l so
universally known as to make any review of them here individually an
impertinence. Their impact on contemporary Europe was instantaneous and
wide-spread. There is no record elsewhere in literary history of such
success. Their immense sales, the innumerable editions and translations
and imitations of them, are matters of familiar knowledge. Poem followed
poem, and novel, novel in swift and seemingly exhaustless succession, and
each was awaited by the public with unabated expectancy. Here once more
was a poet who could tell the world a story that it wanted to hear; a poet

"Such as it had
In the ages glad,
Long ago."

The Homeric[33] quality which criticism has attributed or denied to these
poems is really there. The difference, the inferiority is obvious of
course. They are not in the grand style; they are epic on a lower plane,
ballad-epic, bastard-epic perhaps, but they are epic. No English verse
narrative except Chaucer's ranks, as a whole, above Scott's. Chaucer's
disciple, William Morris, has an equal flow and continuity, and keeps a
more even level of style; but his story-telling is languid compared with
Scott's. The latter is greater in the dynamic than in the static
department--in scenes of rapid action and keen excitement. His show
passages are such as the fight in the Trosachs, Flodden Field, William of
Deloraine's ride to Melrose, the trial of Constance, the muster on the
Borough Moor, Marmion's defiance to Douglas, the combat of James and
Roderick Dhu, the summons of the fiery cross, and the kindling of the
need-fires--those romantic equivalents of the lampadephoroi in the
"Agamemnon."

In the series of long poems which followed the "Lay," Scott deserted the
Border and brought in new subjects of romantic interest, the traditions
of Flodden and Bannockburn, the manners of the Gaelic clansmen, and the
wild scenery of the Perthshire Highlands, the life of the Western
Islands, and the rugged coasts of Argyle. Only two of these tales are
concerned with the Middle Ages, strictly speaking: "The Lord of the
Isles" (1813), in which the action begins in 1307; and "Harold the
Dauntless" (1817), in which the period is the time of the Danish
settlements in Northumbria. "Rokeby" (1812) is concerned with the Civil
War. The scene is laid in Yorkshire, "Marmion" (1808), and "The Lady of
the Lake" (1810), like "The Lay of the Last Minstrel," had to do with the
sixteenth century, but the poet im