paid Scott 1500 guineas.  If we ask ourselves to what this vast popularity of Scott’s poems, and especially of the earlier of them (for, as often happens, he was better remunerated for his later and much inferior poems than for his earlier and more brilliant productions) is due, I think the answer must be for the most part, the high romantic glow and extraordinary romantic simplicity of the poetical elements they contained.  Take the old harper of The Lay, a figure which arrested the attention of Pitt during even that last most anxious year of his anxious life, the year of Ulm and Austerlitz.  The lines in which Scott describes the old man’s embarrassment when first urged to play, produced on Pitt, according to his own account, “an effect which I might have expected in painting, but could never have fancied capable of being given in poetry."[13]

Every one knows the lines to which Pitt refers:—­

    “The humble boon was soon obtain’d;
    The aged minstrel audience gain’d. 
    But, when he reach’d the room of state,
    Where she with all her ladies sate,
    Perchance he wish’d his boon denied;
    For, when to tune the harp he tried,
    His trembling hand had lost the ease
    Which marks security to please;
    And scenes long past, of joy and pain,
    Came wildering o’er his aged brain,—­
    He tried to tune his harp in vain! 
    The pitying Duchess praised its chime,
    And gave him heart, and gave him time,
    Till every string’s according glee
    Was blended into harmony. 
    And then, he said, he would full fain
    He could recall an ancient strain
    He never thought to sing again. 
    It was not framed for village churls,
    But for high dames and mighty earls;
    He’d play’d it to King Charles the Good,
    When he kept Court at Holyrood;
    And much he wish’d, yet fear’d, to try
    The long-forgotten melody. 
    Amid the strings his fingers stray’d,
    And an uncertain warbling made,
    And oft he shook his hoary head. 
    But when he caught the measure wild
    The old man raised his face, and smiled;
    And lighten’d up his faded eye,
    With all a poet’s ecstasy! 
    In varying cadence, soft or strong,
    He swept the sounding chords along;
    The present scene, the future lot,
    His toils, his wants, were all forgot;
    Cold diffidence and age’s frost
    In the full tide of song were lost;
    Each blank in faithless memory void
    The poet’s glowing thought supplied;
    And, while his harp responsive rung,
    ’Twas thus the latest minstrel sung.

* * * * *

    Here paused the harp; and with its swell
    The master’s fire and courage fell;
    Dejectedly and low he bow’d,
    And, gazing timid on the crowd,
    He seem’d to seek in every eye
    If they approved his minstrelsy;
    And, diffident of present praise,
    Somewhat he spoke of former days,
    And how old age, and wandering long,
    Had done his hand and harp some wrong.”