have changed much. The little boy, whose first book of poetry was
"The Lady of the Lake," and who naturally believed that there was no
poet like Sir Walter, is sadly changed into the man who has read
most of the world's poets, and who hears, on many sides, that Scott
is outworn and doomed to deserved oblivion. Are they right or
wrong, the critics who tell us, occasionally, that Scott's good
novels make up for his bad verse, or that verse and prose, all must
go? Pro captu lectoris, by the reader's taste, they stand or fall;
yet even pessimism can scarcely believe that the Waverley Novels are
mortal. They were once the joy of every class of minds; they cannot
cease to be the joy of those who cling to the permanently good, and
can understand and forgive lapses, carelessnesses, and the leisurely
literary fashion of a former age. But, as to the poems, many give
them up who cling to the novels. It does not follow that the poems
are bad. In the first place, they are of two kinds--lyric and
narrative. Now, the fashion of narrative in poetry has passed away
for the present. The true Greek epics are read by a few in Greek;
by perhaps fewer still in translations. But so determined are we
not to read tales in verse, that prose renderings, even of the
epics, nay, even of the Attic dramas, have come more or less into
vogue. This accounts for the comparative neglect of Sir Walter's
lays. They are spoken of as Waverley Novels spoiled. This must
always be the opinion of readers who will not submit to stories in
verse; it by no means follows that the verse is bad. If we make an
exception, which we must, in favour of Chaucer, where is there
better verse in story telling in the whole of English literature?
The readers who despise "Marmion," or "The Lady of the Lake," do so
because they dislike stories told in poetry. From poetry they
expect other things, especially a lingering charm and magic of
style, a reflective turn, "criticism of life." These things, except