Chapter XXIV: Sir Walter Scott

[Coleridge and Sir Walter Scott met at least three times during their lives, once in 1807,[107] once in 1820, and again in 1828. Sir Walter was cognizant of the genius of Coleridge both as the author of _Christabel_ and of the translation of _Wallenstein_, which he praised highly; and he had on the last occasion of their meeting to acknowledge Coleridge's extraordinary colloquial power. His tribute to the genius of Coleridge is well known to readers of Lockhart's _Life of Scott_. The next letter to Allsop contains Coleridge's estimate of Scott. No greater contrast than Scott and Coleridge as literary men, the two greatest, with the exception of Goethe, of their generation, could be conceived. Scott, successful, the darling of the hour, reaping thousands of pounds for his literary output and almost unable to keep pace with the demand for his creations; Coleridge, always unable to obtain anything like remuneration for his more profound and original work, and never the possessor in advance of £50 which he could call his own. And yet, both were the victims of a fate which seemed to brood over them; and, after all, it is difficult to say from a worldly point of view which was really the more successful, the creator of a whole gallery of characters known throughout Anglo-Saxondom as household beings, or the other the disseminator of the most fruitful ideas in all departments of human thought.