Onward

James meets Ellen (Lady of the Lake, Canto I)

[Image source: http://austenfamilyalbumquilt.blogspot.com/2014/11/block-31-lady-of-lake-for-sir-walter.html . An American silk painting, early 19th C.]

Scott spent an intensive six months composing The Lady of the Lake. When it was published in 1810 it was a sensational best-seller, his greatest success to date. It was the poem that introduced Scott to a European audience. For more than a century it was frequently studied in schools. For William J. Rolfe, a headmaster in Cambridge, Mass., reading The Lady of the Lake needed no justification. It sat easily beside Virgil, Shakespeare and Milton: a precious cargo of the most universal and most profound pleasures that poetry can give. He doesn't say this, but he shows it on every page of his lovingly assembled notes. 

[The Lady of the Lake, complete online text with notes by William J. Rolfe (1883, incorporating notes by Scott, Lockhart and R. W. Taylor (1875)):

https://www.poetrynook.com/story/lady-lake

-- Unfortunately the text that Rolfe collated so carefully is now dusted with a few OCR errors.

]

Today, however, few poetry fans have even heard of The Lady of the Lake and fewer still have contemplated reading it. Which is a shame, because reading it is a dazzling experience.

The few modern discussions I've been able to find are ultimately preoccupied (even if they seem to ignore it) with the problem of how a poem such as this can be brought into line with our own expectations of what poetry ought to be offering us; a problem that for Rolfe and others simply didn't exist. 

Though, of course, there were early rumblings about whether this was really poetry at all. That always happens if a poem is unduly popular. And when the poem reached Italy (as recounted by Mary E. Ambrose, see end of post for details), classicist critics took exception to it being cast as a poema, that is, an epic poem. 

But if The Lady of the Lake eludes us today, it's most likely because life itself eludes our ever more virtualized existences: because we're no longer attuned to some things that everyone used to see. After being immersed in the poem so long, I've found it resonate suddenly amid scenes of bustling activity. For instance picking up children from school: this poetry giving meaning to a formless daily scene of wedged cars, converging people and voices.

HARP of the North! that mouldering long hast hung

On the witch-elm that shades Saint Fillan's spring,

And down the fitful breeze thy numbers flung,

Till envious ivy did around thee cling,

Muffling with verdant ringlet every string, --

O Minstrel Harp, still must thine accents sleep?

Mid rustling leaves and fountains murmuring,

Still must thy sweeter sounds their silence keep,

Nor bid a warrior smile, nor teach a maid to weep?

Not thus, in ancient days of Caledon,

Was thy voice mute amid the festal crowd,

When lay of hopeless love, or glory won,

Aroused the fearful, or subdued the proud.

At each according pause, was heard aloud

Thine ardent symphony sublime and high !

Fair dames and crested chiefs attention bow'd;

For still the burden of thy minstrelsy

Was Knighthood's dauntless deed, and Beauty's matchless eye.

 

O, wake once more ! how rude soe'er the hand

That ventures o'er thy magic maze to stray ;

O, wake once more ! though scarce my skill command

Some feeble echoing of thine earlier lay :

Though harsh and faint, and soon to die away,

And all unworthy of thy nobler strain,

Yet if one heart throb higher at its sway,

The wizard note has not been touch'd in vain.

Then silent be no more ! Enchantress, wake again !

(Canto I, Prelude)

In these introductory stanzas, addressed to the Harp of the North, Scott placed his poem in an ancient tradition that compelled attention because of its subject matter ("Knighthood's dauntless deed, and Beauty's matchless eye") and because of the accompanying music of the harp ("Thine ardent symphony sublime and high"). To partake in those delights inspired socially valuable feelings ("Aroused the fearful, or subdued the proud"). But now the tradition had fallen into decay, and Scott could only hope for "Some feeble echoing of thine earlier lay". This is a poetic that pitches the art as both celebration and social ceremony. It's a poetic that's offered playfully: its imagined tradition is in part a historical fantasy combining courtly and popular practices, continental romance and native ballad, as Scott well knew. And anyway his poem of 1810 stood at a large remove from it. Reading The Lady of the Lake was as likely to be solitary as communal (though not so inevitably as today). There was no literal harp symphony in 1810; just Scott's own verbal music, resounding in his readers' imaginations. Nevertheless the suggestion of building a social consensus was indeed at the heart of the enterprise. We can hear, in this most grounded of Scott's poems, the author seeking to promote mutual respect and understanding across cultural and social barriers (between highland and court, or the rulers and the ruled) by invoking shared appreciation of e.g. nature and landscape, common aspirations (love, honour) and common experience (weddings, funerals); by allowing different manners to be displayed and different views to be expressed without judgement (e.g. in the debate between James and Roderick).

