as more of a favorite with Scott than Chaucer. But at
another time he spoke of Drayton as possessing perhaps equal powers of
poetry,[168] and he seems to have felt that Spenser becomes tedious
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