Edinburgh in 1743, "was so inveterate, that numerous as their allies
were, their nearest friends, even in the most remote parts of Scotland,
durst not entertain them, unless under the strictest and closest
disguise."

The outlawed border chieftain, Roderick Dhu, who gives shelter to the
persecuted Douglas, is a fictitious character, but one entirely typical
of the time and place. The expedition undertaken by the young King
against the Border clans, under the guise of a hunting party, is in
part, at least, historic. Pitscottie's History says: "In 1529 James V
made a convention at Edinburgh for the purpose of considering the best
mode of quelling the Border robbers, who, during the license of his
minority and the troubles which followed, had committed many
exorbitances. Accordingly, he assembled a flying army of ten thousand
men, consisting of his principal nobility and their followers, who were
directed to bring their hawks and dogs with them, that the monarch might
refresh himself with sport during the intervals of military execution.
With this array he swept through Ettrick forest, where he hanged over
the gate of his own castle Piers Cockburn of Henderland, who had
prepared, according to tradition, a feast for his reception."

2. GENERAL CRITICISM AND ANALYSIS

_The Lady of the Lake_ appeared in 1810. Two years before, _Marmion_ had
vastly increased the popular enthusiasm aroused by _The Lay of the Last
Minstrel_, and the success of his second long poem had so exhilarated
Scott that, as he says, he "felt equal to anything and everything." To
one of his kinswomen, who urged him not to jeopardize his fame by
another effort in the same kind, he gaily quoted the words of Montrose:

He either fears his fate too much
Or his deserts are small,
Who dares not put it to the touch,
To win or lose it all.

The result justified his confidence; for not only was _The Lady of the
Lake_ as successful as its predecessors, but it remains the most
sterling of Scott's poems. The somewhat cheap supernaturalism of the
_Lay_ appears in it only for a moment; both the story and the characters
are of a less theatrical type than in _Marmion_; and it has a glow,
animation, and onset, which was denied to the later poems, _Rokeby_ and
_The Lord of the Isles_.

The following outline abridged from the excellent one given by Francis
Jeffrey in the _Edinburgh Review_ for August, 1810, will be useful as a
basis for criticism of the