The line I have italicized seems to me to have more of the poet’s special magic of expression than is at all usual with Scott.  The conception of the peaceful green oak wood taming the glaring white of the tented field, is as fine in idea as it is in relation to the effect of the mere colour on the eye.  Judge Scott’s poetry by whatever test you will—­whether it be a test of that which is peculiar to it, its glow of national feeling, its martial ardour, its swift and rugged simplicity, or whether it be a test of that which is common to it with most other poetry, its attraction for all romantic excitements, its special feeling for the pomp and circumstance of war, its love of light and colour—­and tested either way, Marmion will remain his finest poem.  The battle of Flodden Field touches his highest point in its expression of stern patriotic feeling, in its passionate love of daring, and in the force and swiftness of its movement, no less than in the brilliancy of its romantic interests, the charm of its picturesque detail, and the glow of its scenic colouring.  No poet ever equalled Scott in the description of wild and simple scenes and the expression of wild and simple feelings.  But I have said enough now of his poetry, in which, good as it is, Scott’s genius did not reach its highest point.  The hurried tramp of his somewhat monotonous metre, is apt to weary the ears of men who do not find their sufficient happiness, as he did, in dreaming of the wild and daring enterprises of his loved Border-land.  The very quality in his verse which makes it seize so powerfully on the imaginations of plain, bold, adventurous men, often makes it hammer fatiguingly against the brain of those who need the relief of a wider horizon and a richer world.

FOOTNOTES: 

[Footnote 12:  Lockhart’s Life of Scott, ii. 217.]

[Footnote 13:  Lockhart’s Life of Scott, ii. 226.]

[Footnote 14:  Lockhart’s Life of Scott, v. 248.]

[Footnote 15:  Lockhart’s Life of Scott, v. 338.]

[Footnote 16:  Lockhart’s Life of Scott, ii. 137.]

[Footnote 17:  Lockhart’s Life of Scott, ii. 259.]

[Footnote 18:  Lockhart’s Life of Scott, iii. 327.]

CHAPTER VI.

COMPANIONS AND FRIENDS.

I have anticipated in some degree, in speaking of Scott’s later poetical works, what, in point of time at least, should follow some slight sketch of his chosen companions, and of his occupations in the first period of his married life.  Scott’s most intimate friend for some time after he went to college, probably the one who most stimulated his imagination in his youth, and certainly one of his most intimate friends to the very last, was William Clerk, who was called to the bar on the same day as Scott.  He was the son of John Clerk of Eldin,