lication of the book.]

[Footnote 99: Review of Ellis's _Specimens_, _Edinburgh Review_,
April, 1804.]

[Footnote 100: Bletson and Richard Ganlesse.]

[Footnote 101: But see the dictum quoted by Scott in a somewhat
over-emphatic way from Ellis's _Specimens of the Early English Poets_,
to the effect that Chaucer's "peculiar ornaments of style, consisting
in an affectation of splendour, and especially of latinity," were
perhaps his special contribution to the improvement of English poetry.
(_Edinburgh Review_, April, 1804.) Scott said of Dunbar, "This darling
of the Scottish muses has been justly raised to a level with Chaucer
by every judge of poetry to whom his obsolete language has not
rendered him unintelligible." (_Memoir of Bannatyne_, p. 14.) After
naming the various qualities in which Dunbar was Chaucer's rival, he
pronounces the Scottish poet inferior in the use of pathos. The
relative position here assigned to the two poets seems to be rather an
exaltation of Dunbar than a degradation of Chaucer.]

[Footnote 102: _Lockhart_, Vol. I, p. 408.]

[Footnote 103: _Dryden_, Vol. XI, p. 245.]

[Footnote 104: _Dryden_, Vol. XI, p. 396.]

[Footnote 105: _Ibid._, Vol. VI, p. 243.]

[Footnote 106: _Ibid._, Vol. XI, p. 338.]

[Footnote 107: The discussion of popular superstitions given in the
introduction to the _Minstrelsy_ and in the Essay on Fairies, which is
prefixed to the ballad of _Young Tamlane_, suggests comparison with
the _Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft_ which Scott wrote in the
year before he died. He collected a remarkable library in regard to
superstition, and thought at various times of making a book on the
subject, but the project was pushed aside for other matters until
1831. The _Letters_ which he wrote then are full of pleasant anecdote
and judicious comment, and though they lack the vigor of his earlier
work they have remained fairly popular. An edition of Kirk's _Secret
Commonwealth of Elves and Fairies_, published in 1815, has been
attributed to Scott. (See below, the Bibliography of books edited by
Scott.) Reviews of his which have not been mentioned in this chapter,
but which naturally connect themselves with the subjects here
discussed, are the following: _The Culloden Papers_--an account of the
Highland clans, largely narrative (_Quarterly_, January, 1816);
Ritson's _Annals of the Caledonians, Picts and Scots