ht by the public in this country, taking account of the legitimate
trade alone. Scott gained in all by _The Lay_ 769_l._, an
unprecedented sum in those times for an author to obtain from any
poem. Little more than half a century before, Johnson received but
fifteen guineas for his stately poem on _The Vanity of Human Wishes_,
and but ten guineas for his _London_. I do not say that Scott's poem
had not much more in it of true poetic fire, though Scott himself, I
believe, preferred these poems of Johnson's to anything that he
himself ever wrote. But the disproportion in the reward was certainly
enormous, and yet what Scott gained by his _Lay_ was of course much
less than he gained by any of his subsequent poems of equal, or
anything like equal, length. Thus for _Marmion_ he received 1000
guineas long before the poem was published, and for _one half_ of the
copyright of _The Lord of the Isles_ Constable paid Scott 1500
guineas. If we ask ourselves to what this vast popularity of Scott's
poems, and especially of the earlier of them (for, as often happens,
he was better remunerated for his later and much inferior poems than
for his earlier and more brilliant productions) is due, I think the
answer must be for the most part, the high romantic glow and
extraordinary romantic simplicity of the poetical elements they
contained. Take the old harper of _The Lay_, a figure which arrested
the attention of Pitt during even that last most anxious year of his
anxious life, the year of Ulm and Austerlitz. The lines in which Scott
describes the old man's embarrassment when first urged to play,
produced on Pitt, according to his own account, "an effect which I
might have expected in painting, but could never have fancied capable
of being given in poetry."[13]

Every one knows the lines to which Pitt refers:--

"The humble boon was soon obtain'd;
The aged minstrel audience gain'd.
But, when he reach'd the room of state,
Where she with all her ladies sate,
Perchance he wish'd his boon denied;
For, when to tune the harp he tried,
His trembling hand had lost the ease
Which marks security to please;
And scenes long past, of joy and pain,
Came wildering o'er his aged brain,--
He tried to tune his harp in vain!
The pitying Duchess praised its chime,
And gave him heart, and gave him time,
Till every string's according glee
Was blended into harmony.
And then, he said, he would