Three centuries of Scottish literature

ii'-y

^->.-i:

:.■•<■

< ■"■■•.>-

THREE CENTURIES OF SCOTTISH
LITERATURE

PUBLISHED BY

JAMES MACLKHOSE AND SONS, GLASGOW,
}3ubli6lurs to the aiiibtvsitg.

MACMILLAN AND CO., LONDON AND NEW YORK.

Loiidov., - • - Simpkin, Hiunilton aiid Co.
Cajiibridge, • - Macvtiliati and Bowes.
Edinhirgh, - - Doitglas and Fojilis.

MDCCCXCIII.

THREE CENTURIES OF
SCOTTISH LITERATURE

BY

HUGH WALKER, M.A.

PKOFtSSOR OF ENGLISH IN ST. DAVId's I OLLEGE, LAMPETER

VOL. II
THE UNION TO SCOTT

NEW YORK
MACMILLAN AND CO.

1893

/OR

CONTENTS OF VOLUME II.

PAGE

CHAPTER VII.
RAMSA y TO FERGUSSON, i

CHAPTER VIII.

THE EARLIER ANGLO-SCOTTISH SCHOOL OF

THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, - - - 48

CHAPTER IX.

THE LATER ANGLO-SCOTTISH SCHOOL OF THE

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, ----- icx5

CHAPTER X.
ROBERT BURNS, - - 134

CHAPTER XI.
SIR WALTER SCOTT, - 186

THREE CENTURIES OF SCOTTISH
LITERATURE.

CHAPTER VIL
RAMSAY TO FERGUSSON.

In an earlier chapter reference has been made to the long
and disastrous eclipse under which the native literature,
and especially the poetry, of Scotland passed during the
seventeenth century. The union of the Crown of Scotland
with that of England would in any case have drawn talent
from the smaller country ; but if it had brought internal
peace the loss would soon have been made good, and more
than made good. But the Union did not bring peace. In
the disturbed annals of Scotland there are periods of
more violent commotion than the seventeenth century,
but few if any more full of petty quarrels. Not only was
the country shaken by the great civil struggle which con-
vulsed England as well, but it was distracted also to a
degree which England never experienced by religious
differences. The mutual hatred of sects drained the
strength of the nation ; and on the whole it is little to be
wondered at that there were only a few, like the Semples
of Beltrees, who kept alive, in occasional compositions,
the tradition of vernacular poetry.

VOL. II. A

2 SCOTTISH LITERA TURE.

As soon as the Revolution had effected a settlement, and
the strong government of William, while justly establishing
the Presb)^terians as the exponents of the religion of the
State, had prohibited the persecution of the now vanquished
Episcopalians, literature and art began to revive. Some
time had naturally to pass before the fruit of firm govern-
ment and internal peace ripened ; and the literary revival is
chronologically associated rather with the union of the Par-
liaments than with the Revolution. The removal of the seat
of government to Westminster, if not a greater fact than the
union of the Crowns, at any rate made a deeper and more
permanent impression upon the literature of the smaller
country. It was also different in its action. In the seven-
teenth century the leading poets, such as Sir William
Alexander and Drummond of Hawthornden, Anglicised
themselves as completely as they were able, and by doing
so lost, to a large extent, their national audience. Ver-
nacular literature seemed to be in danger of extinction.
In the eighteenth century, on the contrary, an English
and a Scottish school arose and flourished side by side.
Further, the Scotchmen of the seventeenth century' were
almost Avholly borrowers from the English ; they contributed
no appreciable national element to the strong and healthy
English literature of the reign of James I. Three gene-
rations later the case was very different. Not only the
native school, but the Anglicised writers, taught at least
as much as they learnt. They gave to a somewhat
jaded literature a fresh impulse and a new vitality. In
view of the condition of the literary society of Edin-
burgh in that age, this statement, as far as concerns the
writers in English, may seem questionable. That society

RAMS A V TO FERGUSSON. 3

was organised in the closest imitation of that of London.
Clubs sprang up where the wits assembled and sharpened
their intellects one against another ; periodicals were started
to emulate T/ie Tatler and The Spectator; and "correctness"
was studied with as anxious care, though not with such
conspicuous success, in the High Street and the Canongate
as at Twickenham. And it is true that the minor writers of
English are as little original as it is possible to conceive.
With resfard to the more considerable men, it will be the
business of a separate chapter to justify the assertion that
they taught as much as they learnt in England.

The first place in interest must however be given to the
native school. It was original ; for though Ramsay and his
coUaborateurs followed, they did not merely reproduce the
old Scottish poetry, but adapted it to new circumstances
and a new age. It was original so far, that the writers in
it were among the earliest precursors of that revolution in
poetic style which swept away the traditions of the
" correct " poets, and established in their place the
naturalism of Wordsworth. Many influences doubtless
united to bring about that revolution ; but the natural
style was practised by Ramsay and his contemporaries, and
after him by Fergusson, in Scotland, long before the prin-
ciple of it was proclaimed in England. At the same time,
the practice of these men was inconsistent. They appa-
rently detected no incongruity between what they did in
Scotch and what they did as imitators of Pope in English ;
probably they never brought the two styles of work together,
tacitly assuming each to be proper in its own sphere.

The significance of Watson's Choice Collection has been
already noted in connexion with the songs and ballads.

4 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

It gave a powerful stimulus to Scottish poetry in general,
and especially to poetry in the vernacular ; but, although
part of the contents of the collection was new or recent,
Watson brought to the front no hitherto unknown genius,
no one who displayed a capacity for leadership, or who
might have been expected to revive the poetic traditions
of Dunbar and Douglas and Lindsay. William Hamilton
of Gilbertfield was no more than respectable ; yet he was
the equal of any of the living writers whom Watson
helped to bring forward. Five years passed between the
beginning and the conclusion of Watson's undertaking —
if that can be said to have a conclusion at all which
ends with what was practically a promise, never fulfilled,
of a new volume — and still no one had appeared of
more than mediocre gifts. To the year after the appear-
ance of Watson's third part, however, belong the earliest
known verses of a man who, though not himself a great
poet, did a great work for poetry. In 17 12 the Easy
Club was founded, and Allan Ramsay addressed it in
a set of poor verses. He it was who was destined to
breathe new life into Scottish vernacular poetry, and who in
consequence holds a position inferior in historical interest
only to that of Burns. He may be said, in fact, to have
made Burns possible.

Allan Ramsay was born in the parish of Crawford-moor, a
lonely district of Lanarkshire, in 1686. He was of good
family, claiming kinship with the Ramsays of Dalhousie —

" Dalhousie of an auld descent,
My chief, my stoup, and ornament."

But the early death of his father and the remarriage of his
mother left him to face the world poor and unassisted. In

RAMS A V TO FERGUSSON. 5

1 701 he was sent to Edinburgh as an apprentice to a wig-
maker, whose trade he afterwards followed, until his literary
tastes and connexions drew him into the more congenial one
of bookselling. But, though Ramsay had genuine literary
tastes, he was less a poet born than one made by circum-
stances. He was social first, literary afterwards. The Easy
Club, with its demand for occasional verses and its readiness
to hear and applaud, gave him practice in composition and
confidence in his own powers. Previous to his connexion
with it Ramsay seems to have read little and written less.
The club died in 1715 ; but, short as its life had been, his
three years' attendance at its meetings had formed Ramsay's
mind and determined his future life. He began to publish
his verses as leaflets, which were sold in the streets of
Edinburgh. It was as an editor, or more strictly as
editor and author combined, that he made his first con-
siderable venture. In 17 16 appeared Christ's Kirk on
the Green, in two cantos — the first a reprint of the old
poem in the Bannatyne MS., the second an original
addition. Soon afterwards a third canto, also by Ramsay,
was added ; and all three were published together in
1 7 18. The success of this piece, which would have
gratified many a man of older reputation, encouraged
Ramsay to collect his own fugitive pieces into a volume,
which came from the press of Ruddiman in 1721. The
poet is said to have made 400 guineas by it, a large
sum for those days. After an interval marked by some
minor publications of original work, Ramsay appeared
again as an editor. In 1724 he issued the first part of a
most important collection of songs, lyie Tea Table
Miscellany. Two other parts followed between that

6 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

date and 1727, and after a long interval a fourth was
added in 1740. The songs were a mixed collection,
vernacular and English, old and new. Some were by
Ramsay himself, some were the work of his literary
friends and correspondents ; others were marked by him
as wholly old, or as old songs retouched. But the
object of The Tea Table Aliscellany was to please
the public, not to instruct the inquirer into the history
of Scottish songs ; and all who have ever handled it
with a historical object in view have had in consequence
to lament the vagueness and meagreness of the infor-
mation supplied. Nothing is told but the bare fact that
a song is old, old with additions, or new — sometimes
not so much as that. In what way recovered, or how
old, or on what ground it was believed to be old, are
questions to which there is no answer in Ramsay. He
cannot however be blamed for not accomplishing what
he never attempted, or for being blind to that which
none of his contemporaries perceived. The Tea Table
Miscellany, faulty as it is from the point of view of
literary history, was and long remained without rival as a
collection of Scottish songs ; and it has preserved much
that otherwise would probably have been lost. The
success of Ramsay too, encouraging others, like Oswald
and Thomson, to labour in the same field, led indirectly
to the recovery and preservation of other pieces.

In the same year in which the first part of The Tea
Table Miscellatiy appeared, Ramsay also published in two
small volumes a similar compilation, The Evergreen, which
he somewhat quaintly describes as "a collection of Scots
poems, wrote by the ingenious before 1600." The

RAMS A Y TO FERGUSSON. 7

materials for it were chiefly derived from the Bannatyne
MS. ; but they were treated uncritically and without that
sense of responsibility and of obligation to accuracy with
which the modern editor approaches such a task. Poems
undoubtedly ancient are partly modernised, sometimes in
a manner which proves that Ramsay did not understand
the original ; verses are here and there added by the
editor's own hand ; and the collection includes whole
poems whose date is certainly long subsequent to 1600.
Nevertheless, The Evergreen did its work for Ramsay's
generation almost as well as a much more faithful repro-
duction of the old poems would have done. It furnished
what men at that time really wished, and what it was
important that they should have, — a knowledge of some
of the hitherto unknown masterpieces of the great age of
Scottish poetry. The editor's errors and sophistications
were of little moment so long as the spirit of the poems
he printed was not essentially changed ; and the question
whether his system of orthography had any authority out-
side himself was insignificant to men who had no inclina-
tion to investigate the history of the language. Ramsay
himself had his taste trained, his knowledge widened, and
his vocabulary enriched in the course of his labours as
collector and editor; and this without opening to himself
even the chance of falling into the errors of which his
predecessors had been guilty. The best of those prede-
cessors were in essence natural ; but they had gathered
to themselves a plentiful store of the affectations of a
literary tradition. Their " aureate terms " were a snare
exceedingly dangerous to the eighteenth century intellect;
and there can be little doubt that Ramsay would have

8 SCOTTISH LITER A TURE.

gilded his own pages with them had he been able. But
the long break in the succession of poets saved him.
Rhetoric is a growth. No Euphues springs suddenly out
of the void to talk his strange language to a wondering
people ; he must have forerunners. But the rhetoric of
Dunbar and Douglas had been in disuse for more than
a century, and the sudden assumption of it by a living
writer would not have pleased, but shocked. Thus, while
Ramsay in his English poems imitated as best he could
the cultivated rhetoric of Pope, in those written in his
native dialect he was forced to be plain and homely.
And so, not through superior purity of taste, but by force
of circumstances, Ramsay drew from the poetry of the
sixteenth century all that was wholesome for his own age
and rejected what would have been poisonous.

For some time Ramsay had been drifting in the direc-
tion of pastoral poetry. There are to be found among
his works a pastoral on the death of Addison, and another
on the death of Prior, while one or two more were written
to celebrate the marriage of distinguished persons. These
pieces are insignificant in themselves, and produced no
such effect upon others as to give them importance by
reflection. But there were two, on subjects of his own
imagining, which were much superior intrinsically and
deeper in their influence. These were Patie and Roger,
published in 1721, and its sequel, Jetiny and Maggy,
which followed in 1723. At the suggestion of friends
they were worked up into The Gentle Shepherd, which is
unquestionably the best of Ramsay's works, and unsur-
passed in its own sphere in the English language. It was
published in 1725, became at once popular, and rapidly

RAMS A V TO FERGUSSON. 9

passed through edition after edition. It was one of the
last of Ramsay's efforts in literature. In 1728 he pub-
lished another volume of his poems, and in 1730 a col-
lection of thirty Fables. Shortly afterwards he almost
entirely ceased to write. He was then the unchallenged
king of Scottish poets : he had become rich enough to
be independent of the profit derived from his books ; and
he seems to have feared that perseverance might endanger
the fame he had already won. That he did not cease to
cherish his old interests is indicated by the fact that in
1736 he attempted to establish a theatre in Carrubber's
Close. But all that appertained to the stage still stank
in the nostrils of Scottish Presbyterianism ; the theatre
was closed by order of the magistrates, and Ramsay sus-
tained a heavy loss. His subsequent life was entirely
private. About 1755 he gave up business, and retired
to his house on Castle Hill. He died in 1758.

It remains to consider in more detail what manner of
poet this man was, who took up his craft, as it were, by
accident and dropped it at his pleasure. For any trace
of the inevitable in his verse the reader will look in
vain. The higher imagination was a gift denied to him ;
yet with comparatively commonplace powers he exercised
an influence which many men far more richly endowed
have vainly striven to attain. It is to this, fully as much
as to the intrinsic worth of his verse, considerable as its
merit often is, that he owes his interest.

Of all Ramsay's works only one. The Gentle Shepherd,
covers more than a few pages. It is a pastoral, but a
pastoral with variations from the orthodox poetic type
which go far to explain the author's influence. No species

I O SCO TTJSH LITER A TURK.

of poetry is more artificial than the pastoral. From the
time of Theocritus it has been cast of set purpose in
a conventional mould : the shepherds and their Arcadia
are as far removed from this lower earth as the Utopia
of the political dreamer. Many great poets in various
tongues, and conspicuously Milton, had proved that this
artificial form could be made the vehicle of profound and
true poetry. But it was a dangerous style for a genera-
tion of poets already too conventional ; and Pope and
Philips show what it may become when the artificial
framework is filled with artificial sentiment. Gay, who
merely intended to produce a parody, did better than either
of them ; and Ramsay has more in common with him
than with his more serious predecessors. The dramatic
form of The Gentle Shepherd gives it freshness, and per-
haps helps to keep the poet close to nature. He adopts,
it is true, a number of conventionalities ; the hero is a
young laird brought up as a shepherd, the heroine a
lady of high degree reared beside him as a shepherdess.
But the spirit is unconventional. The scenery is a tran-
script from nature, the characters are genuine Scottish
peasants, the actions part of the normal life of the people.
The clothes- washing scene between Peggy and Jenny is
as simple and true as that which Homer paints from a
still more primitive society. In the conversation between
Glaud and Symon, in the first scene of the second act,
Ramsay enters into the details of the peasants' life with
the confidence of one to whom it is familiar. The
"peat ingle," the "divot seat," the ham "reesting in
the nook," are things to be found nearer home than
Arcadia. The harsher features of the shepherd's life are

RAMSA V TO FERGUSSON. 1 1

softened, as in a pastoral comedy they ought to be ;
yet they are not ignored. We hear of "blashy thows,"
and of the evils of storm and flood, but are not brought
face to face with them. The atmosphere is one of
humble plenty and content. The philosophy of the shep-
herd mind is expressed in the words of Patie : —

" He that has just enough can soundly sleep ;
The o'ercome only fashes fowk to keep."

The style of The Gentle Shepherd is such as becomes
the subject, simple and unambitious. It contains no
lofty poetry, but a good deal of true humour and
sympathetic delineation of character and life. The
dialogue is sprinkled with songs, never of high merit,
frequently of scarce moderate merit. Very often they
simply weave into lyric measure the common sense of
the conversation in which they are set ; and therefore
they are, as Ramsay's lyrics are apt to be, somewhat
flat. But a defect of this kind is less serious there than
it would have been in a work of a loftier strain. In
The Gentle Shepherd Ramsay did not aim high, but he
hit his mark. His comedy was at once recognised as
genuine. It became a favourite with those whose life
it portrays as well as with men of literary taste; and it
takes rank amongst those works in which Scotland is
rich beyond equal, works which not only treat of, but
appeal to and are read by, the peasantry. It also gave
a great impetus to the poetry of nature, was imitated by
Ross in his Helenore, and exercised great influence over
all writers in Scotch until Ramsay was superseded in
popular favour by the higher genius of Burns.

The minor poems of Ramsay, though of only moderate

1 2 SCO TTISH LITER A TURK.

bulk, are most varied in kind. Humorous pieces, satires,
elegiacs, fables and tales, songs in many keys, odes and
addresses on anniversaries and ceremonial occasions, all
find their place in his works. Their merit also runs through
a considerable range. The worst of them are very poor ;
the best are far from raising him to the rank of a great
poet, but they give him a title to an honourable place
among the minor bards. Ramsay is least happy when he
is serious. Occasionally throughout his literary life, but
most frequently in the earlier part of it, he wrote in English,
and he seems to have felt it necessary to use that language
in his serious compositions ; but he rarely handled it with
success. His phraseology is full of Scotticisms, sometimes
of the most ludicrously obvious description. His attempts
at reproducing the verse of Pope in such pieces as Tartaha,
On Content, Health, etc., exhibit how deplorably a man of
keen common sense and native shrewdness may fail in
self-criticism. So too, Ramsay's serious elegies are hardly
ever successful j the only one indeed which can be called
so is that on Newton, whose greatness Ramsay felt, and
whom he mourns with dignity. He had not the neat-
ness of phrase and grace of style necessary for a good
elegy. It is only when he allows humour to season his
English, and he rarely does so, that it is at all worthy
of a place beside his Scotch. The Morning Interview is
amusing and clever, though it can ill stand comparison
with The Rape of the Lock, of which it is an imitation.

The use of Scotch in Ramsay's serious poems is excep-
tional ; but in one conspicuous instance, Tlie Visiofi, he
does resort to it in a sober and even elevated frame of
mind. It was one of those published in The Evergreen

RAMSAY TO FERGUSSON. 13

as of ancient composition ; but it has been proved beyond
reasonable doubt that the verses are Ramsay's. In the
poet's own day, as one of his biographers suggests, it
would have been injudicious, and perhaps dangerous, to
own the Jacobitical sentiments, which under a thin veil
he there allows to appear. The Vision is a more ambi-
tious effort than almost any other which Ramsay ever
made. Its ostensible subject is the national struggle for
independence against Edward I. The Scotch version
which Ramsay gives does not profess to be so old as
that. According to a note attached to it in The Ever-
green, it was first written in Latin in 1300, and translated
in 1524; but the language is certainly not the language
of the first half of the i6th century, though the desire to
imitate it gives the piece an air of antiquity. The poet
pictures himself wandering about musing on the misfor-
tunes of his country, when a sudden May storm drives
him to seek shelter under a caverned rock. There he
falls asleep, and in vision sees the warden of the nation,
who holds converse with him, denouncing the treachery
of the peers which has brought Scotland to her state of
thraldom, and prophesying the brighter future which is to
dawn with Bruce. In this loftier strain Ramsay is suc-
cessful to a degree that could scarcely have been ex-
pected. The Vision manifests power of imagination, force
of language, and nobility of sentiment. But it exhibits
also characteristic defects. The versification is extremely
uneven, perhaps in mistaken imitation of the older style ;
and the stanzas on the carousals of the gods present a
picture odiously vulgar, and altogether out of place. The
following vigorous description of the storm is a specimen

14 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

of the better qualities of the poem, not without some
trace of its faults : —

"The air grew ruch with bousteous thuds;
Bauld Boreas branglit outthrow the cluds,

Maist lyke a drunken wicht ;
The thunder crakt, and flauchts did rift,
Frae the blak vissart of the lift ;

The forest shuke with fricht ;
Nae birds abune thair wing extenn,

They ducht not byde the blast ;
Ilk beast bedeen bang'd to their den,
Until the storm was past :
Ilk creature, in nature,

That had a spunk of sense.
In neid then, with speid then,
Methocht, cry'd in defence."

The following stanza pictures the warden of Scotland : —

" Grit darring dartit frae his ee,
A braid-sword shogled at his thie,

On his left aim a targe ;
A shynand speir fill'd his richt hand.
Of stalwart mak in bane and brawnd,

Of just proportions, large ;
A various rainbow-colourt plaid

Owre his left spaul he threw :
Doun his braid back, from his quhyt heid,
The silver wymplers grew.
Amaisit, I gaisit.

To se, led at command,

A stampant, and rampant,

Ferss lyon in his hand."

It will be not unprofitable to compare with this the well-
known verses in which Burns in his Vision depicts the
greatness of his country, especially as the more recent
poet had his predecessor in his mind. The comparison
shows how high the work of a truly great poet towers

I^AMSAV TO FERGUSSON. 15

above even the happier efforts of inferior powers. Burns
effects his purpose less directly than Ramsay in the
description of Coila's plaid : —

" Here, rivers in the sea were lost ;
There, mountains to the skies were tost ;
Here, tumbling billows mark'd the coast

With surging foam ;
There, distant shone Art's lofty boast,

The lordly dome.

" Here, Doon pour'd down his far-fetched floods;
There, well-fed Irwine stately thuds ;
Auld hermit Ayr staw thro' his woods.

On to the shore.
And many a lesser torrent scuds,

With seeming roar.

" By stately tow'r or palace fair.
Or ruins pendent in the air,
Bold stems of heroes, here and there,

I could discern ;
Some seem'd to muse, some seem'd to dare,

With feature stern."

The buffoonery, which is the darkest blot on Ramsay's
Vision, betrays a want of taste which always clung to
him, and which of itself was enough to put success in
the higher walks of poetry beyond his reach. Lochabcr
No More, the loftiest of his lyrics, is likewise marred by
a deformity which may be of kindred origin. Everyone
who is familiar with the song must be sensible of the
ludicrous effect of the hnes in which the hero excuses
his tears : —

" These tears that I shed they are a' for my dear,
And no for the dancer attending on wear."

1 6 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

Professor Minto charitably supposes that they must have
been dictated by "the humorous imp that was Ramsay's
true familiar." But whether intentional or unconscious,
the incongruity, degrading a song otherwise fine though
not otherwise faultless, is equally inexcusable.

But as Ramsay was little fitted to excel in serious
composition, so his literary creed subjected him to no
temptation to strive after the unattainable. He was
fired by no grand conception of the dignity of his office,
and as a caterer to the popular amusement was ready to
acquiesce in the popular judgment : —

" If happily you gain them to your side,
Then bauldly mount your Pegasus and ride :
Value yourself what only they desire ;
What does not take, commit it to the fire."

Acting upon this creed, Ramsay found that he could
please best by giving way to his own natural disposition.
As to what that disposition was he leaves the reader in
no doubt ; for his simple, easy confidences are among the
charms of his verse. He is " mair to mirth than grief
inclined." He hates drunkenness and gluttony, but is
" nae fae to wine and mutton." His very physical ap-
pearance is recorded as faithfully as his predilections : —

" Imprimis, then, for tallness, I
Am five foot and four inches high ;
A black-a-vic'd, snod, dapper fallow.
Nor lean nor overlaid with tallow."

