the farm-burning in South Africa no critic of the war
uses his material as Burke or Grattan (perhaps exaggeratively) would
have used it--the speaker is content with facts and expositions of
facts. In another age he might have risen and hurled that great song in
prose, perfect as prose and yet rising into a chant, which Meg Merrilies
hurled at Ellangowan, at the rulers of Britain: "Ride your ways. Laird
of Ellangowan; ride your ways, Godfrey Bertram--this day have ye
quenched seven smoking hearths. See if the fire in your ain parlour
burns the blyther for that. Ye have riven the thack of seven cottar
houses. Look if your ain roof-tree stands the faster for that. Ye may
stable your stirks in the sheilings of Dern-cleugh. See that the hare
does not couch on the hearthstane of Ellangowan. Ride your ways, Godfrey
Bertram."

The reason is, of course, that these men are afraid of bombast and Scott
was not. A man will not reach eloquence if he is afraid of bombast, just
as a man will not jump a hedge if he is afraid of a ditch. As the object
of all eloquence is to find the least common denominator of men's souls,
to fall just within the natural comprehension, it cannot obviously have
any chance with a literary ambition which aims at falling just outside
it. It is quite right to invent subtle analyses and detached criticisms,
but it is unreasonable to expect them to be punctuated with roars of
popular applause. It is possible to conceive of a mob shouting any
central and simple sentiment, good or bad, but it is impossible to think
of a mob shouting a distinction in terms. In the matter of eloquence,
the whole question is one of the immediate effect of greatness, such as
is produced even by fine bombast. It is absurd to call it merely
superficial; here there is no question of superficiality; we might as
well call a stone that strikes us between the eyes merely superficial.
The very word "superficial" is founded on a fundamental mistake about
life, the idea that second thoughts are best. The superficial impression
of the world is by far the deepest. What we really feel, naturally and
casually, about the look of skies and trees and the face of friends,
that and that alone will almost certainly remain our vital philosophy to
our dying day.

Scott's bombast, therefore, will always be stirring to anyone who
approaches it, as he should approach all literature, as a little child.
We could easily excuse the contemporary critic for not