Mr. Morritt, to whom Scott dedicates Rokeby, and in whose beautiful estate the scene of the poem is laid, was introduced to the poet in the early summer of 1808, and an intimacy began which was one of the most agreeable elements in Scott's life. Twenty years later when paying him a visit, Scott recorded in his Journal (ii. 195): 'He is now one of my oldest, and, I believe, one of my most sincere friends, a man unequalled in the mixture of sound good sense, high literary cultivation, and the kindest and sweetest temper that ever graced a human bosom.' The intimacy led to a long correspondence and to frequent interchange of visits. Mr. Morritt's own recollections of Scott form a delightful contribution in Lockhart's Life. He visited Scott in Edinburgh when he first made his acquaintance, and Scott returned the visit a year later. The beanty of Rokeby made a great impression upon him, as may be seen by his letter to George Ellis, July 8, 1809, and it is most probable that in taking the step which led to the purchase of Abbotsford, and removal from Ashestiel, Scott was influenced by his admiration for his friend's estate. At any rate, Scott palpably connected the writing of the poem Rokeby with the enlargement of his domain, and asked eagerly Morritt to aid him in his poetical venture.

'I have a grand project to tell you of,' he writes December 20, 1811. "Nothing less than a fourth romance, in verse; the theme, during the English civil wars of Charles I., and the scene, your own domain of Rokeby. I want to build my cottage a little better than my limited finances will permit out of my ordinary

income; and although it is very true that an author should not hazard his reputation, yet, as Bob Acres says, I really think Reputation should take some care of the gentleman in return. Now, I have all your scenery deeply imprinted in my memory, and moreover, be it known to you, I intend to refresh its traces this ensuing summer, and to go as far as the borders of Lancashire, and the caves of Yorkshiro, and so perhaps on to Derbyshire. I have sketched a story which pleases me, and I am only anxious to keep my theme quiet, for its being piddled upon by some of your Readyto-catch literati, as John Bunyan calls them, would be a serious misfortune to me. I am not without hope of seducing you to be my guide a little way on my tour. Is there not some book (sense or nonsense I care not) or the beauties of Teesdale-I mean a descrip tive work? If you can point it out or lend it me, you will do me a great favour, and no less if you can tell me any traditions of the period. By which party was Barnard castle occupied? It strikes me that it should be held for the Parliament. Pray help me in this, by truth, or fiction, or tradition,- I care not which if it be picturesque. What the deuce is the name of that wild glen, where we had such a clamber on horseback up a stone staircase? - Cat's Cradle, or Cat's Castle, I think it was. I wish also to have the true edition of the traditionary tragedy of your old house at Mortham, and the ghost thereunto appertain ing, and you will do me yeoman's service in compiling the relics of so valuable a legend. Item Do you know anything of a striking ancient castle, belonging, I think, to the Duke

of Leeds, called Coningsburgh? Grose notices it, but in a very flimsy manner. I once flew past it on the mail-coach, when its round tower and flying buttresses had a most romantic effect in the morning dawn.'

Whereupon Mr. Morritt girded himself and addressed himself thoroughly to the task of supplying Scott with the needed material, and of making suggestions for the construction of the poem which were clearly heeded by the poet. The correspondence between the two friends continued during the winter and spring of 1812, and Morritt furnished further memorabilia in answer to questions, and Scott divided his time between his poem and the estate which it was to help pay for. 'My work Rokeby does and must go forward,' he writes March 2, 1812, or my trees and enclosures might, perchance, stand still. But I destroyed the first canto after I had written it fair out, because it did not quite please me. I shall keep off people's kibes if I can, for my plan, though laid during the civil wars, has little to do with the politics of either party, being very much confined to the adventures and distresses of a particular family.'

In the same letter he says that he must certainly refresh his memory with the scenery, in spite of the serviceable memoranda of Mr. Morritt, and in the autumn of 1812 he went with Mrs. Scott, Walter, and Sophia to Rokeby, remaining there about a week. It was while he was on this visit that Mr. Morritt made that interesting note on Scott's habits of observation which has often been quoted for the light it throws on the poet's attitude toward his work.

'I observed him,' says Morritt, 'noting down even the peculiar little wild flowers and herbs that accidentally grew round and on the side of a bold crag near his intended cave of Guy Denzil; and could not help saying, that as he was not to be on oath in his work, daisies, violets, and primroses would be as poetical as any of the humble plants he was examining. I laughed, in short, at his scrupulousness; but I understood him when he replied, "that in nature herself no two scenes were exactly alike, and that whoever copied truly what was before his eyes, would possess the same variety in his descriptions, and exhibit apparently an imagination as boundless as the range of nature in the scenes he recorded; whereas - whoever trusted to imagination, would soon find his own mind circumscribed, and contracted to a few favorite images, and the repetition of these would sooner or later produce that very monotony and barrenness which had always haunted descriptive poetry in the hands of any but the patient worshippers of truth. Besides which,"

he said, "local names and peculiarities make a fictitious story book look so much better in the face."

