and the pleasure of scouring
the country in pursuit of ballads, which was a search he had already
entered upon to his great enjoyment. From this nothing was so easy as to
float into original poetry, inspired by the same impulse and inspiration
as his ballads. One of the ladies of the house of Buccleuch told him the
story of the elfin page, and begged him to make a ballad of it; and from
this suggestion the _Lay of the Last Minstrel_ arose. The time was ripe
for giving forth all that had been unconsciously stirring in his teeming
fertile imagination. It came at once like a sudden bursting into flower,
with a splendid _eclosion_, out-bursting, involuntary, unlaborious,
delightful to himself as to mankind. From henceforward his name stood in
one of the highest places of literature and his fame was assured.

[Illustration: PLAYFAIR'S MONUMENT, CALTON HILL]

Nothing could be more unintentional, more spontaneous, almost careless;
a thing done for his pleasure far more than with any serious purpose;
nothing--except the later beginning, equally unintentional, of a still
more important stream of production. The poems of Scott will always be
open to much criticism; even those who love them most--and there are
many whose love for this fresh, free, spontaneous, delightful fountain
of song is strong enough to repress every impulse of criticism and
transport it beyond the reach of comment to a romantic enchanted land of
its own, where it flows in native sunshine and delight for
ever--declining to pronounce any definite judgment as to their
greatness. But to Scott in his after-work we are inclined to say no man
worthy of expressing an opinion can give any but the highest place. It
is true, and the fact has to be admitted with astonishment and regret,
that one great writer, his countryman, speaking the same language and in
every way capable of pronouncing judgment, has failed to appreciate Sir
Walter. We cannot tell why, nor pretend to solve that amazing question.
Perhaps it was the universal acclaim, the consent of every voice, that
awoke the germ of perversity that was in Thomas Carlyle: an impulse of
contradiction, especially in face of an opinion too unanimous, which is
one of our national characteristics: perhaps one of those prejudices
pertinacious as the rugged peasant nature itself, which sometimes warps
the clearest judgment; perhaps, but this we find it difficult to
believe, a narrower intensity and passion of meaning in him