But I may as well say what
seems necessary of that and his other poems, while I am on the subject of
his poetry. _Marmion_ has all the advantage over _The Lay of the Last
Minstrel_ that a coherent story told with force and fulness, and concerned
with the same class of subjects as _The Lay_, must have over a confused and
ill-managed legend, the only original purpose of which was to serve as the
opportunity for a picture of Border life and strife. Scott's poems have
sometimes been depreciated as mere _novelettes_ in verse, and I think that
some of them may be more or less liable to this criticism. For instance,
_The Lady of the Lake_, with the exception of two or three brilliant
passages, has always seemed to me more of a versified _novelette_,--without
the higher and broader characteristics of Scott's prose novels--than of a
poem. I suppose what one expects from a poem as distinguished from a
romance--even though the poem incorporates a story--is that it should not
rest for its chief interest on the mere development of the story; but
rather that the narrative should be quite subordinate to that insight into
the deeper side of life and manners, in expressing which poetry has so
great an advantage over prose.
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