It was Scott’s political creed that roused the ire of such men as Hazlitt and Hunt, though they may also have been exasperated at the unprecedented success of poetry which seemed so facile and so superficial to them as Scott’s.  Leigh Hunt calls him “a poet of a purely conventional order,” “a bitter and not very large-minded politician,” “a critic more agreeable than subtle."[476] But Scott’s politics may be looked at in another way.  “In his patriotism,” says Mr. Courthope, “his passionate love of the past, and his reverence for established authority, literary or political, Scott is the best representative among English men of letters of Conservatism in its most generous form."[477]

Though it seems to have been a common opinion among the literary men of his own time that Scott’s criticism was superficial, his knowledge of mediaeval literature was, as we have seen, recognized and respected.  Favorable comments by his contemporaries on other parts of his critical work are not difficult to find.  For example, Gifford wrote to Murray in regard to the article on Lady Suffolk’s Correspondence:  “Scott’s paper is a clever, sensible thing—­the work of a man who knows what he is about."[478] Isaac D’Israeli made the following observation on another of Scott’s papers:  “The article on Pepys, after so many have been written, is the only one which, in the most charming manner possible, shows the real value of these works, which I can assure you many good scholars have no idea of."[479] A more recent verdict may be set beside those just quoted, and it is in perfect agreement with them.  “His critical faculty,” says Professor Saintsbury, “if not extraordinarily subtle, was always as sound and shrewd as it was good-natured."[480]

Scott’s influence as a critic was not very great, but his creative work exerted a strong influence on criticism as well as on the whole intellectual life of his age.  His own novels demanded of the critic that kind of appreciation of the large qualities and negligence of the small which he had insisted on considering the function of criticism; and they became a fact in literature which determined to some degree the attitude taken toward ephemeral ideas.  Newman notes the popularity of Scott’s novels as one of the influences which prepared the ground for the Tractarian movement, for Scott enriched the visions of men by his pictures of the past, gave them noble ideas, and created a desire for a greater richness of spiritual life.[481] Much of his criticism also was inspired by the wish to construct an adequate picture of the past; so far it worked in the same direction with the novels.  Its most important offices aside from this were perhaps to present large and kindly views of literature and literary characters, especially through biographical essays; and to ameliorate somewhat the prevailing asperity of periodical criticism.