the moment, in his tribute to Pitt and Fox, and then reproaches
himself for attempting so great a subject and returns to what he calls
his "rude legend," the very essence of which was, however, a
passionate appeal to the spirit of national independence? What can be
more germane to the poem than the delineation of the strength the poet
had derived from musing in the bare and rugged solitudes of St. Mary's
Lake, in the introduction to the second canto? Or than the striking
autobiographical study of his own infancy which I have before
extracted from the introduction to the third? It seems to me that
_Marmion_ without these introductions would be like the hills which
border Yarrow, without the stream and lake in which they are
reflected.

Never at all events in any later poem was Scott's touch as a mere
painter so terse and strong. What a picture of a Scotch winter is
given in these few lines:--

"The sheep before the pinching heaven
To shelter'd dale and down are driven,
Where yet some faded herbage pines,
And yet a watery sunbeam shines:
In meek despondency they eye
The wither'd sward and wintry sky,
And from beneath their summer hill
Stray sadly by Glenkinnon's rill."

Again, if Scott is ever Homeric (which I cannot think he often is),
in spite of Sir Francis Doyle's able criticism,--(he is too short, too
sharp, and too eagerly bent on his rugged way, for a poet who is
always delighting to find loopholes, even in battle, from which to