critic of the war uses his material as Burke or Grattan (perhaps exaggeratively) would have used it—­the speaker is content with facts and expositions of facts.  In another age he might have risen and hurled that great song in prose, perfect as prose and yet rising into a chant, which Meg Merrilees hurled at Ellangowan, at the rulers of Britain:  ’Ride your ways, Laird of Ellangowan; ride your ways, Godfrey Bertram—­this day have ye quenched seven smoking hearths.  See if the fire in your ain parlour burns the blyther for that.  Ye have riven the thack of seven cottar houses.  Look if your ain roof-tree stands the faster for that.  Ye may stable your stirks in the sheilings of Dern-cleugh.  See that the hare does not couch on the hearthstane of Ellangowan.  Ride your ways, Godfrey Bertram.’

The reason is, of course, that these men are afraid of bombast and Scott was not.  A man will not reach eloquence if he is afraid of bombast, just as a man will not jump a hedge if he is afraid of a ditch.  As the object of all eloquence is to find the least common denominator of men’s souls, to fall just within the natural comprehension, it cannot obviously have any chance with a literary ambition which aims at falling just outside it.  It is quite right to invent subtle analyses and detached criticisms, but it is unreasonable to expect them to be punctuated with roars of popular applause.  It is possible to conceive of a mob shouting any central and simple sentiment, good or bad, but it is impossible to think of a mob shouting a distinction in terms.  In the matter of eloquence, the whole question is one of the immediate effect of greatness, such as is produced even by fine bombast.  It is absurd to call it merely superficial; here there is no question of superficiality; we might as well call a stone that strikes us between the eyes merely superficial.  The very word ‘superficial’ is founded on a fundamental mistake about life, the idea that second thoughts are best.  The superficial impression of the world is by far the deepest.  What we really feel, naturally and casually, about the look of skies and trees and the face of friends, that and that alone will almost certainly remain our vital philosophy to our dying day.

Scott’s bombast, therefore, will always be stirring to anyone who approaches it, as he should approach all literature, as a little child.  We could easily excuse the contemporary critic for not admiring melodramas and adventure stories, and Punch and Judy, if he would admit that it was a slight deficiency in his artistic sensibilities.  Beyond all question, it marks a lack of literary instinct to be unable to simplify one’s mind at the first signal of the advance of romance.  ’You do me wrong,’ said Brian de Bois-Guilbert to Rebecca.  ’Many a law, many a commandment have I broken, but my word, never.’  ‘Die,’ cries Balfour of Burley to the villain in ‘Old Mortality.’  ’Die, hoping nothing, believing nothing—­’ ‘And fearing nothing,’ replies the other.  This is the old and honourable fine art of bragging, as it was practised by the great worthies of antiquity.  The man who cannot appreciate it goes along with the man who cannot appreciate beef or claret or a game with children or a brass band.  They are afraid of making fools of themselves, and are unaware that that transformation has already been triumphantly effected.