The news & observer. [volume] (Raleigh, N.C.) 1894-current, 1903-01-04

stinted praise. saintsbury says his poetic
style had absolutely no forerunners;
that his ''poetical work presents ex
amples of certainly no common beauty"
that he can hold his cwn with the best
in dashing and swinging lyric that in
1.-The simpler lyric and of lyrical nara
tive he sometimes attains the exquisite, )"
and that ION no sound theory of poetical
criticism can Scott be ranked as poet
below Byron, who was his imitator in
narrative and his inferior in lyric" But
demur to the opinion that Byron was
not a greater poet. 1t is the fashion
to underrate Byron now and it has been
for a quarter of a century or longer,
but l am pursuaded that he was one of
the greatest poets since Milton.
Andrew Lang, one of the very cleverest
and most accomplished of English au-
thors of the last thirty years, Che is
Scottish born) is a many sided author
and q capital critic. Near the end CT
KINGSBURY--THREE
his charming paper on SCOTS poetry,
he writes: People tell YOU that
Scott was not a great poet; that
his fame is perishng. Little he cared for
his fame! But for my part l think and
hope that Scott can never die, till men
grow into manhood without having been
boys-till they forget that
"One glorious hour of crowded life
Is worth an age without a name"
And again he says excellently: Sir
Walters sort is very good sort, and in
English literature it's place was empty,
and waiting for him. Think of what he
did. English poetry had long been tame
and commonplace, written in couplets like
Pope's very artificial and smart, or SEN
sible and slow. He comes with poems
of which the music seemed to galiop,
like laundering hoof and ringing brides
of rushing border troop. Here was a
world made alive again that had been
dead for three hundred years-a world
OF men and women" In hearty .sympa-
thy and admiration of the great,
immortal Scott l thank thee. O,
Andrew for what thou hast so sagely
and dolghtsomely written in thine es-
say of appreciation and Interpretation!
In Edinburgh there is a Sir Walter Scott
Club. On 18th of Nov. last it celebrated
its ninth annual banquet. That bright,
captivating critic, Augustine Birrell, who
wrote ''Obiter Dicta," and Res Adjudi-
cata, was elected president for the en-
suing year. Sir Henry Craik, the retiring
president made a fine address, replete
with taste and judgment Speaking OF
what the Scottish poets had done before
Scott appeared, telling of the ballad
mongers and others, he then said with
felicitous appropriations:
"All did their work. One tuned their
wild notes to his milder Tyre. another
gathered their treasures, third accu-
rately measured their sources. But what
did they all compared with the work OF
Scott? He caught the note that came re-
sonant from out the past. He awakened
the echoes of their romance; he made
real the dreamland of their pathos and
their passion. He made them live and
breathe for us. Had he no other record
standing to his name than that of anti
quarian as no antiquarian ever was be-
fore or since, Scott would still command
our reverent, our humble admiration. He
did more. He made our history a very
proverb for its pathos. and it's dramatic
interest, and it is my firm belief that he
rescued a side of the national genius in
Scotland that but for him might well a
century ago have perished and been for
gotten"
He pays due homage to Scott as the
greatest creative genius, as l have held
for decades, since Shakespeare the unap-
preached, the Incompatible. OF the rich