not a better but a different path from what has been travelled by their predecessors."[268] Scott paid tribute in the introduction to The Antiquary to as much of Wordsworth’s poetical creed as he could acquiesce in when he said, “The lower orders are less restrained by the habit of suppressing their feelings, and ...  I agree with my friend Wordsworth that they seldom fail to express them in the strongest and most powerful language.”  In a letter to Southey Scott calls Wordsworth “a great master of the passions,"[269] and in his Journal he said:  His imagination “is naturally exquisite, and highly cultivated by constant exercise."[270] At another time he compared Wordsworth and Southey as scholars and commented on the “freshness, vivacity, and spring” of Wordsworth’s mind.[271]

The personal relations between Scott and Wordsworth were, as Wordsworth’s tribute in Yarrow Revisited would indicate, those of affectionate intimacy.  And if Scott took exception to Wordsworth’s choice of subjects and manner, Wordsworth used the same freedom in disagreeing with Scott’s poetical ideals.  “Thank you,” he wrote in 1808, “for Marmion, which I have read with lively pleasure.  I think your end has been attained.  That it is not in every respect the end which I should wish you to purpose to yourself, you will be well aware, from what you know of my notions of composition, both as to matter and manner."[272] When, in 1821, Chantrey was about to exhibit together his busts of the two poets, Scott wrote:  “I am happy my effigy is to go with that of Wordsworth, for (differing from him in very many points of taste) I do not know a man more to be venerated for uprightness of heart and loftiness of genius.  Why he will sometimes choose to crawl upon all fours, when God has given him so noble a countenance to lift to heaven, I am as little able to account for as for his quarrelling (as you tell me) with the wrinkles which time and meditation have stamped his brow withal."[273]

These remarks upon Wordsworth and Coleridge touch merely the fringe of the subject, and indeed we do not find that Scott exercised any such sublimated ingenuity in appreciating these men as has often been considered essential.  We can see that he admired certain parts of their work intensely, but we look in vain for any real analysis of their quality.  But as he never had occasion to write essays upon their poetry, it is perhaps hardly fair to expect anything more than the general remarks that we actually do find, and as far as they go they are satisfactory.

Like most of his distinguished contemporaries, Scott held the work of Southey in surprisingly high estimation.[274] Southey, more than anyone else except Wordsworth, and more than Wordsworth in some ways, was the “real poet” of the period, devoting his whole heart to literature and his whole time to literary pursuits.  Scott commented on the fact, saying, “Southey’s ideas are all poetical,” and, “In this