ool
in poetry," and he never throughout his life violated the conventions,
literary or social, if he could possibly avoid doing so. This bias
toward conservatism and conventionality shows itself particularly in
the language of his poems. He was compelled, of course, to use much
more concrete and vivid terms than the eighteenth century poets had
used, because he was dealing with much more concrete and vivid matter;
but his language, nevertheless, has a prevailing stateliness, and at
times an artificiality, which recommended it to readers tired of the
inanities of Hayley and Mason, but unwilling to accept the startling
simplicity and concreteness of diction exemplified by the Lake poets at
their best.

Another peculiarity of Scott's poetry which made powerfully for its
popularity, was its spirited meter. People were weary of the heroic
couplet, and turned eagerly to these hurried verses, that went on their
way with the sharp tramp of moss-troopers, and heated the blood like a
drum. The meters of Coleridge, subtle, delicate, and poignant, had been
passed by with indifference--had not been heard perhaps, for lack of
ears trained to hear; but Scott's metrical effects were such as a child
could appreciate, and a soldier could carry in his head.

Analogous to this treatment of meter, though belonging to a less formal
side of his art, was Scott's treatment of nature, the landscape setting
of his stories. Perhaps the most obvious feature of the romantic revival
was a reawakening of interest in out-door nature. It was as if for a
hundred years past people had been stricken blind as soon as they passed
from the city streets into the country. A trim garden, an artfully
placed country house, a well-kept preserve, they might see; but for the
great shaggy world of mountain and sea--it had been shut out of man's
elegant vision. Before Scott began to write there had been no lack of
prophets of the new nature-worship, but none of them of a sort to catch
the general ear. Wordsworth's pantheism was too mystical, too delicate
and intuitive, to recommend itself to any but chosen spirits; Crabbe's
descriptions were too minute, Coleridge's too intense, to please. Scott
was the first to paint nature with a broad, free touch, without raptures
or philosophizing, but with a healthy pleasure in its obvious beauties,
such as appeal to average men. His "scenery" seldom exists for its own
sake, but serves, as it should, for background and setting of