"Which could yon oak's prone trunk uprear."
Nor can I pass the compliment to Scott's own fair patroness, where Lucy's admirer is made to confess, with some momentary lapse of gallantry, that he
"Ne'er won—best meed to minstrel true—
One favoring smile from fair Buccleuch;"
nor the burst of genuine Borderism,—
"Bewcastle now must keep the hold,
Speir-Adam's steeds must bide in stall,
Of Hartley-burn the bowmen bold
Must only shoot from battled wall;
And Liddesdale may buckle spur,
And Teviot now may belt the brand,
Tarras and Ewes keep nightly stir,
And Eskdale foray Cumberland."
But, above all, the choice of the scenery, both of the Introductions and of the story itself, reveals the early and treasured predilections of the poet. For who that remembers the circumstances of his first visit to the vale of St. John, but must see throughout the impress of his own real romance? I own I am not without a suspicion that, in one passage, which always seemed to me a blot upon the composition—that in which Arthur derides the military coxcombries of his rival—
"Who comes in foreign trashery
Of tinkling chain and spur,
A walking haberdashery
Of feathers, lace, and fur;
In Rowley's antiquated phrase,
Horse-milliner of modern days"—
there is a sly reference to the incidents of a certain ball, of August, 1797, at the Gilsland Spa.[20]
Among the more prominent Erskinisms, are the eulogistic mention of Glasgow, the scene of Erskine's education; and the lines on Collins—a supplement to whose Ode on the Highland Superstitions is, as far as I know, the only specimen that ever was published of Erskine's verse.[21]
As a whole, The Bridal of Triermain appears to me as characteristic of Scott as any of his larger poems. His genius pervades and animates it beneath a thin and playful veil, which perhaps adds as much of grace as it takes away of splendor. As Wordsworth says of the eclipse on the lake of Lugano—