*

The title posits an image of timeless stillness and tranquillity. But in Scott's imagination life is always movement. Even Ellen on her skiff is in motion, glowing with "the sportive toil". And in fact the poem portrays dynamic change. The lives of all the main characters change dramatically. The vision of Ellen on her skiff has an eternal dimension, but by the end of the poem we can see that it belongs to an era already past. It's a point subtly underlined by the poem's abandonment of its highland setting in the later cantos. 

"Onward" (I.13): it describes The Lady of the Lake in a single word: both the propulsive movement of the verse and the drive of the narrative. 

Here, for example, is Duncan's funeral at Duncraggan being interrupted by the summons to war.

XVII.

See Stumah, who, the bier beside

His master's corpse with wonder eyed,

Poor Stumah! whom his least halloo

Could send like lightning o'er the dew,

Bristles his crest, and points his ears,

As if some stranger step he hears.

'Tis not a mourner's muffled tread,

Who comes to sorrow o'er the dead,

But headlong haste, or deadly fear,

Urge the precipitate career.

All stand aghast: -- unheeding all,

The henchman bursts into the hall;

Before the dead man's bier he stood,

Held forth the Cross besmear'd with blood;

"The muster-place is Lanrick mead ;

Speed forth the signal! clansmen, speed!"

XVIII,

Angus, the heir of Duncan's line,

Sprung forth and seized the fatal sign.

In haste the stripling to his side

His father's dirk and broadsword tied ;

But when he saw his mother's eye

Watch him in speechless agony,

Back to her opened arms he flew

Pressed on her lips a fond adieu, --

"Alas!" she sobbed, -- "and yet be gone,

And speed thee forth, like Duncan's son!"

One look he cast upon the bier,

Dashed from his eye the gathering tear,

Breathed deep to clear his labouring breast,

And tossed aloft his bonnet crest.

Then, like the high-bred colt, when, freed,

First he essays his fire and speed,

He vanish'd, and o'er moor and moss

Sped forward with the Fiery Cross.

Suspended was the widow's tear

While yet his footsteps she could hear ;

And when she mark'd the henchman's eye

Wet with unwonted sympathy,

"Kinsman," she said, "his race is run

That should have sped thine errand on ;

The oak has fall'n, -- the sapling bough 

Is all Duncraggan's shelter now.

Yet trust I well, his duty done,

The orphan's God will guard my son. --

And you, in many a danger true,

At Duncan's hest your blades that drew,

To arms, and guard that orphan's head!

Let babes and women wail the dead."

Then weapon-clang and martial call

Resounded through the funeral hall,

While from the walls the attendant band

Snatch'd sword and targe, with hurried hand ;

And short and flitting energy

Glanced from the mourner's sunken eye,

As if the sounds to warrior dear

Might rouse her Duncan from his bier.

But faded soon that borrowed force,

Grief claim'd his right, and tears their course.

XIX.

Benledi saw the Cross of Fire,

It glanced like lightning up Strath-Ire.

O'er dale and hill the summons flew,

Nor rest nor pause young Angus knew ;

The tear that gather'd in his eye

He left the mountain breeze to dry ;

Until, where Teith's young waters roll, ...

(III.17-19)

The Lady of the Lake was in six cantos, each of around 30 lengths like the two-and-a-bit that I've just quoted. These lengths are like roughly equal-sized paragraphs or portions of verse. Thus an inset ballad like "Alice Brand" occupies four of these lengths (IV.12-15). You could say that these lengths are like the steady ticking of a clock. For, as Scott took care to point out in his headnote, each canto corresponds to a day. Hence each canto begins with dawn (the smoky city dawn of the final canto is in marked contrast to the others). As often in Scott, his landscapes are portrayed in perpetually fine weather. Six days without any rain, albeit in high summer, would really be quite unusual in the Highlands. Only the poem's numerous references to dewdrops remind us that such fresh landscapes depend on almost daily drenchings.

