Ossian Collection > Aspects of poetry

CHAPTER XIII.
THE HOMERIC SPIRIT IN WALTER SCOTT,
The poetry of Scott is so familiar to all men from
their childhood, the drift of it is so obvious, the mean-
ing seems to lie so entirely on the surface, that it may
appear as if nothing more could be said about it,
nothing which every one did not already know. In the
memory of most men it almost blends with their
nursery rhymes ; their childhood listened to it, their
boyhood revelled in it ; but when they came to man-
hood they desired, perhaps, to put aside such simple
things, and to pass on to something more subtle and
reflective. Yet if we consider the time at which this
poetry appeared, the conditions of the age which pro-
duced it, the great background of history out of which
it grew, and to which it gave new meaning and interest
— if we further compare it with poetry of a like nature
belonging to other nations and ages, and see its likeness
to, and its difference from, their minstrelsies, we shall
perhaps perceive that it has another import and a higher
value than we suspected. As sometimes happens with
persons who have been born and have always lived