He might have added that any modification of the hero’s guilt would have entirely altered the character of the poem, and might have ruined it altogether.  He had never, apparently, gone into the question thoroughly after his first impressions of the type of knights existing in feudal times, for though he states that ’similar instances were found, and might be quoted,’ he is inclined to admit that the attribution of forgery was a ‘gross defect.’  Readers interested in the subject will find by reference to Pike’s ’History of Crime,’ i. 276, that Scott was perfectly justified in his assumption that a feudal knight was capable of forgery.  Those who understand how intimate his knowledge was of the period with which he was dealing will, of course, be the readiest to believe him rather than his critics; but when he seems doubtful of himself, and ready to yield the point, it is well that the strength of his original position can thus be supported by the results of recent investigation.

Jeffrey, in the Edinburgh Review, not being able to understand and appreciate this new devotion to romance, and probably stimulated by his misreading of the reference to Fox in the Introduction to Canto I, did his utmost to cast discredit on ‘Marmion.’  Scott was too large a man to confound the separate spheres of Politics and Literature; whereas it was frequently the case with Jeffrey—­as, indeed, it was to some extent with literary critics on the other side as well—­to estimate an author’s work in reference to the party in the State to which he was known to belong.  It was impossible to deny merits to Scott’s descriptions, and the extraordinary energy of the most striking portions of the Poem, but Jeffrey groaned over the inequalities he professed to discover, and lamented that the poet should waste his strength on the unprofitable effort to resuscitate an old-fashioned enthusiasm.  They had been the best of friends previously—­and Scott, as we have seen, worked for the Edinburgh Review—­but it was now patent that the old literary intimacy could not pleasantly continue.  Nor is it surprising that Scott should have felt that the Edinburgh Review had become too autocratic, and that he should have given a helping hand towards the establishing of the Quarterly Review, as a political and literary organ necessary to the balance of parties.

V. THE TEXT OF THE POEM.

Scott himself revised ‘Marmion’ in 1831, and the interleaved copy which he used formed the basis of the text given by Lockhart in the uniform edition of the Poetical Works published in 1833.  This will remain the standard text.  It is that which is followed in the present volume, in which there will be found only three—­in reality only two—­important instances of divergence from Lockhart’s readings.  The earlier editions have been collated with that of 1833, and Mr. W. J. Rolfe’s careful and scholarly Boston edition has likewise been consulted.  It has