The linearity of motion applies in space as well as time. The reader follows the various characters back and forth along what is mostly an east-west axis between Stirling in the lowlands and Loch Katrine deep in the highlands. This linearity matches the shape of the narrow valleys through less accessible mountain country. I've summarized the very detailed topography of the poem below.

In Canto III, Roderick orders the "Cross of Fire" (it is not actually alight) to be sent forth to summon his clan to a muster point. It occured to me that it would surely have been quicker to send out several crosses in different directions. I still think so, but when you consider the linear nature of the valleys where the clan lived, the single line of summons becomes a bit more understandable. 

The first human figure that we see moving along the E-W line is a hunter pursuing a stag. Even before we discover that he is the disguised King James, it's hard not to feel the symbolic implications of this and other incursions from the east, whether for the sake of pleasure, sex or aggression. When James sees Loch Katrine for the first time, his rapture is expressed as how it might be exploited. 

And "What a scene were here," he cried,

For princely pomp or churchman's pride ! ..."

(I.15)

And though the story is set in the sixteenth century and not the eighteenth, it's hard not to feel the same undertow as in Waverley, of lament for a clan life and culture on the verge of being washed away by history. 

After all, Scott called them the Clan Alpine, borrowing the name of a shadowy ur-clan who lay behind several later clans, most appositely the Clan MacGregor, who were themselves proscribed and persecuted until his own lifetime. 

The battle between clan and king's forces freezes, still undecided, when James' belated message arrives. The first hostile incursor to the islet has just been struck down by Duncan's widow. 

Nevertheless the implications are plain that this is a struggle the highlanders can only lose -- if not now, then soon. Their leader is dead. Brian's prophecy was that the outcome would be shown by the identity of the first casualty: and that was a highlander. Roderick himself (in the debate with James) makes clear that the highlanders can never match the wealth and power of the lowlands. Even before that, Ellen's rejection of marriage with him, his own unstable temperament, all point the same way. So Rossini's librettist, when he converted the battle into an outright defeat for the highlanders, was in tune with the poem's underlying logic. 

*

The story is a fiction but the context is historical, specifically the downfall of the powerful "race of Douglas" during the latter part of the reign of James V (1513-1542), the young king's hostility extending even to those who gave them shelter. (However the Douglas of the poem, like his daughter Ellen, is invented.)

The story also alludes to the tradition of James V being addicted to wandering incognito through his own lands. Perhaps his real motives related to the large number of illegitimate children he seems to have fathered. The poem refers to James' reputation for gallantry when he tries to seduce Ellen (IV.17-18). 

When Scott represents James as selflessly concerned for his subjects' welfare and finally reconciled with Douglas, romance has taken over from history.

*

Scott's powers are most fully displayed not in Waverley or any of its successors but in The Lady of the Lake. Discuss. 

Well, that's not an entirely serious contention. But I'm awed by the poem's display of energy, fullness and precision engineering. 

*

Topographical Summary

The reader's attention is carried back and forth on a basically east-west axis. Key locations, running from east to west, are:

Stirling, site of James V's court. 

Doune, where his forces gather (though it's never actually visited by the reader).

A chain of three lochs in the Trossachs region of the highlands: Vennachar, Achray and Katrine. (In the poem "Trosachs" refers more narrowly to the wild glen separating the latter two lochs.)

The modern town of Callander is in the midst of this area, but the poem never mentions it. That might be historically accurate. At the time of the poem's setting (c. 1540) there was a parish of Callander but it may have been more a collective name for estates and farmsteads rather than a definite town. 

Scott knew the area very well, making almost annual visits to Cambusmore (east of Callander) between 1794 and 1810. I'm using his spellings here; some are different today (e.g. "Venachar"). 

Canto I The Chase (Day 1)

The stag, who has spent the night at Glenartney (royal deer forest on the eastern edge of the highlands), flees the hunt to Uam-Var (heath between Callander and Doune, north of river Teith) and then down to Loch Vennachar, heading west, past Brigg of Turk to Loch Achray. At this point the one remaining hunter ("The Knight of Snowdoun, James Fitz-James") loses the stag in the Trosachs glen (8). Now horseless, the hunter finds his way to Loch Katrine (still heading west) where he sees Ellen in her boat and is invited to be a guest on the islet. 

