ures, but there are also, as truly as in
Shakspere, though not in the same degree, the observation of life, the
knowledge of men, the power of dramatic creation. No writer awakens in
his readers a warmer personal affection than Walter Scott, the brave,
honest, kindly gentleman; the noblest figure among the literary men of
his generation.

Another Scotch poet was Thomas Campbell, whose _Pleasures of Hope_,
1799, was written in Pope's couplet, and in the stilted diction of the
18th century. _Gertrude of Wyoming_, 1809, a long narrative poem in
Spenserian stanza, is untrue to the scenery and life of Pennsylvania,
where its scene is laid. But Campbell turned his rhetorical manner and
his clanking, martial verse to fine advantage in such pieces as
_Hohenlinden_, _Ye Mariners of England_, and the _Battle of the Baltic_.
These have the true lyric fire, and rank among the best English
war-songs.

When Scott was asked why he had left off writing poetry, he answered,
"Byron _bet_ me." George Gordon Byron (1788-1824) was a young man of
twenty-four when, on his return from a two years' sauntering through
Portugal, Spain, Albania, Greece, and the Levant, he published, in the
first two cantos of _Childe Harold_, 1812, a sort of poetic itinerary of
his experiences and impressions. The poem took, rather to its author's
surprise, who said that he woke one morning and found himself famous.
_Childe Harold_ opened a new field to poetry: the romance of travel, the
picturesque aspects of foreign scenery, manners, and costumes. It is
instructive of the difference between the two ages, in poetic
sensibility to such things, to compare Byron's glowing imagery with
Addison's tame _Letter from Italy_, written a century before. _Childe
Harold_ was followed by a series of metrical tales, the _Giaour_, the
_Bride of Abydos_, the _Corsair_, _Lara_, the _Siege of Corinth_,
_Parisina_, and the _Prisoner of Chillon_, all written in the years
1813-1816. These poems at once took the place of Scott's in popular
interest, dazzling a public that had begun to weary of chivalry romances
with pictures of Eastern life, with incidents as exciting as Scott's,
descriptions as highly colored, and a much greater intensity of passion.
So far as they depended for this interest upon the novelty of their
accessories, the effect was a temporary one. Seraglios, divans, bulbuls,
Gulistans, Zuleikas, and other oriental properties deluged English
poetry for a time, and then