"No man has all the resources of poetry in such profusion,
but he cannot manage them so as to bring out anything of his own on a
large scale at all worthy of his genius.... His fancy and diction would
have long ago placed him above all his contemporaries, had they been
under the direction of a sound judgment and a steady will."[263] Such,
in effect, was the opinion that Scott always expressed concerning
Coleridge, and it is practically that of posterity. In _The Monastery_
Coleridge is called "the most imaginative of our modern bards." In
another connection, after speaking of the "exquisite powers of poetry he
has suffered to remain uncultivated," Scott adds, "Let us be thankful
for what we have received, however. The unfashioned ore, drawn from so
rich a mine, is worth all to which art can add its highest decorations,
when drawn from less abundant sources."[264] These remarks are worth
quoting, not only because of their wisdom, but also because Scott had
small personal acquaintance with Coleridge and was rather repelled than
attracted by what he knew of the character of the author of
_Christabel_. His praises cannot in this case be called the tribute of
friendship, and his own remarkable power of self-control might have made
him a stern judge of Coleridge's shortcomings.

One of his most interesting comments on Coleridge is contained in a
discussion of Byron's _Darkness_, a poem which to his mind recalled "the
wild, unbridled, and fiery imagination of Coleridge."[265] _Darkness_ is
characterized as a mass of images and ideas, unarranged, and the critic
goes on to warn the author against indulging in this sort of poetry. He
says: "The feeling of reverence which we entertain for that which is
difficult of comprehension, gives way to weariness whenever we begin to
suspect that it cannot be distinctly comprehended by anyone.... The
strength of poetical conception and beauty of diction bestowed upon such
prolusions [_sic_], is as much thrown away as the colors of a painter,
could he take a cloud of mist or a wreath of smoke for his canvas." It
is disappointing that we have no comment from Scott upon Shelley's
poetry, but we can imagine what is would have been.[266] Scott's
position as the great popularizer of the Romantic movement in poetry
makes particularly interesting his very evident though not often
expressed repugnance to the more extreme development of that movement.

Wordsworth's peculiar theory of poetry seemed to