The cases in which he makes a study of any mood of feeling, as he does of this harper's feeling, are comparatively rare.

Deloraine's night-ride to Melrose is a good deal more in Scott's ordinary way, than this study of the old harper's wistful mood.

But whatever his subject, his treatment of it is the same.

His lines are always strongly drawn; his handling is always simple; and his subject always romantic.

But though romantic, it is simple almost to bareness,--one of the great causes both of his popularity, and of that deficiency in his poetry of which so many of his admirers become conscious when they compare him with other and richer poets.