Lord of the Isles_, and this is why _The Lay_ and _Marmion_ seem so much
superior as poems to the others. They lean less on the interest of mere
incident, more on that of romantic feeling and the great social and
historic features of the day. _Marmion_ was composed in great part in the
saddle, and the stir of a charge of cavalry seems to be at the very core of
it. "For myself," said Scott, writing to a lady correspondent at a time
when he was in active service as a volunteer, "I must own that to one who
has, like myself, _la tête un peu exaltée_, the pomp and circumstance of
war gives, for a time, a very poignant and pleasing sensation."[16] And you
feel this all through _Marmion_ even more than in _The Lay_. Mr. Darwin
would probably say that Auld Wat of Harden had about as much responsibility
for _Marmion_ as Sir Walter himself. "You will expect," he wrote to the
same lady, who was personally unknown to him at that time, "to see a
person who had dedicated himself to literary pursuits, and you will find me
a rattle-skulled, half-lawyer, half-sportsman, through whose head a
regiment of horse has been exercising since he was five years old."[17] And
what Scott himself felt in relation to the martial elements of his poetry,
soldiers in the field felt with equal force. "In the course of the day when
_The Lady of the Lake_ first reached Sir Adam Fergusson, he was posted with
his company on a point of ground exposed to the enemy's artillery,
somewhere no doubt on the lines of Torres Vedras. The men were ordered to
lie prostrate on the ground; while they kept that attitude, the captain,
kneeling at the head, read aloud the description of the battle in Canto
VI., and the listening soldiers only interrupted him by a joyous huzza when
the French shot struck the bank close above them."[18] It is not often that
martial poetry has been put to such a test; but we can well understand with
what rapture a Scotch force lying on the ground to shelter from the French
fire, would enter into such passages as the following:--

"Their light-arm'd archers far and near