And the spirit and dash of those four lines were quickly recognized as marking a new power in Scotch letters; and an echo of them, or of their spirit, in some shape or other, may be found, I think, in all his succeeding poems and in all the tumults and struggles of his life. The elder Scott does not like this philandering with rhyme; it will spoil the law, and a solid profession, he thinks; and true enough it does. For the _Border Minstrelsy_ comes spinning its delightfully musical and tender stories shortly after Lenore; and a little later appears his first long poem--the _Lay of the Last Minstrel_--which waked all Scotland and England to the melody of the new master. He was thirty-four then; ripening later than Campbell, who at twenty-one had published his _Pleasures of Hope_. There was no kinship in the methods of the two poets; Campbell all precision, and nice balance, delicate adjustment of language--stepping from point to point in his progress with all grammatic precautions and with well-poised poetic steps and demi-volts, as studied as a dancing master’s; while Scott dashed to his purpose with a seeming abandonment of care, and a swift pace that made the “pebbles fly.” Just as unlike, too, was this racing freedom of Scott’s--which dragged the mists away from the Highlands, and splashed his colors of gray, and of the purple of blooming heather over the moors--from that other strain of verse, with its introspections and deeper folded charms, which in the hands of Wordsworth was beginning to declare itself humbly and coyly, but as yet with only the rarest applause. I cannot make this distinction clearer than by quoting a little landscape picture--let us say from _Marmion_--and contrasting with it another from Wordsworth, which was composed six years or more before _Marmion_ was published. First, then, from Scott--and nothing prettier and quieter of rural sort belongs to him,-- “November’s sky is chill and drear, November’s leaf is red and sear; Late gazing down the steepy linn That hems our little garden in.” (I may remark, in passing, that this is an actual description of Scott’s home surroundings at Ashestiel.) “Low in its dark and narrow glen You scarce the rivulet might ken, So thick the tangled greenwood grew, So feeble trilled the streamlet through; Now, murmuring hoarse, and frequent seen Through brush and briar, no longer green, An angry brook it sweeps the glade, Breaks over rock and wild cascade, And foaming brown with double speed Marries its waters to the Tweed.” There it is--a completed picture; do what you will with it! Reading it, is like a swift, glad stepping along the borders of the brook. Now listen for a little to Wordsworth; it is a scrap from Tintern Abbey:--