No poem is written for those who read it as they do a novel--merely to follow the interest of the story; or if any poem be written for such readers, it deserves to die.

On such a principle--which treats a poem as a mere novel and nothing else,--you might object to Homer that he interrupts the battle so often to dwell on the origin of the heroes who are waging it; or to Byron that he deserts Childe Harold to meditate on the rapture of solitude.

To my mind the ease and frankness of these confessions of the author's recollections give a picture of his life and character while writing _Marmion_, which adds greatly to its attraction as a poem.

You have a picture at once not only of the scenery, but of the mind in which that scenery is mirrored, and are brought back frankly, at fit intervals, from the one to the other, in the mode best adapted to help you to appreciate the relation of the poet to the poem.

At least if Milton's various interruptions of a much more ambitious theme, to muse upon his own qualifications or disqualifications for the task he had attempted, be not artistic mistakes--and I never heard of any one who thought them so--I cannot see any reason why Scott's periodic recurrence to his own personal history should be artistic mistakes either.