addresses, does so with unaffected candor and cordial benignity. Good and great man! More and more imposing as nearer seen; thou art like that product of a superhuman intellect, that stately temple, which rears its head in the clouds, yet must be studied through and through, for months and years, to be appreciated in all its grandeur.
Nothing surprises me more in Scott’s poetry, than that a person of so strong imagination should see every thing so in detail as he does. Nothing interferes with his faculty of observation. No minor part is sacrificed to give effect to the whole; no peculiar light cast on the picture: you only see through a wonderfully far-seeing and accurately observing pair of eyes, and all this when he has so decided a taste for the picturesque. Take, as a specimen, the opening description in Marmion.
| THE CASTLE. | |
| “ | Day set on Norham’s castled steep, |
| And Tweed’s fair river, broad and deep, | |
| And Cheviot’s mountains lone; | |
| The battled towers, the donjon keep, | |
| The loophole grates, where captives weep, | |
| The flanking walls that round it sweep, | |
| In yellow lustre shone;— | |
| The warriors on the turrets high, | |
| Moving athwart the evening sky, | |
| Seemed forms of giant height; | |
| Their armor, as it caught the rays, | |
| Flashed back again the western blaze, | |
| In lines of dazzling light. | |
| St. George’s banner, broad and gay, | |
| Now faded, as the fading ray | |
| Less bright, and less, was flung; | |
| The evening gale had scarce the power | |
| To wave it on the donjon tower, | |
| So heavily it hung. | |
