ssus, to erect
himself into a legislator."[490] The words remind us of comments made
upon Scott's own work, as for example by Professor Masson, who spoke of
"the shrewdness and sagacity of some of his critical prefaces to his
novels, where he discusses principles of literature without seeming to
call them such."[491] Scott was quick to notice "cant and slang"[492] in
the professional language of men in all arts; and he valued most highly
the remarks of those whose intelligence had not been overlaid by a
conventional pedantry.

Knowing that criticism was not the main business of his life, we are
inclined to be surprised at the broad fields which he seemed to have no
hesitation in entering upon. His remarkable memory doubtless had
something to do with this, but he lived in a period when generalization
was more possible and more permissible than it is in this era of special
monographs. The large tendencies and characteristics that he traced in
his essay on Romance, for instance, are undoubtedly to be qualified at
numberless points, but writing when he did, Scott was comparatively
untroubled by these limitations. Moreover, he had the gift of seeing
things broadly, so that in essentials his survey remains true. But the
amount of his work is almost as astonishing as its scope and variety. He
could accomplish so much only by disregarding details of form; and that
he did so we know from our study of his principles of composition,
confirmed by the evidence of the passages from him that have here been
quoted. It is clear, also, that he was not limited by that "horror of
the obvious," which, as Mr. Saintsbury says, "bad taste at all times has
taken for a virtue."[493] Beyond this we have to fall back for
explanation on the unusual qualities of his mind. An observing friend
said of him that, "With a degree of patience and quietude which are
seldom combined with much energy, he could get through an incredible
extent of literary labour."[494]

Every quality which made Scott a great man contributes to the interest
and importance of his criticism. Such a body of criticism, formulated by
a large creative genius, would be of special consequence if it served
merely as the basis for a study of his other work, a commentary on the
principles which underlay his whole literary achievement. But it would
be strange if a man of Scott's intellectual personality could write
criticism which was not important in itself, and we can only account for