He concluded on very insufficient evidence, says Colonel Parnell, that these memoirs were genuinely historical, published them as such, and by the weight of his opinion falsified "the whole stream of nineteenth-century history bearing on the reign of Queen Anne."[485] Stanhope, Macaulay, and other historians were ready to accept Scott's judgment without further investigation, it seems; and if the accusation be true we may conclude that his influence as a critic has reached farther than might at first sight appear.

Yet we may be content to follow his lead in general, except in those bits of enthusiasm over his friends which bear witness to a generously optimistic nature rather than to a rigid critical attitude such as we should hardly demand in any case from a man of letters commenting on his contemporaries and friends.
George Ticknor was greatly impressed by the "right-mindedness" of the young Sophia Scott,[486] and we may fairly adopt the word to describe the father whom she so much resembled.

There was in him, as Carlyle said, "such a sunny current of true humour and humanity, a free joyful sympathy with so many things; what of fire he had all lying so beautifully latent, as radical latent heat, as fruitful internal warmth of life;--a most robust, healthy man!"[487] Writers upon Scott have made much, perhaps too much, of his feeling that his position as a landed gentleman was more enviable than his prominence as a writer.

The point would be of greater consequence if it performed so important a function in explaining his work as has commonly been assigned to it.

We are told that he wrote much and hastily because he wanted money to establish and support an estate; but the truth is that if he wrote at all he had to write in this way.