The poem gave its author a good deal of trouble, since he was unwontedly anxious to do it well, and he destroyed his work and reattacked it, finally pushing it to a conclusion in the three months at the close of 1812. As usual, during the process of composition and when it was completed he sought the criticism of his friends. "There are two or three songs,' he wrote Morritt, and particularly one in praise of Brignal Banks, which I trust you will like because, entre nous, I like them myself. One of them is a little dashing banditti song, called and entitled Allen-a-Dale.' Scott, indeed, gives Joanna Baillie a curious coincidence in the discovery, on reading her 'Passion of Fear,' that she had an outlaw's song of which the chorus was almost verbatim that which he had written for his outlaw's song in Rokeby, so that he was forced to rewrite that song. Miss Baillie herself repaid him with an enthusiastic letter after reading Rokeby. I wish you could have seen me,' she writes, when it arrived. My sister was from home, so I stirred my fire, swept the hearth, chased the cat out of the room, lighted my candles, and began upon it immediately. It is written with wonderful power both as to natural objects and human character; and your magnificent bandit, Bertram, is well entitled to your partiality; for it is a masterly picture, and true to nature in all its parts, according to my conceptions of nature. Your Lady and both her lovers are very pleasing and beautifully drawn, her conduct and behavior to them both is so natural and delicate; and so is theirs to each other. How many striking passages there are which take a hold of the imagination that can never be unloosed! The burning of the castle in all its progress is very sublime; the final scene, also, when Bertram rides into the church, is grand and terrific; the scene between him and Edmund, when he weeps to find that there is any human being that will shed a tear for him, is very touching and finely imagined. I say nothing of what struck me so much in the three first cantos. And besides those higher beauties, there are those of a softer kind that are wonderfully attractive; for instance, the account of the poor Irishman's death, after he had delivered the child to the Lord of Rokeby, which made me weep freely, and the stealing of Edmund back to the cave by night with all the indications of his silent path, the owlet ceasing its cry, the otter leaping into the stream, etc., is delightful. Your images and similes too, with which the work is not overloaded (like a lady with a few jewels, but of the best water),

are excellent. Your songs are good, particularly those of Wilfrid; but they have struck me less, somehow or other, than the rest of the poem. As to the invention of your story, I praise that more sparingly, for tho' the leading circumstances are well imagined, the conducting of it seems to me too dramatic for a lyrical narrative, and there are too many complex contrivances to the bringing about the catastrophe.'

Miss Baillie proceeded, with some sagacity, to predict that Scott's mind was working toward dramatic composition. Her criticism of Rokeby indeed implies that the story would have lent itself better to a form which permitted a greater elaboration of character and plot. Only the next year, Scott was to perfect his Waverley. In truth, in Rokeby, Scott's interest, though largely in the presentation of his friend's domain, was specifically in character, and the heroine especially was the reflection, in imaginative form, of that early

love, whose influence had already been felt in The Lay of the Last Minstrel. Writing to Miss Edgeworth, five years after the appearance of Rokeby, he says: This much of Matilda I recollect (for that is not so easily forgotten) that she was attempted for the existing person of a lady who is now no more, so that I am particularly flattered with your distinguishing it from the others, which are in general mere shadows.' And Lockhart, quoting this, adds: 'I can have no doubt that the lady he here alludes to, was the object of his own unfortunate first love; and as little, that in the romantic generosity, both of the youthful poet who fails to win her higher favor, and of his chivalrous competitor, we have before us something more than a mere shadow."'

Rokeby was published the first week in January, 1813, and bore the dedication to Mr. Morritt. When the poem was issued in the collective edition of 1830, it was preceded by the following Introduction.

Between the publication of The Lady of the Lake, which was so eminently successful, and that of Rokeby, in 1813, three years had intervened. I shall not, I believe, be accused of ever having attempted to usurp a superiority over many men of genius, my contemporaries; but, in point of popularity, not of actual talent, the caprice of the public had certainly given me such a temporary superiority over men, of whom, in regard to poetical fancy and feeling, I scarcely thought myself worthy to loose the shoe-latch. On the other hand, it would be absurd affectation in me to deny, that I conceived myself to understand, more perfectly than many of my contemporaries, the manner most likely to interest the great mass of mankind. Yet, even with this belief, I must truly and fairly say that I always considered myself rather as one who held the bets in time to be paid over to the winner, than as having any pretence to keep them in my own right.

