to his friend Mrs. Skene, a wish that she should carry him to renew an acquaintance which seems to have been interrupted from the period of his youthful romance.  Mrs. Skene complied with his desire, and she tells me that a very painful scene ensued.”  His diary says,—­“November 7th.  Began to settle myself this morning after the hurry of mind and even of body which I have lately undergone.  I went to make a visit and fairly softened myself, like an old fool, with recalling old stories till I was fit for nothing but shedding tears and repeating verses for the whole night.  This is sad work.  The very grave gives up its dead, and time rolls back thirty years to add to my perplexities.  I don’t care.  I begin to grow case-hardened, and like a stag turning at bay, my naturally good temper grows fierce and dangerous.  Yet what a romance to tell—­and told I fear it will one day be.  And then my three years of dreaming and my two years of wakening will be chronicled, doubtless.  But the dead will feel no pain.—­November 10th.  At twelve o’clock I went again to poor Lady Jane to talk over old stories.  I am not clear that it is a right or healthful indulgence to be ripping up old sores, but it seems to give her deep-rooted sorrow words, and that is a mental blood-letting.  To me these things are now matter of calm and solemn recollection, never to be forgotten, yet scarce to be remembered with pain."[8] It was in 1797, after the break-up of his hopes in relation to this attachment, that Scott wrote the lines To a Violet, which Mr. F. T. Palgrave, in his thoughtful and striking introduction to Scott’s poems, rightly characterizes as one of the most beautiful of those poems.  It is, however, far from one characteristic of Scott, indeed, so different in style from the best of his other poems, that Mr. Browning might well have said of Scott, as he once affirmed of himself, that for the purpose of one particular poem, he “who blows through bronze,” had “breathed through silver,”—­had “curbed the liberal hand subservient proudly,”—­and tamed his spirit to a key elsewhere unknown.

    “The violet in her greenwood bower,
      Where birchen boughs with hazels mingle,
    May boast itself the fairest flower
      In glen, or copse, or forest dingle.

    “Though fair her gems of azure hue,
      Beneath the dewdrop’s weight reclining,
    I’ve seen an eye of lovelier blue,
      More sweet through watery lustre shining.

    “The summer sun that dew shall dry,
      Ere yet the day be past its morrow;
    Nor longer in my false love’s eye
      Remain’d the tear of parting sorrow.”