I must not, however, forget that The Lord of the Isles was published a month before Guy Mannering. The poem was received with an interest much heightened by the recent and growing success of the mysterious Waverley. Its appearance, so rapidly following that novel, and accompanied with the announcement of another prose tale, just about to be published, by the same hand, puzzled and confounded the mob of dulness.[7] The more sagacious few said to themselves--Scott is making one serious effort more in his old line, and by this it will be determined whether he does or does not altogether renounce that for his new one. [Footnote 7: John Ballantyne put forth the following paragraph in the _Scots Magazine_ of December, 1814:-- "Mr. Scott's poem of _The Lord of the Isles_ will appear early in January. The Author of _Waverley_ is about to amuse the public with a new novel, in three volumes, entitled _Guy Mannering_."] The Edinburgh Review on The Lord of the Isles begins with,-- "Here is another genuine Lay of the Great Minstrel, with all his characteristic faults, beauties, and irregularities. The same glow of coloring--the same energy of narration--the same amplitude of description are conspicuous--with the same still more characteristic disdain of puny graces and small originalities--the true poetical hardihood, in the strength of which he urges on his Pegasus fearlessly through dense and rare, and aiming gallantly at the great ends of truth and effect, {p.020} stoops but rarely to study the means by which they are to be attained; avails himself without scruple of common sentiments and common images wherever they seem fitted for his purpose; and is original by the very boldness of his borrowing, and impressive by his disregard of epigram and emphasis." The conclusion of the contemporaneous article in the Quarterly Review is as follows:--