sane to believe itself infallible. He had a singular fancy for showing his manuscripts to his friends, and it is quite delicious to see how doubtful and discouraging were their first comments. Gray, when hard pressed by the "light and genteel" verses of his companion, Richard West, was not more frugal of his doled-out praises. But Scott exacted homage neither from his acquaintances nor from the public. When it came—and it did come very soon in generous abundance—he basked willingly in the sunshine; but he had no uneasy vanity to be frightened by the shade. He would have been as sincerely amused to hear Mr. Borrow call Woodstock "tiresome, trashy, and unprincipled" as Matthew Arnold used to be when pelted with strong language by the London newspapers. "I have made a study of the Corinthian or leading-article style," wrote the great critic, with exasperating urbanity; "and I know its exigencies, and that they are no more to be quarreled with than the law of gravitation." In fact, the most hopeless barrier to strife is the steady indifference of a man who knows he has work to do, and who goes on doing it, irrespective of anybody's