His social philosophy is accurately described in lines
which, though not really Ramsay's, are usually printed
among his works. They are to be found in Pills to Purge
Melancholy ; but as they are valuable to illustrate Ram-

RAMSAY TO FERGUSSON. 1/

say, and as moreover he has some claim upon them
through changing, expanding, and improving the original,
they may be quoted : —

" See that shining glass of claret.

How invitingly it looks !
Take it aff, and let's have mair o't,

Pox on fighting, trade, and books.
Let's have pleasure while we're able, *

Bring us in the meikle bowl.
Place 't on the middle of the table,

And let wind and weather growl.

"Call the drawer, let him fill it

Fou as ever it can hold ;
O tak tent ye dinna spill it,

'Tis mair precious far than gold.
By you've drunk a dozen bumpers,

Bacchus will begin to prove,
Spite of Venus and her mumpers.

Drinking better is than love."

Such was Ramsay in real life — a kindly, easy-going,
but at the same time acute and sensible man of clubs
and convivial gatherings. All his best work in the
minor poems was such as a man of this description
could do. Add sympathy, and The Gentle Shepherd also
is explained. He scourged the vices of his own time
and his own country, sometimes with a coarseness
which bars quotation, but generally with energy and
effect. He held and commonly acted upon the sensible
theory that satire ought to forbear that which is quite
contemptible — -" 'Tis fools in something wise that satire
claim " ; and the objects of his satire are either the
errors of a class or of the nation, or of individuals as

VOL. II. B

1 8 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

representative of classes. From spite and malevolence
Ramsay is free.

It is however where the satire is strongly spiced with
humour or in pieces purely humorous that Ramsay is
at his best. The elegy on John Cowper, the Kirk-
treasurer's man, is just such a subject as suits him.
The Kirk-treasurer's man played the part of police in
the enforcement of that extraordinary ecclesiastical dis-
cipline which, from its institution till the change of
manners first modified and afterwards abolished it, had
to be reckoned with by evil-doers. They found it a
most disagreeable reality ; but at all times it was a reality
which lent itself easily to jest and ridicule ; and perhaps
there were balm to the smart in turning the laugh against
the executioner. If Ramsay had no personal quarrel with
Kirk Sessions, as Burns had in after times, he was the mouth-
piece of many a one who had. The elegies on Maggie
Johnstoiin and Lucky Wood are pitched to a similar key.
They are full of references to convivial customs which bring
clearly before the mind the image of a society in which
drunkenness was respectable in all and normal in many.
The game of hy-jinks, which regulated a man's drinking
by the throw of the dice, and the club of " facers," who
pledged themselves to throw in their own faces all they
left in the glass, could only have thriven in such a
society. The cantos in which Ramsay continued Christ's
Kirk on the Green gave him the opportunity of dis-
playing the same merits on a wider field. The old
poet having depicted a rustic fight, Ramsay carries a
like spirit into rustic revelry and mirth ; and it is no
mean praise to say that the continuation is not un-

RAMSAY TO FERGUSSON. 19

worthy of the original. For broad riotous fun it has
rarely been surpassed. But Ramsay's work is coarser
than the old poem, and there is evident in it an
element of vulgarity not to be found in the model,
though the latter deals with the same class of people
and handles them as fearlessly and apparently with as
full knowledge. The Alonk and the Miller's Wife would
claim notice in this context ; but, as it is simply the old
tale of the Freiris of Berwick modernised, its high merits
should be ascribed, not to Ramsay, but to the author of
that tale.

In the songs there may be seen once and again
evidences of similar powers under similar limitations.
Though in his influence upon Scottish song Ramsay is
second only to Burns, he owes this influence to cir-
cumstances more than to the quality of his verse.
Many have written better than he. The man who
cannot compose twenty lines of heroic sentiment without
ruining them, whether of purpose or unwittingly, with
mean images or vulgar description, can never be a
great lyrist; for however admirable a humorous lyric
may be, it remains true that " our sweetest songs are
those that tell of saddest thought." Occasionally Ramsay
does well; but not once is he able to tune his heart
to the noblest and clearest notes of passion. An thou
wert jny ain thing is a favourable specimen ; but it is
clear that the author never lost himself in his subject.
The Young Laird and Edinburgh Katy is excellent.
It breathes a strong sense of the beauties of nature : —

" O Katy ! wiltu gang wi' me,

And leave the dinsome town a while?

20 SCO TTISH LITER A TURE.

The blossom's sprouting frae the tree,

And a' the simmer's gaun to smile ;
The mavis, nightingale, and lark,

The bleating lambs and whistling hynd.
In ilka dale, green, shaw, and park.

Will nourish health, and glad ye'r mind.

" There's up into a pleasant glen,

A wee piece frae my father's tower,
A canny, saft, and flow'ry den,

Which circling birks has form'd a bower :
Whene'er the sun grows high and warm,

We'll to the cawler shade remove ;
There will I lock thee in mine arm,

And love and kiss, and kiss and love."

Even this beautiful song however is spoilt by a hatefully
affective phrase, " the clear goodman of day."

Ramsay's mind is better illustrated in Bessy Bell and

Mary Gray than in the foregoing lines. The manner

in which he has treated their story is most instructive.

The old ballad was tragic; Ramsay turns it into

comedy — comedy which is both clever and amusing,

but not poetical. The idea of a lover at a loss to

determine between two equally attractive beauties may

be expressed at least as well in prose as in verse, and

was expressed many centuries ago, in generalised shape,

in fable. It is a favourite with Ramsay. He repeats it,

and manages it with equal success, in Genty Tibby and

Sonsy Nelly. But perhaps the best of his lighter songs

is one in praise of drinking, Up in the Air : —

" Now the sun's gane out o' sight.
Beet the ingle, and snuff the light ;
In glens the fairies skip and dance,
And witches wallop o'er to France ;

RAMSAY TO FERGUS SON. 21

Up in the air

On my bonny grey mare,
And I see her yet, and I see her yet.

Up in the air

On my bonny grey mare,
And I see her yet, and I see her yet,

" The wind's drifting hail and snavv
O'er frozen bogs like a footba' ;
Nae starns keek thro' the azure slit,
'Tis cauld and mirk as ony pit :

The man i' the moon

Is carousing aboon.
D'ye see, d'ye see, d'ye see him yet?

The man i' the moon, etc.

" Take your glass to clear your een,
'Tis the elixir heals the spleen,
Baith wit and mirth it will inspire.
And gently puff the lover's fire.

Up in the air,

It drives away care,
Hae wi' ye, hae wi' ye, and hae wi' ye, lads, yet.

Up in the air, etc.

" Steek the doors, keep out the frost.
Come, Willy, gie's about ye'r toast ;
Tilt it, lads, and lilt it out,
And let's hae a blythsome bowt ;

Up wi't there, there,

Dinna cheat, but drink fair;
Huzza, huzza, and huzza ! lads, yet.

Up wi't there, etc."

Ramsay is master of another note which is perhaps his
best. When his rollicking conviviality is tempered by a
spirit of seriousness betraying the shrewd man of the
world and the successful man of business, he develops an
Epicurean philosophy not unlike that of Horace. A
sound instinct sent him to Horace as his exemplar. He

22 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

himself was not artist enough to blend grave and gay
harmoniously together, and to cause deep conviction and
the practical wisdom resulting from ripe experience to
manifest themselves beneath the guise of careless gaiety ;
but he found in the Roman poet the guidance which he
needed, and he used him with remarkable skill, keeping
him, as he has himself explained, or dropping him as he
pleased. His best performance in this mood is an ode
in which he paraphrases and expands Horace, Od. I. 9 ;
and it is in this and a few similar pieces that the real
Ramsay stands revealed : —

" Look up to Pentland's towering tap,

Buried beneath great wreaths of snaw,
O'er ilka cleugh, ilk scar, and slap,
As high as ony Roman wa'.

" Driving their baws frae whins to tee,
There's no nae gowfer to be seen,
Nor dousser fowk wysing a-jee.

The byast bonis on Tamson's green.

" Then fling on coals, and ripe the ribs.
And beik the house baith but and ben,
That mutchkin stoup it hads but dribs,
Then let's get in the tappit hen.

" Good claret best keeps out the cauld,
And drives away the winter soon ;
It makes a man baith gash and bauld,
And heaves his saul beyond the moon.

" Leave to the gods your ilka care.

If that they think us worth their while,
They can a' rowth of blessings spare.
Which will our fasheous fears beguile.

" For what they hae a mind to do,

That will they do, should we gang wud ;

RAMSAY TO FERGUSSON. 2$

If they command the storms to blaw,
Then upo' sight the hailstanes thud.

" But soon as e'er they cry, ' Be quiet,'

The blatt'ring winds dare nae mair move,
But cour into their caves and wait
The high command of supreme Jove.

" Let neist day come as it thinks fit,
The present minute's only ours ;
On pleasure let 's employ our wit,

And laugh at Fortune's feckless powers.

" Be sure ye dinna quat the grip
Of ilka joy when ye are young,
Before auld age your vitals nip,
And lay ye twafald o'er a rung.

" Sweet youth 's a blyth and heartsome time ;
Then, lads and lasses, while it 's May,
Gae pou the gowan in its prime,
Before it wither and decay.

" Watch the saft minutes o' delyte

When Jenny speaks beneath her breath.
And kisses, laying a' the wyte
On you, if she kep ony skaith.

'"Haith, ye're ill-bred'; she'll smiling say,
' Ye'U worry me, you greedy rook.'
Syne frae your arms she'll rin away,
And hide hersell in some dark nook.

" Her laugh will lead you to the place
Where lies the happiness you want,
And plainly tells you to your face,
Nineteen nay says are half a grant.

" Now to her heaving bosom cling.
And sweetly toolie for a kiss,
Frae her fair finger whop a ring.
As taiken of a future bliss.

24 SCO TTISH LITER A TURK.

" These benisons, I'm very sure,

Are of the gods' indulgent grant,
Then, surly carles, whisht, forbear

To plague us with your whining cant."

Such was the man who holds the position of leader in the
Scottish poetical revival of the eighteenth century. He
had predecessors, indeed he was so little of an original
genius that he would probably never have written had
there not been a popular demand for the kind of verse
he supplied. The language of political economy is well
applied to it, for there never was a clearer case in litera-
ture of the operation of economic laws. But except
Ramsay, there was no one who displayed any sustained
capacity to furnish what was wanted. There were num-
bers who could write an occasional piece tolerably well,
but few who could be trusted to succeed in numerous
efforts. Among the living contributors to Watson's Choice
Collection there was none of higher merit than William
Hamilton of Gilbertfield, who simply did what numbers
have done since and are doing now unnoticed — he wrote
two or three fugitive pieces, vigorously expressed and
enlivened by a certain gift of humour, genuine but not
very deep.

The facts of Hamilton's life are, as is the case with
so many Scottish poets, but obscurely known. He died
in 1 75 1 at a great age, but the exact date of his birth
has not been discovered. He had been a soldier, but
abandoned his profession while still young, and subse-
quently lived the leisurely life of a country gentleman,
amusing himself from time to time by writing verses.
Commonplace as he is, in the " dearth of fame " Hamilton

RAMSAY TO FERGUSSON. 25

deserves to be commemorated. He cannot be called
Ramsay's disciple, inasmuch as he had written his best
verses before the other had done more than dream of a
literary career, if his practical mind ever indulged in
dreams on the subject. Nevertheless, he owes to the
younger poet the greater part of such reputation as he
possesses, both because it was the reflection of Ramsay's
fame which gave significance to the contemporary con-
tributions to Watson, and more directly because Hamilton
and Ramsay entered into a poetical correspondence
through which the verses of the former, which are printed
along with Ramsay's works, have become known to a
wider audience than he ever addressed on his own
account. The correspondence is further noteworthy be-
cause it became a model for the famiUar epistles of
Burns. It has been affirmed that Hamilton's share in
it is at least equal in quality to Ramsay's, a compliment
which, as the contributions of the more famous poet are
very ordinary, is not in itself extravagant, but which
nevertheless goes beyond the truth. Hamilton's epistles
are even less than fair specimens of a style of poetry
which never, except in the hands of Burns, rises much
above the commonplace. In the same measure, and in
a similar tone of familiar, humorous, vernacular verse, was
written Hamilton's best piece. The Last Dying Words of
Bonny Heck, the lament of a famous greyhound, which
was printed in the Choice Collection. It has considerable
force and is not without humour ; but the degree of atten-
tion it attracted is only explicable by reference to the
scarcity of genuine native poetry at the time of its appear-
ance. Ramsay affected to class it with The Piper of

26 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

Kilbarchan, " standart Habby," as the model on which
he based his own attempts in that measure ; but there is
a power and freedom in the older piece which Hamilton
could never approach. It would have been well had
Hamilton confined himself to original efforts, which were
generally meritorious and at worst harmless. Unfortunately,
three years after his correspondence with Ramsay (which
occurred in 17 19), he appeared in a new character, as
the editor of an ill-executed and discreditable modernised
version of Blind Harry's Wallace. The popularity which
this version attained was due, not to its merits, but to
the irresistible attractions of the subject for the Scottish
peasantry.

Another Hamilton, William Hamilton of Bangour — some-
times confounded with Hamilton of Gilbertfield, to whom
he was junior by a whole generation — rose into promi-
nence soon after this, and must be noticed in his place;
but although he has been ranked ^ as a scholar of
Ramsay, his true affinities are with the English school.
In fact, Ramsay had no immediate followers of note.
There were many who were ready to contribute an occa-
sional song to The Tea Table Miscellany, men of talent
with literary proclivities but with no purpose of devoting
themselves to literature, and with too much ambition to
confine themselves, had they done so, to the scanty
audience supplied by Scotland itself The clubs, which
formed one of the most remarkable features of the age,
were inimical in spirit to the vernacular. Ready though
they were to welcome and applaud the occasional verses
of Ramsay, they were too directly imitations of the
^ By Mr. Gosse, Eighteenth Century Literature, p. 338.

RAMSA V TO FERGUSSON. 2/

literary societies of the English capital to escape being
Anglicised. Their members therefore neither wrote much
in Scotch nor were careful to claim property in what they
did write. Their identity is generally but half revealed
through initials ; and though in most cases the disguise
may be penetrated, the quantity of matter associated with
any single name is so small that it becomes necessary to
treat their work en bloc. Further, it must be remembered
that, large as is the collection called by Ramsay
The Tea Table Miscellany, it is "a collection of choice
songs Scots and English " ; and the word " English " here
must be understood in a double sense. The element
which is English in origin as well as in language is
much more considerable than is generally supposed ; its
extent can only be realised after a careful examination
of the contents by one tolerably familiar with both
EngUsh and Scotch lyric poetry, not of that age only,
but for a generation or two previous. Again, many of
those songs which are the genuine work of Scottish
authors, many even of those which are also set to native
airs, are influenced by English models. Damon, Strephon,
Celia, Phillis, and Chloe are no maids and swains of
Scottish growth ; nor did those who sang of them north
of the Tweed follow native example. Even when the
theme and all its associations are distinctively Scotch, it
is comparatively rare among the new songs in that col-
lection to find the vernacular employed by anyone except
Ramsay himself. In The Bush aboon Traguair, in his
much over-praised Twecdside, in Allan Wafer, in the Ease
in Yarrow, and even in Down the Burn, Davie, Robert
Crawford, one of the most trusty of Ramsay's associates,

28 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

employs language which is either pure English or has
only the least tincture of Scotch.

And where Ramsay's immediate following in lyric
verse was slight, in efforts more sustained it was scarcely
to be expected that he would find a following at all.
The composition in Scotch of a long piece like The
Gentle Shepherd was an innovation so bold that Ramsay
would probably not have risked it had the plan occurred
to him all at once. It grew, as has been seen, under
his hand ; and it was less venturesome to fashion the
whole out of previously existent fragments than to create
a new work on such a scale. No less than forty-three
years passed before The Gentle Shepherd was followed by
another poem equally ambitious in the same language.
That poem is Jlekftore, or The Fortunate Shepherdess,
published at Aberdeen in 1768, but written, as the adver-
tisement to the first edition^ states, many years before.
The author was Alexander Ross, a schoolmaster, who
was born in 1699 at Kincardine-O'Neil in Aberdeen-
shire, and received his university education at Marischal
College. After taking his degree in 17 18 he acted for
a time as a private tutor, and afterwards taught succes-
sively in the parish schools of Aboyne and Laurence-
kirk. In 1732 he was appointed schoolmaster of Lochlee
in Forfarshire, a place so lonely that only the children
of some five or six families attended his school. This
humble preferment was the last he received. At Lochlee
he lived and died, and there on the scanty income of his
office he reared a numerous family. Doubtless the pro-
found quiet and abundant leisure of his life fostered the
^ Quoted by Longmuir, Life of Ross, p. 49.

RAMS A V TO FERGUSSON. 29

literary tendencies of Ross. He wrote apparently more
for his own amusement than with any definite purpose
of publishing. His verses circulated in MS.; he acquired a
local reputation as a poet ; and it was after that reputation
had been long and firmly established that he determined to
try how the world would receive him. Accordingly he
visited Aberdeen in 1766 with the MS. of The Fortmiate
Shepherdess in his pocket. There he saw Beattie, who,
although he had not yet risen to the height of his repu-
tation, was already known as a poet, and was one of the
most influential of the members of the remarkable literary
coterie which then adorned the northern University.
Beattie, attracted to Ross by the memory of an old
friendship between his father and the poet, helped the
aspirant for poetic fame over the difficulties of publi-
cation. Nor did his kindness stop there. He gave the
book generous praise, and even addressed to the author,
through the pages of The Aberdee?i Journal, a poetical
epistle in Scotch, his only composition in dialect. Thus
befriended, Ross's poem speedily attained that popularity
which it certainly merited, but which might otherwise
have been more slow to come, and a measure of financial
success, modest enough (the profits amounted to about
;!^2o), but more than sufficient to satisfy the author.
The rustic poet found himself, in a more limited way, and
for a time, patronised by the great as Burns was afterwards ;
but he speedily subsided again into the old quiet life of
Lochlee, and notwithstanding the encouragement given by
the reception of his pastoral, the bulk of his writings remained,
and still remain, in MS. He died at Lochlee in 1784.
Helenore is a pastoral narrative poem of over 4000

30 SCO TTISH LIT ERA TURE.

lines. The poet begins with an invocation to his muse,
Scota, whom Burns in a letter declares to be the original
from which he took his Coila. Scota however has none
of the imaginative attributes of Coila. She listens to
her poet, promises him a modest share of inspiration,
but at the same time warns him that her "ain bairn,"
Ramsay, to whom Ross had referred as his model, is
raised high above aught that he may aspire to reach.
The poem, over the creation of which the muse is called
upon to preside, is a singular mixture of true naturalness
and simplicity with a superficial show of artificiality. Its
principal incidents, though they are and long have been
so impossible as to suggest a remote antiquity, were
familiar enough to the minds of all the poet's contempo-
raries ; and, though apparently then unknown in his im-
mediate neighbourhood, they were within the experience of
some of his countrymen. The shepherds, the manner of
their existence, and the scenes amidst which they live,
are all real. In these points and in all essentials Ross
is as faithful to nature as Ramsay. But his system of
names is as incongruous as any that a perverted taste
ever devised. Chloe and her sisterhood are objectionable
even in a song ; but in a long work dealing with the
lives and actions of northern rustics, names like Helenore,
Rosalind, and Olimund are insufferable. The familiar
abbreviations, Nory, Lindy, and Mundy, though they
doubtless indicate a lurking sense of incongruity in the
mind of Ross, do not mend matters. In this ridiculous
piece of affectation we have probably a mark of the
pedagogue's taste, and a relic of his unwillingness to sink
the scholar in the popular poet.

RAMSAY TO FERGUSSON. 3 1

But notwithstanding superficial absurdities and faults of
a deeper if less obtrusive description, Helenore is a poem
of very considerable merit. The scene is laid on the
border between Lowland civilisation and what was still
Highland savagery : on just that meeting ground of two
races and of two types of scenery whose wealth of
picturesque situation Scott perceived so clearly and
utilised in The Lady of the Lake and in Waverley.
Ross's choice however was not determined by the con-
siderations which moved Scott, nor was he to any con-
siderable extent alive to his opportunities. It is true that
the contrasts of scenery are not unskilfully managed ; the
wild loneliness of the mountain whose sounds are the cries
of the earnbleater and the muirfowl, and whose sights are
a succession of " dens and burns and braes and langsome
moors," in opposition to the gentle streams, the bleating
flocks, and the wooded slopes of the richer lowland. In
every reference to scenery Ross is true, because he
copies nature ; but it is only the cultivated country,
Flaviana, that he depicts with affection : —

" The water feckly on a level sled,
Wi' little dinn, but couthy what it made.
On ilka side the trees grew thick and Strang,
And wi' the birds they a' were in a sang :
On ev'ry side, a full bow-shot and mair,
The green was even, gowany, and fair ;
With easy sklent, on ev'ry hand the braes,
To right well up, wi' scatter'd busses raise :
Wi' goats and sheep aboon, and ky below.
The bonny braes a' in a swarm did go."

The wilder Highland scenery is as a dark background
to this picture. It is not dwelt upon with affection or

32 SCO TTISH LIT ERA TURK.

with that stirring of the spirit which indicates that the
sense of subHmity is awakened, but is accepted as a dis-
agreeable fact.

The same is true with regard to the characters. The
Sevitians play a conspicuous part in the story ; for it is
by their irruption into the peaceful glen that the fortunes
of hero and heroine are changed. Rosalind (the name
is masculine in Ross) and Helenore are shepherd and
shepherdess living in Flaviana and moving towards the
orthodox destiny, when an inroad of Kettrin occurs, in
resisting which Rosalind is taken, while Helenore is lost
in seeking to discover him. The issue is most unpoetical.
Ross is tempted by the glitter of squiredom to make
the severance of the pair permanent. Helenore in her
wanderings meets a gentleman who falls in love with
her ; and, to remove every objection, it is discovered
that she is related to him. Rosalind on his part buys
his freedom by promising marriage to a damsel of the
Sevitians named Bydby, and is afterwards forced most
unwillingly to keep his word. Bydby is the only Sevi-
tian who is individually depicted ; and even in her case
there is no attempt to mark her by the characteristics of
her race. Her countrymen are, like their mountains, only
a background to the shepherd population among whom
Ross lived.

The meanness which is visible in the denouement of the
story is indicative of the limitation of Ross's poetical
faculty. There is little in him of "the consecration and
the poet's dream." His is a matter-of-fact mind : he tells
the reader plainly of the nausea which afflicts both his
principal female characters from eating berries in their

RAMSAY TO FERGUSSON. 33

wanderings among the hills. But this, which is his weak-
ness, is at the same time his strength. He is always true.
Even in his unfortunate conclusion he is only depicting,
perhaps a little too faithfully, the ambitions of the class
from which his characters are drawn — ambitions which
after all do not differ in kind from those cherished in
higher ranks of life. It has even been suggested that
the story of Hdenore was probably based on fact, and
that the infidelity may not have been of Ross's invention. ^
At any rate, if he is destitute of some of the virtues
which are always expected and generally found in pastoral
poetry, he possesses others which are extremely rare. His
narrative is vigorous, the interest well sustained, and
the characters of the shepherd people not ill-drawn.
In these respects Ross followed, and followed well, his
master Ramsay. He added however little to what
Ramsay had done. His powers were in the main similar,
and they were less considerable.

