His _obiter dicta_ must be read in the light of one another, and in the light, also, of his known principles.

Temperamentally modest about his own work, he was also habitually optimistic, and the combination gave him an utterly different quality from that of the typical _Edinburgh_ or _Quarterly_ critics.
His disapproval of their point of view he expressed more than once.[235] It seemed to him futile and ungentlemanly for the anonymous reviewer to seek primarily for faults, or "to wound any person's feelings ...

unless where conceit or false doctrine strongly calls for reprobation."[236] "Where praise can be conscientiously mingled in a larger proportion than blame," he said, "there is always some amusement in throwing together our ideas upon the works of our fellow-labourers." He thought, indeed, that vituperative and satiric criticism was defeating its own end, in the case of the _Edinburgh Review_ since it was overworked to the point of monotony.

Such criticism he considered futile as well on this account as because he thought it likely to have an injurious effect on the work of really gifted writers.
An admirer of both Jeffrey and Scott, who once heard a conversation between the two men, has recorded a distinction which is exactly what we should expect.[237] He says: "Jeffrey, for the most part, entertained us, when books were under discussion, with the detection of faults, blunders, absurdities, or plagiarisms: Scott took up the matter where he left it, recalled some compensating beauty or excellence for which no credit had been allowed, and by the recitation, perhaps, of one fine stanza, set the poor victim on his legs again." On Jeffrey Scott's verdict was, "There is something in his mode of reasoning that leads me greatly to doubt whether, notwithstanding the vivacity of his imagination, he really has any _feeling_ of poetical genius, or whether he has worn it all off by perpetually sharpening his wit on the grindstone of criticism."[238] His comment on Gifford's reviews was to the effect that people were more moved to dislike the critic for his savagery than the guilty victim whom he flagellated.[239] In the early days of _Blackwood's Magazine_ Scott often tried to repress Lockhart's "wicked wit,"[240] and when Lockhart became editor of the _Quarterly_ his father-in-law did not always approve of his work.

"Don't like his article on Sheridan's life,"[241] says the _Journal_.