SOURCE: "Scott as a Poet," in Études Anglaises, Vol. XXIV, No. 4, October-December, 1971, pp. 478-91.

Crawford is a Scottish critic and educator and the author of Scott (1965), a book-length study of Sir Walter Scott. In the following essay, Crawford extends the ideas presented by Donald Davie in his 1961 lecture. Like Davie, Crawford finds much of Scott's poetry to be innovative and finely crafted, though Crawford emphasizes the manner in which Scott is able to "ad-lib" on the folk song and popular lyric forms, as well as the interesting textures that are created in the scenes of the poems. Crawford also comments on the connection he perceives between Scott's poetry and novels.

At the time of that other Centenary of nearly forty years ago—the Centenary of Sir Walter's death, which was so widely observed in 1932—there was much shaking of heads at the decline in Scott's reputation. "Who reads...