Canto II The Island (Day 2)

Takes place entirely on and beside the islet towards the eastern end of Loch Katrine. 

James departs. With him go his stag-hounds and "a trusty mountain-guide" (6). [We will later find out that he is not trusty. He is the same Red Murdoch who accompanies James on Day 4 (see IV.16), and is under secret orders to Roderick (see IV.7). He falsely assures James that Roderick is far away engaged in a private war (see V.4).] Where does James go now? Presumably back to Stirling, returning to meet his guide two days later.    

Ellen and the aged minstrel Allan Bane talk. Roderick Dhu approaches from the north side of the lake (16), then she hears her father Douglas's bugle and rows over to pick him up from the nearby mainland (21). Douglas is with Malcolm Graeme. He says that they met in Glenfinlas (a valley that runs down from the north to Brigg of Turk) where they nearly ran into a hunting party (26); doubtless these were the hunters of the previous day, searching for their lost companion James. Douglas has been exiled and mustn't be seen. Roderick later says that Douglas was in fact spotted (28). 

Back on the island they meet with Roderick. Roderick's proposal to marry Ellen is refused. He and Malcolm quarrel and nearly fight, and Malcolm leaves alone. Allan offers to row him far up the lake where it will be safer to get away (36), but Malcolm doesn't want to be indebted even for a boat, so he swims straight across to the mainland (37). [According to Douglas, Malcolm is going to Strath-Endrick (26), which lies about 15 miles due south of Loch Katrine. No reason is given for that destination, but we know Malcolm's own lands have been seized by the crown. Anyway, when we next meet him, on Day 6, he's incarcerated in Stirling Castle.]

Canto III The Gathering (Day 3)

The islet. Roderick sends out the "Cross of Fire" to summon the Clan-Alpine. The muster place is to be Lanrick Mead, "a meadow at the northwestern end of Loch Vennachar" (Rolfe). When it's first mentioned we are told "The Fiery Cross should circle o'er / Dale, glen, and valley, down, and moor" (II.36), and that is indeed what happens. The circle runs anti-clockwise. We follow the cross (initially carried by Malise) eastwards to the funeral scene at Duncraggan, "a homestead between Lochs Achray and Vennachar, near the Brigg of Turk" (Rolfe);  then northward to St Brides (the wedding scene) and Strath Ire, both beside Loch Lubnaig. More briefly St 24 describes its subsequent progress to Balquidder (to the north of Benledi), westward past Loch Voil and Loch Doine on the river Balvaig, then finally southward through one of the passes to Strath-Gartney, which lies just to the north of Loch Katrine.

Meanwhile Roderick and retainers have been out on Ben Venue (south of Loch Katrine) securing his western frontier. Douglas and Ellen have retired to Coir-nan-Uriskin, a corrie on the northern side of Ben Venue . In the evening Roderick passes by them on his way back down to the loch. He overhears Ellen singing Ave Maria, and senses it will be the last time he hears her voice (30). His party cross the lake and head east for "the passes of Achray" (see 27), then join his main force at Lanrick Mead (31).

Canto IV The Prophecy (Day 4)

At Lanrick Mead. Malise has been east to spy out the braes of Doune. Roderick decides that the battle will be within the Trosachs glen (8) -- i.e. between Loch Achray and Loch Katrine, westward from his current location. The battle, he thinks, will be "tomorrow noon" i.e. on Day 5. 

The location shifts back to Coir Uriskin (8), where Ellen and Allan are waiting (this is the only significant jump cut in the poem). Douglas has gone on alone. Ellen notes that their fallback meeting place will be Cambuskenneth Abbey, and wonders why (10). James appears (16). [He has left his horses at Bochastle (at the east end of Loch Vennachar) -- he would have seen the mustered clansmen at Lanrick Mead -- and been led here by the same guide who led him out of the area on Day 2.] The purpose of this second visit is to rescue/seduce Ellen. She refuses to go with him, and tells him of her love for Malcolm, which he accepts (18). Ellen casts doubt on the guide Murdoch's good intentions. James moves off with him into the Trosachs glen (20) where they meet the insane Blanche, who likewise warns James. Murdoch tries to kill James and accidentally kills Blanche; James kills Murdoch. James cannot take the known ways and struggles off-piste until he meets and is given overnight hospitality by Roderick in disguise: the location isn't very specific, but is probably high up on the eastern slopes of Ben Venue, south of the chain of lochs. (Coilantogle ford (31), where Roderick says he will escort James the next day, lies at the east end of Loch Vennachar.)

