These we conceive to be
put in purely for the sake of displaying the erudition of the author;
and poetry, which has no other recommendation, but that the substance of
it has been gleaned from rare or obscure books, has, in our estimation,
the least of all possible recommendations. Mr Scott's great talents, and
the novelty of the style in which his romances are written, have made
even these defects acceptable to a considerable part of his readers. His
genius, seconded by the omnipotence of fashion, has brought chivalry
again into temporary favour; but he ought to know, that this is a taste
too evidently unnatural to be long prevalent in the modern world. Fine
ladies and gentlemen now talk, indeed, of donjons, keeps, tabards,
scutcheons, tressures, caps of maintenance, portcullisses, wimples, and
we know not what besides; just as they did, in the days of Dr Darwin's
popularity, of gnomes, sylphs, oxygen, gossamer, polygynia, and
polyandria. That fashion, however, passed rapidly away; and if it be now
evident to all the world, that Dr Darwin obstructed the extension of his
fame, and hastened the extinction of his brilliant reputation, by the
pedantry and ostentatious learning of his poems, Mr Scott should take
care that a different sort of pedantry does not produce the same
effects.
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