Nevertheless this bluntness of organization in relation to the less important senses, no doubt contributed something to the singleness and simplicity of the deeper and more vital of Scott's romantic impressions; at least there is good reason to suppose that delicate and complicated susceptibilities do at least diminish the chance of living a strong and concentrated life--do risk the frittering away of feeling on the mere backwaters of sensations, even if they do not directly tend towards artificial and indirect forms of character.

Scott's romance is like his native scenery,--bold, bare and rugged, with a swift deep stream of strong pure feeling running through it.

There is plenty of colour in his pictures, as there is on the Scotch hills when the heather is out.

And so too there is plenty of intensity in his romantic situations; but it is the intensity of simple, natural, unsophisticated, hardy, and manly characters.

But as for subtleties and fine shades of feeling in his poems, or anything like the manifold harmonies of the richer arts, they are not to be found, or, if such complicated shading is to be found--and it is perhaps attempted in some faint measure in _The Bridal of Triermain,_ the poem in which Scott tried to pass himself off for Erskine,--it is only at the expense of the higher qualities of his romantic poetry, that even in this small measure it is supplied.
Again, there is no rich music in his verse.