that the early periods of Scotch history could supply him with. Meg
Merrilies appears afresh in every novel."

In 1821:--

"_The Pirate_ is certainly one of the least fortunate of Sir Walter's
productions. It seems now that he cannot write without Meg Merrilies
and Dominie Sampson. One other such novel, and there's an end; but who
can last for ever? who ever lasted so long?"

In 1823:--

"_Peveril_ is a moderate production, between his best and his worst;
rather agreeable than not."

His judgment on _The Bride of Lammermoor_ is indeed deplorable. He thought
it like Scott's previous work, but "laboured in an inferior way, and more
careless, with many repetitions of himself. Caleb is overdone.... The
catastrophe is shocking and disgusting."[168]

Incidentally we find him praising Lister's _Granby_, and Hope's
_Anastasius_. He early discovered and consistently admired Macaulay, though
he drew the line at the _Lays of Ancient Rome_, on the ground that he
"abhorred all Grecian and Roman subjects." It is curious to note the number
and variety of new books which he more or less commends, and which are now
equally and completely forgotten. As we come nearer our own times, however,
we find an important conversion. In 1838 he writes:--

"_Nickleby_ is very good. I stood out against Mr. Dickens as long as I
could, but he has conquered me."

In 1843 he writes to Dickens:--

"Pecksniff and his daughters, and Pinch, are admirable--quite
first-rate painting, such as no one but yourself can execute. Chuffey
is admirable. I never read a finer piece of writing."

And, when Dickens asks him to dinner, he replies:--

"I accept your obliging invitation conditionally. If I am invited by
any man of greater genius than yourself, or one by whose works I have
been more completely interested, I will repudiate you, and dine with
the more splendid phenomenon of the two."

His crowning glory in the matter of literary criticism is that, as Ruskin
told us, he was the first man in the literary circles of London to assert
the value of _Modern Painters_. "He said it was a work of transcendent
talent, presented the most original views in the most elegant and powerful
language, and would work a complete revolution in the world of taste."[169]

With the physical sciences Sydney Smith seems to have had no real
acquaintance, unless we include among them the art of the apothecary, w