Page:Marmion - Walter Scott (ed. Bayne, 1889).pdf/20

xiv declining years—"Oh, man, I had many a grand gallop among these braes when I was thinking of 'Marmion,' but a trotting canny pony must serve me now." His friend, Mr. Skene, however, informs me that many of the more energetic descriptions, and particularly that of the battle of Flodden, were struck out while he was in quarters again with his cavalry, in the autumn of 1807. "In the intervals of drilling," he says, "Scott used to delight in walking his powerful black steed up and down by himself upon the Portobello sands, within the beating of the surge; and now and then you would see him plunge in his spurs and go off as if at the charge, with the spray dashing about him. As we rode back to Musselburgh, he often came and placed himself beside me to repeat the verses that he had been composing during these pauses of our exercise."'

This is wholly in keeping with the production of such poetry of movement as that of 'Marmion,' and it deserves its due place in estimating the work of Scott, just as Wordsworth's staid and sober walks around his garden, or among the hills by which he was surrounded, are carefully considered in connexion with his deliberate, meditative verse. Scott wrote the Introduction to Canto IV just a year after he had begun the poem, and between that time and the middle of February 1808 the work was finished. There is no rashness in saying that rapidity of production did not detract from excellence of result. Indeed, it is admiration rather than criticism that is challenged by the reflection that, in these short months, the poet should have turned out so much verse of high and enduring quality.

'Marmion' is avowedly a descriptive poem. It is a series of skilful and impressive pictures, not only remarkable in themselves, but conspicuous in their own kind in poetical literature. Scott is said to have been deficient, or at any rate imperfectly trained, in certain sense activities, but there