The fisher-skiff and barge that bears a Still wafting onward all to one dark silent port;

In the Introduction to The Lord of the Isles, which he prefixed to the 1830 edition of his poems, Scott refers to the mystification which he practised on the public by the anonymous sue of The Bridal of Triermain, and the attempt to father it on Lord Kinedder. He then says: Upon another occasion I sent up another of these trifles, which, like schoolboys'

position to The Bridal of Triermain, which was designed to belong rather to the Italian school. This new fugitive piece was called Harold the Dauntless; and I am still astonished at my having committed the gross error of selecting the very name which Lord Byron had made so famous. It encountered rather an odd fate. My ingenious friend, Mr. James Hogg, had

kites, served to show how the wind of popular published, about the same time, a work called

taste was setting. The manner was supposed to be that of a rude minstrel or Scald, in op

The Poetic Mirror, containing imitations of the principal living poets. There was in it a very

good imitation of my own style, which bore such a resemblance to Harold the Dauntless that there was no discovering the original from the imitation; and I believe that many who took the trouble of thinking upon the subject were rather of opinion that my ingenious friend was the true, and not the fictitious, Simon Pure. Since this period, which was in the year 1817, the Author has not been an intruder on the public by any poetical work of importance.'

Harold the Dauntless was indeed the last poem of any length that Scott wrote. When it appeared, in January, 1817, Scott was deep in the multitudinous interests which swept him away from poetry, the enlargement of his domain, the writing of the Waverley Novels, contributions to the Annual Register and the various literary enterprises into which he was drawn by the Ballantynes. He kept Harold by him, after finishing the Bridal, some two years, making a plaything of it, something to take up, as Lockhart says, 'whenever the coach brought no proof-sheets to jog him as to serious matters; and poetry written under such conditions is hardly likely to repay the writer or

to treat him otherwise than as a jealous mistress treats her lover.

It was published simply as by the author of The Bridal of Triermain,' and no effort seems to have been made to turn aside attention to Erskine, Gillies, or any one else. Although Scott professed in one or two instances an interest in his work, it is pretty evident that it appealed but slightly to his mind, now so absorbed in larger ventures. 'I begin,' he wrote to Morritt, to get too old and stupid, I think, for poetry, and will certainly never again adventure on a grand scale;' and the next day he wrote to Lady Louisa Stuart: 'I thought once I should have made it something clever, but it turned vapid upon my imagination; and I finished it at last with hurry and impatience. Nobody knows, that has not tried the feverish trade of poetry, how much it depends upon mood and whim; I don't wonder, that in dismissing all the other deities of Paganism, the Muses should have been retained by common consent; for, in sober reality, writing good verses seems to depend upon something separate from the volition of the author.'

HAROLD THE DAUNTLESS

A POEM IN SIX CANTOS

INTRODUCTION

THERE is a mood of mind we all have known
On drowsy eve or dark and lowering day,
When the tired spirits lose their sprightly tone
And nought can chase the lingering hours away.
Dull on our soul falls Fancy's dazzling ray,
And Wisdom holds his steadier torch in vain,
Obscured the painting seems, mistuned the lay,
Nor dare we of our listless load complain,

For who for sympathy may seek that cannot tell of pain?

The jolly sportsman knows such drearihood
When bursts in deluge the autumnal rain,

Clouding that morn which threats the heath-cock's brood;
Of such in summer's drought the anglers plain,

Who hope the soft mild southern shower in vain;

But more than all the discontented fair,

Whom father stern and sterner aunt restrain

From county-ball or race occurring rare,

While all her friends around their vestments gay prepare.

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The amateur's blotched pallet thou mayst claim,
Retort, and air-pump, threatening frogs and mice
Murders disguised by philosophic name-

And much of trifling grave and much of buxom game.

Then of the books to catch thy drowsy glance
Compiled, what bard the catalogue may quote!
Plays, poems, novels, never read but once;
But not of such the tale fair Edgeworth wrote,
That bears thy name and is thine antidote;
And not of such the strain my Thomson sung,
Delicious dreams inspiring by his note,
What time to Indolence his harp he strung;-

O, might my lay be ranked that happier list among!

Each hath his refuge whom thy cares assail.
For me, I love my study-fire to trim,
And con right vacantly some idle tale,
Displaying on the couch each listless limb,
Till on the drowsy page the lights grow dim
And doubtful slumber half supplies the theme;
While antique shapes of knight and giant grim,
Damsel and dwarf, in long procession gleam,

And the romancer's tale becomes the reader's dream.

'Tis thus my malady I well may bear,

Albeit outstretched, like Pope's own Paridel,
Upon the rack of a too-easy chair;

And find to cheat the time a powerful spell

In old romaunts of errantry that tell,
Or later legends of the Fairy-folk,

Or Oriental tale of Afrite fell,

Of Genii, Talisman, and broad-winged Roc,

Though taste may blush and frown, and sober reason mock.

Oft at such season too will rhymes unsought
Arrange themselves in some romantic lay,
The which, as things unfitting graver thought,
Are burnt or blotted on some wiser day.
These few survive — and, proudly let me say,
Court not the critic's smile nor dread his frown;
They well may serve to while an hour away,
Nor does the volume ask for more renown

Than Ennui's yawning smile, what time she drops it down.