de up of, or habitually domineered over, by
voluble Whigs and political economists, Scott was often tempted to put
forth his Tory doctrines and antiquarian prejudices in an exaggerated
shape--in colors, to say the truth, altogether different from what
they assumed under other circumstances, or which had any real
influence upon his mind and conduct on occasions of practical moment.
But I fancy it will seem equally credible, that the most sharp-sighted
of these social critics may not always have been capable of tracing,
and doing justice to, the powers which Scott brought to bear upon the
topics which they, not he, had chosen for discussion. In passing from
a gas-lit hall into a room with wax candles, the guests sometimes
complain that they have left splendor for gloom; but let them try by
what sort of light it is most satisfactory to read, write, or
embroider, or consider at leisure under which of the two, either men
or women look their best.

The strongest, purest, and least observed of all lights, is, however,
daylight; and his talk was commonplace, just as sunshine is, which
gilds the most indifferent objects, and adds brilliancy to the
brightest. As for the old-world anecdotes which these clever persons
were condescending enough to laugh at as pleasant extravagances,
serving merely to relieve and set off the main stream of debate, they
were often enough, it may be guessed, connected with the theme in hand
by links not the less apt that they might be too subtle to catch their
bedazzled and self-satisfied optics. There might be keener knowledge
of human nature than was "dreamt of in their philosophy"--which passed
with them for _commonplace_, only because it was clothed in plain
familiar household words, not dressed up in some pedantic masquerade
of antithesis. "There are people," says Landor, "who think they write
and speak finely, merely because they have forgotten the language in
which their fathers and {p.247} mothers used to talk to them;" and
surely there are a thousand homely old proverbs, which many a dainty
modern would think it beneath his dignity to quote either in speech or
writing, any one of which condenses more wit (take that word in any of
its senses) than could be extracted from all that was ever said or
written by the _doctrinaires_ of the Edinburgh school. Many of those
gentlemen held Scott's conversation to be commonplace exactly for the
same reason that a child thinks a perfectly limpid stream, tho