beauties of composition.
They weigh good and evil qualities by the pound. Get a good name and you
may write trash. Get a bad one and you may write like Homer, without
pleasing a single reader."[386] Looking back from the end of his career
to the time when _The Lady of the Lake_ was in the height of its
success, he wrote: "It must not be supposed that I was either so
ungrateful or so superabundantly candid as to despise or scorn the value
of those whose voice had elevated me so much higher than my own opinion
told me I deserved. I felt, on the contrary, the more grateful to the
public as receiving that from partiality which I could not have claimed
from merit; and I endeavoured to deserve the partiality by continuing
such exertions as I was capable of for their amusement."[387] The
perfect respectability of these remarks tempts the reader to set over
against them this earlier observation by the same writer in the guise of
Chrystal Croftangry, "One thing I have learned in life--never to speak
sense when nonsense will answer the purpose as well."[388]

Whatever Scott might think of the worth of public admiration, he frankly
attempted to write what would be popular. He had none of the feeling
which has characterized many very interesting men of letters, that the
desire for self-expression is the one motive of the author; his personal
literary impulse, on the contrary, was always guided by the thought of
the audience whom he was addressing. "No one shall find me rowing
against the stream," says the "Author" in the Introductory Epistle to
_Nigel_. "I care not who knows it--I write for general amusement; and
though I will never aim at popularity by what I think unworthy means, I
will not, on the other hand, be pertinacious in the defence of my own
errors against the voice of the public." Of his last "apoplectic books,"
he wrote, "I am ashamed, for the first time in my life, of the two
novels, but since the pensive public have taken them, there is no more
to be said but to eat my pudding and to hold my tongue."[389] Early in
his career he seems to have felt that he could make a good deal of money
by writing, if he should wish.[390] Towards the end he said, "I know
that no literary speculation ever succeeded with me but where my own
works were concerned; and that, on the other hand, these have rarely
failed."[391]

The popularity of his own books was so great that they required a
special category. He seemed to be incapable of a