f tournaments and has a firm persuasion
that in an age of tournaments life was thoroughly well understood. A
martial society where men fought hand to hand on good horses with large
lances," etc. ("The Waverley Novels").

[47] "Of enthusiasm in religion Scott always spoke very severely. . . .
I do not think there is a single study in all his romances of what may be
fairly called a pre-eminently spiritual character" (R. H. Hutton: "Sir
Walter Scott," p. 126).

[48] "Unopposed, the Catholic superstition may sink to dust, with all its
absurd ritual and solemnities. Still it is an awful risk. The world is
in fact as silly as ever, and a good competence of nonsense will always
find believers." ("Diary" for 1829).

[49] See vol. i., p. 42. "We almost envy the credulity of those who in
the gentle moonlight of a summer night in England, amid the tangled
glades of a deep forest, or the turfy swell of her romantic commons,
could fancy they saw the fairies tracing their sportive ring. But it is
in vain to regret illusions which, however engaging, must of necessity
yield their place before the increase of knowledge, like shadows at the
advance of morn." ("Demonology." p. 183). "Tales of ghosts and
demonology are out of date at forty years of age and upward. . . . If I
were to write on the subject at all, it should have been during a period
of life when I could have treated it with more interesting
vivacity. . . . Even the present fashion of the world seems to be
ill-suited for studies of this fantastic nature: and the most ordinary
mechanic has learning sufficient to laugh at the figments which in former
times were believed by persons far advanced in the deepest knowledge of
the age." (_Ibid_., p. 398).

[50] See vol. i., pp. 249 and 420.

[51] "Postscript" to "Appreciations."

[52] For the rarity of the real romantic note in mediaeval writers see
vol. i., pp. 26-28, and Appendix B to the present chapter.

[53] See "Studies in Mediaeval Life and Literature," by Edward T.
McLaughlin, p. 34.

CHAPTER II.

Coleridge, Bowles, and the Pope Controversy.

While Scott was busy collecting the fragments of Border minstrelsy and
translating German ballads,[1] two other young poets, far to the south,
were preparing their share in the literary revolution. In those same
years (1795-98) Wordsworth and Coleridge were wandering together over the
Somerset downs and along the coast of Devon, catching glimpses of the sea
t