Helenore is by no means the only work of Ross; the
mass of his unpublished writings much exceeds that of
the portion which has seen the light. So far as can be
judged from the account given by Longmuir of the in-
edited works, they are not of a character greatly to
increase his reputation. The Fortmtate Shepherd, or the
Orphan was clearly prompted by the success of Helenore.
A translation in prose of Buchanan's De Jure and another
in verse of Ramsay's Poemata Sacra exhibit Ross's scholarly
interests, and probably indicate the direction in which his
ambition set. An attempt to throw the book of Job into
English verse casts suspicion on his judgment as well

^ Longmuir, p. 117.
VOL. II. C

34 SCO TTISH LITER A TURE.

as his modesty; and the singular production entitled
A Dream, in imitation of the Cherry and the Slae, betrays
the limitation of his skill in versification. The compli-
cated measure of the old poem overstrains the powers of
Ross ; and Montgomery, whom he sees in his dream,
graciously permits him to change it. Besides all these,
Ross was the author of a small but excellent collection
of songs which display him in a new and unexpected
light. The Rock and the ivee pickle Totv, To the begging
7ve 2vill go, and Wood an^ Married aii a\ are probably
the best things he ever wrote. They have more verve
than Helenore, and they are rich in a humour not to
be found in it. Ross seems to be inspired by the
genuine spirit of the old Scottish songs, his imagination
brightens, his vocabulary grows richer, and the verses
he writes in this spirit are among the best prior to
Burns.

As Ross was the first true successor of Ramsay in the
sphere of the pastoral, so was Robert Fergusson the first
real inheritor of the humorous and satiric power of his
epistles, mock elegies, and tales. Fergusson's name is of
interest because of a story only less pathetic than that
of Chatterton, and also because he was in a special sense
the precursor and early model of Burns. Fergusson was
the son of an Edinburgh clerk, and was born in that
city in 1750. Though his father was very poor, his total
income amounting for a long time to only about ^^25 a
year, he contrived to give his son a good education.
After four years at the Edinburgh High School the boy
secured a Fergusson bursary, under the terms of which
he had to remove to the Grammar School of Dundee.

RAMSAY TO FERGUSSON. 35

Thence he passed, as required by the bequest under
which he was being educated, to St. Andrews University,
where he matriculated in February, 1765. He won there
the friendship of Wilkie of The Epigoniad, and on the
whole seems to have borne a fair reputation, notwith-
standing the fact that in March, 1768, he was " ex-
truded " for complicity in some boyish breach of dis-
cipline. As he was readmitted four days later, his offence
cannot have been considered very serious. At the end
of the session in which this occurred, Fergusson left the
University and returned to Edinburgh to live with his
mother, by this time a widow. Pressed by poverty, but
without any personal regrets, he abandoned the purpose
of studying for the Church, and in 1769, as the readiest
way of earning a living, became a clerk in the office of
Charles Abercromby, Commissary- Clerk. The ceaseless
drudgery of transcription, for that was the nature of his
work, was very little to his taste ; and it was but natural
that he should look beyond the walls of his employer's
office for mental and physical recreation. He had been
from an early date a scribbler of verse. There is still
to be found among his works an Elegy on the Death of
Mr. David Gregory, written, it may be presumed, when
the event, which occurred in April, 1765, was recent.
But his poetic vein was little worked before the year
1 77 1, when he began to contribute to Ruddiman's Weekly
Magazine, or Edinburgh Amusement. At first there seems
to have been a danger that he would become merely the
commonplace writer of commonplace stanzas in imitation
of the English poets ; but though too much of his energy
was thus squandered, some part of it was fortunately re-

36 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

served for those poems in Scotch through which alone
his name is memorable.

His poetical contributions to the Magazine speedily won
for Fergusson a reputation in Edinburgh literary society;
and in October, 1772, following the almost universal
drift of the times, he became a member of an association
known as the Cape Club. He was not able to resist
the temptations to excess which society in those days
presented ; but if ever excess was pardonable, Fergusson's
may be forgiven : " Anything," he exclaimed, " to forget
my poor mother and these aching fingers." His literary
efforts did something to better his circumstances. He
was paid for his contributions to Ruddiman's paper ; and
when they had grown sufficiently numerous he reissued
them, in 1773, as a separate volume. By this venture
he is said to have cleared over ^50, a very consider-
able sum for him. An analysis of the contents of the
volume is interesting. It contained only nine composi-
tions in Scotch; the rest of the volume was filled up
with English pieces. It seems to have been only after
this that Fergusson fully awoke to the great superiority
of his Scotch to his English ; and now little time re-
mained to him. Growing fame led to increased con-
viviality. His delicate constitution was shattered by
excesses, and his intellect seems to have been so far
unhinged as to render him morbidly sensitive to half-
accidental impressions. He had a fit of religious
melancholy which affected him to- the same excess as
other passions, and impelled him to burn his unpub-
lished MSS. He was beginning to recover, when an
accidental fall down a staircase so injured him as to

J? A MSA V TO FERGUSSON. 37

derange his mind, and make necessary his removal to
the public asylum for the insane. The closing scenes
are unspeakably painful. He died alone in the asylum
on the 1 6th October, 1774, and was buried in the
Canongate Churchyard.

Fergusson's poems are divided by their language into
two well-marked classes, Scotch and English. The dis-
tinction, though externally one of words, goes deep. The
EngHsh poems, while they are not destitute of fine
touches, are as a whole of little worth. They are unreal:
Sol shines in heaven, Damon and Sylvia walk the earth.
A similar inferiority has been noticed in Ramsay before
him and will have to be noticed, though " it is less
marked, in Burns after him. The reason commonly
assigned is that the writers were less familiar with the
English, which they only read and wrote, than with the
Scotch, which they used in their daily conversation ; and
doubtless there is much truth in this view. But it is not
the whole truth. When they attempted English, the Scottish
poets were not only writing a strange language but trying
to think strange thoughts as well. The English canons
of taste were different from the Scotch. The poetic tra-
dition of the Scotch impelled almost irresistibly to sim-
plicity and truth, that of the English was such that
nothing short of a revolution could suffice to shake off
the trammels of convention. Thus the strange incon-
gruity perceptible in the works of the Scottish poets may
receive a perfectly natural explanation. So far as mere
command of language goes, Fergusson and Ramsay were
capable of writing English verse much superior to any-
thing in that language which they have left. When they

3 8 SCO TTISH LITER A TURE.

write English however, not the language only, but senti-
ments and versification also are foreign to them. The
time they devote to the English muse is to these men a
species of poetic Sabbath ; for six days of their week
they " bask in Nature's smile " ; on the seventh their
features must be twisted to express emotions they never
felt, and to ape graces they do not possess. And as
mere occasional imitators, who must have a precedent
for everything lest they transgress they know not what,
they are more frigid than the frigid school they followed.
In their Scotch poems, on the other hand, they are under
no such burden. Not only is the language they use
that which they had listened to and spoken from birth,
but their mental and moral atmosphere is native and
familiar. And while in their English they were hampered
with a weight of tradition far more oppressive to them
than it was to their southern brethren, in their Scotch
they were infinitely more free. This is why they
herald the return to nature before it can be said to
have begun in England, almost before any symptoms
of it can be detected. Without elaborating any theory on
the subject, and, if we exclude Burns, without anything
at all approaching Wordsworth's genius, the Scotch poets
adopt in practice much of what is best in Wordsworth's
doctrine of poetic diction and of the proper subjects for
poetic treatment.

All this is as true of Fergusson as it was of Ramsay ;
and it is this which gives to his Scotch poems that worth
and importance which his English compositions lack. In
those Scotch poems Fergusson shows that he possessed
two great gifts — the sense of humour, sometimes sarcastic

RAMS A Y TO FERGUSSON. 39

and frequently pathetic ; and the sense of the beauty of
nature. His humour is penetrating, but it is also kindly.
In his poems on nature, which constantly recall Burns, who
often imitated them, there is sometimes great sweetness ;
and Fergusson's feeling for nature is almost always allied
with his feeling for man.

There have been considerable differences of judgment
as to Fergusson's position among the poets ; but on the
whole the drift of critical opinion has been against him,
A much lower place is commonly assigned to him now
than would once have been claimed. Perhaps this is
due partly to a certain impatience of the more than
generous praise of Burns, who habitually speaks of
Fergusson as his own equal, and sometimes as more than
his equal, and who proves the sincerity of his regard by
imitating Fergusson more frequently than any other poet.
The Mutual Complavit of the Plainstanes and Causey gives
the hint for The Twa Brigs ; The Fanner's Ingle is simi-
larly related to The Cotter s Saturday Night, and Leith
Races to The Holy Fair. There is also kinship of spirit
at least between On Seeing a Butterjly in the Street and
Burns's Mouse ; but in this last case there is no imitation,
and probably no conscious presence of the earlier in the
mind of the later poet. Burns has likewise been blamed
by critics for ranking Fergusson above Ramsay : " the
excellent Ramsay and the still more excellent Fergusson,"
are the terms in which he refers to them in his Common-
place Book. But it may be doubted whether in this par-
ticular the poet has not been a more penetrating critic
than the professors of criticism. Fergusson, in his poetry
as in his life, is less sane and sensible than Ramsay, in

40 SCO TTISH LIT ERA TURK.

some respects perhaps less strong ; but he is infinitely
finer, he gives promise of things of which there is no
hint from beginning to end in Ramsay; and in the course
of a career which closed ere it had well begun, he dis-
plays a fervour and an elevation which the author of
The Gentle Shepherd could never rival. Ramsay was acute
and solid ; but Fergusson was a genius. It should not be
forgotten that he died at twenty-four, and that his literary
life lasted only three years. Nor is he to be contemp-
tuously dismissed as a mere specimen of poetical preco-
city. In his three short years of fame he discovered where
his strength lay, learnt to distrust the questionable prin-
ciples which he had been trained to respect, reversed the
proportions of his English and Scotch, and was, almost
up to the eve of his great misfortune, steadily increasing
his mastery over his native dialect. These are not the
marks of mere precocity. It is true — in the circumstances
it could not be otherwise — that his actual performance is
limited. He has left no long poem, and no proof of his
capacity to produce one. All the verse he ever wrote
can be contained within the covers of a small volume,
and only a few of his pieces are of high merit. But some
of those pieces bear the stamp of genius, immature indeed,
but real, and justify the belief that had he lived even a
few years longer his position as the inferior only of Burns
would have been beyond dispute.

Fergusson was early conscious of his gift of humour.
It is doubtful if he has left any verse earlier than his lines
on the death of Gregory ; and ill suited as the occasion was
for the display of wit, he treats even that subject in the
humorous vein. The bad taste, which would be unpardon-

RAMSAY TO FERGUSSON. 4 1

able in a man, may be overlooked in the boy of fourteen.
The poet's subsequent lapse into English checked for a
while the flow of his humorous verse ; for a sound instinct
taught him, as it taught nearly all his fellow poets, that
whatever the speech he might choose for his more serious
compositions, it was wisdom to express his mirth and
revelry in his native Scotch. Already however in his
earliest volume of poetry the small collection of Scotch
pieces, which were as salt to keep the whole sweet, showed
a great preponderance of the humorous element. It in-
cluded, in particular, The Daft Days, Braid Clait/i, and
Hallotufair. From that date until his death Fergusson
continued to produce poems in a similar strain, which,
while they are frequently defaced by a coarseness that
is not so much Hcentious as tactless, almost always contain
evidence of rich gifts. The Election illustrates both the
merits and the faults of Fergusson's humour. It is need-
lessly coarse, in one or two passages even nauseating ; but
this vice is partly redeemed by its vigour. The characters
are well outlined ; the self-important deacon, the cobbler
overjoyed at the opportunity to exchange "meals o' bread
and ingans" for creams and jellies, the cooper complain-
ing of his " geyz'd " barrel, are living men. The poet's
address To his Aidd Breeks has even greater merit with-
out the countervailing defect. There is much fun at the
threadbare condition of bards, a touch of regret at parting
with old friends, and sly satire on the common ways of
men. Braid Claith likewise shows a keen appreciation
of certain weaknesses of the world with which the poor
poet had only too good reason to be acquainted. It is
much to his credit, as the piece was suggested by his own

42 SCO TTISH LIT ERA TURE.

position and experience, that there is so little bitterness
in it. He states facts without rating the world for being
what it is : —

" Braid claith lends fouk an unco heeze,
Makes mony kail-worms butterflees,
Gies mony a doctor his degrees

For little skaith :
In short, you may be what you please

Wi' guid Braid Claith."

But of all Fergusson's productions in the humorous
strain the masterpiece is Leith Races ; and it is here too
that we find the best known and perhaps the most marked
instance of contact between him and Burns. The resem-
blance is mainly in the introduction. In Leith Races the
opening stanzas run thus : —

" In July month, ae bonny morn.
Whan Nature's rokelay green
Was spread o'er ilka rigg o' corn

To charm our roving een ;
Glowring about I saw a quean,

The fairest 'neath the lift;
Her een were o' the siller sheen,
Her skin like snawy drift,
Sae white that day.

" Quod she, ' I ferly unco sair,

That ye sud musand gae,
• Ye wha hae sung o' Hallow-fair,
Her winter's pranks and play :
Whan on Leith- Sands the racers rare,

Wi' Jocky louns are met.
Their orrow pennies there to ware,
And drown themsel's in debt
Fu' deep that day.'

RAMSAY TO FERGUSSON. 43

" 'And wha are ye, my winsome dear,
That taks the gate sae early ?
Whare do ye win, gin ane may spier?

For I right meikle ferly,
That sik braw buskit laughing lass

Thir bonny blinks shou'd gie,
An' loup like Hebe o'er the grass,
As wanton and as free
Frae dule this day.'

" ' I dwall amang the caller springs
That weet the Land o' Cakes,
And aften tune my canty strings

At bridals and late-wakes :
They ca' me Mirth ; I ne'er was kend

To grumble or look sour.
But blythe wad be a lift to lend,
Gif ye wad sey my pow'r
An' pith this day.'

" 'A bargain be't, and, by my feggs,
Gif ye will be my mate,
Wi' you I'll screw the cheny pegs,

Ye shanna find me blate ;
We'll reel an' ramble thro' the sands,

And jeer wi' a' we meet ;
Nor hip the daft and gleesome bands
That fill Edina's street

Sae thrang this day.'"

Compare with the first stanza the opening of The Holy
Fair : —

" Upon a simmer Sunday morn.
When Nature's face is fair,
I walked forth to view the corn.

An' snuff the caller air.
The rising sun ower Galston muirs

Wi' glorious light was glintin',
The hares were hirplin down the furs,
The lav'rocks they were chantin'
Fu' sweet that day."

44 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

Burns's picture is much the more poetical. Yet Fergus-
son's also is fine ; and in the stanzas immediately following
the comparison is much less decidedly against him. It
is in the satire to which these verses are introductory
that the greater weight and force of the superior poet
decisively tells. Fergusson is amusing, Burns incisive \
the former plays upon the surface, the latter penetrates
to the core.

The poems from which these extracts have been
taken, and the others to which reference has been
made, relate to social life and especially to its more
riotous aspects. These Fergusson was well fitted to
enjoy. They appealed to the fun and frolic of his
nature, to the spirit of conviviality which at once in-
spired him and worked his ruin. They were also the
scenes amidst which the greater part of his days had
been passed. All that he sings of he is familiar with.
"That black banditti, the City Guard," he had known
from early boyhood ; and every rank of the city, from
the solemn Session itself down to the street Arab, he
could draw from the life. Yet it is doubtful if he was
not by nature a man of the country rather than a man
of the town. He viewed all country objects with keen
sympathetic delight, and he painted them with skill and
fidelity, in this respect far excelling Ramsay, whose
references to nature are mostly incidental, and whose
best services to the cause of naturalism in literature are
performed in his pictures of humanity. This sense of
the beauty of nature has been mentioned already as the
second note of Fergusson's poetry ; perhaps in point of
excellence it ought to rank first; but it is not that which

RAxMSAY TO FERGUSSON. 45

most readily strikes the mind of the reader. Fergusson
however was too true a poet to admit of his verses
being classified by the wooden divisions of " town
pieces" and "country pieces," "poems of nature," and
" humorous poems." Here the one note prevails, there
the other; but there is often where it would be least
expected — yet always naturally — a mingling of the two.
He has nowhere drawn a picture of nature more finely
imaginative than that which introduces The Daft Days : —

"Now mirk December's dowie face
Glowrs owr the rigs wi' sour grimace,'
While, thro' his nuniumni of space,

The blear-ey'd sun,
Wi' blinkin' light and stealin' pace,
His race doth run.

"From naked groves nae birdie sings;
To shepherd's pipe nae hillock rings ;
The breeze nae od'rous flavour brings

From Borean cave ;
And dvvyning Nature droops her wings,

Wi' visage grave.

"Mankind but scanty pleasure glean
Frae snawy hill or barren plain.
Whan winter, 'midst his nipping train,

Wi' frozen spear.
Sends drift owr a' his bleak domain

And guides the weir."

As a rule Fergusson's poems on nature have reference
also to man. The Ode to the Bee illustrates the con-
nexion in the mind of the poet between his own race
and the lower creation. The moralising is, as was almost
inevitable on such a subject, somewhat hackneyed; but

46 SCO TTISH LI TERA TURE.

the conclusion, in which the Muse is Hkened to the bee,
rises above the commonplace : —

"Like thee, by fancy wing'd, the Muse
vScuds ear and heartsome o'er the dews,
Fu' vogie, and fu' blyth to crap
The winsome flowers frae Nature's lap
Twining her living garlands there,
That lyart time can ne'er impair."

More characteristic are the lines On seeing a Butterfly in
the Street. They begin by likening the insect to the
human butterfly, who also seeks strange scenes to dis-
play his finery; but presently pity arises for the forlorn
creature which has changed the " lintie's music " for
" gruntles frae the City Guard." (Fergusson can never pass
this body without a thrust more vicious than he bestows
on anything else.) The poem ends with a parallel
between the fate of the plain man ruined by courts and
that of the luckless strayed butterfly : —

"To sic mishanter runs the laird
Wha quats his ha'-house an' kail-yard,
Grows politician, scours to court,
Whare he's the laughing-stock and sport
Of ministers, wha jeer an' jibe,
An' heeze his hopes wi' thought o' bribe.
Till in the end they flae him bare,
Leave him to poortith and to care.
Their fleetching words o'er late he sees,
He trudges hame, repines, and dies."

But sometimes, though rarely, and never for many
successive lines, Fergusson writes without reference to
man. Nowhere has he done so with more success than
in the Ode to the Gowdspink (goldfinch), perhaps the best

RAMS A V TO FERGi/SSON. 47

of its class in the compass of his works. The praise of
the bird's beauty is worthy of the subject : —

" Sure Nature harried mony a tree,
For spraings and bonny spats to thee ;
Nae mair the rainbow can impart
Sic glowin' ferlies o' her art,
Whase pencil wrought its freaks at will
On thee the sey-piece o' her skill.
Nae mair through straths in simmer dight.
We seek the rose to bless our sight ;
Or bid the bonny wa'- flowers blaw
Whare yonder ruins crumblin' fa':
Thy shining garments far outstrip
The cherries upo' Hebe's lip.
And fool the tints that Nature chose
To busk and paint the crimson rose."

When Burns first visited Edinburgh, finding Fergusson's
grave still unmarked, he raised a simple monument over
the remains of one with whose fate his own temperament
and his own history so well qualified him to sympathise.
The act was appropriate; for in paying respect to Fer-
gusson the greater poet was honouring what was up to
this point the best expression of the spirit which animated
himself.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE EARLIER ANGLO-SCOTTISH SCHOOL OF
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

The proof of the assertion made in the preceding
chapter, that in the eighteenth century the Scotch writers
of the English language were instrumental in bringing
about important changes in literature, must be found in
a consideration of the men and their works. They are
divisible into two groups — the first consisting of men who
were born just about the opening of the century, and who
flourished chiefly in the earlier half of it ; the second of
men some twenty or thirty years younger. The first class
were the more original poets. They carried with them to
England or retained in their Scottish surroundings char-
acteristics of their own, and proved, alike by the subjects
they chose, the measures they affected, and their style of
treatment, that they were, if not themselves original, the
scholars of masters so diff'erent from those generally
followed as to give them the influence of originality.

In the earlier group are Hamilton of Bangour, Thom-
son, Mallet, Blair, Armstrong, and the author of Albania.
They vary widely in power from Thomson, a man of
unquestionable and most original genius, to Mallet, who

EARLIER SCHOOL OF XVIIIth CENTURY. 49

was little better than a mere parrot ; but all of them, even
the weakest, brought into EngHsh literature some element
which was not in it before, and which, but for the Scotch
influence, either would not have appeared there or would
have been later in development. It would be well to
group these men together if it were only to show to what
a large extent the "return to nature" towards the close
of the century was influenced by Scotland. With refer-
ence to individuals, such as Thomson in his Seasons and
Ramsay in his vernacular poems, the fact is sufficiently
plain, and is readily enough acknowledged ; but it is only
when we gather the Scotchmen together that it becomes
manifest how far their nationality was from being a mere
accident, how far their ideas and tendencies were the
product of their early surroundings.

Of the six men who have been mentioned, three, though
born in Scotland, spent their literary life in England; of the
other three, two certainly and the third probably remained
in their native country. The English taste spread to Scot-
land and was by no means confined to those Scots who
migrated to London. When Allan Ramsay began to write,
the predilection of Edinburgh literary society was, as has
been pointed out, all for English ; and though he taught
anew the relish for native verse, he never displaced the
ambition to imitate and reproduce what was done in
London. Among the younger wits who worked along with
Ramsay, and who contributed to The Tea Table Miscellany,
it is clear that there was as a rule a preference for English.
It is a fact not without significance that in the later parts of
the collection there is less and less of the Scottish tongue.

Among the contemporaries and fellow-workers of Rani-

VOL. II. D

50 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

say, the most considerable was unquestionably William
Hamilton of Bangour, a man sometimes but erroneously
ranked with the native Scottish school. At the age of
twenty he contributed to the first part of The Tea Table
Miscella7ty. His life was for the most part passed un-
eventfully in the best society which Edinburgh afforded,
until, having involved himself in the rebellion of i745>
he had to seek safety in exile. Having been pardoned he
returned in 1749; and in the following year succeeded, on
the death of his elder brother, to the estate of Bangour.
He died in 1754 at Lyons, whither he had gone for the
sake of his health.

The most widely known of Hamilton's compositions,
and on the whole the best, is the ballad of The Braes of
Yarrow, which won from Wordsworth more admiration
than it quite deserved. It professes to be written in the
ancient Scottish manner ; but the imitation is of the most
transparent description ; and it is not to be compared for
depth of pathos with the best of the genuine old ballads.
Hamilton has caught from them the trick of repetition ;
but his repetitions, which somewhat obtrusively display
their purpose of heightening the effect, are quite different
in spirit from the guileless yet effective repetitions of the
old minstrels. The following verses present the picture
which charmed Wordsworth : —

"Sweet smells the birk, green grows, green grows the grass,
Yellow on Yarrow's braes the gowan ;
Fair hangs the apple frae the rock,"
Sweet the wave of Yarrow flowan.

