Scott's apprehension of the spirit of chivalry, though less
imperfect than his apprehension of the spirit of mediaeval Catholicism,
was but partial. Of the themes which Ariosto sang--

"Le donne, i cavalier, l'arme, gli amori,
Le cortesie, l'audaci imprese io canto"--

the northern Ariosto sang bravely the _arme_ and the _audaci imprese_;
less confidently the _amori_ and the _cortesie_. He could sympathise
with the knight-errant's high sense of honour and his love of bold
emprise; not so well with his service of dames. Mediaeval courtship or
"love-drurye," the trembling self-abasement of the lover before his lady,
the fantastic refinements and excesses of gallantry, were alien to
Scott's manly and eminently practical turn of mind. It is hardly
possible to fancy him reading the "Roman de la Rose" with patience--he
thought "Troilus and Creseyde" tedious, which Rossetti pronounces the
finest of English love poems; or selecting for treatment the story of
Heloise or Tristram and Iseult, or of "Le Chevalier de la Charette"; or
such a typical mediaeval life as that of Ulrich von Liechtenstein.[53]
These were quite as truly beyond his sphere as a church legend like the
life of Saint Margaret or the quest of the Sangreal. In the "Talisman"
he praises in terms only less eloquent than Burke's famous words, "that
wild spirit of chivalry which, amid its most extravagant and fantastic
nights, was still pure from all selfish alloy--generous, devoted, and
perhaps only thus far censurable, that it proposed objects and courses of
action inconsistent with the frailties and imperfections of man." In
"Ivanhoe," too, there is something like a dithyrambic lament over the
decay of knighthood--"The 'scutcheons have long mouldered from the
walls," etc.; but even here, enthusiasm is tempered by good sense, and
Richard of the Lion Heart is described as an example of the "brilliant
but useless character of a knight of romance." All this is but to say
that the picture of the Middle Age which Scott painted was not complete.
Still it was more nearly complete than has yet been given by any other
hand; and the artist remains, in Stevenson's phrase, "the king of the
Romantics."

APPENDIX A.

"Jamais homme de genie n'a eu l'honneur et le bonheur d'etre imite par
plus d'hommes de genie, si tous les grands ecrivains de l'epoque
romantique depuis Victor Hugo jusqu'a Balzac et depuis Alfred de Vigny
jusqu'a Merimee, lui doivent tous et se s