We say deliberately that electric thrills of this kind may be the property of the simplest, of the most ignorant, who shall read or hear the greatest passages in Scott's poetry or in his prose. We bow down and worship at the noblest lines of the Prelude' or the 'Excursion,' at the greatest Sonnets of their author or of Keats, at the greatest scenes in Lear' or 'Paradise Lost,' and we feel that we are by these rapt into a loftier sphere of thought quite foreign to our daily life. Yet the grandeur of them is so unapproachable that few can make their own spirits a part of such majestic thought. But read the finest stanzas in the three great poems of Scott, with all their anachronisms, all (if you will) their absurdities, and you will call for your sorry garron and dash out into the midnight after William of Deloraine :

The warrior's very plume, I say,

Was daggled by the dashing spray.'

(Daggled'! what a word!) Read the sixth canto of 'Marmion' and you will feel yourself listening in the English ranks to the stifled hum' of the advancing Scots, to the ceaseless plash' told by Tweed's echoes of the fugitives from the battle. If Marmion's dying words have become hackneyed, or even ludicrous, from their very simplicity, are they any the less great? or do we forget the even greater lines that precede them?

'A light on Marmion's visage spread

And fired his glazing eye,

With dying hand above his head

He shook the fragment of his blade.'

Pray when was the finish of a run ever so described (even though it be in what Mr Jorrocks considered the positively beastly' sport of stag-hunting), as in the first canto of 'The Lady'? And what about the defiance of the other Lady (of Branksome-is she, by the way, a 'minor character'?) to Lords William Howard and Dacre from her own walls?

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In Parody they have given birth to a scene, and to language, hardly less gallant than their own, and Higginbottom's last words' in 'Rejected Addresses' go far to prove that perfect parody can only be written by him who perfectly appreciates the original text.

'For the young heir of Branksome's line,
God be his aid, and God be mine;

Through me no friend shall meet his doom;
Here, while I live, no foe finds room.
Then, if your lords their purpose urge,
Take our defiance loud and high;
Our slogan is their lyke-wake dirge,

Our moat the grave where they shall lie.

'Proud she looked round, applause to claim'

And well she might. But then she hadn't realised that she was using a 'broken-winded metre.'

If this be a better judgment than Mr Stalker's concerning the three simple minstrel stories in verse, how infinitely more is it true of the long-sustained greatness of a thousand passages in the Waverley Novels! We do not envy the man who can read without a lump in his throat the terrible trial scenes in Waverley' and 'Old Mortality,' that of the Mucklebackits after the storm in 'The Antiquary,' the meeting of Godfrey Bertram and Meg Merrilies (Ride your ways, Laird of Ellangowan,' etc.) in Guy Mannering,' the scene on the Cumbrian beach at the close of 'Redgauntlet,' the interview between Jeanie Deans and the Queen in The Heart of Midlothian,' that between Frank and 'Mr Campbell' on the bridge in 'Rob Roy,' the death-ride of the Master in 'The Bride.' Space and printers would fail if one sought to enumerate one-tenth of the most glorious passages ever penned in romance which these forty-one volumes enclose. One of our own favourites, and it is the only one we purpose to quote at length, is the death scene of Ranald MacEagh in' A Legend of Montrose'; and it is the more wonderful because of the entirely Shakespearian foil introduced by the Fool (who, like Shakespeare's best, was very far from being foolish) in the comments of Dalgetty:

""And now depart, beloved son of my best beloved! I shall never more see thy face, nor hear the light sound of thy footstep-yet tarry an instant, and hear my last charge. Remember the fate of our race, and quit not the ancient manners of the Children of the Mist. We are now a straggling handful, driven from every vale by the sword of every clan, who rule in the possessions where their forefathers hewed the wood, and drew the water to ours. But in the thicket of the wilderness, and in the mist of the mountain, Kenneth,

son of Eracht, keep thou unsoiled the freedom which I leave thee as a birthright. Barter it not, neither for the rich garment, nor for the stone-roof, nor for the covered board, nor for the couch of down-on the rock, or in the valley, in abundance or in famine-in the leafy summer, and in the days of iron winter-Son of the Mist! be free as thy forefathers. Own no lord-receive no law-take no hire-give no stipend-build no hut-enclose no pasture-sow no grain ;let the deer of the mountain be thy flocks and herds-if these fail thee, prey upon the goods of our oppressors-of the Saxons, and of the Gael who are Saxons in their souls, valuing herds and flocks more than honour and freedom. Well for us that they do so; it affords the broader scope for our own revenge. Remember those who have done kindness to our race, and pay their services with thy blood, should the hour require it. If a MacIan shall come to thee with the head of the king's son in his hand, shelter him, though the avenging army of the father were behind him; for in Glencoe and Ardnamurchan, we have dwelt in peace in the years that have gone by. The sons of Diarmid-the race of Darnlinvarach -the riders of Menteith-my curse on thy head, Child of the Mist, if thou spare one of those names, when the time shall offer for cutting them off! and it will come anon, for their own swords shall devour each other, and those who are scattered shall fly to the Mist, and perish by its Children. Once more, begone-shake the dust from thy feet against the habitations of men, whether banded together for peace or for war. Farewell, beloved! and may'st thou die like thy forefathers, ere infirmity, disease, or age, shall break thy spiritbegone!--begone! live free-requite kindness-avenge the injuries of thy race."