Flows Yarrow sweet, as sweet, as sweet flows Tweed,
As green its grass, its gowan as yellow,

EARLIER SCHOOL OF XVII Ith CENTURY. 51

As sweet smells on its braes the birk,
The apple from its rock as mellow.

The secret of the enduring popularity of this ballad is
its somewhat feminine sentiment and the sweetness of
fancy it displays. That which delighted Wordsworth was
the note of sincerity in reference to nature, a note rare
enough then in England, but common to all the Scotch
poets of the time. The poem is marred by that want of
force which proved to be Hamilton's defect in all he
ever wrote.

Among the other writings of Hamilton are included a
number of translations and imitations from Homer
Horace, Virgil, Anacreon, etc. Of these the only one
worthy of a passing mention is a soliloquy in imitation
of that of Hamlet. It is remarkable, not for its intrinsic
merit, but as showing by what slight changes it is pos-
sible to pass from excellence to mediocrity. Of Hamilton's
original poems, the most considerable in point of length
and the most ambitious in design are T/ie Maid of Gal-
lowshiels, Coftte?npIation, and a pair of odes To Fancy.
The first is a fragment of an unfinished mock-heroic
poem which was to have extended to twelve books, but
of which only about 700 lines were written. In forming
this design Hamilton had clearly mistaken the bent of
his own mind. Of humour he was entirely destitute ;
and without humour the mock-heroic must be a failure.
The other pieces mentioned give the clue to their
author's poetic descent. In an age puffed up with con-
ceit of itself and fully assured of its superiority to all
former times, he had the good taste to admire Milton
and to choose him for his model. The later and

52 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

weightier works of Milton were, it is true, too lofty and
too austere for Hamilton ; but his lively fancy and keen
sensibility found in the early writings of his master
something more congenial than the antithetic neatness
of Pope, something in appearance at least more approach-
able than the terse and vigorous sense of Dryden. Ac-
cordingly, though Contemplation is introduced with rhymed
heroics on the model of Pope, the principal part of it
is written in octosyllabic verse after the manner of Mil-
ton's L Allegro and // Penseroso. These poems are very
closely followed, and frequently with much skill. Hamil-
ton's piece however is too long, and the verse has
neither the variety nor the melody of Milton's. As a
rule the reader would be inclined to credit the Scotch
poet with a sensitive ear ; but there are occasional lapses
which suggest a doubt whether he had any ear at all ;
and that power of fancy, which was his best gift, looks
poor beside the boundless wealth of Milton. The
following extract illustrates at once the character of
Hamilton's verse and the extent of his indebted-
ness : —

"Bring Faith, endued with eagle eyes,
That joins the earth to distant skies ;
Bland Hope that makes each sorrow less,
Still smiling calm amid distress ;
And bring the meek-ey'd Charitie,
Not least, tho' youngest of the three,
Knowledge the sage, whose radiant light
Darts quick across the merttal night.
And add warm Friendship to the train,
Social, yielding, and humane ;
With Silence, sober-suited maid,
Seldom on this earth survey'd :

EARLIER SCHOOL OF XVlIIth CENTURY. 53

Bid in this sacred band appear,
That aged venerable seer,
With sorrowing pale, with watchings spare,
Of pleasing yet dejected air.
Him, heavenly Melancholy hight.
Who flies the sons of false delight ;
Now looks serene thro' human life.
Sees end in peace the moral strife ;
Now to the dazzling prospect blind.
Trembles for heaven and for his kind ;
And doubting much, still hoping best,
Late with submission finds his rest."

The criticism which applies to Contemplation is equally
true of the two odes To Fancy. They follow the same
model still more closely than the former ; for Hamilton
was one of the least original of poets. An instructive
story is told with regard to some of his amatory poetry.
The lady who was its subject, rather annoyed than
flattered by its warmth, consulted a friend how she might
best protect herself from such unwelcome attentions. He
sagaciously advised her to make a pretence of taking the
verses seriously and accepting the advances ; whereupon
the alarmed poet became cold and distant. So it is too
frequently with Hamilton's poetry. Like many another
versifier, he took up a subject rather because he thought
he could write prettily than because he felt deeply upon
it. Though, therefore, in an age when tastes so different
from Milton's were almost universally diffused, it is inter-
esting to listen to an echo of his voice, however weak,
yet clearly little was to be expected from a poet so essen-
tially imitative. Hamilton's vein, though it yielded a
little fair-seeming ore, was far from rich. All that can
be justly claimed for him is that he did something to

54 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

divert taste towards earlier and greater models than those
of his own age, and that he struck a note or two, hardly-
more, in the natural key.

His contemporary, James Thomson, was a man of very
different stamp and of far higher rank in literature. It
was he who, more than any other individual in the first
three-quarters of the eighteenth century, taught England
the fallacy of the current canons of taste and criticism.
He was born in 1700, at Ednam, in Roxburghshire,
where his father was minister. While he was still a boy
he was "discovered" by Robert Riccaltoun, then a
farmer, afterwards minister of Hobkirk, who encouraged
and drew out the talent he perceived in young Thomson.
After spending a few years at the grammar school of
Jedburgh, the boy was sent in 17 15 to the University
of Edinburgh, where it was intended that he should
study for the ministry. In 17 16, only a few months
after he had begun his college career, his father died
under circumstances so peculiar, and so vividly illustra-
tive of the spirit of the time, that they deserve to be re-
counted. His parish — not Ednam, but Southdean, near
Jedburgh, to which he had removed in the year of the
poet's birth — was troubled with a ghost ; and the minister
was required to exorcise it. He was on this point no
more enlightened than his congregation, and was in the
act of performing the ceremony of exorcism when he was
seized with a sudden and rapidly fatal illness. The
story ran that he was struck wfth a ball of fire. His
fate made a deep impression on his son's nerves ; and
Mr. J. Logic Robertson is probably right in connecting
with it that sense of the supernatural, bordering on

EARLIER SCHOOL OF XVIIIth CENTURY. 55

superstition, which several times finds expression in
Thomson's poetry.

The death of her husband induced Mrs. Thomson to
remove to Edinburgh, where, as she had been heiress to
a small fortune, she was still able, with economy, to
defray the expenses of her son's education. But though
his connexion with the University continued till 1724,
he never entered the profession for which he had been
destined. He showed a constantly growing predilection
for poetry. He had been from an early age a scribbler
of verse, but had sufficient power of self-criticism to
destroy his own boyish productions. It does not appear
that he printed any specimens of his poetry prior to the
publication in 1720 of some of his pieces in The Edin
burgh Miscellany, a collection issued by the Athenian
Society, one of the numerous literary clubs of the Scottish
capital. Thomson's contributions were of no permanent
value; but one of them, On a Country Life, has been
thought to contain the germ of The Seasons. Though a
crude and boyish piece, it has the merit of being the
outcome of real observation of nature, and it proves
Thomson to have been already, so far, free from the
fetters of the artificial school. There is in it much the
same range of topics that we afterwards find in the
more elaborate work — a few hints about each of the
seasons, something relating to country sports, etc. The
aspiration after a country life with which it concludes
expresses Thomson's lifelong preference, a preference
which explains his choice of subjects. The verse is
the heroic couplet, which was at this time Thomson's
favourite measure ; but both the lines On a Country

56 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

Life and the other pieces where he employs it are harsh
and unpohshed.

In 1725 Thomson, having determined to abandon the
Church, and apparently to enter upon a career of letters,
turned his steps towards London. Whether he had any
other employment in view is uncertain. His vague hints
to his friends certainly suggest some more definite oc-
cupation than that of a writer of verses ; but his hopes,
if he really entertained any, were disappointed. It is
pleasing to notice that his first regular employment was
due to the influence of Lady Grizzel Baillie, herself a
poetess, though she too rarely exerted her talent. Through
her he became tutor in the family of her son-in-law,
Lord Binning. But he soon gave up this post, and
occupied himself with his Winter, which at first con-
sisted merely of detached poetical notes on that season.
It was published in 1726 by a bookseller who bought it
for three guineas. Summer followed in 1727, Sprijig in
1728, and Autumn, completing the cycle, in 1730.
Thomson's poetry had been successful almost from the
first; and by the time The Seasons was finished he was one
of the most celebrated men of letters in England. He
had made little money by his verses, but he had formed
connexions from which he might fairly hope for much
in the future.

Thomson well deserved all the fame he won from The
Seasons. It is the most original contribution to English
poetry in the long interval between" the death of Uryden,
perhaps even between the death of Milton, and the rise
of the Revolutionary school. There are in that period
some works which must rank above Thomson's in other

EARLIER SCHOOL OF XVI I 1th CENTURY. 57

respects ; but there is none which is so much the product
of one mind. Johnson long ago noted this originality as
Thomson's highest claim to praise ; but he was himself
too much imbued with the prevailing spirit of his time to
discover its peculiar value. It is not merely that Thom-
son had a style of his own and a versification of his own ;
nor even is the matter ended when it has been said that
his choice of a subject of itself marked him out from the
common herd of versifiers. This is essentially true ; and
yet Thomson's originality is thrown into all the stronger
relief by the fact that most of his contemporaries coquetted
with rural subjects. Though Pope, Philips, Gay, and
Parnell had all tried such themes, it remained possible for
Wordsworth to assert that " excepting the Nocturnal
Reverie of Lady Winchilsea, and a passage or two in the
Wmdsor Forest of Pope, the poetry of the period inter-
vening between the publication of the Paradise Lost and
the Seasons does not contain a single new image of
external nature." It would be dangerous to affirm the
literal truth of this criticism. Thomson's countryman,
Ramsay, certainly wrote with his eye on nature, and Eng-
lish poetry too was somewhat less barren than Words-
worth imagined ; yet its substantial justice is generally
admitted. The period of which Wordsworth writes was
in the first place one which exalted the town far above the
country : its spirit is expressed in Johnson's well-known
preference for Fleet Street above all other scenes on earth.
The organisation of literary society tended to give addi-
tional strength to this preference. The poets herded
together almost of necessity in the London clubs. It is
hardly conceivable therefore that they should be original

5 8 SCO TTISH LIT ERA TURE.

in their pictures of external nature. But further, it is
well known that the ambition of the age did not aim at
originality of matter at all. The poetical chief of the
time, Pope, held and avowed the belief that all ideas had
been exhausted by former poets, and that for his own age
it only remained to clothe those ideas in a more becom-
ing garb. And in this faith and this practice the whole
host of minor poets followed him. If therefore they
stumbled upon an original idea at all, it was by acci-
dent ; they certainly could not consistently with their
theory seek it.

It is easy to see why such a theory obtained currency.
There is plausibility in the view that the ceaseless toil of
generation after generation of keen and eager minds must
at length exhaust the matter for thought, at least in some
departments. A long succession of poets, from Homer
down, had been occupied in saying the best things about
nature, about human society, about the future destiny of
man ; what, it was argued, could remain for the modern
to add ? The same line of argument, it is true, might
have been applied with even greater plausibility to style.
If the labour of centuries must have used up the matter
of poetry, much more was it likely to have exhausted all
possible varieties of manner; for in style the scope is far
more limited. But had the argument been puslied so far
the poet's occupation would have been gone ; and the
authors of it wisely stopped short of the point of anni-
hilation. The spirit which thus found its expression is by
no means confined to the age of Pope. It is at the root
of the cheap cynicism of the present day, which tells us
that there is no such thing as originality outside the walls of

EARLIER SCHOOL OF XVIIIth CENTURY. 59

a lunatic asylum, the one place probably where originality
is never found. The refutation is not difficult. It may
proceed either by the argument a priori or a posteriori.
On the former line it will be sufficient to suggest that
whatever verbal definition of poetry we may accept, it
will always be found to signify that poetry is the expres-
sion of some kind of thought and is somehow related to
human life. But thought according to the philosophers is
infinite ; and human life both philosophers and biologists
are agreed in describing as a constant series of changes, re-
lated to but always different from the past. The error then
of the Queen Anne poets is cognate to the exploded doctrine
that there is a cycle in human affairs, and that after a certain
lapse of ages variety is exhausted and things repeat them-
selves. We know, on the contrary, that the wheel never
comes full circle, or more properly, that there is no wheel
at all to complete its circle. The course of human affairs
may possibly be represented by a spiral curve, but not by a
curve which returns upon itself

If the fallacy be attacked from the side of experience,
the conclusion is the same ; and it carries to the EngHsh
mind an authority which abstract argument never bears.
Is it true in point of fact that the earlier poets are more
original than the later ones ? In such an inquiry it is
obviously unfair to go back to the point at which our
information ends ; because there we have no means of
determining the extent of the indebtedness to predecessors
who remain unknown. It is impossible to estimate the
indebtedness of Homer, because it is impossible to discover
who were the poets before him. If therefore we take
the penultimate stage, we find the same sort of indebted-

6o SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

ness to predecessors then as now. Was Chaucer more
original than Browning ? No competent judge will doubt
that the balance inclines quite the other way. Milton
inherited many ages of literature after Virgil. Was he
therefore less original ? Both owed much to predecessors :
he who will may weigh and measure their exact indebted-
ness. Wherever the light of history is tolerably full and
clear, we find that the degree of originality is much the same
from age to age ; where it is dim and doubtful, originality
appears greatest on the side on which knowledge is most
limited. One man will always differ from another in
power of origination ; but the possibilities open are much
the same in all ages of history. Robert Browning, one
of the latest of the world's great poets, is also one of the
most independent.

These reflections are so obvious that they would be
scarcely worth expressing were it not clear that they are
often missed even now, and that in the period under
investigation most men were entirely blind to them— so
blind that it needed an original genius to combat in
practice the opposite belief. This was what Thomson
did ; and to have done it successfully is his peculiar
glory. Refusing to believe that all the truth about nature,
that is, all the poetic truth, was to be found in books,
all that was worth learning to be learnt in towns, he
looked with his own eyes, listened with his own ears,
pondered in his own heart upon what he saw and heard,
and, as the result, added more of the freshness of nature
to English verse than all his predecessors from Dryden
downward. How far he was inspired to do this by the
place of his nativity and his early training, it would be

EARLIER SCHOOL OF XVIIIth CENTURY. 6l

interesting to learn more fully and conclusively than it
is possible to discover from the known facts of his life.
He has however recorded his obligation to a minor poet
of his native district for the idea of T/ie Seasons. It was
suggested to his mind by a poem of his early friend,
Robert Riccaltoun, on Winter. It is also said that much
of the scenery of The Seasons is drawn from the vale of
Jed.^ Further, it is to be noted that Thomson was born
and bred in the midst of that district where tradition still
preserved those fine old ballads which Scott afterwards
gathered together in The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.
Though the style of them cannot be traced in Thomson,
it seems more than probable that they gave him or con-
firmed in him, perhaps unconsciously, a taste which he
never lost. He could not be ignorant of them ; and the
single piece in the Scottish dialect which he has left, the
Elegy on Jatties Thorbtirn, is remarkable at least as a proof
of his acquaintance with one of the most distinctive of
Scottish stanzas.

But, though Thomson was eminently original, he shared,
as was inevitable, many of the tendencies of his time. It
is easy to detect in his rich and rather too profusely
ornate style something of that inflation which is so pro-
minent in Johnson, the incarnation of the spirit of his
age. Thomson has no conception of the power of a
severe simplicity ; and though the sincerity of his thought
redeems him, yet the reader often feels that his language
is unnecessarily florid and luxuriant. Frequently he sinks
to the worst affectations of "poetic diction." Sheep are
" the bleating kind," birds " the feathered people " or
^ Mr. Logic Robertson's edition of Thomson, p. 3.

62 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

"the plumy nation," eggs " ovarious food," rustics "the
fond sequacious herd." But if such phrases be taken to
represent the Tartarean depth to which Thomson is cap-
able of sinking, they may be balanced with others which
show his head reared as high towards heaven; for though
his characteristic in The Seasons is rather level excellence
throughout than extraordinary beauty in detached lines
and phrases, he does, like almost all true poets, afford
such lines, a few of which have stamped themselves upon
the popular memory. The world will not readily forget

"On utmost Kilda's shore, whose lonely race
Resign the setting sun to Indian worlds,"

or the kindred picture of the region

"Where the Northern Ocean in vast whirls
Boils round the naked melancholy isles
Of farthest Thule, and the Atlantic surge
Pours in among the stormy Hebrides."

They have a taste of Thomson's habitual gorgeousness,
but only such as the thought demands. There is a
charm too in the allusion to Hampden,

"Who stemmed the torrent of a downward age
To slavery prone " ;

and in the reference to Drake with its grandly sonorous

close,

"A Drake who made thee mistress of the deep,
And bore thy name in thunder round the world."

Time has proved also the happiness 'of the description
of that loveUness which "is when unadorned adorned
the most," and of the lover who " sighed and looked
unutterable things."

EARLIER SCHOOL OF XVII Ith CENTURY. 63

Most of these examples are on subjects which Thomson
did not make pecuHarly his own. From his own proper
sphere may be gathered still finer specimens of his art.
It would be difficult to surpass the line in which he
describes the verdure and the unnumbered flowers of the
meadow as " the negligence of nature, wide and wild " ;
and Mr. Saintsbury has justly praised the picture of "the
yellow wallflower stained with iron-brown" as perfect of
its kind. In another style, but scarcely less admirable,
is the description of a swollen winter stream : —

"It boils, and wheels, and foams, and thunders through."

The line not only raises up before the eye a picture of
the furious torrent, but fills the ear with its roar. Again,
for concise truth and rich suggestiveness the following
lines will bear comparison with almost any : —

" The plaint of rills,
That, purling down amid the twisted roots
Which creep around, their dewy murmurs shake
On the soothed ear."

Here every epithet is pictorial, and not a word can be
spared without damage to the whole. The same merits
are seen in the lines descriptive of the appearance of
the sky at the beginning of a winter storm : —

" Rising slow.
Blank in the leaden-coloured east, the moon
Wears a wan circle round her blunted horns."

Sometimes a single epithet is enough to betray the
master hand, as in the picture of the bird not to be
tempted from her nest, "though the whole loosened Spring

64 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

around her blow"; or in the adjective which he applies
to a summer night, " With quickened step Brown night
retires," where the 'brown' is felt to be as true as it is
novel.

It will be observed that the best of these quotations
are as simple as the thought will permit them to be.
There are however few continuous passages of many
lines in Thomson of which this can be said. He had
a taste for rotundity of phrase, for ear-filling words. This
fault is conspicuous in the luscious description of the
glories of the torrid zone which, with kindred themes,
fills a great part of Summer — the longest, and on
the whole the weakest, of the four poems which make
up The Seasons. There is however visible also in those
passages that striving after truth which would have re-
deemed more serious errors. Thomson had never been
in tropical climates, and it was inevitable that there
should be less of reality in his description of them than
in passages depicting scenes with which his daily walks
had rendered him familiar. But he had read carefully
to prepare himself by the best means in his power for
his task, and he made a strenuous effort to reconstruct a
real scene. He is partly, but not completely, successful.
On the one hand he escapes the common fallacy of
describing the tropics as rich in many-coloured flowers ;
on the other he makes the hippopotamus walk the plains
and seek the hills for food.

This determination to be faithful is- the ruling spirit of
The Seasons. It carried Thomson much farther than the
casual reader is apt to see. He was not content with
the external appearance of things, but always sought to

EARLIER SCHOOL OF XVIIIth CENTURY. 65

penetrate beneath the surface ; and if it is a merit in the
painter to study anatomy that he may the better under-
stand the true play of human muscles, surely it is no
less a merit of the poet to make himself acquainted with
botany that his descriptions may be the more true and
exact. Such knowledge may doubtless be perverted, as
it was by the sculptor who has left that monstrosity of
Milan Cathedral, a human figure stripped of its skin ; or
as it was in Erasmus Darwin's Bota7iic Garden. Ex-
amples may be found in Thomson himself of a not very
poetical use of knowledge ; but as in the main he is free
from pedantry, the trouble he took to extend his infor-
mation must be ranked on virtue's side. The only
matter for regret is that it was not sufficient to preserve
him entirely from mistakes.

But, apart from the question of the more than ample
compensations which Thomson affords, it is impossible
altogether to regret the splendour of taste which results
in verse such as this, in which the poet connects the
radiance of gems with the sunlight : —

" At thee the ruby lights its deepening glow,
And with a waving radiance inward flames ;
From thee the sapphire, solid ether, takes
Its hue cerulean ; and, of evening tiiict,
The purple-streaming amethyst is thine.
With thy own smile the yellow topaz burns ;
Nor deeper verdure dyes the robe of Spring,
When first she gives it to the southern gale,
Than the green emerald shows. But, all combined,
Thick through the whitening opal play thy beams ;
Or, flying several from its surface, form
A trembling variance of revolving lines.
As the site varies in the gazer's hand."
VOL. II. E

66 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

Another extract will illustrate Thomson's more sober-

hued style : —

" Now from the town,
Buried in smoke, and deep, and noisome damps,
Oft let me wander o'er the dewy fields,
Where freshness breathes, and dash the trembling drops
From the bent bush, as through the verdant maze
Of sweet-briar hedges I pursue my walk ;
Or taste the smell of dairy ; or ascend
Some eminence, Augusta, of thy plains,
And see the country, far diffused around,
One boundless blush, one white empurpled shower
Of mingled blossoms : where the raptured eye
Hurries from joy to joy ; and, hid beneath
In fair profusion, yellow Autumn smiles."

It is to be regretted that this passage is marred by the
affected name, Augusta, for London; but except for that
there is nothing which could be wished away. The style
is perfectly simple where simplicity is desirable, and
warms and colours when the subject demands it.

To the poetry of which these extracts are specimens —
favourable specimens, no doubt — a very high rank must
be assigned. It is in the first place absolutely true.
Those conventionalities which suggest that Thomson is
not genuine to the core are mere excrescences upon his
style, the bad inheritance of his age. And secondly, the
truth which he gives the world is new. The thought is
his own, and equally his own is the versification. He
rejects the favourite metre of the day for blank verse ;
and though in particular phrases and turns of expression
the reader may detect the influence which Milton must
always exercise over anyone who adopts his measure,
Thomson's verse is no mere echo of that of any earlier

EARLIER SCHOOL OF XVIIIth CENTURY. ^7

poet. Johnson justly remarks, " His numbers, his pauses,
his diction, are of his own growth, without transcription,
without imitation."

Even in The Seasons however there are evidences of
the Hmitations which prevented Thomson from fulfiUing
those higher hopes which an early work of such dis-
tinguished merit inevitably inspired. One such indication
is the frequent recurrence of identical rhythms. Another,
which goes deeper, is an insufiiciency, under all its
gorgeousness, in Thomson's diction. His eye saw more
than his pen could express. Thus : —

" How clear the cloudless sky ! how deeply tinged
With a peculiar blue."

The poet sees that the blue requires an adjective to define
it, but that which he supplies is not pictorial.