Canto V The Combat (Day 5)

They move along the brow of a precipice (2) above Loch Vennachar, seeing Benledi behind it (3). While they descend a steep pass to lake-level (3) they debate their opposed points of view, and here Roderick reveals himself and his forces surrounding them (9). They reach the foot of the pass and move along "a wide and level green" (11) until they reach Coilantogle ford at the east end of Loch Vennachar (12). Here they fight and Roderick is wounded. We follow James and his followers (and the fatally wounded Roderick) as they race through numerous places (e.g. Doune, Keir) in St 18 to Stirling. As they approach Stirling James spots Douglas making his way from Cambuskenneth. The rest of the canto is located in Stirling (the burghers' sports day). Douglas, after excelling at the sporting contests, reveals himself and is arrested. King James sends word to try to stop the battle, but too late. (The battle in the Trosachs glen takes place -- this is recounted in Canto VI.)

Canto VI The Guard-Room (Day 6). 

The whole canto is set in Stirling Castle, where Douglas, Roderick and Malcolm are incarcerated. Ellen and Allan arrive soon after dawn.

But inset within the canto is Allan's account of yesterday's battle. At Loch Achray he saw the king's forces approaching from the east. At the Trosachs glen they encountered the Clan-Alpine. The minstrel shifted westward on the slopes of Ben Venue to get a view of the Loch Katrine side of the glen. Both forces emerge from the glen, the Clan-Alpine on high ground and the king's forces down by the lake. They send a swimmer over to the islet where the clan's non-combatants are sheltering, but when he arrives he is killed by Duncraggan's widow. At this moment King James' message arrives and the battle abruptly ceases. (Roderick dies while listening to this recitation.)

The action ends with James revealing himself as King James, with pardon for Douglas and with Malcolm's sentence being marriage to his beloved Ellen.

  

Realism

The Lady of the Lake is conspicuously lacking in gothic elements. This, combined with the circumstantial topography and credible natural scenes, creates a bracing effect of realism. Only relatively so, of course. But enough to notice a few points where the narrative stirs questions.

I don't really understand how James' horse dies of exhaustion, yet his two hounds are still with him (I.9). A horse can be galloped to death, but what dog could keep up with such a gallop? 

Why does the unhorsed James, hoping to meet with his "companions of the day" (I.10), take some pains to head west (I.14), instead of going back in the direction he came from?

Scott is very sound on trees, but more careless about flowers. In the Trosach glen he names summer plants (foxglove, nightshade) alongside spring flowers (primrose, violet) (I.12). Even in mountain country where flowering seasons are compressed I'd be surprised to see primrose and nightshade in flower at the same time. 

Where Ellen's hand had taught to twine
The ivy and Idaean vine,
The clematis, the favored flower
Which boasts the name of virgin-bower,
And every hardy plant could bear
Loch Katrine's keen and searching air. (I.26)

It doesn't seem very likely that Ellen could grow a grape vine here. The clematis in question is presumably the native wild clematis Clematis vitalba, but this isn't particularly likely either. It's a calcicole and hence absent from most of Scotland. According to Rolfe, some early readers ingeniously suggested that "Idaean vine" referred to cowberry (lingonberry), to which Linnaeus had assigned the botanical name Vaccinium vitis-idaea in 1753. That would indeed be a very likely plant, common throughout Scotland, but it's a sub-shrub and doesn't twine. I think we must take Ellen's horticulture with a pinch of salt.

In the afternoon of Day 5 Allan Bane witnesses the battle at the Trosachs, yet he and Ellen appear at Stirling Castle (VI.6) soon after dawn on Day 6 -- about 25 miles away. Not impossible, but I wonder how. If they walked it would have taken them all night and they'd have been exhausted. Perhaps they travelled on horseback with the messengers after truce was declared (the "jaded horsemen" of V.33), and snatched some sort of anxious rest that night. Unlike most of the other journeys in the poem, the details of this one are left to our imagination. 

