have been oftener told of Scott than of any other English poet. Indeed,
Sir Walter, who understood himself well, gives the explanation in one of
his diaries:--"I am sensible," he says, "that if there be anything good
about my poetry or prose either, it is a hurried frankness of composition,
which pleases soldiers, sailors, and young people of bold and active
dispositions."[11] He might have included old people too. I have heard of
two old men--complete strangers--passing each other on a dark London
night, when one of them happened to be repeating to himself, just as
Campbell did to the hackney coachmen of the North Bridge of Edinburgh, the
last lines of the account of Flodden Field in _Marmion_, "Charge, Chester,
charge," when suddenly a reply came out of the darkness, "On, Stanley,
on," whereupon they finished the death of Marmion between them, took off
their hats to each other, and parted, laughing. Scott's is almost the only
poetry in the English language that not only runs thus in the head of
average men, but heats the head in which it runs by the mere force of its
hurried frankness of style, to use Scott's own terms, or by that of its
strong and pithy eloquence, as Campbell phrased it. And in _Cadyow Castle_
this style is at its culminating point.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 10: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, ii. 79.]

[Footnote 11: Lockhart's _Life of Scott_, viii. 370.]




CHAPTER V.