A noticeable feature of Thomson is the almost complete
absence from his poetry of that "pathetic fallacy " which,
by identifying the feelings of man with the spirit of nature,
has, to the modern mind, given so deep a charm to much
of our later verse. This "pathetic fallacy" made its appear-
ance soon after Thomson. It is present in the poetry
of Fergusson ; it tinges still more deeply that of Burns ;
and it is of the very essence of Wordsworth's. But in
Thomson there is very little of it. Even a passing touch,
such as "the plaint of rills" in one of the passages
quoted above, is exceptional. He was not an idealist ; he
sought simply to depict what he saw, and what apparently
everyone might easily see. On the other hand, if Thomson
was a realist, he was assuredly not one of the type to which
the garbage of nature is as valuable and as well worthy

68 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

of description as her noblest scenes. He discriminated.
The most commonplace scene was good enough for his
verse provided it was perfect of its kind ; but decay and
dissolution were, to him, matter for reference, not for
elaborate portraiture.

Thomson's successors felt his power, his truth, and his
deep originality. Wordsworth looked back to him as an
early champion of a reviving natural school, and some-
times imitated him. In the Highland Girl the lines,

"Twice seven consenting years have shed
Their utmost bounty on thy head,"

are plainly suggested by Thomson : —

"Consenting Spring
Sheds her own rosy garland on their heads."

Coleridge studied him. A few lines of Thomson call
to mind the magnificent melodies of the Hymn before
Sunrise in the Vale of Chamouni, and are not unworthy
of comparison even with that masterpiece : —

"Meantime, amid these upper seas, condensed
Around the cold aereal mountain's brow,
And by conflicting winds together dashed,
The thunder holds his black tremendous throne."

And the following extract from the grand hymn which
closes The Seaso?is will prove that the still grander hymn
of Coleridge owed more to Thomson than a mere chance
cadence or expression. The elder' poet, it is true, does
not equal one of the most gifted minds in the rolls of
English poetry in one of its loftiest flights ; and it would
be a poor spirit which would grudge to Coleridge the

EARLIER SCHOOL OF XVIIIth CENTURY. 69

suggestions he has known so well how to improve upon.
But the parallel is worthy of attention : —

"To Him, ye vocal gales,
Breathe soft, whose Spirit in your freshness breathes ;
Oh talk of Him in solitary glooms
Where, o'er the rock, the scarcely waving pine
Fills the brown shade with a religious awe.
And ye, whose bolder note is heard afar,
Who shake the astonished world, lift high to heaven
The impetuous song, and say from whom you rage.
His praise, ye brooks, attune, ye trembling rills,
And let me catch it as I muse along.
Ye headlong torrents, rapid and profound ;
Ye softer floods, that lead the humid maze
Along the vale ; and thou, majestic main,
A secret world of wonders in thyself,
Sound His stupendous praise whose greater voice
Or bids you roar, or bids your roarings fall."

Nothing has as yet been said, and little need be said,
of the plan of The Seasotis. The poem cannot with much
meaning be said to have a plan. Thomson himself began
with Winter, and it is a matter almost of indifference
how the parts are arranged. That we regard spring as the
beginning of a cycle of changes which ends in the death
of winter is indeed a reason for the order of the four
poems; but the question why the pictures in each are
just such and not something different is one to which
no satisfactory answer can be given. That the poet was
sensible of this is proved by the fact that in editions
after the first— for he was constantly altering, polishing,
adding, and transposing — some passages are even removed
from one season to another. This want of vital unity
is doubtless a defect of the poem, and is probably the

70 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

chief reason why, although it is recognised by all who
read it as a great work, The Seaso?is no longer enjoys
the full measure of popularity which is due to its merits,
and which not so very long ago it still retained. But
the difficulty was insuperable. If such a work was to
be written at all, it could not, as regards plan, be done
better than Thomson did it.

A success so decided as that achieved by The Seasons
naturally encouraged its author to further poetic ventures.
Even before it was finished, in 1729, he published another
poem entitled Britan?iia, which enjoyed a fleeting popu-
larity and was afterwards not undeservedly forgotten.
Thomson, though a fervid patriot, was unfortunate in his
attempts to wed patriotism to verse. His song, Il2de,
Britannia, which first appeared in the masque of Alfred,
the joint work of Thomson and Mallet, is only too well
known for his poetic fame; and another more ambitious
but even less successful effort must shortly be noticed.
His first play, Sophonisba, followed in 1730. It enjoyed
a qualified and brief success, due rather to the reputation
won by The Seasons than to its own merits. Thomson
however had a love for the theatre, and over and over
again tried his fortune in dramatic composition. Aga-
memnon was put upon the stage in 1738. Another
tragedy, Edward and Eleanora, was ready for repre-
sentation the following year ; but on political grounds
the necessary license was refused. Tancred and Sigis-
mi0ida followed in 1745; and finally the posthumous play
of Coriola7ius in 1749. It can only be matter for regret
that Thomson wasted so much of his life over composi-
tions in which he was so little qualified to excel. He

EARLIER SCHOOL OF XVLLLth CENTURY. /I

had not the dramatic faculty. His plays are cold, lifeless,
and uninteresting. They are equal in bulk to all his
other poetry combined, yet there is hardly a line in the
whole for the loss of which the world would be poorer.

The five years which had passed between the arrival
of Thomson in London and the completion of The
Seasons had raised him to the first rank of literary fame.
It seemed as if he was now about to reap the material
fruits of his success. In 1730 he was asked to accom-
pany Charles Talbot, eldest son of Sir Charles Talbot,
who subsequently became Lord Chancellor, as travelling
companion through France and Italy. The office not
only afforded him present support and the prospect of
future preferment, but promised a widening of his educa-
tion and experiences which might well be expected to
enrich his poetry. On his return, after an absence of
more than a year, he began to work on the poem which
was afterwards published under the title of Liberty.
Young Talbot was dead before its completion, and it
was dedicated to his memory by the grateful Thomson,
who owed to the patronage of the father the office of
Secretary of Briefs in Chancery.

Liberty is a long poem in five parts, published in
sections in three successive years, 1734, 1735, and 1736.
It is as a whole dull, and except in a few passages
shows little of the beauty of The Seasons. It is bad in
design ; and nothing but superlative excellence of style
could on such a subject atone for ignorance of history
and a false political philosophy. The poem, which is a
vision wherein the Goddess of Liberty traces her own
career, begins in the middle with a comparison between

72 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

the ancient and modem state of Italy ; works backward
to the first rise of liberty and its transmission down to
Greece ; goes on to its rise, progress, and decline in
Rome ; its retirement from earth in the dark ages ; its
reappearance in Britain : and ends with a vision of the
future. The whole is heavy and laboured, confused, and
often pompous. The beauties are like Gratiano's reasons,
hid in too much chaff to be worth the search.

In 1736 Thomson, by this time a tolerably prosperous
man, removed to Richmond, where he could indulge his
special tastes better than in London \ but the death of
Lord Talbot in the following year, depriving him of his
office, reduced him again to poverty. He was soon
however relieved from his more pressing wants by a
pension of ;£ioo from the Prince of Wales, to whom in
gratitude he dedicated his play of Agamemnojt. In 1744
he was appointed, through the influence of Lord Lyttelton,
Surveyor-General of the Leeward Islands, a post which,
after paying his deputy, brought him ^300 a year. In
1748 The Castle of Indokfice was published. Some three
months later in the same year the poet died of a chill
caught on the river. He was attended on his death-bed
by his fellow-countryman and fellow-poet, Dr. Armstrong.

The Castle of Indolence, the triumph which signalised
the close of Thomson's career as The Seasons marked
its beginning, was a work on which he had laboured
lovingly for nearly fifteen years, enlarging, touching, and
refining. As was the case with The Seasons too, the
plan of it grew under his hand. He began merely with the
intention of writing a few stanzas in order to turn back upon
his friends the charge of idleness which they were accus-

EARLIER SCHOOL OF XVII Ith CENTURY. 73

tomed to prefer against him. The subject proved con-
genial, and the few stanzas grew into a poem of two
cantos, one of the most highly finished and one of the most
imaginative of the productions of the eighteenth century.
It is written in the stanza of Spenser, whose manner is
imitated and whose languorous charm of style has been
caught to an astonishing degree. And yet T/ie Castle of
Indolence is very much more than an imitation ; indeed,
when viewed in reference to the age in which it was
written, it is scarcely less original than The Seasons itself.
We might suppose that Thomson had set himself to teach
his time two lessons, and had embodied those lessons
in two poems. The first was the lesson that careful
observation and fidelity to fact would still repay the
poet; the second, not less surprising to a rationalising
age, was that human nature possessed a faculty beyond
the understanding, and was not to be satisfied by an
appeal to that alone. It has been already remarked that
in The Seasons Thomson is realistic in the sense that
he paints what he actually sees, — imaginatively, yet still
in such a way that even a prosaic mind may follow him
and understand him. There is no Turneresque light upon
his landscape to repel one type of mind as violently as it
attracts another. In The Castle of Indole?ice he writes
as an idealist for idealists ; and though a little reflection
detects the same nature beneath both, it seems at first
sight as if the two poems were the product of different
minds. In both cases we see a man whose interest in
society is altogether subordinate to his interest in the phe-
nomena of his own mind. These phenomena may be re-
garded either from the external or from the internal point

74 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

of view ; and Thomson has taken each in turn. In The
Seasons there is Httle direct yet there is a constant indirect
subjective reference. The one point of union between the
various pictures is that they are the perceptions of the
poet's mind. He speaks to his brother men, but to them
only through his own personal experience. In The Castle
of Indolence we look inward ; but there is no other essential
change. We still find Thomson teaching through the
medium, not of what he had gathered to be the experi-
ence of other men, but of what he knew as his own.
And the atmosphere of the two poems differs only as
the difference of subject suggested. There is an elusive
vagueness in the phenomena of the inner world which
contrasts with the definiteness and solidity, as it appears
at least, of the outer world, much as the delicate beauty
of The Castle of Indolence contrasts with the more solid
and palpable excellence of The Seasons.

The first canto of The Castle of Jndokfice is devoted
to a description of the enchanter's castle, his allurements,
the inhabitants of his domain, and their mode of life.
The whole is drawn by a master hand. Few things in
poetry are more beautiful or more admirably fitted to the
purpose than the opening description of the castle. Thom-
son has anticipated in it Tennyson's conception of the
"land where it was always afternoon." The two poets
worked independently, and both exquisitely.

"In lowly dale, fast by a river's side,

With woody hill o'er hill encompass'd round,
A most enchanting wizard did abide,

Than whom a fiend more fell is nowhere found.
It was, I ween, a lovely spot of ground ;

EARLIER SCHOOL OF XVIIIth CENTURY. 75

And there a season atween June and May,

Half prankt with spring, with summer half imbrown'd,
A listless climate made, where, sooth to say.
No living wight could work, ne cared ev'n for play.

"Was nought around but images of rest :

Sleep-soothing groves, and quiet lawns between ;

And flowery beds that slumberous influence kest.
From poppies breath 'd ; and beds of pleasant green,
Where never yet was creeping creature seen.

Meantime unnumber'd glittering streamlets play'd.
And hurl'd everywhere their waters sheen ;

That, as they bicker'd through the sunny glade,

Though restless still themselves a lulling murmur made.

"Join'd to the prattle of the purling rills,

Were heard the lowing herds along the vale,

And flocks loud-bleating from the distant hills.
And vacant shepherds piping in the dale :
And now and then sweet Philomel would wail,

Or stock-doves plain amid the forest deep,
That drowsy rustled to the sighing gale;

And still a coil the grasshopper did keep ;

Yet all these sounds yblent inclined all to sleep.

"Full in the passage of the vale, above,

A sable, silent, solemn forest stood ;
Where nought but shadowy forms was seen to move,

As Idless fancied in her dreaming mood :

And up the hills, on either side, a wood
Of blackening pines, ay waving to and fro.

Sent forth a sleepy horror through the blood ;
And where this valley winded out, below.
The murmuring main was heard, and scarcely heard, to
flow.

"A pleasing land of drowsihead it was,

Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye ;
And of gay castles in the clouds that pass,
For ever flushing round a summer sky :
There eke the soft delights, that witchingly

7^ SCO TTISH LITER A TURK.

Instil a wanton sweetness through the breast,

And the calm pleasures always hover'd nigh :
But whate'er smack'd of noyance, or unrest,
Was far far off expelled from this delicious nest."

The wizard who dwells in this enchanted ground is
master of a song not unworthy of it. By the example
of the butterfly in prime of May, and of the birds which
neither plough nor sow, yet enjoy the harvest, he calls
upon man, the outcast of nature, to lay down his load
of care and enjoy ease unbroken or varied only by that
gentle exercise which is a pleasure. This wizard, his
porter, whose " calm, broad, thoughtless aspect breath'd
repose," and the porter's page, careless of all but sleep
and play, are the rulers of the scene. They take the
victims drawn by the alluring song within their domain,
give them draughts from the fountain of Nepenthe, and
proclaim to them that all are at liberty to follow their
own pleasure. Whereupon, so innumerable are the paths
of desire, the multitude vanish,

"As when a shepherd of the Hebrid-isles,

Plac'd far amid the melancholy main,
(Whether it be lone fancy him beguiles ;

Or that aerial beings sometimes deign

To stand embodied, to our senses plain)
Sees on the naked hill, or valley low.

The whilst in ocean Phoebus dips his wain,
A vast assembly moving to and fro :
Then all at once in air dissolves the wondrous show."

All that can soothe the sense or charm the taste, every
delicacy of food and drink, every pleasing colour and
form and sound, enrich and adorn those courts and halls.
These delights are sketched with great skill, though

EARLIER SCHOOL OF XVII Ith CENTURY. 7/

Thomson checks himself in the middle and declares that
his muse has no colours which can glow like that fairy-
land. Portraits are added of a few of the inhabitants of
the place, including the poet himself, " more fat than
bard beseems," but "void of envy, guile, and lust of
gain." The canto ends significantly with a picture of a
place discovered too late, a place

" Deep, dreary, underground,
Where still our inmates, when unpleasing grown,
Diseas'd, and loathsome, privily were thrown."

The second canto displays the other side of the
picture. It tells the story of the birth and nurture of
Sir Industry, his progress over the world till he settles
in Britain, and his final retirement there to pass the
evening of his days in a well-earned repose. But the
news that Indolence is eating away the morals of the
land and ruining the works which he had reared rouses
Sir Industry. He sallies out attended by his bard Philo-
melus, and seeks the Castle. Even these champions of
toil feel the charm of the enchanter's art ; but the Knight
subdues him and then calls upon the Bard to rouse with
his song the souls of those who are not altogether lost.
He responds with a fine strain which is meant to contrast
with that of Indolence in the first canto, and with the
picture of his slumberous land. The essence of it is that
action is always preferable to inactivity, as the stream is
preferable to the stagnant pool. The better sort rise to
his appeal, but the greater part curse both Bard and
Knight as sons of hate disturbing the seat of peace and
love. The Knight then waves a wand which dispels
the enchantment and shows the inhabitants the native

78 SCO TTISH LITER A TURK.

hideousness of the place. He promises help to all who

will repent. The impenitent must suffer deeply before

their stains are wept away; but even for them Thomson's

kindly philosophy has hope : —

"Who can say
What grace may yet shine forth in heaven's eternal day ? "

The poem ends with a description of the misery of those
who will not be rescued.

The same fate which has in art so often exalted the
picture of evil above that of good, which has awarded
the palm to Dante's Inferno in preference to his Faradiso,
to Milton's hell rather than his heaven, has decreed
that Thomson's delineation of Indolence should excel
that of Industry. The second canto is good, but there
is nothing in it which for poetic beauty can be compared
with the best passages of the first; nor is the impression
of the whole nearly so pleasing. There may be some
common cause which has helped to bring about the like
result in all these cases ; but there was also a special
cause at work in Thomson's case. He loved ease, and
his Castle of Indolence is drawn by one who had felt
all the delights of which he writes.

One of the highest qualities of the poem is the delicacy
with which the moral of it is woven in with the artistic
fabric. To accomplish this union satisfactorily is always
one of the most difficult tasks that can be set the poet;
and it was one in which Thomson's contemporaries were
rarely successful. But he possessed the skill which they
lacked. Without shutting from view one delight which
Indolence can claim as his own, without ignoring the
possibility of combining indolence with action, provided

EARLIER SCHOOL OF XVIIIth CENTURY. 79

the action be unencumbered with a purpose, without
even denying the tincture of virtue there is in vice itself,
he yet succeeds in presenting the loathsome den which
ultimately engulfs the idle as the natural goal of their
life, and this in a manner quite unobtrusive. And the
contrasting figure of Industry is drawn, if not with equal
charm, at least with convincing force. The moral is that
they who live the life of butterflies must accept the fate
of the butterfly, must be content to be the sport of cir-
cumstances ; while they who with their own right hand
are architects of their own fortune will naturally enjoy
whatever of beautiful or of good their labour has created.

The patience with which Thomson endeavoured to
perfect his poem was well bestowed. The Castle of
Indolence, though less important in the history of poetry,
is in some respects preferable even to The Seasons.
Though it was a casual growth it cannot be charged with
that defect of plan which betrays itself in the earlier poem.
There is a natural sequence of the ideas, a natural
development of the thought, the parts are linked each
to each by natural harmony. The style is, if not better,
at any rate finer and more delicate. Objections may be
taken by some to the archaisms in imitation of Spenser;
but most readers will probably think that the Spenserian
stanza has become so associated in tradition with archaic
forms as almost to demand them before it will yield its
full flavour.

One of the most peculiar points in the history of
Thomson is that he should twice and no oftener have
achieved such distinguished success. In virtue of either
The Seasons or The Castle of Indolence, still more of

8o SCO TTISH LITER A TURK.

both, most critics would be willing to grant him a place
among the minor giants, not the gods, of poetry ; some
would be inclined, on a review of his work in connexion
with the time and circumstances in which it was pro-
duced, to make that place far from a low one. Those
two poems are unmistakeably the work of a man of genius.
Yet in all else that he wrote, considerable as it is in
quantity and varied as it is in character, the reader
seldom even for a moment, and never for many conse-
cutive lines, feels that he is in the presence of a great
man. The songs to Amanda, though inspired by a real
passion, are at the best of only moderate merit. The
miscellaneous songs have even less to recommend them.
About the tragedies, Liberty and Britannia, the world
has long ago made up its mind. Among the minor
poems which have not been noticed there is little that
would attract even a passing glance but for the name of
Thomson. The best of them, the Llymn on Solitude,
does contain a few lines in his happiest manner ; but
exceptional passages such as this are not sufficient to
disturb the general judgment that Thomson is memorable
for The Seasons and The Castle of Indolence alone. He
stumbled upon the one subject at the very opening of
his career, the other he had not finished till he was
almost on the verge of the grave. Whether, if length of
days had been granted him, he would have written more
that the world would not willingly let die, or whether he
would have groped blindly on from' blunder to blunder
as he did through so many of the years that were
actually his, can never be determined. Thus much is
certain, that his inspiration was not at his own com-

EARLIER SCHOOL OF XVIIIth CENTURY. 8 1

mand ; that he had no canon of self-criticism by which
he could discriminate between what was possible for him
and what was impossible ; that the worth of his work was
wholly dependent upon a felicitous choice of subject;
and that according as the subject suited or did not suit
him, he displayed the head of gold or the feet of clay.
To define what suited him is not easy. He made no
approach to definition himself; but at least a little may
be done by negatives. Nothing suited him which de-
manded, like the drama, the mergence of self in the
character of another; nothing which, like Liberty, de-
manded a combination of history and philosophy ; nothing
which, like the songs, called for the concentrated expres-
sion of intense passion. Byron detected that Thomson
was weak on the subject of love. The episodes in The
Seasons, if they may be so called, are feeble ; and what
is worse, they betray a strain of coarseness in the poet's
mind. His genius was reflective rather than passionate ;
and self, in no offensive sense, was always the pivot of his
reflection.

Thomson, though he was not the founder of a school,
exercised a well marked influence over the poets of his
time. He was the first after Milton who for non-drama-
tic purposes employed blank verse on a large scale; and
all the very considerable body of eighteenth century verse
in that measure must be regarded as, in greater or less
degree, due to his example. But he was especially in-
fluential over his own countrymen; and of these no one
followed him more closely than David Mallet. Mallet,
who had studied at Edinburgh in the same years with
Thomson, preceded him to London, and was one of the

VOL. II. F

82 SCO TTISH LITER A TURE.

first to reach him a helping hand there. His fidelity to
his fellow student, for which Thomson was lastingly
grateful, is a bright feature in a character by no means
admirable. The real name of the man was Malloch ; and
it may be taken as characteristic of his pseudo-refinement
that he thought fit to change it, partly no doubt to get
rid of the homely guttural, pardy perhaps in foolish irri-
tation at the coarse and clumsy wit which had transformed
it into Moloch. He had exercised himself in versifying
even before he left Edinburgh; but it was not till 1724
that he produced his first notable piece,— as it happens,
the only thing by him which is still remembered— the
ballad of William and Margaret. It was suggested, as
Mallet himself declares, by the lines repeated by Merry-
Thought in The Knight of the Burning Pestle : —

"When it was grown to dark midnight,
And all were fast asleep,
In came Margaret's grimly ghost.
And stood at William's feet."

Mallet's ballad belongs to the same class as Hamilton of
Bangour's Braes of Yarrozv, to which however it is much
inferior. It may be described as an attempt to graft the
elegance and classicism of the Queen Anne poets on the
structure of the ancient ballad. The way in which Mallet
handles the old lines on which he worked is instructive :—

"'Twas at the silent, solemn hour
When night and morning meet ;
In glided Margaret's grimly ghost,
And stood at William's feet."

Every fresh touch here is in the eighteenth century spirit,
and tends at least as much to weaken and to destroy

EARLIER SCHOOL OF XVIIIth CENTURY. ^l

the simplicity of the old ballad as it does to add to its
smoothness. The moralising of the third stanza is also
a departure from the ballad style. An artificial age had
little to learn from Mallet even if he had continued to
write in the strain which first won him a name. But he
barely touched that string again. He is the author of
another ballad, Edwin and Etnma, and of a song to a
Scotch tune, The Birks of Endermay ; but the ballad is
thoroughly artificial, and the song is one of those in
which the substantive is always fitted with its orthodox
epithet, The poet warbles about the smiling morn, the
breathing spring, the tuneful birds, the feathered songsters,
soft raptures, the verdant shade.

The example of Thomson carried Mallet away upon a
new path. His Excursion, published in 1728, was sug-
gested by Thomson's Seasons, then in progress and partly
issued ; indeed the imitation of subject and rhythm is
shameless. There is however between the two a wide
difference. The Exclusion has all the faults of The
Seasons more deeply accentuated. There is the same
lack of unity, and there is besides a clumsiness in
mediating transitions with which Thomson cannot be
charged. On the other hand, we fail to find the fidelity
and the insight which redeem The Seasons. Mallet could
not trust himself to simple delineation of the ordinary
scenes of nature : he attempted to make up by loudness
of style and inflation of thought for that which he was
half conscious of lacking in penetration. Fire must blaze,
thunder ratde, death strike, to give interest to the page.
In nearly all his longer pieces the storm is Mallet's
unfailing resort in difficulty. The reason lies on the

84 SCO TTISH LIT ERA TURE.

surface : of all natural scenes, a tempest is the one to
which it is easiest to give the semblance of poetic dress.
But The Excursion was an early work, and it remained
possible that maturer years and larger experience might
enable Mallet to produce something better. He did so
in Amyntor and Theodora, published in 1747. It was
originally written for the stage, but was altered into the
form of a narrative poem in blank verse. It contains a
quantity of flowing and by no means unpleasing verse;
but the sentiment is sickly to the last degree and the
whole atmosphere of the poem unwholesome.

