But, if that mighty word I once rehearse,
They seem submissively to roar in verse."
"It is easier to flatter than to praise," says Jean Paul, but even flattery is not always the facile work it seems.
Sir Walter Scott, who was strangely disposed to undervalue his own merit as a poet, preserved the most genuine enthusiasm for the work of others. When his little daughter was asked by James Ballantyne what she thought of The Lady of the Lake, she answered with perfect simplicity that she had not read it. "Papa says there is nothing so bad for young people as reading bad poetry." Yet Sir Walter always spoke of Madoc and Thalaba with a reverence that would seem ludicrous were it not so frankly sincere. Southey himself could not have admired them more; and when Jeffrey criticised Madoc with flippant severity in the Edinburgh Review, we find Scott hastening to the rescue in a letter full of earnest and soothing praise. "A poem whose merits are of that higher tone," he argues, "does not immediately take with the public at large. It is even possible that during your own life you must be contented with the applause of the few whom na-
