about which
he might have said, using the words given to a character in one of his
stories,--"It soothes my imagination, without influencing my reason or
conduct."[454] A liking for the wonderful and terrible, which he felt
from his earliest childhood, was one manifestation of a poetical
temperament which is so apparent that there is no need of reciting the
evidence. The poetical qualities in the Waverley novels gave Adolphus
one of his favorite arguments in the attempt to prove that Scott was the
author.

Yet Scott seemed to feel that his position as a writer of popular
fiction, however much the novel is capable of being the vehicle of
imagination and poetical power, was not a really high one. James
Ballantyne persuaded him to omit from one of his introductions a passage
that seemed to belittle the occupation of his life,[455] but in the
introduction to _The Abbot_ he wrote: "Though it were worse than
affectation to deny that my vanity was satisfied at my success in the
department in which chance had in some measure enlisted me, I was
nevertheless far from thinking that the novelist or romance-writer
stands high in the ranks of literature." The ideal which he set for
himself is indicated in the following passage of his article on _Tales
of My Landlord_: "If ... the features of an age gone by can be recalled
in a spirit of delineation at once faithful and striking ... the
composition is in every point of view dignified and improved; and the
author, leaving the light and frivolous associates with whom a careless
observer would be disposed to ally him, takes his seat on the bench of
the historians of his time and country." He once expressed the opinion
that the historical romance approaches, in some measure, when it is
nobly executed, to the epic in poetry.[456] When a medal of Scott,
engraved from the bust by Chantrey, was struck off, he suggested the
motto which was used:

"Bardorum citharas patrio qui reddidit Istro,"

and said, "because I am far more vain of having been able to fix some
share of public attention upon the ancient poetry and manners of my
country, than of any original efforts which I have been able to make in
literature."[457] The following commendation, which he wrote for a book
of portraits accompanied by essays, might be made to apply to his
novels: "It is impossible for me to conceive a work which ought to be
more interesting to the present age than that which exhibits before our
eyes our '