Yet Scott seemed to feel that his position as a writer of popular fiction, however much the novel is capable of being the vehicle of imagination and poetical power, was not a really high one.  James Ballantyne persuaded him to omit from one of his introductions a passage that seemed to belittle the occupation of his life,[455] but in the introduction to The Abbot he wrote:  “Though it were worse than affectation to deny that my vanity was satisfied at my success in the department in which chance had in some measure enlisted me, I was nevertheless far from thinking that the novelist or romance-writer stands high in the ranks of literature.”  The ideal which he set for himself is indicated in the following passage of his article on Tales of My Landlord:  “If ... the features of an age gone by can be recalled in a spirit of delineation at once faithful and striking ... the composition is in every point of view dignified and improved; and the author, leaving the light and frivolous associates with whom a careless observer would be disposed to ally him, takes his seat on the bench of the historians of his time and country.”  He once expressed the opinion that the historical romance approaches, in some measure, when it is nobly executed, to the epic in poetry.[456] When a medal of Scott, engraved from the bust by Chantrey, was struck off, he suggested the motto which was used: 

    “Bardorum citharas patrio qui reddidit Istro,”

and said, “because I am far more vain of having been able to fix some share of public attention upon the ancient poetry and manners of my country, than of any original efforts which I have been able to make in literature."[457] The following commendation, which he wrote for a book of portraits accompanied by essays, might be made to apply to his novels:  “It is impossible for me to conceive a work which ought to be more interesting to the present age than that which exhibits before our eyes our ‘fathers as they lived’"[458] He felt strongly the value and importance of past manners, faiths and ideals for the present, and from this point of view took satisfaction in the social and ethical teaching of his novels.

On the whole, Scott’s opinions about his own work fitted well with his general literary principles, except that his modesty inclined him to discount his own performance while he overestimated that of others.  With this qualification we may remember that he always spoke sensibly about his work, without affectation, and with abundant geniality.  We are reminded of the comment on Moliere quoted by Scott from a French writer,—­“He had the good fortune to escape the most dangerous fault of an author writing upon his own compositions, and to exhibit wit, where some people would only have shown vanity and self-conceit."[459]

CHAPTER VI

SCOTT’S POSITION AS CRITIC