SUPERNATURAL MACHINERY 'II

We may, if we please, call this supernatural machinery gro-
tesque, or childish, or ridiculous, but it is absurd to speak of it
as an excrescence, or otherwise than thoroughly transfused with
the human interest of the story. Only a born romancer, in full
imaginative sympathy with such childish or childlike supersti-
tions, could have effected so complete a transfusion. It was no
wonder that Scott took refuge in mock-acquiescence when the
maintriumph of his peculiar genius was so generally misunder-
stood : the misunderstanding was general enough among all the
articulate critics to make him distrust himself. Machinery of
the kind was specially objectionable to the cool matter-of-fact
reason of the eighteenth century, and this perhaps explains why
the critics did not take the trouble to understand such a novelty.
That it was grotesque and uncouth, Scott himself, was fully
aware, and he tried to anticipate this objection by putting the
'Lay* into the mouth of an old minstrel. For the use of it by
a Border Minstrel, he had a perfect historical defence, if he had
cared to enlarge upon it. Owing to the bitterness of border feuds
reconciliations were so antecedently incredible, that a Border
audience would hardly have believed in them as possible except
through supernatural interference, and the agents whom Scott
employed were perfectly familiar to Border superstition.

Scott's supernatural machinery may be looked at in relation
to the literature of the time. The study of the supernatural for
literary purposes was a passing fashion during the last ten years
of the eighteenth century. It was brought to Edinburgh by
Mrs. Barbauld and ' Monk' Lewis, and while Scott and Ley den
in the Border country were hunting after old ballads of the
supernatural and making new, Coleridge and Wordsworth on the
Quantock Hills were discussing the proper artistic treatment of
this fascinating element, and Coleridge was writing f The Rime
of the Ancient Mariner1 and 'Christabel*—incomparably the
highest achievements of this phase of the Romantic revival.
The fashion was set by Germany, and its rapid spread is a
curious instance of the international unity of literature. Its
prevalence at the time explains why Lady Dalkeith was so
charmed with the story of Gilpin Homer, and eager that Scott
should use it as a subject for a ballad. A new goblin was a
delightful discovery when interest in the subject ran so high