Let Satire Be My Song

Bequest of Philip Hofer, 1984 – Typ 805.09.8761F

• Complete Image
• HOLLIS Catalog Entry

These are the themes, that claim our plaudits now;
These are the Bards to whom the Muse must bow:
While MILTON, DRYDEN, POPE, alike forgot,
Resign their hallow’d Bays to WALTER SCOTT.

Richard Westall (1765-1836). Westall’s Illustrations of Marmion (London, [1809]).

Walter Scott (1771-1832) had been handsomely paid by his London publishers, John Murray and William Miller, for his popular Scottish border romances. Though he labeled him a “hireling bard” in English Bards, and Scotch Reviewers, Byron ranked Scott among his contemporaries as “the Monarch of Parnassus, and the most English of Bards.” From their first meeting at Murray’s 50 Albemarle Street residence in 1815, the rival poets maintained a cordial friendship. This suite of engravings, in its original publisher’s portfolio, was issued separately to illustrate Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field.