which addresses itself only to the eyes may be laid aside when it becomes tiresome to the reader; whereas it may not always have been so easy to stop the minstrel in the full career of his metrical declamation.”  Flaws like this may be picked in the details of Scott’s method, just as we may sometimes find fault with the lapses in his mediaeval scholarship.  We do him no injustice when we say that aside from certain aspects of his work on the ballads and Sir Tristrem, his achievement was that of a popularizer of learning.

But if he lacked some of the authority of erudition, he escaped also the induration of pedantry.  In writing of remote and dimly known periods, critics are perhaps most apt to show their defects of temper, and Scott often commented on the acerbity of spirit which such studies seem to induce.  “Antiquaries,” he said, “are apt to be both positive and polemical upon the very points which are least susceptible of proof, and which are least valuable if the truth could be ascertained; and which therefore we would gladly have seen handled with more diffidence and better temper in proportion to their uncertainty."[90] Of Ritson he says many times in one form or another that his “severe accuracy was connected with an unhappy eagerness and irritability of temper.”  Scott rode his own hobbies with an expansive cheerfulness that did not at all hinder them from being essentially serious.

Other Studies in Mediaeval Literature

Scott’s attitude on the Ossianic controversy—­His slight acquaintance with other northern literatures—­Anglo-Saxon scholarship of the time—­Character of his familiarity with Middle-English poetry—­His opinions in regard to Chaucer—­General importance of Scott’s work on mediaeval literature.

Part of Scott’s critical work on mediaeval literature falls outside the limits of the two divisions we have been considering—­those of ballad and romance.  He knew comparatively little about the early poetry of the northern nations, but at some points his knowledge of Scottish literature made the transition fairly easy to the literature of other Teutonic peoples.  But he was especially bound to be interested in the Gaelic, for a Scotsman of his day could hardly avoid forming an opinion in regard to the Ossianic controversy then raging with what Scott thought must be its final violence.  He did not understand the Gaelic language,[91] but he had a vivid interest in the Highlanders.  The picturesque quality of their customs made it natural enough for him to use them in his novels, and by the “sheer force of genius,” says Mr. Palgrave, who considers this Scott’s greatest achievement, “he united the sympathies of two hostile races."[92]