is, as usual, with Wordsworth.

Both render, with perhaps equal power, though in characteristically different ways, the impression of the austere and desolate grandeur of the mountain scenery. But the thought to which Wordsworth leads up is the mysterious divineness of instinct

that strength of feeling, great

Above all human estimate:"—

while Scott conducts his story to the reflection that Nature has given the dead man a more stately funeral than the Church could have given, a comparison seemingly dragged in for the sake of a stanzaful of his favourite Gothic imagery.

"When a Prince to the fate of the Peasant has yielded,

The tapestry waves dark round the dim-lighted hall; With 'scutcheons of silver the coffin is shielded,

And pages stand mute by the canopied pall:

Through the courts at deep midnight the torches are gleaming,

In the proudly arched chapel the banners are beaming,
Far adown the long aisle sacred music is streaming,
Lamenting a chief of the people should fall.'

Wordsworth and Landor, who seldom agreed, agreed that Scott's most imaginative line was the verse in "Helvellyn":

"When the wind waved his garment how oft didst thou start!"

In several of his poems Wordsworth handled legendary subjects, and it is most instructive here to notice his avoidance of the romantic note, and to imagine how Scott would have managed the same material. In the prefatory note to "The White Doe of Rylstone," Wordsworth himself pointed out the difference. "The subject being

taken from feudal times has led to its being compared to some of Sir Walter Scott's poems that belong to the same age and state of society. The comparison is inconsiderate. Sir Walter pursued the customary and very natural course of conducting an action, presenting various. turns of fortune, to some outstanding point on which the mind might rest as a termination or catastrophe. The course I attempted to pursue is entirely different. Everything that is attempted by the principal personages in 'The White Doe' fails, so far as its object is external and substantial. So far as it is moral and spiritual it succeeds."

This poem is founded upon "The Rising in the North," a ballad given in the "Reliques," which recounts the insurrection of the Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland against Elizabeth in 1569. Richard Norton of Rylstone, with seven stalwart sons, joined in the rising, carrying a banner embroidered with a red cross and the five wounds of Christ. The story bristled with opportunities for the display of feudal pomp, and it is obvious upon what points in the action Scott would have laid the emphasis; the muster of the tenantry of the great northern Catholic houses of Percy and Neville; the high mass celebrated by the insurgents in Durham Cathedral; the march of the Nortons to Brancepeth; the eleven days' siege of Barden Tower; the capture and execution of Marmaduke and Ambrose; and-by way of episodethe Battle of Neville's Cross in 1346.* But in conformity to the principle announced in the preface to the

*Scott could scarcely have forborne to introduce the figure of the Queen of Scots, to insure whose marriage with Norfolk was one of the objects of the rising.

2

"Lyrical Ballads"-that the feeling should give importance to the incidents and situation, not the incidents and situation to the feeling-Wordsworth treats all this outward action as merely preparatory to the true purpose of his poem, a study of the discipline of sorrow, of ruin and bereavement patiently endured by the Lady Emily, the only daughter and survivor of the Norton house.

"Action is transitory—a step, a blow. . .
Suffering is permanent, obscure and dark,
And has the nature of infinity.

Yet through that darkness (infinite though it seem
And irremoveable) gracious openings lie.
Even to the fountain-head of peace divine."

With the story of the Nortons the poet connects a local tradition which he found in Whitaker's "History of the Deanery of Craven "; of a white doe which haunted the churchyard of Bolton Priory. Between this gentle creature and the forlorn Lady of Rylstone he establishes the mysterious and soothing sympathy which he was always fond of imagining between the soul of man and the things of nature.*

Or take again the "Song at the Feast of Brougham Castle," an incident in the Wars of the Roses. Lord Clifford, who had been hidden away in infancy from the vengeance of the Yorkists and reared as a shepherd, is restored to the estates and honours of his ancestors. High in the festal hall the impassioned minstrel strikes his harp and sings the triumph of Lancaster, urging the shepherd lord to emulate the warlike prowess of his forefathers.

* For a full review of "The White Doe" the reader should consult Principal Shairp's "Aspects of Poetry," 1881.

Thus far the minstrel,, and he has Sir Walter with him; for this is evidently the part of the poem that he liked and remembered, when he noted in his journal that "Wordsworth could be popular* if he would-witness the Feast at Brougham Castle'-'Song of the Cliffords,' I think, is the name." But the exultant strain ceases and the poet himself speaks, and with the transition in feeling comes a change in the verse; the minstrel's song was in the octosyllabic couplet associated with metrical But this Clifford was no fighter-none of Scott's heroes. Nature had educated him.

romance.

"In him the savage virtue of the Race" was dead.
"Love had he found in huts where poor men lie;
His daily teachers had been woods and rills,
The silence that is in the starry sky,

The sleep that is among the lonely hills."

Once more, consider the pronounced difference in sentiment between the description of the chase in "Hartleap Well" and the opening passage of "The Lady of the Lake":

"The stag at eve had drunk his fill.

Where danced the moon on Monan's rill," etc.†

* Scott averred that Wordsworth offended public taste on system.

This is incomparable, not only as a masterpiece of romantic narrative, but for the spirited and natural device by which the hero is conducted to his adventure. R. L. Stevenson and other critics have been rather hard upon Scott's defects as an artist. He was indeed no stylist: least of all a precieux. There are no close-set mosaics in his somewhat

Scott was a keen sportsman, and his sympathy was with the hunter.* Wordsworth's, of course, was with the quarry. The knight in his poem-who bears not unsuggestively the name of "Sir Walter "—has outstripped all his companions, like Fitz James, and is the only one in at the death. To commemorate his triumph he frames a basin for the spring whose waters were stirred by his victim's dying breath; he plants three stone pillars to mark the creature's hoof-prints in its marvellous leap from the mountain to the springside; and he builds a pleasure house and an arbour where he comes with his paramour to make merry in the summer days. But Nature sets her seal of condemnation upon the cruelty and vainglory of man. The spot is curst"; no flowers or grass will grow there; no beast will drink of the fountain. Part I. tells the story without enthusiasm but without comment. Part II. draws the lesson

"Never to blend our pleasure or our pride

With sorrow of the meanest thing that feels."

The song of Wordsworth's "Solitary Reaper" derives a pensive sorrow from "old, unhappy, far-off things and battles long ago." 99 But to Scott the battle is not far off, but a vivid and present reality. When he visited the

slip-shod prose, and he did not seek for the right word "with moroseness," like Landor. But, in his large fashion, he was skilful in inventing impressive effects. Another instance is the solitary trumpet that breather its "note of defiance" in the lists of Ashby-de-la-Zouch, which has the genuine melodramatic thrill-like the horn of Hernani or the bell that tolls in "Venice Preserved."

* See the "Hunting Song" in his continuation of “Queenhoo Hall"

"Waken, lords and ladies gay,

On the mountain dawns the day."