But Sir Walter
Scott, in the nineteenth century, has recreated for us all the
charm of those old tales. For this then, let us thank and
remember him.
"His legendary song could tell
Of ancient deeds, so long forgot;
Of feuds, whose memory was not;
Of forests, now laid waste and bare;
Of towers, which harbour now the hare;
Of manners, long since chang'd and gone;
Of chiefs, who under their grey stone
So long had slept, that fickle Fame
Had blotted from her rolls their name,
And twin'd round some new minion's head
The fading wreath for which they bled."*
*Lay of the Last Minstrel.
Chapter LXXIX BYRON--"CHILDE HAROLD'S PILGRIMAGE"
WHEN Sir Walter Scott ceased to write Metrical Romances, he said
it was because Byron had beaten him. But the metrical romances
of these two poets are widely different. With Sir Walter we are
up among the hills, out on the wide moorland. With him we tramp
the heather, and ford the rushing streams; his poems are full of
healthy, generous life.
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