In the mean time years crept on, and not without their usual depredations on the passing generation. My sons had arrived at the age when the paternal home was no longer their best abode, as both were destined to active life. The field-sports, to which I was peculiarly attached, had now less interest, and were replaced by other amusements of a more quiet character; and the means and opportunity of pursuing these were to be sought for. I had, indeed, for some years attended to farming, a knowledge of which is, or at least was then,

indispensable to the comfort of a family re siding in a solitary country-house; but although this was the favorite amusement of many of my friends, I have never been able to consider it as a source of pleasure. I never could think it a matter of passing importance, that my cattle or crops were better or more plentiful than those of my neighbors, and nev ertheless I began to feel the necessity of some more quiet out-door occupation, different from those I had hitherto pursued. I purchased a small farm of about one hundred acres, with the purpose of planting and improving it, to which property circumstances afterwards enabled me to make considerable additions; and thus an era took place in my life, almost eqral to the important one mentioned by the Vicar of Wakefield, when he removed from the Blue room to the Brown. In point of neighborhood at least, the change of residence made little more difference. Abbotsford, to which we removed, was only six or seven miles down the Tweed, and lay on the same beautiful stream. It did not possess the romantic character of Ashestiel, my former residence; but it had a stretch of meadow-land along the river, and possessed, in the phrase of the landscape-gardener, considerable capabilities. Above all, the land was my own, like Uncle Toby's Bowling-green, to do what I would with. It had been, though the gratification was long postponed, an early wish of mine to connect my. self with my mother earth, and prosecute those experiments by which a species of creative

power is exercised over the face of nature. I can trace, even to childhood, a pleasure derived from Dodsley's account of Shenstone's Leasowes, and I envied the poet much more for the pleasure of accomplishing the objects detailed in his friend's sketch of his grounds, than for the possession of pipe, crook, flock, and Phillis to boot. My memory, also, tenacions of quaint expressions, still retained a phrase which it had gathered from an old almanac of Charles the Second's time (when everything down to almanacs affected to be smart), in which the reader, in the month of June, is advised for health's sake to walk a mile or two every day before breakfast, and, if he can possibly so manage, to let his exereise be taken upon his own land.

With the satisfaction of having attained the fulfilment of an early and long-cherished hope, I commenced my improvements, as delightful in their progress as those of the child who first makes a dress for a new doll. The nakedness of the land was in time hidden by woodlan is of considerable extent - the smallest of possible cottages was progressively expanded into a sort of dream of a mansion-house, whimsical in the exterior, but convenient within. Nor did I forget what is the natural pleasure of every man who has been a reader; I mean the filling the shelves of a tolerably large library. All these objects I kept in view, to be executed as convenience should serve; and although I knew many years must elapse before they could be attained, I was of a disposition to comfort myself with the Spanish proverb. Time and I against any two.'

The difficult and indispensable point of finding a permanent subject of occupation was now at length attained; but there was annexed to it the necessity of becoming again a candidate for public favor; for as I was turned improver on the earth of the every-day world it was under condition that the small tenement of Parnassus, which might be accessible to my labors, should not remain uncultivated.

I meditated, at first, a poem on the subject of Bruce, in which I made some progress, but afterwards judged it advisable to lay it aside, supposing that an English story might have more novelty; in consequence, the precedence was given to Rokeby.

If subject and scenery could have influenced the fate of a poem, that of Rokeby should have been eminently distinguished for the grounds belonged to a dear friend, with whom I had lived in habits of intimacy for many years, and the place itself united the romantic beauties of the wilds of Scotland with the rich and smiling aspect of the southern portion of the island. But the Cavaliers and

Roundheads, whom I attempted to summon up to tenant this beautiful region, had for the public neither the novelty nor the peculiar interest of the primitive Highlanders. This, perhaps, was scarcely to be expected, considering that the general mind sympathizes readily and at once with the stamp which nature herself has affixed upon the manners of a people living in a simple and patriarchal state; whereas it has more difficulty in understanding or interesting itself in manners founded upon those peculiar habits of thinking or acting which are produced by the progress of society. We could read with pleasure the tale of the adventures of a Cossack or a Mongol Tartar, while we only wonder and stare over those of the lovers in the Pleasing Chinese History, where the embarrassments turn upon difficulties arising out of unintelligible delicacies peculiar to the customs and manners of that affected people.

The cause of my failure had, however, a far deeper root. The manner, or style, which, by its novelty, attracted the public in an unusual degree, had now, after having been three times before them, exhausted the patience of the reader, and began in the fourth to lose its charms. The reviewers may be said to have apostrophized the author in the language of Parnell's Edwin:

And here reverse the charm, he cries,
And let it fairly now suffice,

The gambol has been shown.'

