tic side in any specific critical utterance. We have seen also that
he resembled the Romanticists in his power to disengage his verdicts on
literature from ethical considerations. On the other hand he seems
always to have deferred to the standard authorities of the classical
criticism of his time when his own knowledge was not sufficient to guide
him. In discussing Roscommon's Essay on Translated Verse he wrote: "It
must be remembered that the rules of criticism, now so well known as to
be even trite and hackneyed, were then almost new to the literary
world."[463]

Perhaps the main reason why one would not class Scott's critical work
with that of the Romanticists is that he had no desire to proclaim a new
era in creative literature or in criticism. Like the Romanticists he was
ready to substitute "for the absolute method of judging by reference to
an external standard of 'taste,' a method at once imaginative and
historical";[464] yet he talked less about imagination than about good
sense. The comparison with Boileau suggests itself, for Scott admired
that critic in the conventional fashion, calling him "a supereminent
authority,"[465] and Boileau also had said much about "reason and good
sense." But Scott had an appreciation of the _furor poeticus_ that made
"good sense" quite a different thing to him from what it was to Boileau.
He did not say, moreover, that the poet should be supremely
characterized by good sense, but that the critic, recognizing the facts
about human emotion, should make use of that quality.

The subjective process by which experience is transmuted into literature
engaged Scott's attention very little: in this respect also he stands
apart from the newer school of critics. The metaphysical description of
imagination or fancy interested him less than the piece of literature in
which these qualities were exhibited. His own mental activities were
more easily set in motion than analysed, and the introspective or
philosophical attitude of mind was unnatural to him. Because of his
adoption of the historical method of studying literature, and the
similarity of many of his judgments to those which were in general
characteristic of the Romantic school, we may say that Scott's criticism
looks forward; but it shows the influence of the earlier period in its
acceptance of traditional judgments based on external standards which
disregarded the nature of the creative process.

From Coleridge Scott is separated i