was writing: "I began to warm
in my gear, and am about to awake the whole controversy of Goth and
Celt. I wish I may not make some careless blunders."[379] The criticisms
of "J.B." became more frequent and more irritating to him as he felt a
growing inability to achieve precision in details.[380] When Lockhart
pointed out some lapses in his style, he wrote in his _Journal_, "Well!
I will try to remember all this, but after all I write grammar as I
speak, to make my meaning known, and a solecism in point of composition,
like a Scotch word in speaking, is indifferent to me."[381] Until he
felt his powers failing, he was for the most part at once good-natured
and independent in his manner of receiving criticism. Whether or not he
agreed with the opinion expressed, he usually thought that what he had
once written might best stand, though he might be influenced in later
work by the advice that had been given.[382]

"I am sensible that if there be anything good about my poetry or prose
either," Scott wrote, in a passage that has often been quoted, "it is a
hurried frankness of composition which pleases soldiers, sailors and
young people of bold and active disposition."[383] I have tried to show
that this quality was one which he not only enjoyed, in his own work and
in that of other writers, but that as a critic he very seriously
approved of it.

Yet in spite of his belief that the greatest literature is not the
result of slow and painful labor, it was probably the ease with which he
wrote which led him to undervalue his own work. However we may account
for it, he found difficulty in regarding himself as a great author.[384]
When this modesty of his came into conflict with the other opinion that
he had always been inclined to hold--that the popularity of books is a
test of their merit--the result is amusing. He was impelled at times to
utter contemptuous words about the foolishness of the public, and of
course he could not help being moved also in the other direction--to
believe there was more in his writings than he had realized. In one mood
he said, "I thank God I can write ill enough for the present
taste";[385] and "I have very little respect for that dear _publicum_
whom I am doomed to amuse, like Goody Trash in _Bartholomew Fair_, with
rattles and gingerbread; and I should deal very uncandidly with those
who may read my confessions were I to say I knew a public worth caring
for, or capable of distinguishing the nicer