In discussing Roscommon's Essay on Translated Verse he wrote: "It must be remembered that the rules of criticism, now so well known as to be even trite and hackneyed, were then almost new to the literary world."[463] Perhaps the main reason why one would not class Scott's critical work with that of the Romanticists is that he had no desire to proclaim a new era in creative literature or in criticism.

Like the Romanticists he was ready to substitute "for the absolute method of judging by reference to an external standard of 'taste,' a method at once imaginative and historical";[464] yet he talked less about imagination than about good sense.

The comparison with Boileau suggests itself, for Scott admired that critic in the conventional fashion, calling him "a supereminent authority,"[465] and Boileau also had said much about "reason and good sense." But Scott had an appreciation of the _furor poeticus_ that made "good sense" quite a different thing to him from what it was to Boileau.
He did not say, moreover, that the poet should be supremely characterized by good sense, but that the critic, recognizing the facts about human emotion, should make use of that quality.
The subjective process by which experience is transmuted into literature engaged Scott's attention very little: in this respect also he stands apart from the newer school of critics.

The metaphysical description of imagination or fancy interested him less than the piece of literature in which these qualities were exhibited.

His own mental activities were more easily set in motion than analysed, and the introspective or philosophical attitude of mind was unnatural to him.