I have found no reference to Landor, a poet whom Southey and Wordsworth
read with eagerness, but Mr. Forster makes this statement in his
_Biography of Landor_: "Among Landor's papers I found a list, prepared
by himself, of resemblances to passages of his own writing to be found
in Scott's _Tales of the Crusaders_. There were several from _Gebir_....
The poem had made a great impression on Scott, who read it at Southey's
suggestion."[314] Forster also notes the fact that Southey, in a letter
to Scott written in 1812, spoke very highly of Landor's _Count
Julian_.[315] I am similarly unable to cite any comment by Scott on the
writings of Lamb. Was it because Scott's genius clung to Scotland and
Lamb's to London, that the two seemed so little to notice each other? It
does seem odd that Scott never refers to the delightful _Specimens of
English Dramatic Poets_. At one time Lamb wrote to Sir Walter asking a
contribution toward a fund that was being raised to help William Godwin
out of pecuniary troubles, and Scott replied, through the artist Haydon,
with a cheque for ten pounds and a pleasant message to Mr. Lamb, "whom I
should be happy to see in Scotland, though I have not forgotten his
metropolitan preference of houses to rocks, and citizens to wild rustics
and highland men."[316] Hazlitt and Hunt were two other writers whose
literary work Scott ignored.[317] This, as well as his neglect of Lamb's
and DeQuincey's essays, may be due largely to the fact that he seldom
read newspapers and magazines, and these writers were journalists and
contributors to periodicals. Voracious reader as Scott was, he had to
economize time somewhere, and the hours saved from papers could be given
to books. We do find one or two references to these men as political
writers. Scott hoped Lockhart would learn, as editor of the _Quarterly_,
to despise petty adversaries, for "to take notice of such men as Hazlitt
and Hunt in the _Quarterly_ would be to introduce them into a world
which is scarce conscious of their existence."[318]
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