In the interval between these two works Mallet had
engaged in a variety of literary ventures. In 1731 his
tragedy of Eurydice was represented, but obtained litde
favour. The characters are ill drawn. Possessing few
individual features they stand out, not as living beings,
but rather as abstract types. Their utterances too are
frequently turgid. Nevertheless Eurydice is not without
merit. The story is interesting and clear, there is pro-
gress from scene to scene, and unexpected vigour in the
language. Much the same may be said of the later
tragedy of Mustapha, written with a political aim, and
first acted in 1739. Mallet was one of the dependants
of Prince Frederick, to please whom he held Walpole up
to opprobrium in the character of Rustan, and repre-
sented the King in the person of Sultan Solyman as the
dupe of that intriguing statesman. The piece, owing to
its political complexion, was populai- for a short time;
but it had not enough of merit to preserve it per-
manently. The poisoning of the Sultan's mind is too
childishly easy, and the dramatis prsonae are poor. An-

EARLIER SCHOOL OF XVIIIth CENTURY. 85

other tragedy, Elvira, acted at Drury Lane in 1763, was
written also with a poHtical end in view ; but on this
occasion it was in the interest, not of the opposition,
but of the Bute government. The masques, Alfred, which
he wrote in conjunction with Thomson, and Britannia,
are of mediocre quahty. Both contain some pleasing
but commonplace lyrics.

Mallet also wrote a prose Life of Bacon, a trivial thing,
worthless as an authority and hardly more important as a
piece of composition.

He died in 1765. His works do little to adorn his
country's literature, and his life did much to stain her
name. Johnson says that " it was remarked of him that
he was the only Scot whom Scotchmen did not com-
mend."^ He was a venal writer, a treacherous friend, a
dishonest man. Whatever party could or would pay
him he was ready to serve with his pen ; and through
his obsequiousness he made more by his writings than
they were worth. He accepted from Bolingbroke the
task of avenging upon Pope's memory his offence in
publishing without authority The Patriot King. How-
ever Pope's guilt may be estimated, Mallet, his professed
friend, was not the proper person to visit it upon him,
especially as Pope was by that time dead. Mallet
earned by this the bequest of the whole body of Boling-
broke's writings, published and unpublished. He was
not even superior to the meanness of taking money
for work which he never performed. He accepted,
under the will of the Duchess of Marlborough, a legacy

^ "He must have been awful,'''' was the remark of one who heard
this quotation.

S6 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

of ;^iooo to write a life of the great Duke, spread
reports of his progress in it, and died with nothing
done. Such is the dishonourable life which Mallet's
writings have done just enough to preserve from a
merciful oblivion.

There still remain three of those who were named at
the beginning as representatives of the Anglo-Scottish
school. They differ considerably both from their fellows
and from one another; but all agree in this, that they
follow Thomson in the use of blank verse, and that they
stand quite apart from the dominant school of Pope.
One was the physician John Armstrong, a man both
personally and in his literary work associated with Thom-
son. He was born in 1709 at Castleton in Roxburgh-
shire, and, like Thomson, was an alumnus of Edinburgh
University. Soon after he had finished his medical
course he proceeded to London, where he intended to
practise his profession. He was already known to a
limited circle as a writer of verses ; and, singularly enough,
one of his first pieces, the subject of which is Whiter,
was, he says, just finished when Thomson's poem on the
same subject appeared. Armstrong in this piece imitates
Shakespeare rather than any contemporary ; and though
it is unimportant in itself, there is in its strength con-
siderable promise. The sluggishness of his disposition
and that splenetic cast of character which Thomson
makes the leading feature of his portrait in The Castle
of Lidolence, combined perhaps with his addiction to
literature, hindered his professional advancement. He
attempted to further it by a treatise on a medical subject
in 1737; but whatever good that might have done him

EARLIER SCHOOL OF XVIIIth CENTURY. 87

was more than balanced by a licentious poem published
the year before, The Economy of Love, a poem in such bad
taste that even the author, who was a man by no means
squeamish or ready to detect faults in himself, saw the
propriety of curtailing it in a later edition of its more
offensive parts. In the year 1744 he published The Art
of Preserving Health, a didactic poem in blank verse. It
is too little to say that this is Armstrong's most memor-
able work, for it dwarfs all else that he has written.

The Art of Preserving Health is divided into four
books, and consists in all of rather more than 2000 lines.
It sinks or rises according to the nature of the subject
immediately in hand. The first book, on air, admits of
comparatively free handling ; the second, on diet, draws
from the poet a complaint expressed in a few fine

lines : —

" A desart subject now

Rougher and wilder, rises to my sight.
A barren waste, where not a garland grows
To bind the Muse's brow ; not ev'n a proud
Stupendous solitude frowns o'er the heath
To rouse a noble horror in the soul."

The practical in this section prevails unduly over the
poetical. Medical maxims in verse are inevitably dry,
utterly misplaced, and, it may be suspected, less accurate
than if they had been given in prose. It was far from
being Armstrong's native instinct to indulge in sounding
language not particularly charged with meaning \ but he
was sometimes forced to do so to atone by the semblance
of poetry for the absence of the true poetic spirit. He did
it occasionally when the temptation was less urgent ; but
this evil trick, which he had partly caught from his con-

$^ SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

temporaries, was never a habit with him. One point in
his medical advice in this second part deserves to be
mentioned. He inculcates temperance in drinking, yet
recommends an occasional debauch as necessary to en-
able a man to meet the claims of society. The manners
of the time stand revealed in this more vividly than in
all the moralist's denunciations of excess.

The third book is concerned with exercise, which the
poet again complains of as intractable. The subject of the
fourth is the passions. It is here that Armstrong has the
freest scope, and here accordingly are found his finest
passages. The power of the lines on melancholy must be
felt by everyone. It is singular how clearly they betray,
through a very different measure, the same hand that
wrote the concluding stanzas of the first canto of The
Castle of Indolence?- They are however superior : —

" The dim-ey'd Fiend,
Sour Melancholy, night and day provokes
Her own eternal wound. The sun grows pale ;
A mournful visionary light o'erspreads
The chearful face of nature : earth becomes
A dreary desart, and heaven frowns above.
Then various shapes of curs'd illusion rise :
Whate'er the wretched fears, creating Fear
Forms out of nothing ; and with monsters teems
Unknown in hell. The prostrate soul beneath
A load of huge imagination heaves ;
And all the horrors that the murderer feels
With anxious flutterings wake the guiltless breast."

The man who wrote thus had a sympathetic insight into
suffering ; and Armstrong's poem throughout gives evid-

^ Those stanzas, which are descriptive of various diseases, were
written by Armstrong for Thomson's poem.

EARLIER SCHOOL OF XVIIIth CENTURY. 89

ence of a marvellous power of realising the effects of
disease as if he himself felt them. Perhaps however the
finest lines he ever wrote are those descriptive of the
plague in England. The passage is too long to quote as
a whole, but the following extract from it will give some
idea of its strength and elevation : —

" It seem'd the general air,
From pole to pole, from Atlas to the East,
Was then at enmity with English blood.
For, but the race of England, all were safe
In foreign climes ; nor did the Fury taste
The foreign blood which England then contain'd.
Where should they fly ? The circumambient heaven
Involv'd them still ; and every breeze was bane.
Where find relief? The salutary art
Was mute, and, startled at the new disease.
In fearful whispers hopeless omen gave.
To heaven with suppliant rites they sent their pray'rs ;
Heav'n heard them not. Of every hope depriv'd ;
Fatigu'd with vain resources ; and subdued
With woes resistless and enfeebling fear ;
Passive they sunk beneath the weighty blow.
Nothing but lamentable sounds was heard,
Nor aught was seen but ghastly views of death.
Infectious horror ran from face to face,
And pale despair. 'Twas all the business then
To tend the sick and in their turn to die.
In heaps they fell : and oft one bed, they say.
The sick'ning, dying, and the dead contain'd."

Armstrong continued to write poetry from time to time
for many years after the publication of The Art of Pre-
serving Health. His -Bettevolence, Taste, and A Day, the
last an epistle addressed to John Wilkes, are the most
considerable of his later poems. They are unfortunately
in the heroic couplet, a measure over which Armstrong

90 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

had much less mastery than he possessed over blank
verse. The best of them is Taste, which is described as
" an epistle to a young critic." It is marked by vigorous
understanding and independence of judgment. From its
subject and the nature of the opinions expressed, it is
akin to Armstrong's prose volume, Sketches or Essays on
Various Subjects, published under the pseudonym of
Launcelot Temple in 1758. The best of these essays are
critical, and the criticism is distinguished by its very
modem cast of opinion. The essay Of the Versification
of English Tragedy deserves the highest commendation.
The writer says of Shakespeare that he had " the most
musical ear of all the English poets," a judgment as honour-
able to his discernment as its expression at that time was
to his courage. In 1770 he collected a number of his
productions in two volumes of Miscellanies, which in-
cluded a tragedy, The Forced Marriage, that had been
rejected many years before. Some medical essays pub-
lished in 1773 were Armstrong's last contribution to
literature. He died in 1779, leaving, notwithstanding
that he had never been successful either as poet or
physician, a considerable sum of money scraped together
by a thrift approaching penury.

Armstrong's early imitation of Shakespeare and his
critical panegyrics on the great dramatist reveal his true
leanings. He was indeed indebted to Thomson, but only
in a slight degree ; and the influence of his country is
rather seen in the independence of the fashionable mode
which it helped him to maintain, than in positive features
of his style. He was one of the earliest students of the
Elizabethans who went so far as to make them his models,

EARLIER SCHOOL OF XVIIIth CENTURY. 9 1

and acknowledge them as supreme masters of poetic art.
He owes to the school in which he studied the daring
of his sombre imagination, the manliness of his style,
and the strength of his verse.

Another of the band of Scots who cultivated blank
verse was Robert Blair, author of the once famous and even
now by no means forgotten poem, The Grave. Differing
from Armstrong in most things, he agreed with him in this,
that his leading characteristic was strength, and that he
learnt the secret of this strength by a study of the Eliza-
bethans. Blair was born in Edinburgh in 1699; and
after an education at the university of his native city,
followed by further study in Holland, he became a minister
of the Church of Scotland, and in 1731 was appointed
to the parish of Athelstaneford. As he was followed by
John Home, author of Douglas, this parish had the some-
what unusual honour of cherishing two poets in succession.

Blair is said to have made his first attempts at verse
in that Edinburgh Miscellany of 1720 which contained
also the early efforts of Thomson and Mallet. Previous
to his settlement at Athelstaneford, he had composed a
poem to the memory of William Law, professor of philo-
sophy in the University of Edinburgh, whose daughter
he afterwards married. He had also already begun The
Grave, but it was not published till 1743. The author
had little time to prove what more he might be capable
of doing. He died in 1746, leaving behind him a son,
afterwards Lord President of the Court of Session, whose
career proved that strength of understanding and stern
morality were hereditary in the family.

The Grave immediately acquired a great popularity;

92 SCO TTISH LITER A TURE.

and though time has obscured its fame, it is still spoken
of with respect by critics who cannot be suspected of
undue sympathy either with Blair's country or with his
tone of thought. Part of its vogue was doubtless due
to considerations other than literary. A religious subject
presents to an author the great advantage that, if he only
avoids outspoken heresy, he will secure some audience
irrespective of his merits; and if he shows real ability
that audience generally remains faithful. Thus through-
out the religious world, and especially in Scotland itself,
where a gloomy Calvinism predisposed the people to a
favourable reception of his dismal theme, there already
existed a taste which could be gratified by such verse as
Blair's. Further, there may be detected in universal
human nature some traces of the ghoulish spirit. Horrors
have for most men more or less of that morbid fascination
which draws people to visit morgues, and glut their eyes
on monstrosities of all kinds, and which Plato has noted
in a familiar passage of the Republic. And about the
time when Blair wrote, this unwholesome love of the
gloomy, if not the ghastly, was unusually prevalent. It
is visible not only in Blair's countryman Armstrong, but
in Young, author of the Night Thoughts?-

The choice of such a subject as the grave does not
necessarily imply anything morbid in the treatment; but
it must be admitted that there is a morbid element in
Blair's poem. He has no reticence about the worm

^ It is probable that Blair was not indebted to Young ; for although
The Grave was not published till the year following the first of the
Night Thoughts, Blair is known to have been in communication with
publishers before any part of Young's work appeared.

EARLIER SCHOOL OF XVIIIth CENTURY. 93

that surfeits on the damask cheek of beauty, about the
awful pangs attending the strong man's dissolution, or
about the all-devouring appetite of the "great man-
eater"; and he has been praised, most injudiciously,
for being so out-spoken. Shakespeare has used much
the same images ; but a comparison of Blair with the
parts of Hamlet and Measure for Measure, which he
evidently had in his mind in more passages than one,
shows at once what a change the stronger imagination
has worked, how much more skilful is the execution,
how much deeper the moral, how widely different in
consequence the work of the two poets. Yet Blair has
learnt not a little, and often has learnt well, from his
master ; and it is to his honour that he, a Scotch clergy-
man of a century and a half ago, is found imitating him
at all. Often his lines sound simply like distant echoes
of Shakespearian lines ; but sometimes there is originality
combined with a considerable share of Shakespeare's
strength. And this is Blair's highest praise. At his best
he shows a masculine vigour of language and an austere
dignity of imagination more than sufficient to atone for
the harshness of his verse, marred, nay, almost ruined,
as it is by the abuse of the hypermetrical line. That
there is virtue in the poem is proved by its richness in
quotable and often-quoted lines — a feature which may be
taken as one of the tests of good work. The best
known is one which occurs in the description of the
departure of good from the world at the sin of Adam,
to return only in visits " like those of angels, short and
far between." The simile is more familiar in the less
happy form which Campbell gave it — "few and far

94 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

between." ^ Blair's better manner is seen in the lines
which follow : —

"Son of the morning, whither art thou gone?
Where hast thou hid thy many-spangled head,
And the majestic menace of thine eyes,
Felt from afar."

But best of all that he wrote is the close of The Grave,
in which beauty of expression finely responds to beauty
of thought : —

" 'Tis but a night, a long and moonless night,
We make the grave our bed, and then are gone.
Thus at the shut of even the weary bird
Leaves the wide air and, in some lonely brake,
Cowers down and dozes till the dawn of day,
Then claps his well-fledged wings and bears away."

The man who felt thus and wrote thus was, whatever
his limits, a true poet. All the evidence points to the
conclusion that his limits were narrow. There is no
trace of varied powers in Blair; but there is every-
where a guarantee that whatever else he might have
done with a longer life, he would have done nothing
weak.

Several of these men then show that they possess a
true poetic gift; and in the case of Thomson the gift is
a high one. But there is a short, nameless, neglected
poem which contains verse of as high a quality as any-
thing Armstrong or Thomson or Blair ever wrote. The
poem in question, which is called Albania, was peculiarly
ill-fated. Of the original edition only one copy is known

■•^ There is, as Marsh points out in his English Language, a yet older
form of the simile in John Norris, who makes the angels' visits "short
and bright."

EARLIER SCHOOL OF XVIIIth CENTURY. 95

to survive, and that copy is provokingly sparing of infor-
mation. It bears date 1737, and asserts that the poem
"was wrote by a Scots clergyman, who is since dead."
It does not reveal the name of this clergyman, nor that
of the editor. The dedication, apparently by the latter,
is addressed to General Wade. Leyden, from whom these
particulars are taken, included the poem in his little volume
of Scottish Descriptive Poems ; and it is referred to appre-
ciatively by Scott in a letter to Joanna Baillie, and
quoted in a note to one of the ballads ot the Border
Minstrelsy. But though it has long been known and
admired by a few, even Leyden's reprint did not bring
it into wide repute ; so hard is it for a poem not asso-
ciated with any known name to live.

Albania is very unequal. Within its short compass of
296 lines it contains one or two passages which would do
honour to most poets, while there are others little better
than prosaic. The promise of the better parts is all the
higher because it appears from internal evidence that
the author was only twenty-four years of age when he
wrote it; and a man who could write as this man wrote
at twenty-four might have been a king in letters had he
lived to the fulness of his powers. He combines how-
ever with the genius of a master many of the marks of
juvenility and inexperience. His success or failure de-
pends entirely on the subject immediately in hand : he
has not art to dress up the tamer passages. Where he
enumerates the elements of the wealth of Scotland he
grows prosaic; where his blood is warmed by the feeling
of patriotism or his imagination quickened by an inspiring
theme, he rises to excellence. His native power is shown

g6 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

by the fact that the thought, though not always poetic,
is always forcible ; his art is sometimes crude, but his
mind is never feeble. The verse varies as the thought
does. At its best it is admirable ; in the poorer passages
it has neither variety nor harmony. The lines best known
are those quoted by Scott, descriptive of the spectre
hunting in Ross : —

" There oft is heard, at midnight, or at morn,
Beginning faint, but rising still more loud
And nearer, voice of hunters, and of hounds,
And horns hoarse-winded, blowing far and keen ;
Forthwith the hubbub multiplies, the gale
Labours with rifer shrieks, and rifer din
Of hot pursuit, the broken ciy of deer
Mangled by throttling dogs, the shouts of men,
And hoofs thick beating on the hollow hill.
Sudden the gazing heifer in the vale
Starts at the noise, and both the herdsman's ears
Tingle with inward dread. Aghast he eyes
The mountain height, and all the ridges round.
Yet not one trace of living wight discerns ;
Nor knows, o'erawed, and trembling as he stands.
To what, or whom, he owes his idle fear.
To ghost, to witch, to fairy, or to fiend,
But wonders, and no end of wondering finds."

This is powerfully imagined and powerfully expressed.
It is however in passages of a patriotic cast that the
writer usually shows at his best. Of that description is
the beautiful explanation of the late twilight in the North
as due to the unwillingness of the sun to leave the land
he loves. He,

" Looking back from the Atlantic brine,
Eyes thy glad slumbers with reflected beam.
And glitters o'er thy head the clear night long."

EARLIER SCHOOL OF XVIIIih CENTURY. 97

Such too are the opening verses, the finest in the poem.
There is a music in some of the Hues unequalled in the
passages given above, and a fervour in the thought which,
joined with the melody, gives the passage a place among
the best blank verse of that age : —

" O loved Albania ! hardy nurse of men !
Holding thy silver cross I worship thee.
On this, thy old and solemn festival,
Early, ere yet the wakeful cock hath crowed.

Hear ! goddess, hear ! that on the beryl flood,
Enthroned of old, amid the waters' sound,
Reign'st far and wide o'er many a sea-girt spot.
Oh smile ! whether on high Dunedin thou
Guardest the steep and iron-bolted rock,
Where trusted lie the monarchy's last gems,
The sceptre, sword, and crown, that graced the brows,
Since father Fergus, of an hundred kings :
Or if, along the well-contested ground.
The warlike Border-land, thou marchest proud ;
In Teviotdale, where many a shepherd dwells.
By lovely-winding Tweed, or Cheviot brown :
Nor ween I now in Durham's lofty spire
To seek thee, though thy lov'd St. David's work ;
Nor where Newcastle opes her jetty mines
Of coal ; nor in strong Berwick ; nor in Man,
That never dreaded plague ; nor in the wilds
Of stony Westmoreland : all once thy own.

Hail, land of bow-men ! seed of those who scorned
To stoop the neck to wide imperial Rome.
O dearest half of Albion sea-walled !
Hail ! state unconquered by the fire of war.
Red war, that twenty ages round thee burned ;
To thee, for whom my purest raptures glow.
Kneeling with filial homage, I devote
My life, my strength, my first and latest song."

This assertion that Albania would be the author's last

VOL. II. G

98 SCO TTISH LITER A TURK.

song, as it was his first, seems unfortunately to have proved
prophetic. Again at the end he repeats that it is patriotism
alone which inspires his poetry : —

"Thus, Caledonia, many hilled! to thee,
End and beginning of my ardent song,
I tune the Druid's lyre, to thee devote
This lay, and love not music but for thee."

If he had lived long however, we may be sure that the
fervour of soul which displays itself in such verse would
again have enforced utterance. Much was lost in that
early and nameless grave.

It may be desirable in a few sentences to recall the
common features of this band of Scotchmen, and to mark
what was new in their contribution to literature. All of
them were distinguished by a certain independence of mind
with reference to the literary fashion of the time : even
Mallet needed but the example of Thomson to encourage
him to cut himself free from it. The taste of the Queen
Anne poets influenced them only to a slight degree. All
of them too brought freshness with them, either, like Arm-
strong and Blair, as students of a manner which had
fallen into disuse, or, like Thomson, from a new and
original study of nature. It was precisely on these lines
that the great literary revolution of the latter part of the
century proceeded. The leaders of the romance move-
ment turned for inspiration either to the Elizabethans or
to the remains of our old popular poetry, as Blair and
Armstrong, and as Hamilton and even Mallet had done
The leaders of the natural school followed in the footsteps
of Thomson, left the city and the study, and ceased to

EARLIER SCHOOL OF XVIIIth CENTURY. 99

accept their impressions of nature at second hand. Like
him, they trusted rather to

"A heart
That watches and receives."

Thus the men who have just been reviewed foreshadow,
far more clearly than is commonly believed, the work of
the revolutionary poets. They did not indeed do that
work beforehand; but they helped greatly to make the
doing of it possible.

CHAPTER IX.

THE LATER ANGLO-SCOTTISH SCHOOL OF
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

Just about the time when Thomson and his contempor-
aries were beginning to write, another set of poets of very
different character were in their infancy. John Wilson,
William Wilkie, Thomas Blacklock, and John Home were all
born about the opening of the third decade of the century.
William Falconer, William Julius Mickle, and James
Beattie were some ten years younger. Later still came
James Macpherson, Michael Bruce, and John Logan.
These men differ widely among themselves, but still more
widely from their immediate predecessors. It is curious
that, except for dramatic composition, blank verse, the
favourite measure of the former period, almost disappears
in this. So too does that freshness of matter which is
the chief merit of the elder group. It would seem that
the longer continuance of close intercourse with England
had made the weight of southern influence more heavily
felt, and had checked the growth of native ideas.

