Writing toward the close of 1818 on the state of contemporary literature, John Keats remarked: "We have seen three literary kings in our Time--Scott--Byron--and then the scotch novels." The same year, William Hazlitt had stated in the last of the Lectures on the English Poets that "Walter Scott is the most popular of all the poets of the present day, and deservedly so." Today, Scott's poetry has been all but forgotten, although the "scotch novels" continue to be read and occasionally taught. Scott's poetic career and reputation present an especially intriguing problem for literary biography: Why one of the most popular British poets of all time should at present find only a small place, if that, in anthologies and histories of British Romantic poetry. The answer probably has as much to do with the history of literature and literary criticism since the Romantic period as it does with the...