* of Dick o' the Cow. Bestitute of Roxburgh, for his guide; exploring fore starting, that is, at six o'clock, the ballad every rivulet to its source, and every ruined hunters had, just to lay the stomach, a devilpeel from foundation to battlement. At this led duck or twae, and some London porter.' time no wheel carriage had ever been seen in Auld Thomas found them, nevertheless, well the district-the first, indeed, was a gig, driven disposed for breakfast' on their arrival at by Scott himself for a part of his way, when Tuzzilehope; and this being over, he delighted on the last of these seven excursions. There them with one of the most hideous and unwas no inn or public-house of any kind in the earthly of all specimens of riding music,' whole valley; the travellers passed from the and, moreover, with considerable libations of shepherd's hut to the minister's manse, and whisky-punch, manufactured in a certain again from the cheerful hospitality of the wooden vessel, resembling a very small milkmanse to the rough and jolly welcome of the pail, which he called Wisdom,' because it homestead: gathering, wherever they went,made' only a few spoonfuls of spiritssongs and tunes, and occasionally more tangi- though he had the art of replenishing it so ble relics of antiquity-even such a 'rowth of adroitly, that it had been celebrated for fifty auld knicknackets' as Burns ascribes to Cap-years as more fatal to sobriety than any bowl tain Grose. To these rambles Scott owed much in the parish. Having done due honour to of the materials of his Minstrelsy of the Wisdom,' they again mounted, and proceeded Scottish Border;' and not less of that intimate Acquaintance with the living manners of these

• Loud tune: German, lallen.

over moss and moor to some other equally hospitable master of the pipe. Ah me,' says Shortreed, 'sic an endless fund o' humour and drollery as he then had wi' him! Never ten yards but we were either laughing or roaring and singing. Wherever we stopped, how brawlie he suited himsell to every body! He aye did as the lave did; never made himsell the great man, or took ony airs in the company. I've seen him in a' moods in these jaunts, grave and gay, daft and serious, sober and drunk-(this, however, even in our wildest rambles, was rare)-but, drunk or sober, he was aye the gentleman. He lookit excessive-out, by nature and circumstance working ly heavy and stupid when he was fou, but he was never out o' gude-humour.''

burden of business, hospitality, and duty, legal or civic-with what other faculties in him no one could yet say. As indeed, who, after lifelong inspection, can say what is in any man? The uttered part of a man's life, let us always repeat, bears to the unuttered, unconscious

the rest of them, were alive and alert,-whisky sometimes preponderating. But let us now fancy that the jovial young advocate has pleaded his first cause; has served in yeomanry drills; been wedded, been promoted sheriff, without romance in either case; dab bling a little the while, under guidance of Monk Lewis, in translations from the German, in translation of "Goethe's Gütz with the Iron Hand;"-and we have arrived at the threshold of the Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border," and the opening of a new century. Hitherto, therefore, there has been made together, nothing unusually remarkable, yet still something very valuable; a stout effec These are questionable doings, questionably tual man of thirty, full of broad sagacity and narrated; but what shall we say of the follow-good humour, with faculties in him fit for any ing, wherein the element of whisky plays an extremely prominent part? We will say that it is questionable, and not exemplary, whisky mounting clearly beyond its level; that indeed charity hopes and conjectures, here may be some aggravating of features for effect's sake! "On reaching, one evening, some Charlies-part a small unknown proportion; he himself hope or other (I forget the name) among those never knows it, much less do others. Give wildernesses, they found a kindly reception, as him room, give him impule; he reaches down usual; but, to their agreeable surprise after to the infinite with that so straitly-imprisoned some days of hard living, a measured and soul of his; and can do miracles if need be! orderly hospitality as respected liquor. Soon It is one of the comfortablest truths that great after supper, at which a bottle of elderberry men abound, though in the unknown state. wine alone had been produced, a young student Nay as above hinted, our greatest, being also of divinity, who happened to be in the house, by nature our quietest, are perhaps those that was called upon to take the big ha' Bible,' in remain unknown! Philosopher Fichte took the good old fashion of Burns's Saturday comfort in this belief, when from all pulpits Night; and some progress had been already and editorial desks, and publications, periodi made in the service, when the good man of cal and stationary, he could hear nothing but the farm, whose tendency,' as Mr. Mitchell the infinite chattering and twittering of com says, 'was soporific,' scandalized his wife and monplace become ambitious; and in the the dominie by starting suddenly from his infinite stir of motion nowhither, and of din knees, and, rubbing his eyes, with a stentorian which should have been silence, all seemed exclamation of 'By -, here's the keg at churned into one tempestuous yesty froth, and last!' and in tumbled, as he spoke the word, a the stern Fichte almost desired "taxes on couple of sturdy herdsmen, whom, on hearing knowledge" to allay it a little;—he comforted a day before of the advocate's approaching himself, we say, by the unshaken belief that visit, he had despatched to a certain smug-Thought did still exist in Germany; that gler's haunt, at some considerable distance, in quest of a supply of run brandy from the Solway Frith. The pious exercise' of the household was hopelessly interrupted. With a thousand apologies for his hitherto shabby entertainment, this jolly Elliot, or Armstrong, had the welcome keg mounted on the table without a moment's delay, and gentle and simple, not forgetting the dominie, continued carousing about it until daylight streamed in upon the party. Sir Walter Scott seldom failed, when I saw him in company with his Liddesdale companion, to mimic with infinite humour the sudden outburst of his old host on hearing the clatter of horses' feet, which he knew to indicate the arrival of the keg-the consternation of the dame-and the rueful despair with which the young clergyman closed the book."-Vol. i. pp. 195–199.

