INTRODUCTION.

ROKEBY is a poem that has never been as great a favourite as it deserves to be. The undeserved neglect from which it has suffered is due to the time of its publication, which was doubly unfortunate. Under any circumstances Scott would have found it an extremely difficult task to produce a new poem that could successfully rival the attractions of The Lay, Marmion, and The Lady of the Lake. Each of these three poems had marvellously excited the enthusiasm of the reading public by inseparably connecting the castles, hills, lakes, and valleys of Scotland with historical and legendary associations. But as in these three fine poems he had to a certain extent exhausted the sources of inspiration to be found in the legends and picturesque beauty of his native land, he determined, for a change, to cross the border and chose the north of England as the scene of his next poem. In so doing he sacrificed the advantages that the expression of intense patriotic feeling had given him in his previous works. The general excellence of Rokeby could not have entirely compensated for this great loss, even if there had been no other disadvantage to contend with. Unfortunately, however, there was another and still more serious impediment in the way of the popularity of Rokeby. If he wished to

maintain his high reputation, Scott had at this date not only to equal or surpass his own previous efforts, but also to compete with Byron at a time when that poet's great genius was just beginning to take the world by storm. As we are reminded in the retrospective introduction to Rokeby, written seventeen years after its original publication, "a mighty and unexpected rival was advancing on the stage-a rival not in poetical powers only, but in that art of attracting popularity," in which Scott, with characteristic modesty, declares himself to have "preceded better men than himself." The first two cantos of Childe Harold had appeared in the spring of 1812, and been greeted with such a sudden outburst of enthusiastic applause that, as the author himself said without exaggeration, he "awoke one morning and found himself famous." Still more fatal to the popularity of Rokeby was the publication of the Giaour, the first of Byron's poetic romances, in the spring of 1813. This poem being a romance interspersed with beautiful descriptions of scenery, and written in the metre of Scott's longer poems, more particularly challenged comparison with Scott's works, and in the competition for popular favour won the day. Such a result is not to be wondered at, but must not be regarded as a proof that the Giaour is a finer poem than Rokeby. It would be more reasonable to attribute Byron's greater popularity at the commencement of his poetical career to the charm of novelty and the natural inclination to worship the rising sun. The resemblance between the poetical romances of Scott and Byron is only superficial. Both excel in describing scenery. But Byron's gorgeous descriptions of the sunny shores and seas of southern Europe are very different from

the fresh open-air simplicity with which Scott depicted the highlands and lowlands of Scotland. Still greater is the contrast between Scott's hardy warriors and the gloomy introspective heroes of Byron, whose actions are mainly guided by passionate love, or still more passionate jealousy. The greater prominence given to love and its attendant passions by one who knew well their intensity was an agreeable variety to readers of poetry accustomed in Scott's poems to regard battle as alone fit to be the main subject of interest in narrative poems. Love depicted with oriental voluptuousness for a time entirely captivated the reading public of England, who were perhaps getting a little tired of participating with Scott in the exciting incidents of rough feudal warfare. Thus it was that Rokeby, though it did not fail to command an extensive sale, nevertheless cannot be said to have won anything like the acclamation that had greeted the appearance of the three earlier poems by which Scott had won and established his renown as a brilliant narrative poet. Nor could it successfully rival the immense popularity secured by Byron's first longer poems.

But, for all that, Rokeby is a very fine poem, quite able to bear comparison with the very best achievements of its author's genius. Scott has interspersed among all his narrative fictions fine lyrics, but in no other of his works does he introduce so many beautiful songs as are found in Rokeby. Nor is the poem by any means deficient in narrative and descriptive power, although it is difficult to extract from it such brilliant passages as are culled from Scott's earlier poems and find their place in every poetical anthology. To appreciate the excellence of Rokeby, the poem must be judged as a whole.