The chronological order ought to be observed so far
as to separate the first group from the rest ; for it will be
found that, while the characteristic of that group is merely

LATER SCHOOL OF XVIIIth CENTURY. 1 01

imitation of the school of Pope, the later writers appear
first to be groping after something new, and then to grasp
it. This something new is romanticism. In the first
group John Home, as a dramatist, stands apart. Of the
others, Blacklock and Wilkie agree in this, that they touch
hands at once with the English Augustan poets and with
the ancient classical writers whom these professed to
admire, and from whom they took their name. Blacklock
is much the smaller man of the two. He has in truth little
claim to remembrance except such as can be founded
upon a pathetic story and an amiable and virtuous
character. He lost his eyesight from smallpox in infancy ;
and struggling under this disadvantage he managed to
acquire a considerable degree of learning. His favourite
pursuit was poetry ; an unwise choice, for he had no
grandeur of idea to atone for the want of precision which
must mark the descriptions of one who has never seen
that which he describes. Even in an age when mediocre
verse was more charitably received than it is at the
present day, he would, but for the interest inspired by
his blindness, have failed to attract attention. In virtue
of that however, and of his personal charm, he was most
favourably received. The kindly sceptic, David Hume,
did all he could in his behalf, even surrendering to him
his salary as Advocates' Librarian ; and Spence, the pro-
fessor of poetry at Oxford, to whom Blacklock was intro-
duced by Hume, wrote an account of his life, character,
and writings which made him known to the English public.
Blacklock in his turn, at a later day, had it in his power
to stretch a helping hand to Robert Burns ; and the fact
that he was partly the means of turning Burns fi-om his

I02 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

design of emigrating, constitutes for him a stronger claim
to remembrance than anything he ever wrote. For in
truth neither his prose nor his poetry is of much value.
In the poetry there is not one gleam of original power;
and there is little even of that conventional prettiness
which sometimes makes the minor poet mildly attractive.

Blacklock tried with song, ode, pastoral, and elegy to
chmb the gentler slopes of Parnassus; William Wilkie
attempted to storm its steepest heights by means of his
ambitious epic, The Epigoniad. He has fallen under a
shadow of oblivion somewhat deeper than he deserved,
though it is easily explained. A short poem moderately well
done has a better chance to be read than a long one of the
same quality, though the ability which has gone to the
creation of the latter may be much greater than that
devoted to the slighter work. The Epigoiiiad is moderately
good ; but it requires more than moderate merit to induce
men to read [an epic in nine books.

Wilkie was a man with a history very similar to that
of scores of his countrymen who, by dint of dauntless
character and strong understanding, have conquered an
unpropitious fortune. He was born in 1721, and was
sent at the age of fourteen to the University of Edinburgh,
but in the midst of his studies was recalled by his father's
death to manage a farm and provide for a mother and
three sisters. Most lads would have sunk under the
burden, or at the utmost would have contented them-
selves with fighting successfully the battle for existence.
But Wilkie never surrendered his ambitions. He carried
through his studies to the end, was licensed, and re-
ceived first the assistantship and afterwards the principal

LATER SCHOOL OF XVIIIth CENTURY. 103

charge of the parish of Ratho. But he carried to the end
of his life the marks of his stern struggle : it was the rude
boorishness of his manner which induced Charles Towns-
hend to say of him that " he had never met with a man
who approached so near the two extremes of a god and
a brute as Wilkie did."^

The Epigoniad, the great work of Wilkie's life, appeared
in 1757. The nature of its reception might be guessed,
even if there were no other evidence, from the tone of the
Dream in the Manner of Spenser, which is really an apology
for The Epigoniad, appended to the second edition of
1759. In this Dream, which consists of eighteen nerve-
less Spenserian stanzas, the poet is brought before Homer,
who asserts that Wilkie's merits are borrowed from him.
Wilkie admits the charge, but replies with truth that
others have borrowed full as much. There is some beauty
in stanza xvii. : —

" He smil'd, and from his wreath, which well could spare
Such boon, the wreath with which his locks were clad,
Pluck'd a few leaves to hide my temples bare ;
The present I receiv'd with heart full glad.
Henceforth, quoth I, I never will be sad ;
For now I shall obtain my share of fame :
Nor will licentious wit nor envy bad,
With bitter taunts my verses dare to blame :
This garland shall protect them, and exalt my name."

This poetical prophecy has not been fulfilled ; time
has only sunk The Epigoniad in a deeper obscurity. The
choice of subject was unfortunate. The story of the siege
of Thebes was one which could only have been made
interesting to modern readers by a man of the highest

^ Alex. CarlyWs Autobiography, p. 394.

1 04 SCO TTISH LITER A TURE.

powers. It was doubtless Pope's Homer which inspired
Wilkie with the ambition to write a classical epic ; but a
translation of Homer, and a translation by Pope, was a
very different thing from an original poem on a subject
of ancient legend by William Wilkie. There are numerous
faults in Wilkie's composition — glaring Scotticisms, bad
rhymes, incapacity to attain that neatness and point with-
out which the heroic couplet is indefensible. Worse than
all is the absence of any great original ideas. A short
poem may have a sufficient raison d^etre without much
originality or largeness of conception, but an epic hardly.
The minor faults of language and versification seem to
have sprung chiefly from that irregular education which,
although it did not prevent Wilkie from amassing learn-
ing, left him conspicuously unpolished. The false rhymes
are often, perhaps more often than not, explainable by
the common Scottish pronunciation. This has sometimes
even led Wilkie to give a false form to his words ; for
instance —

"While here, in doubtful poise the battle kings;
Faint is the host and wounded half the kings."

On the other hand, the narrative is clear and vigorous,
the movement rapid, the style terse, and the similes not
infrequently felicitous. The following lines happily de-
scribe the dim hearing of a man wounded and apparently
dead : —

" The shouts tumultuous and the din 'of war,
His ear receiv'd like murmurs heard afar ;
Or as some peasant hears, securely laid
Beneath a vaulted cliff or woodland shade,
When o'er his head unnumber'd insects sing
In airy rounds, the children of the spring."

LATER SCHOOL OF XVLLIth CENTURY. 105

Wilkie's reputation for classical learning and his fame as
a poet secured him, with the amusing inconsequence of the
time, the post of Professor of Natural Philosophy at St.
Andrews. Thither he went in 1759, and while there he
published in 1768 his Moral Fables in Verse. They did
not raise his reputation. He died in 1772, leaving behind
him a name renowned for poetry and learning, but still
more for eccentricity.

Yet another who founded upon the classicism of the
Queen Anne poets was John Wilson, author of a descrip-
tive poem entitled Clyde. He was born in 1720. His
education, like Wilkie's, was cut short by his father's
death, which occurred when he was fourteen years of age.
Afterwards, young as he was, he supported himself by
private teaching till, in 1736, he was appointed school-
master of his native parish of Lesmahagow. He seems
to have been always given to literary pursuits ; but it
was not till 1764 that he published the only poem by
which his name is still known. This poem, Clyde, was
based upon an earUer and less elaborate piece entitled
Nethait. Along with it was printed what the author
seems to have considered, at the time at least, a more
important work — a tragedy, now utterly forgotten, entitled
Earl Douglas. Wilson's poetical career proved to be
near its close when it seemed just opening. In 1767
he was made master of the grammar school of Greenock
under the peculiar condition, according to Leyden,i that
he would abstain from " the profane and unprofitable art
of poem making." As Wilson was 47 years of age when
this happened, and as the poems already published were

^ Scottish Descriptive Poems.

1 06 SCO TTISH LITER A TURE.

therefore mature works, it is not probable that the world
lost much by this enforced silence : but the action of
the magistrates and minister who laid down this condi-
tion deserves to be commemorated wherever the name of
John Wilson is mentioned. The poor muzzled poet
lived till 1789 ; but for the rest of his life his name is
blotted out of the annals of literature.

Clyde belongs to that class of poems of which the best
known English examples are Denham's Coopei's Hill and
Pope's Wi7idsor Forest. It is descriptive of nature, not
in general like Thomson's Seasons, still less as incidental
to some action, according to the manner of epic poets, but of
nature as seen in a particular locality. Poems of this class
never have been and never will be popular. There is noth-
ing, either in Clyde or in any of the pieces classed along
with it, that can fairly be called artistic unity. It is true, as
Leyden pointed out, that Clyde has the advantage over
many descriptive poems of a definite starting point ; but
it labours under a disadvantage which at least balances
this : it has no centre, there is no point round which the
scenes are grouped, nor is there any continuous thread
of feeling uniting them. The poet traces the Clyde from
its source to the sea and along the shores of the Firth.
Historical allusions, sometimes not unskilful, diversify the
topography. But the topics are too numerous, and the
effect of the whole is that of a series of sketches rather
than of a finished picture. Among minor but still serious
faults may be mentioned a want of mastery over the
measure, the heroic couplet. It sometimes halts ; and at
other times, though it may scan tolerably, it betrays, in
its ill-arranged pauses and needless Alexandrines, defic-

LATER SCHOOL OF XVIIIth CENTURY. lO/

iency in the more subtle skill necessary to secure harmony.
The diction is disfigured by Scotticisms, and the scantiness
of Wilson's vocabulary shows itself in the frequent repeti-
tion of the same word within the space of a few lines. It
is on the whole impossible to assign Clyde a high rank
even in an uninteresting and generally feeble class of
poems.

The last name of the first group is associated with one
of those lofty reputations which occasionally spring up
and decay like mushrooms. It is interesting because
of its connexion with a species of literature which since
the days of David Lindsay had been under a cloud
in Scotland. John Home, the still famous and once
flattered author of Douglas, was born at Leith in
1722. It has been already mentioned that he suc-
ceeded Blair at Athelstaneford. Soon after he had
gone there he had a tragedy, Agis, ready for the stage,
and made a journey to London to offer it to Garrick, by
whom however it was declined. Again, in 1755, he set
off on a similar errand with Douglas. Dr. Alexander
Carlyle of Inveresk in his admirable Autobiography has
given a vivid and irresistibly amusing account of the
lofty expectations of Home's friends ; of the difficulties
and chances of the journey; how there was no satisfac-
tory means of carrying the precious MS. ; how the want
was supplied ; and of the final disappointment and indig-
nation. Home and his friends however were not disposed
to accept a second time the verdict of Garrick. London
was the best place for such a masterpiece ; but if Lon-
don would reject the prophets Edinburgh might teach
her a lesson. Towards the close of 1756 Douglas was

1 08 SCO TTISH LITER A TURE.

acted there with great success, but not without results
by no means agreeable to some of those concerned. It
was bad that a minister of the Church of Scotland
should write a play, worse that he should have the
effrontery to put it upon an Edinburgh stage, worst of
all that a number of his clerical brethren should be
found to countenance him in his evil courses. The issue
was a very serious ecclesiastical ferment. Those ministers
who had witnessed the representation of Home's play
were hotly attacked, and, according to their character,
bent to the storm or defied it. Whyte of Liberton
pleaded that he attended only once, and endeavoured
to conceal himself in a corner to avoid giving offence.
This contemptible plea was accepted in mitigation, and
he escaped with suspension for six weeks. "Jupiter
Carlyle," as, according to Scott, he was called, from
having had his magnificently handsome person more
than once painted for the king of gods and men, pur-
sued a more manly course ; and though his courage
involved him in much trouble and not a little profes-
sional danger, the cause of freedom was ultimately suc-
cessful and the charge against him dismissed.

Home himself was driven, not altogether unwillingly,
since the success of Douglas gave him the hope of
making a living by his pen, to abandon his profession.
He did so in June, 1757. He moved to London, where,
shortly before his resignation, the onge rejected Douglas
had been acted with great applause. The playwright
who had formerly been obliged to solicit the favour of
managers was now courted by them. He had power
of a more substantial kind too as a favourite of Lord

LATER SCHOOL OF XVIIIth CENTURY. 109

Bute, to whom he was appointed private secretary. After
the success of Douglas, Agis was in 1758 put upon the
stage; and two years later it was followed by The Siege
of Aquileia. In 1762 Home retired once more to Scot-
land. His life there was marked by few events beyond
the successive production of The Fatal Discovery in 1769,
Alonzo in 1773, and Alfred in 1778. In that year his
mental powers were permanently impaired through injuries
caused by a fall from his horse. He survived till 1808,
but produced nothing more except his prose History of
the Rebellioji of 1745-

So much of the flavour of Home's work has evaporated
that the reader of the present day almost inevitably asks
what is the secret of the extraordinary popularity he en-
joyed in his own time. As far as Scotland is concerned,
the explanation might be supposed to lie, and no doubt
did in part lie, in the feeling of patriotism. Home was
the representative Scot of literature, and the honour of his
country was bound up with his. But he was scarcely
less warmly received in England ; and a Scot living in
England under the Bute administration was not the
person to arouse a prejudice in favour of himself. The
explanation of the popularity must therefore be sought
within Home's writings, not in external circumstances.
It was probably due to the fact that his dramas appeal
to sentiment; and thus, in an age when the appeal to
reason had been somewhat overdone, they caught the
fancy of the multitude. So long as the love of melo-
drama survives, and it is perennial, work such as Home's
is sure of a temporary popularity.

The story of Douglas is briefly this : Lady Randolph

1 1 0 SCO TTISH LIT ERA TURE.

had in youth married privately a younger son of Douglas,
between whose house and her father's there was a
hereditary feud. Soon after the marriage her husband,
her brother, and the priest who officiated were killed in
battle. She gave birth in secret to a child. The nurse
by agreement carried it away; but she was overtaken by
a storm on the journey, and nothing more was heard of
her or of the child. Thus all the witnesses had dis-
appeared. The lady afterwards, to please her father,
married Lord Randolph ; but she is painted as the
victim of a consuming sorrow. When the play opens
the land is in commotion with a Danish invasion. A
young shepherd, Norval, hastening to the war, saves
Lord Randolph from assassins and is taken into high
favour. He is followed by his supposed father, old
Norval, through whom it is discovered that he is no
other than Lady Randolph's son. This discovery is
made in the absence of Randolph, and is concealed from
him because the young Douglas is the real owner of the
lands in Randolph's possession. Meanwhile Glenalvon,
heir to Randolph and villain of the piece, observing the
meetings between Lady Randolph and her son, fills the
mind of Lord Randolph with jealousy. The latter
watches, gets, as he beheves, ocular proof of the truth
of his suspicions, confronts Douglas after he has just left
his mother's presence, fights him, and is on the point of
being disarmed when Glenalvon treacherously wounds
Douglas. The latter slays Glenalvon, but his own wound
is mortal. Lady Randolph flees from the presence of the
body and throws herself headlong from a cliff.

It is evident from this analysis that there is nothing

LATER SCHOOL OF XVIIIth CENTURY. HI

profound in the structure of the play. A secret marriage,
a woman with her heart in the tomb, the return of a
long-lost son, a villain to rouse a husband's jealousy — all
are as ordinary as it is possible to conceive. Nearly
every movement is conventional, and the characters are
featureless. Lady Randolph's sorrow is weak and whin-
ing. It is intended that the reader or the spectator
should admire her ; but common sense suggests the
possibility, unsuspected by Home, that it may be neither
the best nor the most truly tender women who give up
their lives to unavailing sorrow, and neglect the duty
which lies before them. Nerval has all the external
features of the gallant and high-born youth. Even as a
shepherd he displays the martial spirit. He is brave,
generous, and high-souled. But there is nothing to dis-
tinguish him from other young men possessing these
qualities. His almost miraculous readiness in arms, sup-
posed to be a hereditary trait, is a conventional touch.
Glenalvon again, who might have been the lago of the
play, is simply a vulgar scoundrel. All the dramatic capital
of Douglas is exhausted in telling a sentimental tale ; for
characters there are none. There is, it is true, some
poetry in the piece; but it is poetry of a weak type,
pretty, but not beautiful, mildly interesting, but not rous-
ing with new and great thoughts. The following lines are
a favourable specimen : —

"This is the place, the centre of the grove;
Here stands the oak, the monarch of the wood.
How sweet and solemn is this midnight scene !
The silver moon, unclouded, holds her way
Through skies where I could count each little star.
The fanning west wind scarcely stirs the leaves ;

1 1 2 SCO TTISH LIT ERA TURK.

The river rushing o'er its pebbled bed,
Imposes silence with a stilly sound.
In such a place as this, at such an hour,
If ancestry can be in aught believed.
Descending spirits have conversed with man.
And told the secret of the world unknown."

There is nothing in Home's other plays to alter much
the impression derived from Douglas. None of them
vied with it in popularity, and most of them are clearly
inferior. Alfred, the last, was also the weakest and least
admired. It displays Home's sentimentalism in its least
respectable light. His Alfred is a mere commonplace
lover, risking for his passion not only his life but his
kingdom; and by all the rules of probability he ought
to have lost both. No wonder that an English audience
rejected such a picture of their hero-king. It is in Alfred
that we trace most clearly the influence of Shakespeare
upon Home. The pretended frenzy of Ethelwida is
modelled on the madness of Ophelia. It is to Home's
honour that he revered Shakespeare and tried to form
himself upon his example, at a time when able contempo-
raries viewed his admiration with little more than tolerance.
Even David Hume in his correspondence shows that he
would have been better pleased had his namesake adopted
the French dramatists as his prototypes.

Agis, Home's earliest effort, is the least skilful in adap-
tation for the stage. The movement is languid, the
interest weak, and the elements out of which the story
is woven incongruous. The love-story of Lysander and
Euanthe is an ill-disguised tag upon the tale of Spartan
factions. The rhymed choruses are mere doggerel. The
Fatal Discovery, the scene of which is laid away back in

LATER SCHOOL OF XVIIIth CENTURY. II3

Pictish times, is chiefly noticeable for the choice of sub-
ject, which indicates the influence of Macpherson.
Alonzo, which is said to have been best received of all
after Douglas, merely presents again the same characteris-
tics in an exaggerated form. Here Home revels in
melodrama. There is much in it well calculated to win
a cheap and passing popularity; but it is nearly all tinsel,
which time has sorely tarnished. The Siege of Aquileia is
perhaps the best of all Home's works. It has the same
general character as Douglas, and in fact all its author's
plays ; but the heroism is higher, the sentiment less
stagey. There is considerable vigour in the conduct of
the action, and the nobler passions are painted with
generous sympathy.

Home was a man who could harp with success upon
one string ; but he could do nothing more. However
foreign it might be to his plot, he must either enlist the
spirit of sentiment or fail. To the true heroic he could
not rise. He had glimmerings of it in his soul, his heart
warmed to it, but he could not express it. Now that
the glitter of novelty is gone, it is easy to see that a
niggard nature had denied him the wreath of the vates
sacer. Johnson, whose scornful disbelief in Home is well
known, though he expressed his opinion in exaggerated
language, was essentially right.

But a literary reputation is rarely achieved without
some more or less real foundation ; and Home's power
was real within the limits of sentiment. He was
master of a kind of pathos cognate to, yet different from,
that of East Lynne. He could at least make a martial
figure stalk with a gallant bearing across the stage, and

VOL. II. H

1 1 4 SCO TTISH LIT ERA TURE.

he could fill his mouth with sounding phrases. It ought
in justice to be added that he has occasional lines of a
high order. The comparison to the tide of all sorts of
things that fluctuate is hackneyed enough; but it is very
happily expressed in The Siege of Aquileia : —

" For ebbing resolution ne'er returns,
But still falls farther from its former shore."

And in Alomo there are one or two passages worthy of
a better setting. The lines which follow might be not
unfitly applied to the Homeric Achilles : —

" Scorning his foes, offended with his friends,
Shrouded in anger and in deep disdain,
Like some prime planet in eclipse he moves.
Gazed at and feared."

And in another style this also is good : —

" When sore affliction comes
In the decline of life, 'tis like a storm,
Which, in the rear of autumn, shakes the tree
That frost had touched before ; and strips it bare
Of all its leaves."

The younger men, Falconer, Mickle, Beattie, Macpher-
son, Logan, and Bruce, form a body in most respects
heterogeneous, but presenting at least one feature in
common. In all of them may be detected a more or
less marked flavour of romance. The chief, perhaps in
one or two instances the only interest attaching to their
names will be found to rest in their blind groping after
something more spiritually nourishing than couplets in the
manner of Pope and on Pope's well-worn themes. The
unanimity with w^hich they sought the new field of

LATER SCHOOL OF XVlIIth CENTURY. 115

romance is all the more remarkable because, in the group
which preceded them and which Avas divided from them
by only a few years, John Home was the only man who
can be said to have shown any trace of a similar tend-
ency. His sentimentalism was an element by no means
alien to the tmie that was to come ; but those who were
strictly his contemporaries exhibited no such feature. They
were on the contrary the faithful, almost the slavish fol-
lowers of their immediate English predecessors. The
later group however differed in an important respect from
that of which Thomson was the centre. The earlier poets,
as has been seen, carried with them into England the
impress of their native country; in their successors that
impress was much less conspicuous. The change of which
they exhibited symptoms had begun to be general, and was
no longer, except in the vernacular verse of Fergusson, a
specially Scottish movement.

It will be convenient to take William Falconer first,
for the double reason that he was the oldest man, and
that his work, in external form at least, connects him
more closely than any of the others with the Queen
Anne poets. This man, the son of a barber, was born
at Edinburgh in 1732. When a boy he was against his
own will sent to sea. He had risen to the rank of
second mate when his ship, which was trading between
Alexandria and Venice, was wrecked near Cape Colonna.
Falconer and two others alone escaped. His experiences
on this occasion formed the subject of his one good poem,
The Shipwreck. This piece, published in 1762, was one of
the authorities from which Byron culled materials for his
powerful description of the wreck in Don Juan.

1 1 6 SCO TTISH LITER A TURE.

Falconer's work is most unequal. The verse at its
best has an admirably easy flow, and at the same time
a nervous energy beyond the reach of the mere copyist.
But there are two very different accents in it. One is
that of imitated classicism. The parts descriptive of the
scenes through which the ship passes are poor. To
make them good would have demanded a culture which
Falconer had no opportunity to acquire. The classical
similes, introduced by way of illustration, and the hack-
neyed loves are also poor. The other accent is that of
nature ; and to this the poem owes the whole of its
value. The fact that Falconer relates what he himself
saw and endured gives reality to his descriptions and
speed and fire to his narrative. Sometimes, nay often,
he so overloads his verse with technicalities that it sinks
to mere prose ; but in the happier passages he succeeds
in throwing over the hard facts of the sailor's life and
lot the light of imagination. His fidelity to fact is the
source of much that is bad, but likewise of all that is
good in his poem. This too it is that connects him with
the coming school. It is quite evident that he was
troubled with no sense of discontent with the old. Versi-
fication and diction were imitated, as far as the author could
imitate, from Pope; and where the matter suited he was
ready to adopt the worst enormities of Pope's followers.
But his choice of a subject introduced a vital difference.
He had seen everything he described, -had felt the agonies
he painted, and was himself the hero of his poem.

The inequality of The Shipwreck is not confined to
the ordinary rise and fall from passage to passage, but
affects the main divisions of the poem as well. They are

LATER SCHOOL OF XVIIIth CENTURY. H?

of widely different degrees of merit. The first canto is
the poorest, because it is in great part occupied with
matters not specially of a seafaring character, and does
not therefore call forth Falconers professional knowledge ;
the second, which, after a short introduction, is entirely
occupied with the struggle against the storm, contains by
far the greatest proportion of good work ; the third and
last, where a number of classical scenes pass in review,
again sinks in quality. Falconer does not excel in happy
isolated lines and expressions ; yet he has a few, such
as, for example, the picture in four words of the "long
dark melancholy vale" between two monster billows. His
scenes are of necessity prevailingly gloomy and terrible in
their character. The following passage describing the con-
ference of the officers in their extremity will give some
idea of the nature of Falconer's style in such scenes : —

"No blazon'd trophies o'er their concave spread,
Nor storied pillars raised aloft their head :
But here the Queen of Shade around them threw
Her dragon wing, disastrous to the view !
Dire was the scene with whirlwind, hail, and shower ;
Black melancholy ruled the fearful hour :
Beneath, tremendous roll'd the flashing tide,
Where fate on every billow seem'd to ride —
Enclos'd with ills, by perils unsubdued,
Great in distress the master-seaman stood !
Skill'd to command ; deliberate to advise ;
Expert in action; and in council wise."

