SCOTT LAY OF THE LAST MINSTREL EDITED WITH PREFACE AND NO TES BY W. MINTO, M. A. PROFESSOR OF LOGIC AND ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN Oxford AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 1886 [All rights reserved] EDITOR'S PREFACE. SIR WALTER SCOTT made a great reputation by his metrical romances before he began to write romances in prose, and 'The Lay of the Last Minstrel,' published in 1805, when the author was in his thirty-fourth year, was the first of his metrical romances. It became more immediately and widely popular than any poem ever published before. It came upon the ear of the world like a strain from a long-forgotten instrument suddenly taken up by a natural master, and played with surpassing skill and spontaneous unaffected rapture. It was as if men had all of a sudden, while they were bent soberly over their every-day work, heard a flourish of trumpets and looked up in amazement to see before them a procession of strange and dazzling figures out of the past centuries,―mail-clad knights, courteous squires, hardy yeomen, fair ladies, bowmen, bloodhounds, impish dwarfs and wizards. The novel metre of the 'Lay' added to the charm of the novel matter. It was quick, lively, varied—a contrast to the solemn, majestic, monotonous measures used in the serious poetry of the eighteenth century. To complete the influence of the new poet, it so happened that his countrymen were in circumstances peculiarly disposing them to listen to him. England was then in a heroic mood. Napoleon was thundering at the gates. We were in the heat of a struggle for existence. Branksome Hall, with its warriors keeping watch day and night in complete mail, was a picturesque image of the England of 1805. Circumstances were thus favourable to the Minstrel's advent; but, indeed, a poem so full of fresh and vigorous action, and universally intelligible feeling, must have been popular in any age and any circumstances. Commentary on a poem so simple, hearty, and energetic is not likely to be read, but, for the sake of the student, one may put together a few notes on its history and disputable points connected with its structure and relations to other literature. |