courtesy under the delicate circumstances.
Cowper was, perhaps, not likely to welcome very warmly any successor to
his beloved Newton. At any rate, he appears never to have cordially
appreciated Scott. Scott complains, not without reason, of the poet
charging him with _scolding_ the people at Olney, when neither he nor
Mrs. Unwin, nor their more respectable friends, had ever heard him
preach.[818] Still the coldness between the poet and the new curate
could hardly have been so great as Southey represents it, for Scott
tells us that 'The Force of Truth' was revised by Mr. Cowper, and as to
style and externals considerably improved by his advice.[819]

Though Scott was unpopular at Olney, it must not be supposed that the
fault was altogether his. Possibly he may not have had the elements in
his character which, under any circumstances, could have made him
popular. Indeed, he frankly owns that he had not. 'Some things,' he
writes, 'requisite for popularity I would not have if I could, and
others I could not have if I would.'[820] But at Olney his unpopularity
redounded to his credit. No man could have done his duty there without
being unpopular. The evils against which Scott had to contend were of a
more subtle and complicated kind than simple irreligion and immorality.
Spiritual pride, and the combination of a high profession with a low
practice, were the dominant sins of the place.

Scott's warfare against the perversions of Calvinism forms a conspicuous
feature in his ministerial career. On his removal to the chaplaincy of
the Lock Hospital in London, he met with the same troubles as at Olney,
on a larger scale, and in an aggravated form. 'Everything,' he writes,
'conduced to render me more and more unpopular, not only at the Lock,
but in every part of London ... but my most distinguishing reprehensions
of those who perverted the doctrines of the Gospel to Antinomian
purposes, and my most awful warnings, were the language of compassionate
love, and were accompanied by many tears and prayers.'[821] His printed
sermons show us how strongly he felt the necessity of making a bold
stand against the pernicious principles of some of the 'professors' who
attended his ministry. It required far greater moral courage to wage
such a warfare as this than to fight against open sin and avowed
infidelity. And when it is also remembered that Scott was a needy man,
and that his bread depended upon his keeping on good terms with his
con