only venture to say that in more than one passage, where I have myself been habitually most affected by the cadence of the Latin, I have seemed to myself, rightly or wrongly, to have been able to produce something of a corresponding effect by in one way or another varying the measure. While wishing under all the circumstances to guard carefully against anything like a servile imitation of Scott, I have yet regarded him as my master rather than Byron. Unlike as the spirit of Border warfare may be to the spirit of the Æneid, the spirit of Oriental passion is still more unlike. Even the ballad-like peculiarities of Scott have some similarity to the epic common-place which Virgil felt himself obliged by the laws of his work to borrow from Homer. It must be remembered too that Scott's poems, in respect of style, differ not a little from each other. The style of the Lay is comparatively rude and unpolished: the style of the Lord of the Isles is comparatively cultivated and elaborate. I need not say that it is the latter type that I have made my model rather than the former. I have sedulously eschewed what Mr. Arnold calls the ballad slang, even where it offered itself without the seeking: such expressions as 'out and spoke,' 'well I wot,' 'all on Parnassus' slope,' I have left where I found them, I have not indeed denied myself an occasional archaism, any more than Virgil himself has done, as I cannot see that 'mote' for 'might' and 'eyne' for 'eyes' are more objectionable than 'faxo' for 'fecero' and 'aulai' for 'aulæ.' But I have excluded all such primitive peculiarities as seemed inconsistent with high finish, expletives like 'did say' and 'did sue,' and inversions like 'soon as the wildered child saw he.' In the versification I have avoided, with scarce a single
