Still for stern Mammon may they toil in vain !
And sadly gaze on gold they cannot gain!

Such be their meed, such still the just reward
Of prostituted muse and hireling bard!

For this we spurn Apollo's venal son,

And bid a long 'Good-night to Marmion.'"

In his introduction to the edition of 1830, long after Byron and Scott had exchanged letters of friendship and had learned to respect each other, Scott wrote very calmly:

"The transaction, being no secret, afforded Lord Byron, who was then at general war with all who blacked paper, an apology for including me in his satire entitled English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. I never could conceive how an arrangement between an author and his publishers, if satisfactory to the persons concerned, could afford matter of censure to any third party. I had taken no unusual or ungenerous means of enhancing the value of my merchandise, -I had never higgled a moment about the bargain, but accepted at once what I considered the handsome offer of my publishers. These gentlemen, at least, were not of opinion that they had been taken advantage of in the transaction, which indeed was one of their own framing; on the contrary, the sale of the poem was far beyond their expectation."

After Scott entered upon the period of his most rapid writing, he customarily dashed off a few sheets each morning and sent them to his publisher for pruning and revision; but Marmion was written before the demands upon his time were urgent, and the poem may be consid

ered one of his best. If the composition had been in prose, we should have called Marmion a historical novel. Scott called the poem A Tale of Flodden Field, but it should be understood at the outset that the author made free with historical facts, not so much by inventing incidents as by changing time and place to suit his tale.

Marmion was written during a tremendous flush of national feeling, when the sound of fife and drum were in the air. Napoleon had not been overthrown at Waterloo. French success on the continent and threats of making Great Britain an appanage of France had stirred up the British Lion. With British supremacy questioned and British coasts threatened, we can see readily that the naval victories of the Nile, of Copenhagen, and of Trafalgar had aroused a storm of emotion, compared with which American enthusiasm over Dewey's victory at Manila was a mere tremor. In this national atmosphere, with honest British pride thrilling his cheeks, Scott wrote Marmion and sent it out to the people. Wise critics said he ought to have celebrated Nelson or Pitt or Sir John Moore, rather than a profligate knight three hundred years dead; but Scott knew his own powers, and any one can see for himself that the weakest parts of the poem are the passages in which he attempts. to laud the victors in the Napoleonic wars. The people

hailed Marmion with acclaim. When we remember how often Scotland, under the Stuarts, was leagued with France against England, we can understand that the English, in particular, were delighted that a native of

Scotland, a Scot of the Scots, should treat an English knight so chivalrously in a noble poem abounding in passages of ardent patriotism. Indirectly, but none the less effectively, the publication of Marmion proclaimed the adhesion of the Scots to the national cause.

As to the setting of the poem, it will be sufficient for the student to remember that Scott's descriptions of a knight, a costume, a castle, an inn, a feast, a tourney, or a march are to be considered as dating about the time of the discovery of America by Columbus.

Scott's chivalrous treatment of female characters should not be overlooked. If the student will run through the poem, reading the passages which pertain to any one woman, as Clare, or her unfortunate rival, he cannot fail to feel that they were written by a gentleman of native nobility - not blind to fault-but strong and manly in his make-up.

6

The introductions to the several cantos should be omitted at the first reading. Their general plan is given by Lockhart: "As for the epistolary dissertations' it must, I take it, be allowed that they interfered with the flow of the story, when readers were turning the leaves with the first ardor of curiosity, and they were not, in fact, originally intended to be interwoven in any fashion with the romance of Marmion. . . . Though the author himself does not allude to, and had perhaps forgotten the circumstance when writing the Introductory Essay of 1830, they were announced by an advertisement early in 1807, as Six Epistles from Ettric Forest, to be published in a separate volume; and perhaps it might have been better that this

first plan had been adhered to. But, however that may be, are there any pages among all he ever wrote that any one would be more sorry he should not have written? They are among the most delicious portraitures that genius ever painted of itself, buoyant, virtuous, happy genius, — exulting in its own energies, yet possessed and mastered by a clear, calm, modest mind, and happy only in diffusing happiness around it. With what gratification those Epistles were read by the friends to whom they were addressed, it would be superfluous to show. He had, in fact, painted them almost as fully as himself; and who might not have been proud to find a place in such a gallery! The tastes and habits of six of those men, in whose intercourse Scott found the greatest pleasure when his fame was approaching its meridian splendor, are thus preserved for posterity; and, when I reflect with what avidity we catch at the least hint which seems to afford us a glimpse of the intimate circle of any great poet of former ages, I cannot but believe that posterity would have held this record precious, even had the individuals been in themselves far less remarkable than a Rose, an Ellis, a Heber, a Skene, a Marriott, and an Erskine."

Scott himself, speaking of the composition of Marmion twenty-two years afterward, says: "I may be permitted to say that the period of its composition was a very happy one in my life; so much so, that I remember with pleasure, at this moment, some of the spots in which particular passages were composed. It is probably owing to this that the Introductions to the several cantos as

sumed the form of familiar epistles to my intimate friends, in which I alluded, perhaps more than was necessary or graceful, to my domestic occupations and amusements, a loquacity which may be excused by those who remember that I was still young, light-headed, and happy, and that 'out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.""

Suggestions. To the student, it may be said, one should bear constantly in mind that Scott is describing scenery and customs which he had long studied. Norham is less than twenty-five miles from the home of his grandparents. Marmion was written within a morning's gallop of Flodden Field. Much of the poem was composed, or at least thought out, while Scott's eye actually rested on the hills and valleys mentioned. Make a list of the dozen or more adjectives in the first stanza of the first canto, and you will see that each is used as by one who had actually gazed long and lovingly on the high turrets, or if these had fallen, upon the mountains of Cheviot, and upon the river Tweed, whose murmuring under the window of Abbotsford, one quiet afternoon, was the last sound he heard. Genius finds literary material near at hand; mediocrity goes far afield; an unawakened mind. goes to an encyclopædia.

Use a dictionary. Such words as yard, stalworth, hosen, and plump are good old English words. Look them up with care. Another thing: critics have given Scott high praise for the minuteness and accuracy of his descriptions. No literary man of the century has approached him in an intensive knowledge of the manners