The licentious combination of rhymes, in a manner perhaps not very congenial to our language, had not been confined to the author. Indeed, in most similar cases, the inventors of such novelties have their reputation destroyed by their own imitators, as Acteon fell under the fury of his own dogs. The present author, like Bobadil, had taught his trick of fence to a hundred gentlemen (and ladies), who could fence very nearly or quite as well as himself. For this there was no remedy; the harmony became tiresome and ordinary, and both the original inventor and his invention must have fallen into contempt if he had not found out another road to public favor. What has been said of the metre only, must be considered to apply equally to the structure of the Poem and of the style. The very best passages of any popular style are not, perhaps, susceptible of imitation, but they may be approached by men of talent; and those who are less able to copy them, at least lay hold of their peculiar features, so as to produce a strong burlesque. In either way, the effect of the manner is rendered cheap and common; and, in the latter case, ridiculous to boot. The evil consequences to an author's reputation are at least as fatal as

those which come upon the musical composer when his melody falls into the hands of the street ballad-singer.

Of the unfavorable species of imitation, the author's style gave room to a very large number, owing to an appearance of facility to which some of those who used the measure unquestionably leaned too far. The effect of the more favorable imitatious, composed by persons of talent, was almost equally unfortunate to the original minstrel, by showing that they could overshoot him with his own bow. In short, the popularity which once attended the School, as it was called, was now fast decaying.

Besides all this, to have kept his ground at the crisis when Rokeby appeared, its author ought to have put forth his utmost strength, and to have possessed at least all his original advantages, for a mighty and unexpected rival was advancing on the stage, - a rival not in poetical powers only, but in that art of attracting popularity, in which the present writer had hitherto preceded better men than himself. The reader will easily see that Byron is here meant, who, after a little velitation of no great promise, now appeared as a serious candidate, in the first two cantos of Childe Harold. I was astonished at the power evinced by that work, which neither the Hours of Idleness, nor the English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, had prepared me to expect from its author. There was a depth in his thought, an eager abundance in his diction, which argued full confidence in the inexhaustible resources of which he felt himself possessed, and there was some appearance of that labor of the file, which indicates that the author is conscious of the necessity of doing every justice to his work, that it may pass warrant. Lord Byron was also a traveller, a man whose ideas were fired by having seen, in distant scenes of difficulty and danger, the places whose very names are recorded in our bosoms as the shrines of ancient poetry. For his own misfortune, perhaps, but certainly to the high increase of his poetical character, nature had mixed in Lord Byron's system those passions which agitate the human heart with most violence, and which may be said to have hurried his bright career to an early close. There would have been little wisdom in measuring my force with so formidable an antagonist; and I was as likely to tire of playing the second fiddle in the concert, as my audience of hearing me. Age also was advancing. I was growing insensible to those subjects of excitation by which

youth is agitated. I had around me the most pleasant but least exciting of all society, that of kind friends and an affectionate family. My circle of employments was a narrow one; it occupied me constantly, and it became daily more difficult for me to interest myself in poeti cal composition:

How happily the days of Thalaba went by!'

Yet, though conscious that I must be, in the opinion of good judges, inferior to the place I had for four or five years held in letters, and feeling alike that the latter was one to which I had only a temporary right, I could not brook the idea of relinquishing literary occupation, which had been so long my chief diversion. Neither was I disposed to choose the alternative of sinking into a mere editor and commentator, though that was a species of labor which I had practised, and to which I was attached. But I could not endure to think that I might not, whether known or concealed, do something of more importance. My inmost thoughts were those of the Trojan Captain in the galley race: 'Non jam, prima peto. Mnestheus, neque vincere certo, Quanquam O!-sed superent, quibus hoc, Neptune,

6

dedisti;

Extremos pudeat rediisse: hoc vincite, cives, Et prohibete nefas.' 1

En. lib. v. 194.

I had, indeed, some private reasons for my Quanquam O!' which were not worse than those of Mnestheus. I have already hinted that the materials were collected for a poem on the subject of Bruce, and fragments of it had been shown to some of my friends, and received with applause. Notwithstanding, therefore, the eminent success of Byron, and the great chance of his taking the wind out of my sails, there was, I judged, a species of cowardice in desisting from the task which I had undertaken, and it was time enough to retreat when the battle should be more decidedly lost. The sale of Rokeby, excepting as compared with that of The Lady of the Lake, was in the highest degree respectable; and as it included fifteen hundred quartos, in those quarto-reading days, the trade had no reason to be dissatisfied.