Not only does this poem, with the slight exceptions just mentioned, show a gain over the earlier poems in narrative power, but it also marks an advance in character delineation. The characters of the _Lay_ are, with one or two exceptions, mere lay-figures; Lord Cranstoun and Margaret are the most conventional of lovers; William of Deloraine is little more than an animated suit of armor, and the Lady of Branksome, except at one point, when from her walls she defies the English invaders, is nearly or quite featureless. With the characters of _The Lady of the Lake_ the case is very different. The three rivals for Ellen's hand are real men, with individualities which enhance and deepen the picturesqueness of each other by contrast. The easy grace and courtly chivalry, of the disguised King, the quick kindling of his fancy at sight of the mysterious maid of Loch Katrine, his quick generosity in relinquishing his suit when he finds that she loves another, make him one of the most life-like figures of romance. Roderick Dhu, nursing darkly his clannish hatreds, his hopeless love, and his bitter jealousy, with a delicate chivalry sending its bright thread through the tissue of his savage nature, is drawn with an equally convincing hand. Against his gloomy figure the boyish magnanimity of Malcolm Graeme, Ellen's brave faithfulness, made human by a surface play of coquetry, and the quiet nobility of the exiled Douglas, stand out in varied relief. Judged in connection with the more conventional character types of _Marmion_, and with the draped automatons of the _Lay_, the characters of _The Lady of the Lake_ show the gradual growth in Scott of that dramatic imagination which was later to fill the vast scene of his prose romances with unforgettable figures.