scale of a ballad.
Scott had tried another sort of imitation in the stanzas composed in old
English and in the metre of the original to supply the missing
conclusion of _Sir Tristrem_. It was not within his scope to write an
original romance in the old language, but Coleridge's _Christabel_ was
recited to him, and gave him a modern rhythm fit for a long story. So
the intended ballad became the _Lay_, taking in, with the legend of
Gilpin Horner for a foundation, all the spirit of Scott's knowledge of
his own country.

Here I must pause to express my admiration for Lockhart's criticism of
Scott, and particularly for his description of the way in which the
_Lay_ came to be written. It is really wonderful, Lockhart's sensible,
unpretentious, thorough interpretation of the half-unconscious processes
by which Scott's reading and recollections were turned into his poems
and novels. Of course, it is all founded on Scott's own notes and
introductions.

What happened with the _Lay_ is repeated a few years afterwards in
_Waverley_. The _Lay_, a rhyming romance; _Waverley_ an historical
novel; what, it may be asked, is so very remarkable about their origins?
Was it not open to any one to write romances in verse or prose? Perhaps;
but the singularity of Scott's first romances in verse and prose is that
they do not begin as literary experiments, but as means of expressing
their author's knowledge, memory and treasured sentiment. Hazlitt is
right; Scott's experience is shaped into the Waverley Novels, though one
can distinguish later between those stories that belong properly to
Scott's life and those that are invented in repetition of a pattern.

Scott's own alleged reason for giving up the writing of tales in verse
was that Byron beat him. But there must have been something besides
this: it is plain that the pattern of rhyming romance was growing stale.
The _Lay_ needs no apology; _Marmion_ includes the great tragedy of
Scotland in the Battle of Flodden:--

The stubborn spearmen still made good
Their dark impenetrable wood,
Each stepping where his comrade stood,
The instant that he fell.
No thought was there of dastard flight;
Link'd in the serried phalanx tight,
Groom fought like noble, squire like knight,
As fearlessly and well;
Till utter darkness closed her wing
O'er their thin host and wounded king.

And _The Lady of the Lake_ is all that the Highlands meant fo