Thus for _Marmion_ he received 1000
guineas long before the poem was published, and for _one half_ of the
copyright of _The Lord of the Isles_ Constable paid Scott 1500
guineas. If we ask ourselves to what this vast popularity of Scott's
poems, and especially of the earlier of them (for, as often happens,
he was better remunerated for his later and much inferior poems than
for his earlier and more brilliant productions) is due, I think the
answer must be for the most part, the high romantic glow and
extraordinary romantic simplicity of the poetical elements they
contained. Take the old harper of _The Lay_, a figure which arrested
the attention of Pitt during even that last most anxious year of his
anxious life, the year of Ulm and Austerlitz. The lines in which Scott
describes the old man's embarrassment when first urged to play,
produced on Pitt, according to his own account, "an effect which I
might have expected in painting, but could never have fancied capable
of being given in poetry."[13]
Every one knows the lines to which Pitt refers:--
"The humble boon was soon obtain'd;
The aged minstrel audience gain'd.
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