through the continued use of his difficult stanza and even more because of the “languor of a continued allegory."[169] In comparing his judgments on Spenser and Dryden we may conclude that the critic found more in the later poet of that solid intellectual basis which he emphasizes in characterizing him.  “This power of ratiocination,” says Scott, “of investigating, discovering, and appreciating that which is really excellent, if accompanied with the necessary command of fanciful illustration and elegant expression, is the most interesting quality which can be possessed by a poet."[170] Again he lays emphasis on Dryden’s versatility,—­greater, he says, than that of Shakspere and Milton.  In Old Mortality Dryden is referred to as “the great High-priest of all the Nine.”  Scott would have called this another point of his superiority over Spenser, if he had made the comparison.

Yet he saw Dryden’s deficiencies.  “It was a consequence of his mental acuteness that his dramatic personages often philosophized and reasoned when they ought only to have felt,"[171] Scott remarks and he frequently deplores Dryden’s failure “in expressing the milder and more tender passions."[172] Of Dryden’s great gift of style, Scott speaks in the highest terms.  “With this power,” he says, “Dryden’s poetry was gifted in a degree surpassing in modulated harmony that of all who had preceded him and inferior to none that has since written English verse [sic].  He first showed”—­and here we see Scott’s eighteenth-century affinities—­“that the English language was capable of uniting smoothness and strength."[173]

Such criticism as Scott gives on specific parts of Dryden’s work is clear-cut, fair for the most part, and has the sanity and reasonableness which are the most noticeable qualities of his criticism in general.  It would be easier to find illustrations of shrewdness than of subtlety among his notes, but his discriminations are often effective and satisfying.  His discussion, for example, of prologues and epilogues considered in relation to the theatrical conditions which determined their character is admirable.[174] A note on “the cant of supposing that the Iliad contained an obvious and intentional moral"[175] is also full of sense and vigor, but these qualities are so thoroughly diffused through the work that there is no need of particularizing.  His praise of Alexander’s Feast may be referred to, however, as showing his characteristic delight in objective poetry.[176] As a lyric poet, he says, Dryden “must be allowed to have no equal."[177]

The peculiarly congenial qualities of the subject may have had something to do with the fact that the style in which the Life of Dryden is written is noticeably better than that of Scott’s ordinary work.  It is marked with a care and accuracy that were not, unfortunately, habitual to him.  Perhaps it was an advantage that when he wrote the book he had not yet become altogether familiar with his own facility; certainly the substance and the manner of treatment unite in making this the most important of his critical biographies.