_Wilhelm Meister_ is, as Niebuhr truly said, "a menagerie of tame animals." Doubtless Goethe's women--certainly his women of culture--are more truly and inwardly conceived and created than Scott's.

Except Jeanie Deans and Madge Wildfire, and perhaps Lucy Ashton, Scott's women are apt to be uninteresting, either pink and white toys, or hardish women of the world.

But then no one can compare the men of the two writers, and not see Scott's vast pre-eminence on that side.
I think the deficiency of his pictures of women, odd as it seems to say so, should be greatly attributed to his natural chivalry.

His conception of women of his own or a higher class was always too romantic.

He hardly ventured, as it were, in his tenderness for them, to look deeply into their little weaknesses and intricacies of character.