Comparison of Scott with Jeffrey and with the Romantic critics—­His criticism largely appreciative—­Romantic in special cases and Augustan in attitude—­Comparison with Coleridge—­Scott’s respect for the verdict of the public—­His opinion that elucidation is the function of criticism—­Use of historical illustration—­Hesitation about analysing poetry—­Political criticism—­Verdict of his contemporaries on his criticism—­Influence as a critic—­Literary prophecies—­Character of his critical work as a whole—­His attitude towards it—­Lack of system—­Broad fields he covered—­His greatness a reason for the importance of his criticism.

Important as Scott’s poetry was in the English Romantic revival, as a critic he can hardly be counted among the Romanticists.  His attitude, nevertheless, differed radically from that of the school represented by Jeffrey and Gifford.  We have already seen that he disliked their manner of reviewing, and that he was conscious of complete disagreement with Jeffrey in regard to poetic ideals.  Of Jeffrey Mr. Gates has said:  “[He] rarely appreciates a piece of literature....  He is always for or against his author; he is always making points."[460] That Scott was influenced in his early critical work by the tone of the Edinburgh Review is undeniable, but temperamentally he was inclined to give any writer a fair chance to stir his emotions; and he did not adopt the magisterial mood that dictated the famous remark, “This will never do.”  Scott’s style lacked the adroitness and pungency which helped Jeffrey successfully to take the attitude of the censor, and which made his satire triumphant among his contemporaries.  Scott declined, moreover, to cultivate skill in a method which he considered unfair.  Compared with Jeffrey’s his criticism wanted incisiveness, but it wears better.

The period was transitional, and Jeffrey did not go so far as Scott in breaking away from the dictation of his predecessors.  But his attitude was on the whole more modern than the reader would infer from the following sentence in one of his earliest reviews:  “Poetry has this much at least in common with religion, that its standards were fixed long ago by certain inspired writers, whose authority it is no longer lawful to call in question."[461] He considered himself rather an interpreter of public opinion than a judge defining ancient legislation, but he used the opinion of himself and like-minded men as an unimpeachable test of what the greater public ought to believe in regard to literature.  We may remember that the enthusiasm over the Elizabethan dramatists which seems a special property of Lamb and Hazlitt, and which Scott shared, was characteristic also of Jeffrey himself.  It was Jeffrey’s dogmatism and his repugnance to certain fundamental ideas which were to become dominant in the poetry of the nineteenth century that lead us to consider him one of the last representatives of the eighteenth century critical tradition.  Scott praised the Augustan writers as warmly as Jeffrey did, but he was more hospitable to the newer literary impulse.  “Perhaps the most damaging accusation that can be made against Jeffrey as a critic,” says Mr. Gates, “is inability to read and interpret the age in which he lived."[462]