The success of Marmion encouraged Scott to produce another poem, and in May, 1810, was published The Lady of the Lake, which met with equal favour. In the preface to his new poem Walter Scott made the following sensible remarks:—
“If a man is determined to make a noise in the world, he is as sure to encounter abuse and ridicule, as he who gallops furiously through a village, must reckon on being followed by the curs in full cry. Experienced persons know, that in stretching to flog the latter, the rider is very apt to catch a bad fall; nor is an attempt to chastise a malignant critic attended with less danger to the author. On this principle I let parody, burlesque, and squibs, find their own level; and while the latter hissed most fiercely, I was cautious never to catch them up, as school-boys do, to throw them back against the naughty boy who fired them off, wisely remembering that they are in such cases apt to explode in the handling.”
The philosophical temperament of which he here boasts was soon put to a severe test, for George Colman the younger produced a parody in which every technical blemish in The Lady of the Lake was mercilessly ridiculed, and every improbability maliciously exaggerated, whilst Scott’s long Notes on antiquarian and philological topics were imitated with very comical mock gravity. This clever satire was entitled, “The Lady of the Wreck; or Castle Blarneygig,” by George Colman the younger, inscribed to the author of “The Lady of the Lake.” This poem was published by Longmans and Co., London, and was illustrated by some curious and very well executed little woodcuts. The scene of the story is laid in Ireland, and the author thus explains his reason for selecting that country:—
“Let not the reader, whose senses have been delightfully intoxicated by that Scottish Circe, the “Lady of the Lake,” accuse the present author of plagiary. The wild Irish and wild Caledonians bore a great resemblance to each other, in very many particulars; and two Poets, who have any “method in their madness,” may, naturally, fall into similar strains of wildness, when handling subjects equally wild and remote. ’Tis a wild world, my masters! The author of this work has merely adopted the style which a northern Genius has, of late, rendered the Fashion, and the Rage. He has attempted, in this instance, to become a maker of the Modern-Antique; a vendor of a new coinage, begrim’d with the ancient ærugo; a constructor of the dear pretty sublime, and sweet little grand; a writer of a short epick poem, stuff’d with romantick knick-knackeries, and interlarded with songs and ballads, à la mode de Chevy Chase, Edom o’ Gordon, Sir Launcelot du Lake, &c., &c. How is such a writer to be class’d?”
Scott’s descriptions of scenery, his love of sport, and chivalrous tone are all, in this burlesque, reduced to a very prosaic level; thus the lines in Canto I commencing:—
“The stag at eve had drunk his fill,
Where danced the moon on Monan’s rill,
And deep his midnight lair had made
In lone Glenartney’s hazel shade.”
are, by Colman, rendered thus:—