says Mr. Lang; with "Marmion," and the "Last Minstrel," and "The Lady of the Lake," read "for the twentieth time," and ever with fresh delight. Poetry came to Scott with Shakespeare, studied rapturously by firelight in his mother's dressing-room, when all the household thought him fast asleep, and with Pope's translation of the Iliad, that royal road over which the Muse has stepped, smiling, into many a boyish heart. Poetry came to Pope—poor little lame lad—with Spenser's "Faerie Queene;" with the brave adventures of strong, valiant knights, who go forth, unblemished and unfrighted, to do battle with dragons and "Paynims cruel." And so the links of the magic chain are woven, and child hands down to child the spell that holds the centuries together. I cannot bear to hear the unkind things which even the most tolerant of critics are wont to say about Pope's "Iliad," remembering as I do how many boys have received from its pages their first poetic stimulus, their first awakening to noble things. What a charming picture we have of Coleridge, a feeble, petulant child tossing with fever on his little bed, and of his brother Francis stealing
