t is
implicit in many of his biographical studies. His own amiability of
course influenced all his work. Satire he considered objectionable, "a
woman's fault,"[22] as he once called it; though he did not feel himself
"altogether disqualified for it by nature."[23] "I have refrained, as
much as human frailty will permit, from all satirical composition,"[24]
he said. For satire he seems to have substituted that kind of "serious
banter, a style hovering between affected gravity and satirical
slyness," which has been pointed out as characteristic of him.[25]
Washington Irving noticed a similar tone in all his familiar
conversations about local traditions and superstitions.[26]

He was really optimistic, except on some political questions. In his
_Lives of the Novelists_ he shows that he thought manners and morals had
improved in the previous hundred years; and none of his reviews exhibits
the feeling so common among men of letters in all ages, that their own
times are intellectually degenerate. It is true that he looked back to
the days of Blair, Hume, Adam Smith, Robertson, and Ferguson, as the
"golden days of Edinburgh,"[27] but those golden days were no farther
away than his own boyhood, and he had felt the exhilaration of the
stimulating society which he praised. One of his contemporaries spoke of
Scott's own works as throwing "a literary splendour over his native
city";[28] and George Ticknor said of him, "He is indeed the lord of the
ascendant now in Edinburgh, and well deserves to be, for I look upon him
to be quite as remarkable in intercourse and conversation, as he is in
any of his writings, even in his novels."[29] But he could hardly be
expected to perceive the luster surrounding his own personality, and
this one instance of regret for former days counts little against the
abundant evidence that he thought the world was improving. Yet of all
his contemporaries he was probably the one who looked back at the past
with the greatest interest. The impression made by the author of
_Waverley_ upon the mind of a young enthusiast of his own time is too
delightful to pass over without quotation. "He has no eccentric
sympathies or antipathies"; wrote J.L. Adolphus, "no maudlin
philanthropy or impertinent cynicism; no nondescript hobby-horse; and
with all his matchless energy and originality of mind, he is content to
admire popular books, and enjoy popular pleasures; to cherish those
opinions which experience has sanctioned