lines was probably more extensive and
minute than any man's of his generation. The introductions and notes to
his poems and novels are even overburdened with learning. But this,
though important, was but the lesser part of his advantage. "The
old-maidenly genius of antiquarianism" could produce a Strutt[11] or even
perhaps a Warton; but it needed the touch of the creative imagination to
turn the dead material of knowledge into works of art that have delighted
millions of readers for a hundred years in all civilised lands and
tongues.

The key to Scott's romanticism is his intense local feeling.[12] That
attachment to place which, in most men, is a sort of animal instinct, was
with him a passion. To set the imagination at work some emotional
stimulus is required. The angry pride of Byron, Shelley's revolt against
authority, Keats' almost painfully acute sensitiveness to beauty,
supplied the nervous irritation which was wanting in Scott's slower,
stronger, and heavier temperament. The needed impetus came to him from
his love of country. Byron and Shelley were torn up by the roots and
flung abroad, but Scott had struck his roots deep into native soil. His
absorption in the past and reverence for everything that was old, his
conservative prejudices and aristocratic ambitions, all had their source
in this feeling. Scott's Toryism was of a different spring from
Wordsworth's and Coleridge's. It was not a reaction from disappointed
radicalism; nor was it the result of reasoned conviction. It was inborn
and was nursed into a sentimental Jacobitism by ancestral traditions and
by an early prepossession in favour of the Stuarts--a Scottish
dynasty--reinforced by encounters with men in the Highlands who had been
out in the '45. It did not interfere with a practical loyalty to the
reigning house and with what seems like a somewhat exaggerated deference
to George IV. Personally the most modest of men, he was proud to trace
his descent from "auld Wat of Harden" [13] and to claim kinship with the
bold Buccleuch. He used to make annual pilgrimages to Harden Tower, "the
_incunabula_ of his race"; and "in the earlier part of his life," says
Lockhart, "he had nearly availed himself of his kinsman's permission to
fit up the dilapidated _peel_ for his summer residence."

Byron wrote: "I twine my hope of being remembered in my line with my
land's language." But Scott wished to associate his name with the land
itself. Abbotsf