"
After the "Lay" came "Marmion, a Tale of Flodden Field." It is far
more ambitious and complicated than the "Lay," and is not much worse
written. Sir Walter was ever a rapid and careless poet, and as he
took more pains with his plot, he took less with his verse. His
friends reproved him, but he answered to one of them -
"Since oft thy judgment could refine
My flattened thought and cumbrous line,
Still kind, as is thy wont, attend,
And in the minstrel spare the friend:
Though wild as cloud, as stream, as gale,
Flow forth, flow unrestrained, my tale!"
Any one who knows Scott's country knows how cloud and stream and
gale all sweep at once down the valley of Ettrick or of Tweed. West
wind, wild cloud, red river, they pour forth as by one impulse--
forth from the far-off hills. He let his verse sweep out in the
same stormy sort, and many a "cumbrous line," many a "flattened
thought," you may note, if you will, in "Marmion." For example -
"And think what he must next have felt,
At buckling of the falchion belt."
The "Lay" is a tale that only verse could tell; much of "Marmion"
might have been told in prose, and most of "Rokeby." But prose
could never give the picture of Edinburgh, nor tell the tale of
Flodden Fight in "Marmion," which I verily believe is the best
battle-piece in all the poetry of all time, better even than the
stand of Aias by the ships in the Iliad, better than the slaying of
the Wooers in the Odyssey.
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