Yet there were many reasons for this.

If Scott had made the ballad popular, he had also destroyed it for a century--perhaps for ever--by substituting the novel as the favourite medium for the storyteller.

Great ballads we were to have in every decade from that day to this, but never another 'best seller' like _Marmion_ or _The Lady of the Lake_.

Our _popular_ poets had to express themselves in other ways.

Then Borrow, although his verse has been underrated by those who have not seen it at its best, or who are incompetent to appraise poetry, was not very effective here, notwithstanding that the stories in verse in _Romantic Ballads_ are all entirely interesting.