poet, and once intimated that future generations would in regard to him feel something like Milton’s desire “to call up him who left half told the story of Cambuscan bold."[262] “No man has all the resources of poetry in such profusion, but he cannot manage them so as to bring out anything of his own on a large scale at all worthy of his genius....  His fancy and diction would have long ago placed him above all his contemporaries, had they been under the direction of a sound judgment and a steady will."[263] Such, in effect, was the opinion that Scott always expressed concerning Coleridge, and it is practically that of posterity.  In The Monastery Coleridge is called “the most imaginative of our modern bards.”  In another connection, after speaking of the “exquisite powers of poetry he has suffered to remain uncultivated,” Scott adds, “Let us be thankful for what we have received, however.  The unfashioned ore, drawn from so rich a mine, is worth all to which art can add its highest decorations, when drawn from less abundant sources."[264] These remarks are worth quoting, not only because of their wisdom, but also because Scott had small personal acquaintance with Coleridge and was rather repelled than attracted by what he knew of the character of the author of Christabel.  His praises cannot in this case be called the tribute of friendship, and his own remarkable power of self-control might have made him a stern judge of Coleridge’s shortcomings.

One of his most interesting comments on Coleridge is contained in a discussion of Byron’s Darkness, a poem which to his mind recalled “the wild, unbridled, and fiery imagination of Coleridge."[265] Darkness is characterized as a mass of images and ideas, unarranged, and the critic goes on to warn the author against indulging in this sort of poetry.  He says:  “The feeling of reverence which we entertain for that which is difficult of comprehension, gives way to weariness whenever we begin to suspect that it cannot be distinctly comprehended by anyone....  The strength of poetical conception and beauty of diction bestowed upon such prolusions [sic], is as much thrown away as the colors of a painter, could he take a cloud of mist or a wreath of smoke for his canvas.”  It is disappointing that we have no comment from Scott upon Shelley’s poetry, but we can imagine what is would have been.[266] Scott’s position as the great popularizer of the Romantic movement in poetry makes particularly interesting his very evident though not often expressed repugnance to the more extreme development of that movement.

Wordsworth’s peculiar theory of poetry seemed to Scott superfluous and unnecessary, though he was never, so far as we can judge, especially irritated by it.[267] Of Wordsworth and Southey he wrote to Miss Seward:  “Were it not for the unfortunate idea of forming a new school of poetry, these men are calculated to give it a new impulse; but I think they sometimes lose their energy in trying to find