That he was deeply impressed with his blunder in managing the White Lady of Avenel may be surmised from the fact that in several later discussions of the effect of supernatural apparitions in novels, he emphasized the necessity of keeping them sufficiently infrequent to preserve an atmosphere of mystery.

Of _The Monastery_ he said: "I agree with the public in thinking the work not very interesting; but it was written with as much care as the others--that is, with no care at all."[377] But sometimes he felt inclined to rebel against a popular verdict, as when Norna, in _The Pirate_, was said to be a mere copy of Meg Merrilies.[378] In his later days he grew more and more unsure of himself, as he felt compelled to work at his topmost speed.

His _Journal_ for 1829 has the following record in regard to a review he was writing: "I began to warm in my gear, and am about to awake the whole controversy of Goth and Celt.

I wish I may not make some careless blunders."[379] The criticisms of "J.B." became more frequent and more irritating to him as he felt a growing inability to achieve precision in details.[380] When Lockhart pointed out some lapses in his style, he wrote in his _Journal_, "Well! I will try to remember all this, but after all I write grammar as I speak, to make my meaning known, and a solecism in point of composition, like a Scotch word in speaking, is indifferent to me."[381] Until he felt his powers failing, he was for the most part at once good-natured and independent in his manner of receiving criticism.

Whether or not he agreed with the opinion expressed, he usually thought that what he had once written might best stand, though he might be influenced in later work by the advice that had been given.[382] "I am sensible that if there be anything good about my poetry or prose either," Scott wrote, in a passage that has often been quoted, "it is a hurried frankness of composition which pleases soldiers, sailors and young people of bold and active disposition."[383] I have tried to show that this quality was one which he not only enjoyed, in his own work and in that of other writers, but that as a critic he very seriously approved of it.
Yet in spite of his belief that the greatest literature is not the result of slow and painful labor, it was probably the ease with which he wrote which led him to undervalue his own work.