simple, violent world" of rugged activity and excitement, as well as
that power to kindle men's hearts, as by a trumpet-call, which was the
chief secret of the charm of his own greatest poems. It is much easier
to discern the great novelist of subsequent years in the _Border
Minstrelsy_ than even in _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_, _Marmion_,
and _The Lady of the Lake_ taken together. From those romantic poems
you would never guess that Scott entered more eagerly and heartily
into the common incidents and common cares of every-day human life
than into the most romantic fortunes; from them you would never know
how completely he had mastered the leading features of quite
different periods of our history; from them you would never infer that
you had before you one of the best plodders, as well as one of the
most enthusiastic dreamers, in British literature. But all this might
have been gathered from the various introductions and notes to the
_Border Minstrelsy_, which are full of skilful illustrations, of
comments teeming with humour, and of historic weight. The general
introduction gives us a general survey of the graphic pictures of
Border quarrels, their simple violence and simple cunning. It enters,
for instance, with grave humour into the strong distinction taken in
the debatable land between a "freebooter" and a "thief," and the
difficulty which the inland counties had in grasping it, and paints
for us, with great vivacity, the various Border superstitions. Another
commentary on a very amusing ballad, commemorating the manner in which
a blind harper stole a horse and got paid for a mare he had not lost,
gives an account of the curious tenure of land, called that of the
"king's rentallers," or "kindly tenants;" and a third describes, in
language as vivid as the historical romance of _Kenilworth_, written
years after, the manner in which Queen Elizabeth received the news of
a check to her policy, and vented her spleen on the King of Scotland.