From which Liddesdale raids, which we here, like the young clergyman, close not without a certain rueful despair, let the reader draw what nourishment he can. They evince satisfactorily, though in a rude manner, that in those days young advocates, and Scott, like

thinking men, each in his own corner, were verily doing their work, though in a silent latent manner.* Walter Scott, as a latent Walter, had never amused all men for a score of years in the course of centuries and eternities, or gained and lost, say a hundred thousand pounds stirling by literature; but he might have been a happy and by no means a useless,-nay, who knows at bottom whether not a still usefuller Walter! However that was not his fortune. The Genius of rather a singular age,-an age at once destitute of faith and terrified at skepticism, with little knowledge of its whereabout, with many sorrows to bear or front, and on the whole with a life to lead in these new circumstances, had said to himself: What man shall be the temporary comforter, or were it but the spiritual comfitmaker, of this my poor singular age, to solace its dead tedium and manifold sorrows a little? So had the Genius said, looking over all the world, what man? and found him walking the dusty outer parliament-house of Edinburgh,

Fichte, Ueber das Wesen des Gelehrten.

with his advocate-gown on his back; and ex- | Do they turn out well? What boots it that a claimed, That is he!

man's creed is the wisest, that his system of principles is the superfinest, if, when set to work, the life of him does nothing but jar, and fret itself into holes? They are untrue in that, were it in nothing else, these principles of his; openly convicted of untruth;-fit only, shall we say, to be rejected as counterfeits, and flung to the dogs? We say not that; but we do say that ill-health, of body or of mind, is defeat, is battle (in a good or in a bad cause) with bad success; that health alone is victory. Let all men, if they can manage it, contrive to be healthy! He who in what cause soever sinks into pain and disease, let him take thought of it; let him know well that it is not good he has arrived at yet, but surely evil,may, or may not be, on the way towards good.

