n the most definite way. Coleridge
began at the foundation, building up a set of principles such as the new
impulse in literature seemed to demand. Scott preferred the concrete,
and was stimulated by the particular book to express opinions that would
never have come to his mind as the result of pursuing a train of
unembodied ideas. Coleridge's judgments, moreover, would be unaffected
by public estimation, for he sought to found them on the spiritual and
philosophic consciousness that exists apart from the crowd.[466] Scott,
on the other hand, was ready to use popular judgment as an important
test of his opinions. Coleridge himself pointed out another interesting
contrast. He wrote: "Dear Sir Walter Scott and myself were exact, but
harmonious opposites in this;--that every old ruin, hill, river, or
tree, called up in his mind a host of historical or biographical
associations, ... whereas, for myself, notwithstanding Dr. Johnson, I
believe I should walk over the plain of Marathon without taking more
interest in it than in any other plain of similar features."[467] We
might perhaps say that Coleridge's affection was given to ideas,
Scott's, to objects; hence Coleridge was a critic of literary principles
and theories, Scott a critic of individual books and writers. It follows
that Scott was on the whole an impressionistic critic. A study of his
personality is essential to a consideration of his critical work, for he
was not so much a systematic student of literature, guided by fixed
principles, as a man of a certain temperament who read particular things
and made particular remarks about them as he felt inclined. The
inconsistencies and contradictions which would naturally result from
such a procedure are occasionally noticeable, but they are fewer than
would occur in the work of a less well-balanced man than himself.

His ideas about criticism were influenced by his feeling that the
judgment of the public would after all take its own course, and that it
was in the long run the best criterion. He used his opinion that an
author, even in his own lifetime, commonly receives fair treatment from
the public, as an argument against establishing in England any literary
body having the power of pensioning literary men.[468] On this subject
he said, "There is ... really no occasion for encouraging by a society
the competition of authors. The land is before them, and if they really
have merit they seldom fail to conquer their share of