ott wrote emphatically.
He was much troubled by the problem of whether to publish Dryden's works
without any cutting, and came near taking Ellis's advice to omit some
portions, but he finally adhered to his original determination: "In
making an edition of a man of genius's works for libraries and
collections ... I must give my author as I find him, and will not tear
out the page, even to get rid of the blot, little as I like it."[156]

The question of the morality of theater-going was one Scott felt obliged
to discuss when he was writing upon the drama. He found its vindication,
characteristically, in a universal human trait,--the impulse toward
mimicry and impersonation,--and in the good results that may be supposed
to attend it. In naming these he lays what seems like undue stress on
the teaching of history by the drama, in language that might quite as
well be applied to historical novels. His argument on the literary side
also is stated in a somewhat too sweeping way:--"Had there been no
drama, Shakespeare would, in all likelihood, have been but the author of
_Venus and Adonis_ and of a few sonnets forgotten among the numerous
works of the Elizabethan age, and Otway had been only the compiler of
fantastic odes."[157] A final plea, in favor of the stage as a
democratic agency--though this of course is not Scott's phrasing--seems
slightly unusual for him, although not essentially out of character.
"The entertainment," he says, "which is the subject of general
enjoyment, is of a nature which tends to soften, if not to level, the
distinction of ranks."[158] In another mood he admitted the greater
likelihood that immoral plays would injure the public character than
that moral plays would elevate it.[159]

It is sufficiently apparent to any student of Scott's work that he was
personally very fond of the drama. Many of the literary references and
allusions which appear in great abundance throughout his writings are
from plays, and show, as we have seen, a wide acquaintance with English
dramatic writers, from Shakspere to such comparatively little-known
playwrights as Suckling and Cowley. In the _Letters of Malachi
Malagrowther on the Currency_, for example, Scott's unusual range of
reading reveals itself even in connection with a subject remote from his
ordinary field, and here as elsewhere he shows himself prone to quote
from the drama.[160] But Scott was interested in plays for what he found
in them of characters and man