Note 101 — Chapter III

But see the dictum quoted by Scott in a somewhat over-emphatic way from Ellis's Specimens of the Early English Poets, to the effect that Chaucer's "peculiar ornaments of style, consisting in an affectation of splendour, and especially of latinity," were perhaps his special contribution to the improvement of English poetry. (Edinburgh Review, April, 1804.) Scott said of Dunbar, "This darling of the Scottish muses has been justly raised to a level with Chaucer by every judge of poetry to whom his obsolete language has not rendered him unintelligible." (Memoir of Bannatyne, p. 14.) After naming the various qualities in which Dunbar was Chaucer's rival, he pronounces the Scottish poet inferior in the use of pathos. The relative position here assigned to the two poets seems to be rather an exaltation of Dunbar than a degradation of Chaucer.