But Mr.Churton Collins thinks Scott did not present a really clear view of Swift's mysterious character, and Craik says he took only the conventional attitude towards Swift's politics, misanthropy, and religion.

The charge indicates Scott's weakness, and perhaps also much of his strength, as a biographer and critic, for he had no prejudice against the conventional as such, and was never anxious to exhibit special "insight" of any kind.

Yet I think his portrayal of Swift has seemed to most readers a clear presentation of a real and comprehensible character.[191] Scott's remark when he undertook the work, that Swift was of his early favorites,[192] seems surprising when one remembers how his genial nature recoiled from misanthropy and cynicism; but his treatment of the Dean was so sympathetic that Jeffrey thought him decidedly too lenient, and was moved to express righteous indignation in the pages of the _Edinburgh Review_.[193] The rebuke was unnecessary, for Scott did not omit to record Swift's failings and to express wholesomely vigorous opinions concerning them, though he felt that they ought to be looked upon as evidences of disease rather than of guilt.

He felt also, with perhaps some excess of charity but surely not such as could be in the least harmful, that "if the Dean's principles were misanthropical, his practice was benevolent.

Few have written so much with so little view either to fame or to profit, or to aught but benefit to the public."[194] Jeffrey's condemnation of Scott's point of view was mingled with just praise.