The previous chapter closed with a summary of the developments which produced the romantic tale in verse. The discovery of the genre was attributed to Scott, but this interpretation must now be slightly amended.

Scott's Lay of the Last Minstrel did not represent something entirely new, it was simply the most exciting and successful product of a tendency that had been developing for a long time. Even before Scott a few poets had attempted a similar mixture of the elements in question, and, although they approached the task from different angles, they achieved similar results. In fact, in the Introduction to the Lay in the complete edition of his poetic works published in 1830, Scott refers to some of these early forms and admits the influence they had on him.

The work with which we will begin nevertheless had at the most an indirect influence on Scott. It is W. S. Landor's Gebir, a poem that appeared in 1798, in the year of the Lyrical Ballads, the year English romanticism was born. It was to have an important influence on Southey and Shelley1 and occupies a middle position between the epic poem in the classical style and the romantic tale in verse, at the turning point between the tastes of the eighteenth century and those of the nineteenth.