ich the critic might become dictatorial. He was fond
enough of details when they were concrete and vital. The facts of
literary history were in this category to him, as distinguished from the
notions of literary theory; and we find that his critical principles are
apt to appear incidentally among remarks on what seemed to him the more
tangible and important facts of literary and social history. The books
he chose to review were chiefly those which gave him a chance to use his
historical information and imagination. His ideas were concrete, as
those of a great novelist must inevitably be. Indeed the dividing line
between creative work and criticism seems often to be obliterated in
Scott's literary discussions, since he was inclined to amplify and
illustrate instead of dissecting the book under consideration. As a
critic he was distinguished by the qualities which appear in his novels,
and which may be described in Hazlitt's words, as "the most amazing
retentiveness of memory, and vividness of conception of what would
happen, be seen, and felt by everybody in given circumstances."[471]

Scott felt that there was especial danger of futile theorizing in the
criticism of poetry. In writing about _Alexander's Feast_ he discussed
for a moment the possibility of detecting points at which the author had
paused in his work, but almost immediately he stopped himself with the
characteristic remark--"There may be something fanciful ... in this
reasoning, which I therefore abandon to the reader's mercy; only begging
him to observe, that we have no mode of estimating the exertions of a
quality so capricious as a poetic imagination."[472] Early in his career
he gave this rather over-amiable explanation of the fact that he had
never undertaken to review poetry: "I am sensible there is a greater
difference of tastes in that department than in any other, and that
there is much excellent poetry which I am not nowadays able to read
without falling asleep, and which would nevertheless have given me great
pleasure at an earlier period of my life. Now I think there is something
hard in blaming the poor cook for the fault of our own palate or
deficiency of appetite."[473] We have seen that he did review poetry
afterwards, but that he was inclined to do it with the least possible
emphasis on the specifically aesthetic elements. On the subject of
novel-writing he developed a somewhat fuller critical theory, but here
also his discussions concerned