contemporaries. Moore was another lyrist whose poetry Scott greatly
admired. In Moore's case, as in Southey's, the contemporary estimate was
higher than can now be maintained, but Moore is to-day underrated. From
what Scott says about him we conclude that the man's personality and his
way of singing added much to the exquisiteness of his songs. "He seems
almost to think in music," Scott said, "the notes and words are so
happily suited to each other";[299] and, "it would be a delightful
addition to life if T.M. had a cottage within two miles of one."[300]
Allan Cunningham was a young protege of Scott whose songs, "Its hame and
it's hame," and "A wet sheet and a flowing sea," seemed to him "among
the best going."[301] Another poet who received Scott's good offices was
Hogg, whose relations with the greater man are described so vividly and
at some points so amusingly by Lockhart. Scott called him a "wonderful
creature for his opportunities."[302]

For the poet Crabbe, Scott, like Byron and Wordsworth,[303] had a steady
and high admiration. In the Sunday evening readings that Lockhart
describes as being so pleasant a feature of the life of the family in
Edinburgh, Crabbe was perhaps the chief standing resource after
Shakspere.[304] His work was particularly recommended to the young
people of the family,[305] and when the venerable poet visited the
Scotts in 1822, he was received as a man whom they always looked upon as
nobly gifted. Scott once wrote of him: "I think if he had cultivated the
sublime and the pathetic instead of the satirical cast of poetry, he
must have stood very high (as indeed he does at any rate) on the list of
British poets. His _Sir Eustace Grey_ and _The Hall of Justice_ indicate
prodigious talent."[306] Scott did not like Crabbe's choice of
subjects,[307] but he appreciated the "force and vigour" of a poet whom
students of our own day are once more beginning to admire, after a
period during which he was practically ignored.

Scott's very high estimation of Joanna Baillie has already been
mentioned.[308] In this case as in many others he was proud and happy in
the personal friendship of the writer whose works he admired. He once
wrote to Miss Edgeworth: "I have always felt the value of having access
to persons of talent and genius to be the best part of a literary man's
prerogative."[309] Almost the earliest of the writers for whose
friendship Scott felt grateful was Matthew Lewis, famed as the author