cott in prose fiction. It is
extremely probable that, as Mr. Balfour suggested the other day in
unveiling the Westminster Abbey monument, this breadth of touch obtained
him his popularity abroad, nor need it impair his fame at home.

Unquestionably, though he had many minor gifts and graces, including
that of incomparable lyric snatch, from the drums and fifes of
'Lochinvar' and 'Bonnie Dundee' to the elfin music of 'Proud Maisie,'
his faculty of weaving a story in prose or in verse, with varied
decorations of dialogue and description and character, rather than on a
cunning canvas of plot, was Scott's main forte. If it is in verse--and
admirable as it is here, I think we must allow it to be--less
pre-eminent than in prose, it is, first, because minor formal defects
are more felt in verse than in prose; secondly, because the scope of the
medium is less; and thirdly, because the medium itself was in reality
not what he wanted. The verse romance of Scott is a great achievement
and a delightful possession: it has had extraordinary influence on
English literature, from the work of Byron, which it directly produced,
and which pretty certainly would never have been produced without it, to
that of Mr. William Morris, which may not impossibly have been its last
echo--transformed and refreshed, but still an echo--for some time to
come. But there was a little of the falsetto in it, and the interludes,
of which the introductions to _Marmion_ and to the _Bridal_ are the most
considerable, show that it gave no outlets, or outlets only awkward, for
much of what he wanted to say. He defines his own general literary
object admirably in a letter to Morritt. 'I have tried to induce the
public to relax some of the rules of criticism, and to be amused with
that medley of tragic and comic with which life presents us, not only in
the same course of action, but in the same character.' The detailed
remarks which have been given in earlier chapters make it unnecessary to
bring out the application of this to all his work, both verse and prose.
And it need but be pointed out in passing how much more satisfactorily
the form of prose fiction lent itself, than the form of verse romance,
to the expression of a creed which, as it had been that of Shakespeare,
so it was the creed of Scott.

But a few words must be added in reference to the complaint which is
often openly made, and which, I understand, is still more often secretly
entertained, or taken