nteresting comment on Goethe's success in creating a really wicked
Mephistopheles, who escapes the noble dignity that Milton and Byron gave
to their pictures of Satan. Goethe and Scott exchanged letters once in
1827,[339] and it was a personal grief to Sir Walter that the German
poet's death prevented a visit Scott proposed to make him in 1832. In
_Anne of Geierstein_ Goethe is called "an author born to arouse the
slumbering fame of his country";[340] and in the _Journal_ Scott
characterizes him as "the Ariosto at once and almost the Voltaire of
Germany."[341] The suggestion for the character of Fenella in _Peveril
of the Peak_ was taken from Goethe, as we learn by Scott's
acknowledgment in the Introduction. Another German from whom Scott
borrowed a suggestion--this time for the unlucky "White Lady of
Avenel"--was the Baron de la Motte Fouque. Scott was evidently
interested in his work, though he thought Fouque sometimes used such a
profusion of historical and antiquarian lore that readers would find it
difficult to follow the narrative.[342] Sir Walter asked his son to tell
the Baroness de la Motte Fouque that he had been much interested in her
writings and those of the Baron, and added, "It will be civil, for folks
like to know that they are known and respected beyond the limits of
their own country."[343]

In the literary circles of Paris Scott more than once experienced the
pleasure of finding himself "known and respected" by foreigners,[344]
and he had intimate relations with men of letters in London. On one of
his visits there he saw Byron almost every morning for some time, at the
house of Murray the publisher. In Edinburgh society Scott was naturally
a prominent figure, being noted for his fund of anecdote and his
superior gifts in presiding at dinners. But however much his kindly
personal feeling is reflected in his comments on the literary work of
his friends, he was too well-balanced to assume anything of the
patronizing tone that such success as his might have made natural to
another sort of man. His fellow-poets thought him a delightful person
whom they liked so much that they could almost forgive the preposterous
success of his facile and unimportant poetry.

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 p