This poem, with 236, exemplifies the peculiar skill with which Scott employs proper names: nor is there a surer sign of high poetical genius.
Poem 191.
The Editor in this and in other instances has risked the addition (or the change) of a Title, that the aim of the verses following may be grasped more clearly and immediately.
Poem 198.
Nature's Eremite: refers to the fable of the Wandering Jew.—This beautiful sonnet was the last word of a poet deserving the title "marvellous boy" in a much higher sense than Chatterton. If the fulfilment may ever safely be prophesied from the promise, England appears to have lost in Keats one whose gifts in Poetry have rarely been surpassed. Shakespeare, Milton, and Wordsworth, had their lives been closed at twenty-five, would (so far as we know) have left poems of less excellence and hope than the youth who, from the petty school and the London surgery, passed at once to a place with them of "high collateral glory."
Poem 201.
It is impossible not to regret that Moore has written so little in this sweet and genuinely national style.
Poem 202.
A masterly example of Byron's command of strong thought and close reasoning in verse:—as the next is equally characteristic of Shelley's wayward intensity, and 204 of the dramatic power, the vital identification of the poet with other times and characters, in which Scott is second only to Shakespeare.
Poem 209.