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THE WORTHINGTON SCRANTON CAMPUS
THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY
120 RIDGE VIEW DRIVE

DUNMORE, PENNSYLVANIA 18512

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INTRODUCTION.

IN looking back over this century, which is now so near its close, there is none among its conspicuous figures of pleasanter aspect than that of Scott; and of all the men who have lived during its course there is not one who has contributed more largely to the pleasure of its successive generations. This is a high eulogy; no man could desire a better. To amuse men rationally, to give them wholesome entertainment, is to do them a great service; and to do this through a lifetime more successfully than any one else, is to be worthy of lasting gratitude. This is what Scott did for our fathers, and has done for many of us, and will continue to do for many of our children. At this moment, more than sixty years after the last of his novels was written, two popular editions of them are in course of publication; while his poems, ninety years after the "Lay of the Last Minstrel ” was first published, are still the delight of youthful readers, and still charm readers of all ages by the interest of their animated narrative, the ease of their versification, and the manliness of their spirit.

“Scott,” said Mr. Emerson, “is the most lovable of men, and entitled to the world's gratitude for the entertainment he has given to solitude, the relief to headache and heartache. But," he adds, "he is not sufficiently alive to ideas to be a great man.”

"Into the question whether Scott was a great man or not, we do not propose," says Carlyle, "to enter deeply. It is, as too usual, a question about words. There can be no doubt that many men have been named and printed great who were vastly smaller than he; as little doubt, moreover, that of the specially good, a very large portion, according to any genuine standard of man's worth, were worthless in comparison with him. . . The truth is, our best definition of Scott were perhaps even this, that he was, if no great man, then something much pleasanter to be, - a robust, thoroughly healthy, and withal very prosperous and victorious man. An eminently well-conditioned man, healthy in body, healthy in soul; we will call him one of the healthiest of men."

And it is this sound, healthy human nature, on good terms with itself and with the world, with easy mastery of its own faculties, open, sympathetic, cordial, — it is this large, genial nature with which his work, whether in prose or poetry, is inspired. Let us be grateful for such a gift. There is space even on the narrow shelves of the immortals for books such as his. Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, may rest on a higher shelf, but Scott will be nearer at hand for the multitude of readers, and his volumes will require more frequent rebinding.

He was past thirty years old before his poetic genius found its full expression. He was born in 1771, and it was in 1805 that his first long poem, "The Lay of the Last Minstrel," was published and sprang into the popularity which it has never lost. It was largely a piece of improvisation. It was no poem the writing of which "made him lean for many years." Once fairly entered upon, it was soon finished, “proceeding,” as he tell us, "at about the rate of a canto per week." In a letter written within a month or two after its publication, he wrote, “It is deficient in that sort of continuity which a story ought to have, and which, were it to write again, I would endeavor to give it. . . . The sixth canto is altogether redundant." Composed as it was at breakneck speed, it is not surprising that the diction is often careless, that the facile couplets are too apt to drop heavily to a prosaic level, and that there is little depth in the reflections which occasionally intervene in the story. But, on the other hand, the narrative flows with rapid current, the story is full of picturesque and lively scenes, and the verse has what Wordsworth well called "an easy, glowing energy." The account of William of Deloraine's ride by night quickens the blood till its beat keeps time with the gallop; and, though the last canto be redundant, it contains in the Ballad of Rosabelle one of those fine lyrics within the limits of which Scott's improvising genius seems often to find its best expression. In his modest introduction to his final edition of the Lay in 1830, he gives an interesting account of its origin and composition; but neither he nor his critics have done justice to the chief distinction of the poem, that its mode was practically a new invention, reclaiming poetry from the tediousness of the then prevailing artificial style, to its place as an art of entertainment in the spirited romantic delineation of nature and of life. There had been nothing like it in English literature. It was an extension of the delightful realm of poetry, and in its kind there has been nothing better.

Scott was in no hurry to take advantage of the popularity of his first long poem, and he determined that his second should be less hasty in its composition. Accordingly," to cite his own words, “particular passages of a

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