George Tichnor, the author, says that Scott repeated to him the English translations of two long Spanish ballads which he had never seen, but which had been read to him twice.
Scott's college friend, John Irving, in writing of himself and Scott, says: "The number of books we thus devoured was very great. I forgot a great part of what I read; but my friend, notwithstanding he read with such rapidity, remained, to my surprise, master of it all, and could even, weeks and months afterwards, repeat a whole page in which anything had particularly struck him at the moment."
Washington Irving remarked: "During the time of my visit he inclined to the comic rather than to the grave in his anecdotes and stories; and such, I was told, was his general inclination. He relished a joke or a trait of humor in social intercourse, and laughed with right good will.... His humor in conversation, as in his works, was genial and free from causticity. He had a quick perception of faults and foibles, but he looked upon human nature with an indulgent eye, relishing what was good and pleasant, tolerating what was frail and pitying what was evil.... I do not recollect a sneer throughout his conversation, any more than there is throughout his works."
Lord Byron said: "I think that Scott is the only very successful genius that could be cited as being as generally beloved as a man as he is admired as an author; and I must add, he deserves it, for he is so thoroughly good-natured, sincere and honest, that he disarms the envy and jealousy his extraordinary genius must excite."
Leslie Stephen remarked: "Scott could never see an old tower, or a bank, or a rush of a stream without instantly recalling a boundless collection of appropriate anecdotes. He might be quoted as a case in point by those who would explain all poetical imagination by the power of associating ideas. He is the poet of association."
Lockhart, who married the daughter of Sir Walter and who was therefore his son-in-law, wrote a biography of his father-in-law wherein he says that: "The love of his country became indeed a passion; no knight ever tilted for his mistress more willingly than he would have bled and died to preserve even the airiest surviving nothing of her antique pretensions for Scotland. But the Scotland of his affections had the clan Scott for her kernel."
I believe the son-in-law is inclined to be facetious, but is he just to his immortal father-in-law? I don't believe he is—therefore his criticisms are not worth a whoop.
Thomas Carlyle, the cynical philosopher and mugwump, condescended to give Sir Walter a sort of recommendation of character, which it renders me extremely happy to quote. Here it is. Read it carefully and ponder:
"The surliest critic must allow that Scott was a genuine man, which itself is a great matter. No affectation, fantasticality or distortion dwelt in him; no shadow of cant. Nay, withal, was he not a right brave and strong man according to his kind? What a load of toil, what a measure of felicity he quietly bore along with him! With what quiet strength he both worked on this earth and enjoyed in it, invincible to evil fortune and to good!"
This cynic, this philosopher, this mugwump says Sir Walter was a genuine man. Good for Mr. Carlyle.