in these poems such as we find in Byron, no great force of passion or depth of sentiment, but a sort of harmonious rhythm,—­more highly prized in the earlier part of the century than in the latter, since Wordsworth and Tennyson have made us familiar with what is deeper and richer, as well as more artistic, in language and versification.  But no one has denied Scott’s originality and high merits, in contrast with the pompous tameness and conventionality of the poetry which arose when Johnson was the oracle of literary circles, and which still held the stage in Scott’s day.

Even Scott’s admirers, however, like Canning and Ellis, did not hesitate to say that they would like something different from anything he had already written.  But this was not to be; and perhaps the reason why he soon after gave up writing poetry was the conviction that his genius as a poet did not lie in variety and richness, either of style or matter.  His great fame was earned by his novels.

One thing greatly surprises me:  Scott regarded Joanna Baillie as the greatest poetical genius of that day, and be derived more pleasure from reading Johnson’s “London” and “The Vanity of Human Wishes” than from any other poetical composition.  Indeed, there is nothing more remarkable in literary history than Scott’s admiration of poetry inferior to his own, and his extraordinary modesty in the estimate of his own productions.  Most poets are known for their morbid vanity, their self-consciousness, their feeling of superiority, and their depreciation of superior excellence; but Scott had eminently a healthy mind, as he had a healthy body, and shrank from exaggeration as he did from vulgarity in all its forms.  It is probable that his own estimate of his poetry was nearer the truth than that of his admirers, who were naturally inclined to be partial.

There has been so much poetry written since “The Lady of the Lake” was published,—­not only by celebrated poets like Wordsworth, Southey, Moore, Byron, Campbell, Keats, Shelley, Tennyson, Browning, Longfellow, Lowell, Whittier, Bryant, but also by many minor authors,—­that the standard is now much higher than it was in the early part of the century.  Much of that which then was regarded as very fine is now smiled at by the critics, and neglected by cultivated readers generally; and Scott has not escaped unfavorable criticism.

It has been my object to present the subject of this Lecture historically rather than critically,—­to show the extraordinary popularity of Scott as a poet among his contemporaries, rather than to estimate his merit at the present time.  I confess that most of “Marmion,” as also of the “Lady of the Lake,” is tame to me, and deficient in high poetic genius.  Doubtless we are all influenced by the standards of our own time, and the advances making in literature as well as in science and art.  Yet this change in the opinions of critics does not apply to Byron’s “Childe Harold,”