Notwithstanding Scott gave great dinners occasionally, they appear to have been a bore to him, and he very rarely went out to evening entertainments, although at public dinners his wit and sense made him a favorite chairman.  He retired early at night and rose early in the morning, and his severest labors were before breakfast,—­his principal meal.  He always dined at home on Sunday, with a few intimate friends, and his dinner was substantial and plain.  He drank very little wine, and preferred a glass of whiskey-toddy to champagne or port.  He could not distinguish between madeira and sherry.  He was neither an epicure nor a gourmand.

After Scott had become world-famous, his happiest hours were spent in enlarging and adorning his land at Abbotsford, and in erecting and embellishing his baronial castle.  In this his gains were more than absorbed.  He loved that castle more than any of his intellectual creations, and it was not completed until nearly all his novels were written.  Without personal extravagance, he was lavish in the sums he spent on Abbotsford.  Here he delighted to entertain his distinguished visitors, of whom no one was more welcome than Washington Irving, whom he liked for his modesty and quiet humor and unpretending manners.  Lockhart writes:  “It would hardly, I believe, be too much to affirm that Sir Walter Scott entertained under his roof, in the course of the seven or eight brilliant seasons when his prosperity was at its height, as many persons of distinction in rank, in politics, in art, in literature, and in science, as the most princely nobleman of his age ever did in the like space of time.”

One more unconscious, apparently, of his great powers has been rarely seen among literary men, especially in England and France,—­affording a striking contrast in this respect to Dryden, Pope, Voltaire, Byron, Bulwer, Macaulay, Carlyle, Hugo, Dumas, and even Tennyson.  Great lawyers and great statesmen are rarely so egotistical and conceited as poets, novelists, artists, and preachers.  Scott made no pretensions which were offensive, or which could be controverted.  His greatest aspiration seems to have been to be a respectable landed proprietor, and to found a family.  An English country gentleman was his beau-ideal of happiness and contentment.  Perhaps this was a weakness; but it was certainly a harmless and amiable one, and not so offensive as intellectual pride.  Scott indeed, while without vanity, had pride; but it was of a lofty kind, disdaining meanness and cowardice as worse even than transgressions which have their origin in unregulated passions.