This poem, along with the touching sonnet which condenses much of the same sentiment, and tells Scott that

"the might

Of the whole world's good wishes with him goes,"

was sent to him soon afterwards, and reached him before he left London for Italy. No record remains as to how he took these poems, or what pleasure they gave him. Probably the pall of gloom was by this time settling down on his mind too heavily, to be lifted off by any song that mortal poet could sing.

Compared with the two former poems, Yarrow Revisited falls short of the ideal tone to which they were set. In the former, the poet's mind was free to follow its natural impulse, and, unencumbered with present fact, to see Yarrow Vale in the visionary light which romance and foregone humanities had combined to shed upon it.

In the last poem the sense of Scott's recent misfortunes and declining health was too painfully present to admit of such treatment. Wordsworth was himself conscious of this, and in the retrospect he made this remark: "There is too much pressure of fact for these verses to harmonize, as much as I could wish, with the two preceding poems." This is true. And yet if it wants the idealizing touch, it has qualities of its own, which well compensate for that want. It is one of the latest of Wordsworth's poems, in which his natural power is seen still unabated; and if it falls below the best things he did in his best days, it is only second to these, and displays his later or autumnal manner in its best form. Several of the stanzas above quoted are only a little below the finest verses in the best of the

Lyrical Ballads, written in his poetic prime. But if some may estimate the artistic merit of Yarrow Revisited lower than I am inclined to do, they cannot deny its human and historic interest. It is an enduring record of the friendship of two poets, the greatest of their time, and of the last scene in that friendship. Commencing with that first meeting at Lasswade, before either was much known to fame, their friendship lasted, unabated till death parted them.

The two poets had lived apart, and met only by occasional visits, when Wordsworth crossed the Scottish border, or Scott visited the Lakes. On one of these latter occasions they had together ascended Helvellyn, and some have supposed, but, I believe, without reason, that Wordsworth commemorated that ascent in the lines beginning:

"Inmate of a mountain dwelling."

But there is no doubt that in one of his latest poems, "Musings in Aquapendente," he reverted to that day on "Old Helvellyn's brow,

Where once together, in his day of strength,
We stood rejoicing, as if earth were free

From sorrow, like the sky above our heads."

The characters of Wordsworth and Scott were not less different than were the views and methods on which their poetry was constructed. But they each esteemed and honored the other, throughout their days of active creation, and now they had met for what they well knew, though they did not say it, must be their final interview. It was an affecting and solemn interview, according to the prose account of it which Wordsworth and Lockhart have each given; not less affecting than this, its poetic record.

Then, again, the poem is a memorial of the very last visit Scott ever paid, not to Yarrow only, but to any scene in that land which he had so loved and glorified. A memorial of that day, struck off on the spot, even by an inferior hand, would have been precious. But when no less a poet than Wordsworth was there to commemorate this, Scott's last day by his native streams, and when into that record he poured so much of the mellow music of his autumnal genius, the whole poem reaches to a quite tragic pathos. As you croon over its solemn cadences, and think of the circumstances out of which it arose, and the sequel that was so soon to follow, you seem to overhear in every line

"The still sad music of humanity."

Wordsworth never revisited those scenes.

But once

again, on hearing of the death of James Hogg, in November, 1835, in thought he returned to Yarrow, and poured out this Extempore Effusion, probably the very last outburst in which his genius flashed forth with its old poetic fervor :

"When first, descending from the moorlands,

I saw the Stream of Yarrow glide

Along a bare and open valley,

The Ettrick Shepherd was my guide.

How fast has brother followed brother,
From sunshine to the sunless land!

"Yet, I, whose lids from infant slumber
Were earlier raised, remain to hear
A timid voice, that asks in whispers,.

'Who next will drop and disappear?'"

These lines are a fitting epilogue to the three poems, "by which," as Lockhart has said, "Wordsworth has connected his name to all time with the most romantic of Scottish streams," and, he might have added, with the greatest of Scottish poets.

CHAPTER XII.

THE WHITE DOE OF RYLSTONE.

WHAT induced Wordsworth for once to stray into the field of romance, and to choose for his theme this last effort of decaying chivalry - Wordsworth, whose genius we generally associate with incidents which are homely, and subjects which are reflective? His other poems all turn upon modern persons and experiences. But The White Doe of Rylstone goes back to the feudal period of England's history, just before its close. In choosing such a theme, does not Wordsworth seem to have forsaken his proper region, and to have trespassed for once upon the domain of Scott? For is not the story of the "Fall of the Nortons" just such an one as might have inspired one of Scott's metrical romances? So at first sight it might seem. And yet a closer study of this poem will, perhaps, show more than anything else could how wide is the contrast between the genius of the two poets. The whole way in which Wordsworth handles the subject, and the peculiar effect which he brings out of it, are so unlike Scott's manner of treatment, are so entirely true to Wordsworth's special vein of thought and sentiment, that this contrast, even if there were nothing else, would make the poem worthy of close regard.

The incidents on which the White Doe is founded belong to the year 1569, the twelfth of Queen Eliza beth.