His full-blooded enjoyment of life and literature tempered without obscuring his critical instinct, and though he was “willing to be pleased by those who were desirous to give pleasure",[345] he noted the weak points of men to whose power he gladly paid tribute.  Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, and Byron, whom he classed as the great English poets of his time, may, with the exception of Southey, be given the places he assigned to them.  In regard to Byron, Scott expressed a critical estimate that the public is only now getting ready to accept after a long period of depreciating Byron’s genius.  The men whose work Scott judged fairly and sympathetically represent widely different types.  With some of them he was connected by the new impulse that they were imparting to English poetry, but he was so close to the transition period that he could look backward to his predecessors with no sense of strangeness.  He was never inclined to quarrel with the “erroneous system” of a poem which he really liked.  His comments on Byron’s Darkness suggest that if he had read more than he did of Shelley and others among his younger contemporaries he might have found much to reprehend, but he held that “we must not limit poetical merit to the class of composition which exactly suits one’s own particular taste."[346] Among novelists even less than among poets can we trace a “school” to which he paid special allegiance.  He read and enjoyed all sorts of good stories, growing in this respect more catholic in his tastes, though perhaps more severe in his standards, as he grew older.

In speaking of Scott’s relations with his contemporaries, we must especially remember his ardent interest in those realities of life which he considered greater than the greatest books.  In one of his reviews he laid stress on the merit of writing on contemporary events,[347] and he seemed to think there was too little of such celebration.  There are many evidences of his great admiration for those of his contemporaries who were men of action, but it is sufficient to remember that the only man in whose presence Scott felt abashed was the Duke of Wellington, for he counted that famous commander the greatest man of his time.

CHAPTER V

SCOTT AS A CRITIC OF HIS OWN WORK

Lack of dogmatism about his own work—­Harmony between his talents and his tastes—­His conviction of the value of spontaneity and abundance—­Merits of a rapid meter—­Greater care necessary in verse writing a reason why he turned to prose—­His attitude in regard to revision—­Modesty about his own work—­His opinion of the popular judgment—­Importance of novelty—­Rivalry with Byron—­Scott’s attempts to keep ahead of his imitators—­Devices to secure novelty—­His resolution to write history—­Historical motives of his novels—­His comments on the use of historical material—­His verdict in regard to his descriptive abilities and methods—­Lack