When I have been for some time in the rich scenery about Edinburgh, which is like ornamented garden-land, I begin to wish myself back again among my honest grey hills, and if I did not see the heather at least once a year, _I think I should die_."[14] Now, the bareness which Scott so loved in his native scenery, there is in all his romantic elements of feeling.

It is while he is bold and stern, that he is at his highest ideal point.
Directly he begins to attempt rich or pretty subjects, as in parts of _The Lady of the Lake_, and a good deal of _The Lord of the Isles_, and still more in _The Bridal of Triermain_, his charm disappears.

It is in painting those moods and exploits, in relation to which Scott shares most completely the feelings of ordinary men, but experiences them with far greater strength and purity than ordinary men, that he triumphs as a poet.

Mr.Lockhart tells us that some of Scott's senses were decidedly "blunt," and one seems to recognize this in the simplicity of his romantic effects.

"It is a fact," he says, "which some philosophers may think worth setting down, that Scott's organization, as to more than one of the senses, was the reverse of exquisite.