Thus besides relieving him of a host of compliments which he did not enjoy, and enabling him the better to evade an ill-bred curiosity, the disguise no doubt was the same sort of fillip to the fancy which a mask and domino or a fancy dress are to that of their wearers.

Even in a disguise a man cannot cease to be himself; but he can get rid of his improperly "imputed" righteousness--often the greatest burden he has to bear--and of all the expectations formed on the strength, as Mr.
Clough says,-- "Of having been what one has been, What one thinks one is, or thinks that others suppose one." To some men the freedom of this disguise is a real danger and temptation.

It never could have been so to Scott, who was in the main one of the simplest as well as the boldest and proudest of men.

And as most men perhaps would admit that a good deal of even the best part of their nature is rather suppressed than expressed by the name by which they are known in the world, Scott must have felt this in a far higher degree, and probably regarded the manifold characters under which he was known to society, as representing him in some respects more justly than any individual name could have done.

His mind ranged hither and thither over a wide field--far beyond that of his actual experience,--and probably ranged over it all the more easily for not being absolutely tethered to a single class of associations by any public confession of his authorship.