At the sound of the war-muster "The joyous wolf from covert drew" (III.9). That turns out to be historically realistic, at least. Wolves were probably extinct in England by this time, but they still existed in Scotland, and in growing numbers. Mary Queen of Scots hunted them in 1563, and in 1577 an edict in James VI's name made it compulsory to hunt wolves three times a year. The last recorded killing of a Scottish wolf was in 1680. 

*

One of the Europeans who relished the French translation of The Lady of the Lake (Elisabeth de Bon, 1813) was Gioachino Rossini. A few years later the result was his opera La donna del lago, first performed at Naples on 24 September 1819. As Mary E. Ambrose pointed out, the Italian audiences wouldn't have come across Scott before: the first Italian translations were in 1821 (The Lady of the Lake and Kenilworth).

You can watch the whole of it on YouTube, in the 1992 La Scala production conducted by Riccardo Muti, with June Anderson in the role of Elena, Rockwell Blake as Uberto (Giacomo V), Martine DuPuy as Malcom Groeme, Chris Merritt as Rodrigo di Dhu and Giorgio Surjan as Duglas d'Angus. 

The libretto was by Andrea Leone Tottola. There were some inevitable changes to adapt the plot to an operatic context: less social and historical narrative, no breakneck journeys through fells and glens, but more intrigue and more passionate lyricism from Elena and her three admirers. Rossini bathes this world in incessant melody. 

In the opera the disguised king Giacomo is called "Uberto" (you can see why it might have been a bit confusing to have King Giacomo disguised as someone called "Giacomo"). The role of Malcom is for a contralto en travesti (here splendidly sung by mezzo Martine DuPuy). Duglas is reconceived as a father who's out of tune with his daughter, exerting his authority to drive through the dreaded marriage, and telling Rodrigo that her obvious aversion is just modesty. War is mustered but there is no Cross of Fire and the poem's fearsome Brian is transformed into a wholesome Chorus of Bards. The highlanders are decisively routed by the king's forces, unlike in Scott where the battle is suspended while still in the balance. Rodrigo appears late and departs early; his off-stage death is perfunctory compared to its importance in Scott's poem.  

* 

Six years after La donna del lago, Franz Schubert wrote Fräulein am See (Op. 52), seven songs from The Lady of the Lake in German translations by Adam Storck. They are rarely performed as a group, being variously for soprano, baritone, male voice quartet and female choir. But one of them is "Ellens dritter Gesang", much better known as "Ave Maria". The original German lyrics, translating Ellen's "Hymn to the Virgin" (III.29), are most often replaced by the traditional Roman Catholic prayer in Latin. Here's Barbara Bonney singing the original version:

Mary E. Ambrose. “‘La Donna Del Lago’: The First Italian Translations of Scott.” The Modern Language Review, vol. 67, no. 1, Modern Humanities Research Association, 1972, pp. 74–82. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3722387 .  

Interesting article about early responses to Scott in Italy. It took me a while to work out that when Indelicato compares "Fi-gems" to Ariosto's Zerbino, he means Fitz-James! Another commentator, Carlo Varese, pointed out that Rossini's maxim "mantenete il movimento" could have been Scott's maxim too. 

Guest, Ann M. “Imagery of Color and Light in Scott’s Narrative Poems.” Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, vol. 12, no. 4, [Rice University, Johns Hopkins University Press], 1972, pp. 705–20. https://www.jstor.org/stable/449961 .

Notes the variety of colour treatment in Scott's narrative poems. The Lady of the Lake stands out for its "natural hues", for its comparative realism and restraint.

Hubbard, Tom. “‘Bright Uncertainty’: The Poetry of Walter Scott, Landscape, and Europe.” Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies (HJEAS), vol. 13, no. 1/2, Centre for Arts, Humanities and Sciences (CAHS), acting on behalf of the University of Debrecen CAHS, 2007, pp. 49–64. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41274382 . (This is an expanded version of a lunchtime talk given at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in 2005.)

Entertaining wander through Scott's poetry that takes off from an 1810 reviewer's comment (in the Quarterly Review): Scott "sees everything with a painter's eye. Whatever he represents has a character of individuality, and is drawn with an accuracy and minuteness of discrimination which we are not accustomed to expect from verbal description." Hubbard regards Scott's poetry as appealing to the ear rather than the eye, also notes Ruskin's appreciation of Scott's deliberate indistinctness of visual form (which I'm not sure I agree with, especially in this poem).

My other Scott posts