o do itself justice.
His fancy and diction would have long ago placed him above all his
contemporaries, had they been under the direction of a sound judgment
and a steady will.[117] I don't now expect a great original poem from
Coleridge, but he might easily make a sort of fame for himself as a
poetical translator,--that would be a thing completely unique and _sui
generis_."

[Footnote 117: In the Introduction to _The Lay of the
Last Minstrel_, 1830, Sir Walter says: "Were I ever to
take the unbecoming freedom of censuring a man of Mr.
Coleridge's extraordinary talents, it would be on
account of the caprice and indolence with which he has
thrown from him, as in mere wantonness, those unfinished
scraps of poetry, which, like the Torso of antiquity,
defy the skill of his poetical brethren to complete
them. The charming fragments which the author abandons
to their fate are surely too valuable to be treated like
the proofs of careless engravers, the sweepings of whose
studios often make the fortune of some painstaking
collector." And in a note to _The Abbot_, alluding to
Coleridge's beautiful and tantalizing fragment of
_Christabel_, he adds: "Has not our own imaginative poet
cause to fear that future ages will desire to summon him
from his place of rest, as Milton longed

'To call up him who left half told
The story of Cambuscan bold'?"]

While this criticism proceeded, Scott was cutting away at his brown
loaf and a plate of kippered salmon, in a style which strongly
reminded me of Dandie Dinmont's luncheon at Mump's Hall; nor was his
German topic at all the predominant one. On the contrary, the
sentences which have dwelt on my memory dropt from him now and then,
in the pauses, as it were, of his main talk;--for though he could not
help recurring, ever and anon, to the subject, it would have been
quite out of his way to make any literary matter the chief theme of
his conversation, when there was a single person present who was not
likely to feel much interested in its discussion.--How often have I
heard him quote on such occasions Mr. Vellum's advice to the butler in
Addison's excellent play of The Drummer: "Your conjuror, John, is
indeed a twofold