to which Byron yielded his tribute of _The Vampire_. A tempting subject for expatiation, especially when one remembers--and who that has once read it can forget?--the most glorious passage in the _Memoirs_ of Alexandre Dumas describing his first conversation with the unknown gentleman who afterwards turned out to be Charles Nodier, in the theatre of the Porte Saint-Martin where the play was the _Vampire_: from which theatre Charles Nodier was expelled for hissing the _Vampire_, himself being part-author of the marvellous drama. I hope it is not impertinent in a stranger to express his unbounded gratitude for that delightful and most humorous dialogue, in which the history of the Elzevir Press (starting from _Le Pastissier francois_) and the tragedy of the rotifer are so adroitly interwoven with the theatrical scene of Fingal's Cave and its unusual visitors, the whole adventure ending in the happiest laughter over the expulsion of the dramatist. I may not have any right to say so, but I throw myself on the mercy of my hearers: I remember nothing in any chronicle so mercurial or jovial in its high spirits as this story of the first encounter and the beginning of friendship between Charles Nodier and Alexandre Dumas. The Vampire of Staffa may seem rather far from the range of Scott's imagination; but his contributions to Lewis's _Tales of Wonder_ show the risk that he ran, while the White Lady of Avenel in _The Monastery_ proves that even in his best years he was exposed to the hazards of conventional magic. Lockhart has given the history of _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_, how the story developed and took shape. It is not so much an example of Scott's mode of writing poetry as an explanation of his whole literary life. _The Lay of the Last Minstrel_ was his first original piece of any length and his first great popular success. And, as Lockhart has sufficiently shown, it was impossible for Scott to get to it except through the years of exploration and editing, the collection of the Border ballads, the study of the old metrical romance of _Sir Tristrem_. The story of the Goblin Page was at first reckoned enough simply for one of the additions to the Border Minstrelsy on the scale of a ballad. Scott had tried another sort of imitation in the stanzas composed in old English and in the metre of the original to supply the missing conclusion of _Sir Tristrem_. It was not within his scope to write an original romance in the old language, but Coleridge's _Christabel_ was recited to him, and gave him a modern rhythm fit for a long story. So the intended ballad became the _Lay_, taking in, with the legend of Gilpin Horner for a foundation, all the spirit of Scott's knowledge of his own country.