as it stands.  Scott wrote with his friends about him, and it was part of his own enjoyment of his work to interest them in what for the time was receiving the main part of his attention.  His talk with Mr. Morritt in front of the little cottage at Lasswade is highly significant as illustrative of his attitude towards his friends.  His healthy, humorous, happy nature wanted sympathy, appreciation, sociality, and good cheer for its complete normal development, and this alone would explain the writing of the Introductions.  But there is more than this.  He talked over his subject and his progress with friends competent to discuss and advise, and he showed them portions of the poem as he advanced.  There are indications in the Introductions of certain discussions that had arisen over his conception and treatment, and surely few readers would like to miss from the volume the clever and humorous apology for his own method which the poet advances in the Introduction to the third canto.  William Erskine, refined critic and life-long friend, is asked to be patient and generous while the poet proceeds in his own way:—­

     ’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 unrestrain’d, my Tale!’

Further, the Introductions do not in any case interrupt the progress of the Poem.  Scott was dealing with a great national theme—­a cause he and his friends could understand and appreciate—­and both before starting and at every pause he has something to say that is apposite and suggestive.  His country’s wintry state is the key-note of the first Introduction, which is an appropriate prelude to a great national tragedy; weird Border legends and the touching and mysterious silences of lone St. Mary’s Lake fitly introduce the ‘mysterious Man of Woe’; the third and the fourth Introductions, with their features of personal interest and their bright reminiscences of ‘tales that charmed’ and scenes on ’the field-day, or the drill,’ are easily connected with the Hostel and the Camp; Spenser’s ‘wandering Squire of Dames,’ the vigorous description of the ‘Queen of the North,’ and the tribute to the notes that ’Marie translated, Blondel sung,’ all tell in their due place as preparatory to the canto on The Court; while the ominous record, emanating from a Yule-tide retreat, could not be more fitly interrupted than by a battle of national disaster.  Scott, then, may have thought of publishing the Introductions separately, but it is well that he ultimately allowed his better judgment to prevail.  It is not necessary to dwell on their special descriptive features, which readily assert themselves and give Scott a high and honoured place among Nature-poets.  His quick and minute observation, his sense of colour and harmonious effects, and his skill of arrangement are admirable throughout.

II.  COMPOSITION OF ‘MARMION.’