"Dryden," he wrote, "forebore, from prudence, indolence, or a regard for the freedom of Parnassus, to erect himself into a legislator."[490] The words remind us of comments made upon Scott's own work, as for example by Professor Masson, who spoke of "the shrewdness and sagacity of some of his critical prefaces to his novels, where he discusses principles of literature without seeming to call them such."[491] Scott was quick to notice "cant and slang"[492] in the professional language of men in all arts; and he valued most highly the remarks of those whose intelligence had not been overlaid by a conventional pedantry.
Knowing that criticism was not the main business of his life, we are inclined to be surprised at the broad fields which he seemed to have no hesitation in entering upon.

His remarkable memory doubtless had something to do with this, but he lived in a period when generalization was more possible and more permissible than it is in this era of special monographs.

The large tendencies and characteristics that he traced in his essay on Romance, for instance, are undoubtedly to be qualified at numberless points, but writing when he did, Scott was comparatively untroubled by these limitations.

Moreover, he had the gift of seeing things broadly, so that in essentials his survey remains true.

But the amount of his work is almost as astonishing as its scope and variety.