The "Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border" proved to be a well, from which flowed one of the broadest rivers. Metrical romances, (which in due time pass into prose romances ;) the old life of men resuscitated for us; it is a mighty word! Not as dead tradition, but as a palpable presence, the past stood before us. There they were, the rugged old fighting men; in their doughty simplicity and strength, with their heartiness, their healthiness, their stout self-help, in their iron basnets, leather jerkins, jack-boots, in their quaintness of manner and costume; there as they looked and lived; it was like a new discovered continent in literature; for the new century, a bright El Dorado, or else some fat beatific land of Cockaigne, and Paradise of Scott's healthiness showed itself decisively Donothings. To the opening nineteenth cen- in all things, and nowhere more decisively tury, it is languor and paralysis; nothing could than in this: the way in which he took his have been welcomer. Most unexpected, most fame; the estimate he from the first formed of refreshing, and exhilarating; behold our new fame. Money will buy money's worth; but El Dorado; our fat beatific Lubberland, where the thing men call fame what is it? A gaudy one can enjoy and do nothing! It was the emblazonry, not good for much,-except indeed time for such a new literature; and this Wal- as it too may turn to money. To Scout it was ter Scott was the man for it. The Lays, the a profitable pleasing superfluity, no necessary Marmions, the Ladys and Lords of Lake and of life. Not necessary, now or ever? SeemIsles, followed in quick succession, with ever-ingly without much effort, but taught by nature, widening profit and praise. How many thou- and the instinct which instructs the sound sands of guineas were paid down for each heart what is good for it and what is not, he new Lay; how many thousands of copies felt that he could always do without this same (fifty and more sometimes) were printed off emblazonry of reputation; that he ought to then and subsequently; what complimenting, put no trust in it; but be ready at any time reviewing, renown, and apotheosis there was; to see it pass away from him, and to hold on all is recorded in these seven volumes, which his way as before. It is incalculable, as we will be valuable in literary statistics. It is a conjecture, what evil he escaped in this history, brilliant, remarkable; the outlines of manner; what perversions, irritations, mean which are known to all. The reader shall re- agonies without a name, he lived wholly apart call it, or conceive it. No blaze in his fancy from, knew nothing of. Happily before fame is likely to mount higher than the reality did. arrived, he had reached the mature age at At this middle period of his life, therefore, which all this was easier to him. What a Scott, enriched with copyrights, with new strange Nemesis lurks in the felicities of men! official incomes and promotions, rich in money, In thy mouth it shall be sweet as honey, in thy rich in repute, presents himself as a man in belly it shall be bitter as gall? Some weaklythe full career of success. "Health, wealth, organized individual, we will say at the age and wit to guide them,” (as his vernacular of five-and-twenty, whose main or whole talent proverb says,) all these three are his. The rests on some prurient susceptivity, and nothing field is open for him, and victory there: his under it but shallowness and vacuum, is own faculty, his own self, unshackled, victori- clutched hold of by the general imagination, is ously unfolds itself,-the highest blessedness whirled aloft to the giddy height; and taught that can befall a man. Wide circle of friends, to believe the divine-seeming message that he personal loving admirers: warmth of domes- is a great man: such individual seems the tic joys, vouchsafed to all that can true-heart- luckiest of men: and is he not the unluckiest? edly nestle down among them; light of radi- Swallow not the Circe-drought, O weakly ance and renown given only to a few: who organized individual; it is fell poison; it will would not call Scott happy? But the happi- dry up the fountains of thy whole existence, est circumstance of all is, as we said above, and all will grow withered and parched; thou that Scott had in himself a right healthy soul, shalt be wretched under the sun! Is there, for rendering him little dependent on outward cir- example, a sadder book than that "Life of cumstances. Things showed themselves to Byron," by Moore? To omit mere prurient him not in distortion or borrowed light or susceptivities that rest on vacuum, look at gloom, but as they were. Endeavour lay in poor Byron, who really had much substance him and endurance, in due measure; and in him. Sitting there in his self-exile, with a clear vision of what was to be endeavoured proud heart striving to persuade itself that it after. Were one to preach a Sermon on despises the entire created universe; and afar Health, as really were worth doing, Scott off, in foggy Babylon, let any pitifullest whipought to be the text. Theories are demon- ster draw pen on him, your proud Byron strably true in the way of logic; and then in writhes in torture,-as if the pitiful whipster the way of practice, they prove true or else were a magician, or his pen a galvanic not true: but here is the grand experiment, wire struck into the Byron's spinal marrow?

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2 x 2

Lamentable, despicable,-one had rather be a | and buttoned into the breeches-pocket. Some kitten and cry mew! O, son of Adam, great or little, according as thou art loveable, those thou livest with will love thee. Those thou livest not with, is it of moment that they have the alphabetic letters of thy name engraved on their memory with some signpost likeness of thee (as like as I to Hercules) appended to them? It is not of moment; in sober truth, not of any moment at all! And yet, behold, there is no soul now whom thou canst love freely, from one soul only art thou always sure of reverence enough; in presence of no soul is it rightly well with thee! How is thy world become desert; and thou, for the sake of a little babblement of tongues, art poor, bankrupt, insolvent not in purse, but in heart and mind. "The golden calf of self-love," says Jean Paul, "has grown into a burning Phalaris' bull, to consume its owner and worshipper." Ambition, the desire of shining and outshining, was the beginning of sin in this world. The man of letters who founds upon his fame, does he not thereby alone declare himself a follower of Lucifer (named Satan, the Enemy,) and member of the Satanic school?-

