Yet we may be content to
follow his lead in general, except in those bits of enthusiasm over his
friends which bear witness to a generously optimistic nature rather than
to a rigid critical attitude such as we should hardly demand in any case
from a man of letters commenting on his contemporaries and friends.
George Ticknor was greatly impressed by the "right-mindedness" of the
young Sophia Scott,[486] and we may fairly adopt the word to describe
the father whom she so much resembled. There was in him, as Carlyle
said, "such a sunny current of true humour and humanity, a free joyful
sympathy with so many things; what of fire he had all lying so
beautifully latent, as radical latent heat, as fruitful internal warmth
of life;--a most robust, healthy man!"[487]
Writers upon Scott have made much, perhaps too much, of his feeling that
his position as a landed gentleman was more enviable than his prominence
as a writer. The point would be of greater consequence if it performed
so important a function in explaining his work as has commonly been
assigned to it. We are told that he wrote much and hastily because he
wanted money to establish and support an estate; but the truth is that
if he wrote at all he had to write in this way. He justly believed that
he could do his best work so. Yet it was a natural result of his
facility that he should look upon the literature he produced as of
comparatively little moment. Some of his remarks about his critical
work, however, show that he really regarded creative writing as the
business of his life, and that in contrast with it he considered his
criticism a relief from more arduous labor. After the publication of
_Marmion_ he wrote: "I have done with poetry for some time--it is a
scourging crop, and ought not to be hastily repeated. Editing,
therefore, may be considered as a green crop of turnips or peas,
extremely useful for those whose circumstances do not admit of giving
their farm a summer fallow."[488] After years of novel-writing he said
of writing a review, "No one that has not laboured as I have done on
imaginary topics can judge of the comfort afforded by walking on
all-fours, and being grave and dull."[489]
From what Scott said about Dryden as a critic we may conclude that the
unsystematic character of his own scholarly work may have been a matter
of principle as well as inclination. "Dryden," he wrote, "forebore, from
prudence, indolence, or a regard for the freedom of Parna
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