to observe you mention bad health: those who contribute so
much to the improvement as well as the delight of society
should escape this evil. I hope, however, that one day your
state of health may permit you to view this country."

This interchange of letters was the beginning of a friendship that was
to endure and strengthen through the lives of both poets, for they died
in the self-same year. The "new poetical attempt" that was
"on the anvil" must have been _The Lady of the Lake_, completed and
published in the following year. But already Scott had uneasy misgivings
that the style would not bear unlimited repetition. Even before Byron
burst upon the world with the two first cantos of _Childe Harold_, and
drew on him the eyes of all readers of poetry, Scott had made the
unwelcome discovery that his own matter and manner was imitable, and
that others were borrowing it. Many could now "grow the flower" (or
something like it), for "all had got the seed." It was this persuasion
that set him thinking whether he might not change his topics and his
metre, and still retain his public. To this end he threw up a few tiny
_ballons d'essai_--experiments in the manner of some of his popular
contemporaries, and printed them in the columns of the _Edinburgh Annual
Register_. One of these was a grim story of village crime called _The
Poacher_, and written in avowed imitation of Crabbe. Scott was earnest
in assuring Lockhart that he had written in no spirit of travesty, but
only to test whether he would be likely to succeed in narrative verse of
the same pattern. He had adopted Crabbe's metre, and as far as he could
compass it, his spirit also. The result is noteworthy, and shows once
again how a really original imagination cannot pour itself into
another's mould. A few lines may suffice, in evidence. The couplet about
the vicar's sermons makes one sure that for the moment Scott was
good-humouredly copying one foible at least of his original:--