ich were
costly quartos; and while there can be no doubt that this was the
highest point of Scott's poetical vogue, there is, I believe, not much
doubt that the poem has always continued to be a greater favourite with
the general than any other of his. It actually, more than any other,
created the _furore_ for Scottish scenery and touring, which has never
ceased since; it supplied in the descriptions of that scenery, in the
fight between Roderick and Fitz-James, and in other things, his most
popular passages; and it has remained probably the type of his poetry to
the main body of readers.

Yet there are some who like it less than any other of the major
divisions of that poetry, and this is by no means necessarily due either
to a desire to be eccentric or to the subtler but almost equally
illegitimate operation of the want of novelty--of the fact that its best
effects are but repetitions of those of _Marmion_ and the _Lay_. For,
fine as it is, it seems to me to display the drawbacks of Scott's scheme
and method more than any of the longer poems. Douglas, Ellen, Malcolm,
are null; Roderick and the king have a touch of theatricality which I
look for in vain elsewhere in Scott; there is nothing fantastic in the
piece like the Goblin Page, and nothing tragical like Constance. There
is something teasing in what has been profanely called the 'guide-book'
character--the cicerone-like fidelity which contrasts so strongly with
the skilfully subordinated description in the two earlier and even in
the later poems. Moreover, though Ellis ought not to have called the
octosyllable 'the Hudibrastic measure' (which is only a very special
variety of it), he was certainly right in objecting to its great
predominance in unmixed form here.

The critics, however, sang the praises of the poem lustily. Even
Jeffrey--perhaps because it was purely Scottish (he had thought
_Marmion_ not Scottish enough), perhaps because its greater
conventionality appealed to him, perhaps because he wished to make
atonement--was extremely complimentary. And certainly no one need be at
a loss for things to commend positively, whatever may be his comparative
estimate. The fine Spenserian openings (which Byron copied almost
slavishly in the form of the stanza he took for _Harold_), the famous
beginning of the stag, the description of the pass (till Fitz-James
begins to soliloquise), some of the songs (especially the masterly
'Coronach'), the passage of the Fiery C