'The young savage stooped, and kissed the brow of his dying parent: but, accustomed from infancy to suppress every exterior sign of emotion, he parted without tear or adieu, and was soon far beyond the limits of Montrose's

camp.

'Sir Dugald Dalgetty, who was present during the latter part of this scene, was very little edified by the conduct of MacEagh upon the occasion. "I cannot think, my friend Ranald," said he, "that you are in the best possible road for a dying man. Storms, onslaughts, massacres, the burning of suburbs, are a soldier's daily work, and are justified by the necessity of the case, seeing that they are done in course of duty; for burning of suburbs, in particular, it may be said that they are traitors and cut-throats to all fortified towns. Hence it is plain, that a soldier is a profession peculiarly

favoured by Heaven, seeing that we may hope for salvation, although we daily commit actions of so great violence. But then, Ranald, in all services of Europe, it is the custom of the dying soldier not to vaunt him of such doings, or to recommend them to his fellows; but, on the contrary, to express contrition for the same, and to repeat, or have repeated to him, some comfortable prayer; which, if you please, I will intercede with his Excellency's chaplain to prefer on your account. It is otherwise no point of my duty to put you in mind of those things; only it may be for the ease of your conscience to depart more like a Christian, and less like a Turk, than you seem to be in a fair way of doing."

'The only answer of the dying man-(for as such Ranald MacEagh might now be considered)-was a request to be raised to such a position that he might obtain a view from the window of the Castle. The deep frost-mist, which had long settled upon the top of the mountains, was now rolling down each rugged glen and gully, where the craggy ridges showed their black and irregular outline, like desert islands rising above the ocean of vapour. "Spirit of the Mist!" said Ranald MacEagh, "called by our race our father, and our preserver-receive into thy tabernacle of clouds, when this pang is over, him whom in life thou hast so often sheltered." So saying, he sank back into the arms of those who upheld him, spoke no further word, but turned his face to the wall for a short space.

""I believe," said Dalgetty, "my friend Ranald will be found in his heart to be little better than a heathen." And he renewed his proposal to procure him the assistance of Dr Wishart, Montrose's military chaplain; "A man," said Sir Dugald, "very clever in his exercise, and who will do execution on your sins in less time than I could smoke a pipe of tobacco."

6.66

Saxon," cried the dying man, "speak to me no more of thy priest-I die contented."

Nor must we forget, whether we call Scott poet or merely minstrel, the marvellous songs, and snatches of song, which turn up in the most unexpected places, both in the Poems and the Novels. The rather ponderous Rokeby,' for instance, includes some of the best; it has the unforgettable 'A weary lot is thine, fair maid.' The mottoes and chapter-headings are alive with such magic things, often attributed to the 'Old Play' or 'Old Ballad,' just as Scott's own head was full of them. No

doubt he hardly knew which of them were original, which just shifting echoes and recollections. His talent for forgetting what he had written was equal to his talent for forgetting where or how he had picked up a stave. From Daft Davie Gellatly to Wandering Willie there is hardly one humorous or pathetic character of Sir Walter's creation who does not make our ears tingle with some lilted lines of song:

'Leave thee-leave thee, lad

I'll never leave thee;

The stars shall gae withershins
Ere I will leave thee.'

Those of us who are as 'unmusical' as Scott was reputed to be must yet go on inventing airs for such lines as these, and they linger in our memories even when the personality of the singer may have become blurred.

And when one sets to work to collect or anthologise from the finished songs, in the Novels or elsewhere, what riches one finds! Bonnie Dundee' alone would have made a Minstrel's fortune. What of County Guy' in 'Quentin Durward,' of 'Farewell to Northmaven' in 'The Pirate,' of 'Birds of Omen' in Montrose,' of Proud Maisie' in Midlothian,' of Meg's three great songs in 'Guy Mannering'; 'Ivanhoe,' by itself, has 'When Israel of the Lord beloved,' 'The Barefooted Friar,' and 'The Widow of Wycombe.' The tiresome White Lady in 'The Monastery' has two melodies as eerie and haunting as ever were written. And then, Jock o' Hazeldean,' 'Oh, hush thee, my baby,' 'The Pibroch of Black Donald,' 'The Sun upon the Weirdlaw Hill'—are these the work of a man without any romance in his nature?

Nay, if such songs as these, and such scenes as those quoted above, whether in prose or verse, are not the quintessence of Romance, we may well ask, concerning that concept, the question which Johnson asked concerning the poetry of Pope ('dull fellows' both, no doubt); yet when we think of them we have no need to rely merely on the admiration of the simple-minded soldiers in Wellington's army or on schoolboys like Dick. We suppose that no one, hardly even Mr Stalker, would accuse Jane Austen or Thackeray of being 'Romantic' or exactly' of the Romantic School,' and we suppose that