amsay and of Ferguson, he
talked of them with too much humility as his models."[251] Scott's
admiration of Burns was always expressed in the highest and, if one may
say so, the most affectionate terms. He refused to let himself be named
"in the same day" with Burns.[252] "Long life to thy fame and peace to
thy soul, Rob Burns!" he exclaimed, in his _Journal_; "when I want to
express a sentiment which I feel strongly, I find the phrase in
Shakespeare--or thee."[253] On another day he compared Burns with
Shakspere as excelling all other poets in "the power of exciting the
most varied and discordant emotions with such rapid transitions."[254]
Again, "The Jolly Beggars, for humorous description and nice
discrimination of character, is inferior to no poem of the same length
in the whole range of English poetry."[255] Scott wished that Burns
might have carried out his plan of dramatic composition, and regretted,
from that point of view, the excessive labor at songs which in the
nature of things could not all be masterpieces.[256]

Of writers who were more precisely contemporaries of Scott, the Lake
Poets and Byron are the most important. The precedence ought to be given
to Coleridge because of the suggestion Scott caught from a chance
recitation of _Christabel_ for the meter he made so popular in the
_Lay_.[257] Fragments from _Christabel_ are quoted or alluded to so
often in the novels[258] and throughout Scott's work that we should
conclude it had made a greater impression upon him than any other single
poem written in his own time, if Lockhart had not spoken of Wordsworth's
sonnet on Neidpath Castle as one which Scott was perhaps fondest of
quoting.[259] _Christabel_ is not the only one of Coleridge's poems
which Scott used for allusion or reference, but it was the favorite. "He
is naturally a grand poet," Scott once wrote to a friend. "His verses on
Love, I think, are among the most beautiful in the English language. Let
me know if you have seen them, as I have a copy of them as they stood in
their original form, which was afterwards altered for the worse."[260]
The _Ancient Mariner_ also made a decided impression on him, if we judge
from the fact that he quoted from it several times.[261] Scott evidently
felt that Coleridge was a most tantalizing poet, and once intimated that
future generations would in regard to him feel something like Milton's
desire "to call up him who left half told the story of Cambuscan
bold."[262]