forth from the far-off hills. He let his verse sweep out in the
same stormy sort, and many a "cumbrous line," many a "flattened
thought," you may note, if you will, in "Marmion." For example -


"And think what he must next have felt,
At buckling of the falchion belt."


The "Lay" is a tale that only verse could tell; much of "Marmion"
might have been told in prose, and most of "Rokeby." But prose
could never give the picture of Edinburgh, nor tell the tale of
Flodden Fight in "Marmion," which I verily believe is the best
battle-piece in all the poetry of all time, better even than the
stand of Aias by the ships in the Iliad, better than the slaying of
the Wooers in the Odyssey. Nor could prose give us the hunting of
the deer and the long gallop over hillside and down valley, with
which the "Lady of the Lake" begins, opening thereby the enchanted
gates of the Highlands to the world. "The Lady of the Lake," except
in the battle-piece, is told in a less rapid metre than that of the
"Lay," less varied than that of "Marmion." "Rokeby" lives only by
its songs; the "Lord of the Isles" by Bannockburn, the "Field of
Waterloo" by the repulse of the Cuirassiers. But all the poems are
interspersed with songs and ballads, as the beautiful ballad of
"Alice Brand"; and Scott's fame rests on THESE far more than on his
later versified romances. Coming immediately after the very tamest
poets who ever lived, like Hayley, Scott wrote songs and ballads as
wild and free, as melancholy or gay, as ever shepherd sang, or gipsy
carolled, or witch-wife moaned, or old forgotten minstrel left to
the world, music with no maker's name. For example, take the