It was in this poetic period that Scott formed his connection with the Ballantynes; and embarked, though under cover, largely in trade. To those who regard him in the heroic light, and will have vates to signify prophet as well as poet, this portion of his biography seems somewhat incoherent. Viewed as it stood in the reality, as he was and as it was, the enter prise, since it proved so unfortunate, may be called lamentable, but cannot be called unnatural. The practical Scott, looking towards practical issues in all things, could not but find hard cash one of the most practical. If, by any means, cash could be honestly produced, were it by writing poems, were it by printing them, why not? Great things might be done ultimately; great difficulties were at once got rid of-manifold higglings of booksellers, and contradictions of sinners hereby fell away. A printing and bookselling speculation was not so alien for a maker of books. Voltaire, who indeed got no copyrights, made much money by the war commissariat, in his time; we believe by the victualling branch of it. Saint George himself, they say, was a dealer in bacon in Cappadocia. A thrifty man will help himself towards his object by such steps as lead to it. Station in society, solid power over the good things of this world, was Scott's avowed object; towards which the precept of precepts is that of Iago: Put money in thy purse.

Here, indeed, it is to be remarked, that, perhaps, no literary man of any generation has less value than Scott for the immaterial part of his mission in any sense; not only for the fantasy called fame, with the fantastic miseries attendant thereon; but also for the spiritual purport of his work, whether it tended hitherward or thitherward, or had any tendency whatever; and indeed for all purports and results of his working, except such, we may say, as offered themselves to the eye, and could, in one sense or the other be handled, looked at,

what too little of a fantast, this vates of ours! But so it was: in this nineteenth century, our highest literary man, who immeasurably beyond all others commanded the world's ear, had, as it were, no message whatever to deliver to the world; wished not the world to elevate itself, to amend itself, to do this or to do that, except simply pay him for the books he kept writing. Very remarkable; fittest, perhaps, for an age fallen languid, destitute of faith and terrified at skepticism? Or, perhaps, for quite another sort of age, an age all in peaceable triumphant motion? But, indeed, since Shakspeare's time there has been no greater speaker so unconscious of an aim in speaking. Equally unconscious these two utterances; equally the sincere complete products of the minds they came from: and now if they were equally deep? Or, if the one was living fire, and the other was futile phosphorescence and mere resinous firework? It will depend on the relative worth of the minds; for both were equally spontaneous themselves, unencumbered by an ulterior aim. Beyond drawing audiences to the Globe Theatre, Shakspeare contemplated no result in those plays of his. Yet they have had results! Uter with free heart what thy own demon gives thee: if fire from heaven it shall be well; if resinous firework, it shall be as well as it could be, or better than otherwise! The candid judge will, in general, require that a speaker, in so extremely serious a universe as this of ours, have something to speak about. In the heart of the speaker there ought to be some kind of gospel-tidings burning till it be uttered; otherwise it were better for him that he altogether held his peace. A gospel somewhat more decisive than this of Scott's,except to an age altogether languid, without either skepticism or faith? These things the candid judge will demand of literary men ; yet withal will recognise the great worth there is in Scott's honesty, if in nothing more, in his being the thing he was with such entire good faith. Here is a something not a nothing. If no skyborn messenger, heaven looking through his eyes; then neither is it a chimera with his systems, crotchets, cants, fanaticisms, and "last infirmity of noble minds,”—full of misery, unrest, and ill-will; but a substantial, peaceable, terrestrial man. Far as the Earth is under the Heaven, does Scott stand below the former sort of character; but high as the cheerful flowery Earth is above waste Tartarus does he stand above the latter. Let him live in his own fashion, and do honour to him in that.

It were late in the day to write criticisms on those Metrical Romances: at the same time, the great popularity they had seems natural enough. In the first place, there was the indisputable impress of worth, of genuine human force, in them. This, which lies in some degree, or is thought to lie, at the bottom of all popularity, did to an unusual degree, disclose itself in these rhymed romances of Scott's. Pictures were actually painted and presented; human emotions conceived and sympathized with. Considering that wretched Della-Cruscan and other vamping-up of old