oodstock_, the product of three months' work,
brought him L8228. In four years he paid L70,000 to his creditors. One
day the tears rolled down his cheeks because he could no longer force
his fingers to grasp the pen. The king offered him a man-of-war in
which to make a voyage to the Mediterranean. Hoping to regain his
health, Scott made the trip, but the rest came too late. He returned
to Abbotsford in a sinking condition, and died in 1832, at the age of
sixty-one.

[Illustration: SCOTT'S GRAVE IN DRYBURGH ABBEY.]

Poetry.--Scott's three greatest poems are _The Lay of the Last
Minstrel_ (1805), _Marmion_ (1808), and _The Lady of the Lake_ (1810).
They belong to the distinct class of story-telling poetry. Like many
of the ballads in Percy's collection, these poems are stories of old
feuds between the Highlander and the Lowlander, and between the border
lords of England and Scotland. These romantic tales of heroic battles,
thrilling incidents, and love adventures, are told in fresh, vigorous
verse, which breathes the free air of wild nature and moves with the
prance of a war horse. Outside of Homer, we can nowhere find a better
description of a battle than in the sixth canto of _Marmion: A Tale of
Flodden Field_:--

"They close, in clouds of smoke and dust,
With sword sway and with lance's thrust;
And such a yell was there,
Of sudden and portentous birth,
As if men fought upon the earth,
And fiends in upper air;
* * * * *
And in the smoke the pennons flew,
As in the storm the white sea mew."

_The Lady of the Lake_, an extremely interesting story of romantic
love and adventure, has been the most popular of Scott's poems. Loch
Katrine and the Trossachs, where the scene of the opening cantos is
laid, have since Scott's day been thronged with tourists.

[Illustration: LOCH KATRINE AND ELLEN'S ISLE.]

The most prominent characteristic of Scott's poetry is its energetic
movement. Many schoolboys know by heart those dramatic lines which
express Marmion's defiance of Douglas, and the ballad of _Lochinvar_,
which is alive with the movements of tireless youth. These poems have
an interesting story to tell, not of the thoughts, but of the deeds,
of the characters. Scott is strangely free from nineteenth century
introspection.

Historical Fiction.--Seeing that Byron could surpass him as a poet,
and finding that his own genius was best adapted to writing prose
tales, Sco