Scott, Sir Walter - John Ruskin (essay date 1856)

John Ruskin (essay date 1856)

SOURCE: "Of Modern Landscape," in The Works of John Ruskin Vol. 5, edited by Å. Ô. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn, George Allen, 1904, pp. 317-53.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge on Scott's Poetry:

I am reading Scott's Lady of the Lake, having had it on my table week after week till it cried shame to me for not opening it. But truly as far as I can judge from the first 98 pages, my reluctance was not unprophetic. Merciful Apollo!—what an easy pace dost thou jog on with thy unspurred yet unpinioned Pegasus!—The movement of the Poem (which is written with exception of a multitude of Songs in regular 8 syllable Iambics) is between a sleeping Canter and a Marketwoman's trot—but it is endless—I seem never to have made any way—I never remember a narrative poem in which I felt the sense of Progress so languid—. There are (speaking of the first 90 pages) two or three pleasing...

[The entire page is 7447 words long]

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