er, with a pretty turn or verse and a great amount of
reading, if his most intimate friend, William Erskine, had not met
'Monk' Lewis in London, and found him anxious for contributions to his
_Tales of Wonder_. Lewis was a coxcomb, a fribble, and the least bit in
the world of a snob: his _Monk_ is not very clean fustian, and most of
his other work rubbish. But he was, though not according to knowledge, a
sincere Romantic; he had no petty jealousy in matters literary; and,
above all, he had, as Scott recognised, but as has not been always
recognised since, a really remarkable and then novel command of flowing
but fairly strict lyrical measures, the very things needed to thaw the
frost of the eighteenth-century couplet. Erskine offered, and Lewis
gladly accepted, contributions from Scott, and though _Tales of Wonder_
were much delayed, and did not appear till 1801, the project directly
caused the production of Scott's first original work in ballad,
_Glenfinlas_ and _The Eve of St. John_, as well as the less important
pieces of the _Fire King_, _Frederick and Alice_, etc.

In _Glenfinlas_ and _The Eve_ the real Scott first shows, and the better
of the two is the second. It is not merely that, though Scott had a
great liking for and much proficiency in 'eights,' that metre is never
so effective for ballad purposes as eights and sixes; nor that, as
Lockhart admits, _Glenfinlas_ exhibits a Germanisation which is at the
same time an adulteration; nor even that, well as Scott knew the
Perthshire Highlands, they could not appeal to him with the same subtle
intimacy of touch as that possessed by the ruined tower where, as a
half-paralysed infant, he had been herded with the lambs. But all these
causes together, and others, join to produce a freer effect in _The
Eve_. The eighteenth century is farther off; the genuine mediaeval
inspiration is nearer. And it is especially noticeable that, as in most
of the early performances of the great poetical periods, an alteration
of metrical etiquette (as we may call it) plays a great part. Scott had
not yet heard that recitation of _Christabel_ which had so great an
effect on his work, and through it on the work of others. But he had
mastered for himself, and by study of the originals, the secret of the
_Christabel_ metre, that is to say, the wide licence of equivalence in
trisyllabic and dissyllabic feet,[10] of metre catalectic or not, as need
was, of anacrusis and the rest. As is natural t