I hope, however, that one day your state of health may permit you to view this country." This interchange of letters was the beginning of a friendship that was to endure and strengthen through the lives of both poets, for they died in the self-same year.

The "new poetical attempt" that was "on the anvil" must have been _The Lady of the Lake_, completed and published in the following year.

But already Scott had uneasy misgivings that the style would not bear unlimited repetition.

Even before Byron burst upon the world with the two first cantos of _Childe Harold_, and drew on him the eyes of all readers of poetry, Scott had made the unwelcome discovery that his own matter and manner was imitable, and that others were borrowing it.

Many could now "grow the flower" (or something like it), for "all had got the seed." It was this persuasion that set him thinking whether he might not change his topics and his metre, and still retain his public.