Falconer could also paint well the contrasting picture of
the peaceful departure of the vessel from port : —

" Uptorn reluctant from its oozy cave,
The ponderous anchor rises o'er the wave.

1 1 8 SCO TTISH LIT ERA TURK.

High on the slippery nnasts the yards ascend,
And far abroad the canvas wings extend.
Along the glassy plain the vessel glides,
While azure radiance trembles on her sides :
The lunar rays in long reflection gleam.
With silver deluging the fluid stream."

Falconer wrote poetry both before and after The Ship-
wreck; but of all his productions this is the only one of
merit. His Ode on the Duke of York's second Departure
from E?2gla?id; his Demagogue, a political satire on the
elder Pitt, Wilkes, and Churchill; and the two or three
minor pieces which go under his name, are all indifferent.
An untimely death cut short his literary activity. He
sailed in 1769 on board a ship which was never heard
of after passing the Cape.

Falconer stands alone. The others may be best treated
in two groups. Mickle, Logan, and Bruce all illustrate
the lyrical revival ; Macpherson and Beattie are more
distinctly precursors of the romantic school.

William Julius Mickle, Falconer's junior by two years,
had, like him, to bide the buffets of fortune; but not
such buffets as could furnish him with poetical ideas or
teach him that energy which Falconer learnt. He fled
from importunate creditors to London; and there for
some years led the miserable life of a man waiting the
bounty of his Maecenas, Lord Lyttelton. The turning
point of his fortune was reached when he was made
corrector to the Clarendon Press. In the latter part of
his life, notwithstanding his usual ill luck in commercial
speculation, he was a moderately prosperous man. He
died in 1788.

It is unnecessary, and it would be tedious, to notice

LATER SCHOOL OF XVIIIth CENTURY. II9

in detail all Mickle's contributions to literature. They
are extremely varied. He meddled in the deistic con-
troversy, attempted tragedy, translated an epic, wrote
elegiacs, ballads, songs, and imitations of Spenser. Most
of his work has more or less of the character of pretti-
ness ; none of it is powerful or original. His once cele-
brated translation of The Lusiad is now forgotten. Next
to it perhaps the performance which had most fame in
Mickle's own day was Syr Martyti, a weak imitation of
Spenser, originally published under the title of T/ie Con-
cubine. It is full of archaisms which betray great ignorance
of the history of the English language.

Mickle had not power to produce any long and sus-
tained work, though he could, on the rare occasions when
he deigned to be simple and natural, write a few graceful
and pleasing verses. His odes of the Pindaric type
have gone the way of nearly all such odes. Some of his
songs have fared and have deserved to fare no better.
If indeed we could credit him with that exquisite one,
There's nae luck about the house, it must be admitted
that he for once rose high ; but if there is any force in
internal evidence, scepticism on this point is justified. He
has nothing else approaching it in merit, nothing at all
resembling it in style. His most memorable production
in the ballad class is Cuiimor Hall, widely known through
Scott's Kenihvorth. It is here that he comes into con-
tact with the new spirit. His ballad style is indeed far
removed from that of the old minstrels, and it is often
weakly rhetorical \ but its smooth lyric flow illustrates
the rise of a taste different from that of the classical
school. Some of the elegies also show much grace of

1 20 SCO TTISH LITER A TURE.

fancy and melody of verse. The influence of Gray is
conspicuous in them.

Michael Bruce and John Logan were men considerably
younger than Mickle. Bruce was born in 1746, Logan
about two years later. They were friends in life ; and
their names have been associated since their death by
a bitter controversy which has raged about the author-
ship of the Ode to the Cuckoo. Absolute proof in favour
of either cannot be looked for now. The facts are briefly
these: Bruce died of consumption in 1767. Shortly after
his death his MSS. were entrusted to Logan to edit; but
it was not till 1770 that Logan issued a small volume con-
taining seventeen pieces. These are described in the
preface as a miscellany by different authors; but no
guide to the authorship is given. In 1781 however
the Ode to the Cuckoo was included in a volume of
poems by Logan himself. It does not appear that his
authorship was challenged during his life, though he sur-
vived till 1788. Many years afterwards local tradition
was ransacked, and recollections of the Ode as the com-
position of Bruce were noted down. On this foundation
violent attacks were made on the memory of Logan. That
he was, to say the least, extremely imprudent and careless,
and that a plausible case was made for Bruce, will pro-
bably not be denied by any one who has examined the
question ; but on the other hand, any one who reflects on
the untrustworthy character of traditionary evidence many
years old, will hesitate to brand Logan with the charge of
so mean an act against his friend. It is true Logan's
character was not in all respects above reproach. His
conduct was so objectionable to the congregation of

LATER SCHOOL OF XVIIIth CENTURY. 121

South Leith, of which he was minister, that in 1786 he
consented, in order to avoid litigation, to retire on an
annuity. One of his offences however was the pubHcation
of a tragedy, Riinnamede ; and he was accused of nothing
of a nature to make the charge of a peculiarly disgraceful
literary theft more probable.

Whether it be Logan's or Brace's, the Ode is entirely
fresh, natural, and true. It delighted Wordsworth, and
was not without influence on his own lyric addressed
to the same bird. Neither of the writers for whom it is
claimed did anything else equal to this. Among Bruce's
acknowledged productions, there is much to praise in
the Elegy Written in Spring ; but his poem, Sir Jatnes
the Ross, proves that he had not command of the
ballad strain ; and his poems in blank verse are value-
less.

Logan, judged by his admitted compositions, was, on
the whole, the better poet of the two ; but as Bruce
died so young this fact cannot be regarded as throwing
light on the authorship of the Ode. Logan wrote prose
as well as poetry. His sermons are smooth and pleas-
ing in composition, but never very forcible or striking.
The same merits mark his verse, and the same limit-
ations. It is sweet, but cloying. His mind was elegant,
not powerful. Effeminacy of taste is perceptible in his
work generally, and especially in the melodramatic tragedy
of Runnaniede. But even if the Ode is not his, he de-
serves a niche in memory as the author of the tine song.
The Braes of Yarrotv, which, although it owes much to
the older and more exquisite Willie drozuned in Yarrow,
has likewise high merits of its own : —

1 2 2 SCO TTISH LITER A TURK.

"His mother from the window look'd
With all the longing of a mother ;
His little sister weeping walk'd

The greenwood path to meet her brother ;

"They sought him east, they sought him west,
They sought him all the forest thorough ;
They only saw the cloud of night.

They only heard the roar of Yarrow."

These men, as has been said, illustrate chiefly the
lyrical movement. They could not but show also traces
of the romantic revival so closely associated with it.
Romanticism is however far more prominent in Beattie
and Macpherson. Macpherson was the younger of the
two, but he made himself felt in literature before Beattie.
He was indeed, so far as Scotland is concerned, the true
initiator of the romantic movement. This position must
be assigned to him whatever view be taken either of the
merits or of the authenticity of his chief works. Else-
where too he had a greater influence over its develop-
ment than is generally recognised.

James Macpherson was born in 1738. After an edu-
cation at the Universities of Aberdeen and Edinburgh,
when he was still only twenty, he published a bombastic
poem entitled The Highlander. This and the other con-
fessedly original works of Macpherson have been treated
with scant respect both by his advocates and his assail-
ants. Those who have accepted Fifigal as a genuine
translation from the Gaelic have generally argued from
the poverty of Macpherson's acknowledged works his in-
capacity to produce Fifigal; many of his detractors have
contemptuously ranked both original works and professed

LATER SCHOOL OF XVIIIth CENTURY. 1 23

translations in the category of the worthless. Two years
later, in his Fragments of Ancient Poetry collected in the
Highlands of Scotland, he made his appearance as a
translator from the Gaelic. It was these fragments which
first drew the attention of England in general, and more
particularly of the Lowland Scotch, to the question of
the remains of Gaelic literature in Scotland. A fund
was raised by subscription, and Macpherson was sent
into the Highlands to gather materials. The fruit
of his search was the Ossianic poems as we now know
them — Fitigal, with some minor poems, published in 1762,
Teniora in the following year. They instantly attracted
wide attention. They were translated into the principal
languages of Europe; and they divided the learned into
two hostile camps of believers and sceptics.

There are two questions about the Ossianic poems
which ought to be kept carefully apart, though it has
been too much the fashion to let the determination of
the one colour judgment on the other. The first is the
question of their genuineness; the second that of their merit.

The question whether these poems are translations may
be regarded from two points of view. The Celtic
scholar may inquire into their authenticity from the
evidence of language, analysing and dissecting the
" originals." The verdict pronounced upon such grounds
must be the most authoritative. For any one however
who is not a specialist in the Celtic languages it is only
possible to state the result. This, in the present case,
seems to be that the so-called Gaelic texts are docu-
ments made up to fit Macpherson's " translation." They
are not wholly forgeries, but they have been much

124 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

" doctored " ; and there are innumerable indications in
the language that even the genuine parts are far more
modern than the date assigned by Macpherson.

This result agrees exactly with that reached by general
criticism. It is no longer necessary to discuss the sub-
ject exhaustively; but the principal grounds upon which
judgment proceeds may be briefly summarised here.
There are two lines of argument. The first points out
the inherent improbability of Macpherson's contentions,
and the further doubt thrown upon it by the course
which he chose to pursue ; the second enforces this
argument by a more detailed consideration of the poems
as they appear in English.

As to the first : The date of Ossian carries us back to
the third century; and we are asked to believe that thus
early the Scottish Highlands produced one epic poem of
six duans or cantos and another of eight. The produc-
tion of such works implies no small degree of civilisation
and refinement; and the proof that the Scottish High-
lands had attained it is altogether wanting. And even if
it could be believed that the poems had been written,
their preservation through so many turbulent and dis-
tracted centuries would have been itself a marvel. The
preservation of scattered and broken legends pointing
back to a past as distant is a very different thing,
Macpherson's position, therefore, being in itself so sug-
gestive of scepticism, ought to haye been supported by
evidence of unusual strength. What he offered however
was not more but less than ordinary evidence. The
first requirement was that the MSS. should be made
public upon which those extraordinary assertions rested.

LATER SCHOOL OF XVII Ith CENTURY, 1 25

It was treated as an affront. Macpherson's friends urged
him to publish them ; but, though he made preparations, so
long as he Hved they urged in vain. The verdict of scholars
on the MSS. he left behind him has been already given.

When the contents of the poems in their English dress
are considered, critical objections to the Macpherson story
so accumulate that it seems wonderful that sane men should
still be found, however prejudiced, to believe it, or any
considerable portion of it. No one denies that there
was and is in the Gaelic some foundation upon which
Macpherson built ; but from that admission to acceptance
of his Ossia/i. is a long step. In early poetry we expect
simplicity and definiteness ; in an early epic on the exploits
of a great warrior we expect minute details of the fighting,
descriptions of arms, the names of those he conquers, and
particulars of the wounds by which they fell. There is little
of all this in Ossia?i ; in Fingal singularly little ; while the
first part of Temora — and in a less degree the whole — reads
as if it might have been Macpherson's answer to such
objections. And while hardly anything is found that might
be expected, a great deal appears which no one would have
anticipated. The romantic love which holds such a con-
spicuous place in Fingal ; the chivalrous generosity to
enemies and to the fallen, so inconsistent with the customs
of early warfare; the frequent descriptions of nature not as
an accessory, but for its own sake ; the vagueness which
pervades the whole, making it difficult to carry away a sense
of the march of events — all these features point either to
Macpherson's own invention, or to late composition in the
Gaelic ; and as the latter is a supposition for which there is
no authority, it may be dismissed. It is safer to rely upon

1 26 SCO TTISH LITER A TURK.

general considerations like these than upon special points
like the mention of cars among a people to whom cars
were unknown ; for that and similar difficulties might be
explained on the theory of interpolation. The argument
from omission too is inconclusive ; and yet most minds will
be impressed by the point noted in Boswell's Johnson, that
there is no mention of the wolf in Fingal. Of such argu-
ments no single one may be in itself convincing, but united
they press upon the mind with a weight not easily resisted.

Among the more general critical arguments no single
point is more damnatory than Macpherson's treatment of
the romantic passion of love. To find it in the poems at
all would be surprising; to find it the main element in
some, and a prominent feature in many others, rouses a
suspicion of the strongest kind. It is only necessary to
turn to the arguments which Macpherson prefixed to the
poems to discover the astonishing part which this passion
plays. Frequently the maiden, disguised, takes arms and
fights for her lover. At some crisis the mail is torn from
her shoulders, the white breast disclosed; and the sequel is
in the spirit of the orthodox modern novel. In Fingal we
look for a breathless narrative of martial prowess ; but
instead, we are introduced to heroes who are for ever
thinking of some maid of snowy breast and softly rolling
eye. As a rule, a fight is hardly begun when it is
interrupted by some love incident.

But whether authentic or not, tl>e Ossianic poems are
facts. They exercised a powerful and very wide influence,
and they ought therefore to be estimated with reference to
their intrinsic merit. Of the many criticisms which have
been given there are few which do not reveal prejudice

LATER SCHOOL OF XVIIIth CENTURY. 1 27

on one side or the other \ for as it was the tendency of
the partisans of Macpherson to overpraise him, so we
find that the minds of the sceptics were generally warped
by their disbelief to undue depreciation. " Sir," said
Johnson, " a man might write such stuff for ever if he
would abandon his mind to it." If however Fingal
had been purely " stuff," it would not have captivated a
mind like Napoleon's. He was neither a poet nor a
critic ; but an intellect so piercing and energetic could
hardly be taken with mere emptiness. Perhaps the kin-
ship between the style of Macpherson and that of his
own bulletins may partly explain the admiration ; but still
the admiration is worth noting. As regards the world
in general, the explanation of IMacpherson's wide popularity
is doubtless to be found in the fact that he earlier than
others gave it something for which it was waiting. Eng-
land was destined at no distant date to be deluged with
Mysteries of Udolpho, Frankensteins, Tales of Wonder,
Scottish Chiefs, the multiform nutriment of the passion
for the marvellous and the romantic. The countries of
continental Europe felt the same need and grew a
similar crop to satisfy it. Macpherson appealed to this
passion. It has been seen that among his contem-
poraries and fellow-countrymen there were some who
showed signs of the coming romantic movement ; but he
was the first in the English language who powerfully
and decisively expressed it. And this must be set down
as his signal merit. Far from being a mere translator,
he was peculiarly original. ^ Not that Macpherson created

^Macpherson borrows, or, if the word is preferred, steals freely.
It is the general spirit that is referred to as original.

1 2 8 SCO TTISH LIT ERA TURK.

the spirit of romance. Three years after Fingal, Percy's
Reliques appeared ; and Chatterton's work and life were
both finished within eight years of the publication of the
Highland epic. These three rank as contemporaneous
and independent pioneers. To them principally we owe
the romantic revival.

It does not follow that Macpherson was a man of
great genius. On the contrary, the range of his ideas
was so narrow that to read any one of his poems is to
become master of almost all that he had to say. The
same expressions, the same images, and almost identical-
situations recur again and again. Repetition was affected
no doubt partly to give an aspect of antiquity; but in
Macpherson it goes deeper and discloses poverty of
mind. Still, to deny him the praise of having well
expressed his few thoughts is unjust. There is much
fustian in his style, and it speedily palls upon the ear ;
but the peculiar poetic prose which he formed for himself
has, in little bits, a powerful charm. His descriptions of
scenery and of aspects of nature are often very beautiful.
We ask again and again why they are there, but he who
can forget their incongruity with a poem of the third
century must feel their truth. Macpherson knew the
country in which he laid his scene, and caught some-
thing of the grandeur of its mountains and stormy seas.
His descriptions of female beauty are likewise good.
One of the best is that of Strina-dona : —

"If on the heath she moved, her breast was whiter than the down
of Cana ; if on the sea-beat shore, than the foam of the rolling ocean.
Her eyes were two stars of light. Her face was heaven's bow in
showers. Her dark hair flowed around it like the streaming clouds.
Thou wert the dweller of souls, white-handed Strina-dona."

LATER POETS OF XVIIIth CENTURY. 1 29

His images have little variety, but they are often well
applied, as in the following picture of a defeated army: —

"Now on the rising side of Cromla stood Erin's few sad sons; like
a grove through which the flame had rushed, hurried on by the winds
of the stormy night ; distant, withered, dark they stand, with not a
leaf to shake in the gale."

This pathetic tone is frequent ; much less common is
that which we should expect to be prevalent, the tone of
warlike exultation : but we catch it in Ullin's war-song : —

" Son of the chief of generous steeds ! high-bounding king of
spears ; strong arm in every perilous toil ; hard heart that never
yields ; chief of the pointed arms of death : cut down the foe ; let
no white sail bound round dark Inistore. Be thine arm like thunder,
thine eyes like fire, thy heart of solid rock. Whirl round thy sword
as a meteor at night ; lift thy shield like the flame of death. Son of
the chief of generous steeds, cut down the foe 1 Destroy ! "

Such is the most remarkable and the most famous of
literary forgeries. It is strange that two such notable
forgeries as those of Macpherson and Chatterton should
have come within a few years of one another, and still
more strange that the forgers should both have been
leaders of the romantic movement. Such coincidences
are seldom the result purely of chance. In this instance
the hidden impulse was given by the fact that the romantic
revival had its roots in the far past ; and to men initiating
it the idea naturally occurred of ascribing their works to
the early times which they tried to reproduce. Harsh
names have been given to both these men ; but there is less
to blame in the act itself than in the means taken sub-
sequently to support the imposition. This widely separates
the case of Macpherson from that of poor Chatterton.

VOL. II. I

1 30 SCOTTISH LITER A TURK.

The "marvellous boy" was as much the superior of
Macpherson in character as he was in genius.

About Macpherson's later career and works little need
be said. The Ossianic poems procured him rewards
much more substantial than mere fame. His subsequent
writings were seldom either poetry or, like his Ossian, of
the nature of poetry. In 1773 however he was so
unwise as to publish a prose translation of the Iliad of
Homer in the style of his Ossian. This translation,
begun and ended in six weeks, was received as it
deserved to be ; and Johnson, on the occasion of the
famous quarrel which drove him to provide himself with
a cudgel, told the translator that his " abilities, since his
Homer, were not so formidable." Macpherson died in
1796, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

Somewhat later than Macpherson, but like him asso-
ciated with the new romantic movement, was James
Beattie, whose name is now remembered only through
the poem of The Alinstrel. He was born in 1735, ^-nd
educated at Marischal College, Aberdeen, where, in
1760, he was appointed professor of moral philosophy
and logic. His life was mainly a record of successive
publications. Towards the close it was clouded by the
premature death of his two sons, the elder of whom, a
youth of much promise, left some literary remains in
prose and verse, which were published with a touching
memoir by his father in 1799. In the same year Beattie
was struck with paralysis, and he died in 1803.

Beattie's odes are feeble echoes of The Bard of Gray
and The Passions of Collins ; his Judgrnent of Paris
is mere rhetoric ; his imitation of Shakespeare's Blow,

LA TER POE TS OF XVIIIth CENTUR V. 1 3 1

d/o7C', thou winter wind is chiefly remarkable for the
number of technical faults compressed within so narrow
compass. The. Minstrel itself is more noteworthy as a
symptom than for its intrinsic merits. Beattie's purpose
was to trace " the progress of a Poetical Genius, from
the first dawning of fancy and reason, till that period
at which he may be supposed capable of appearing in
the world as a minstrel."^ The nurture of this poetical
genius is significant. His opening mind is fed upon
tales of knight, swain, and maid, fairy, fiend, and
monster from the old ballads. He drinks in at the
same time the influence of rural nature, whose melan-
choly and terrible aspects are, in the true spirit of
modern romance, as captivating as her smiles and sun-
shine. In more points than its Spenserian stanza The
Minstrel resembles Childe Harold, also the picture of a
poetic mind, but of a much more masculine one than
Beattie's. Edwin, the " strange and wayward wight " of
The Minstrel, has several of the milder features of the
Childe ; and the same air of affectation pervades and
vitiates both poems. But none of the greater attributes
of Byron's work can be ascribed to Beattie's. The
strains of the latter are smooth and pleasing, but not
strong. His thought is nowhere great; it verges on
originality, but is never conspicuously fresh and new.
The Minstrel besides is defective in the execution of its
plan. The idea at the root of it was a happy one ; and
Wordsworth subsequently gave partial proof of what
might be done with it. But Beattie did not really carry
out his purpose. The figure of Edwin remains a mere
^Preface to The Minstrel.

1 3 2 SCO TTISH LITER A TURK.

shadow; and the reader cannot be said to behold the
growth of a mind whose features are nowhere brought
before his eye.

Besides this fundamental defect, which affects the
whole, it is impossible to overlook the great inferiority of
the second book to the first. This second book de-
scribes the opening of doubt of man and virtue in the
innocent mind, and thus impinges upon topics which
Beattie had already handled in his prose ; for in the
Essay on Truth (1770) he stood up as the champion of
orthodox belief against the sceptic Hume. Neither in
prose nor in poetry did he deal with the subject
successfully. Probably therefore little has been lost
from Beattie's failure to fulfil his design of adding a
third book on the more mature experience of The
Minstrel ; it is very questionable if he had the necessary
depth. He is most happy when in the first book he
delineates the effect of natural scenery upon the poet's
mind. He shows in an occasional line the influence of
Shakespeare; but he is more indebted to Gray and to
Percy's Reliques. The following description, though the
verse is marred by the monotony of the pause, is good
of its kind; and if the rest of the poem were equal to it,
Beattie would deserve much higher praise than has been
given to him : —

"But who the melodies of morn can tell?

The wild brook babbling down tl>e mountain side ;
The lowing herd; the sheepfold's simple bell;

The pipe of early shepherd dim descried

In the lone valley ; echoing far and wide
The clamorous horn along the cliffs above ;

The hollow murmur of the ocean tide ;

LATER POETS OF XVIIIth CENTURY. 133

The hum of bees, the linnet's lay of love,

And the full choir that wakes the universal grove.

"The cottage curs at early pilgrim bark;

Crown'd with her pail the tripping milkmaid sings;
The whistling ploughman stalks afield ; and, hark !

Down the rough slope the ponderous waggon rings;

Through rustling corn the hare astonish'd springs;
Slow tolls the village clock the drowsy hour ;

The partridge bursts away on whirring wings ;
Deep mourns the turtle in sequester'd bower ;
And shrill lark carols clear from her aerial tower."

Such were the Scotchmen who, in the third quarter
of the eighteenth century, contributed in Enghsh to the
poetic literature of the country. They, the countrymen
of Thomson, began by rejecting the example of Thomson,
and reverting to somewhat servile imitations of a school
already beginning to be discredited in England. This
however proved to be but a passing phase; and if we
take them as a whole, we see in these men a growing
tendency to seek their models in earlier English literature,
or even to go back for hints to the rude fragments of
popular poetry. We see in them also evidence of a
lyrical revival. And above all we see the beginning of
the great romantic movement.

CHAPTER X.

ROBERT BURNS.

Robert Burns was born near Ayr on the 25th of
January, 1759. His father, William Burnes, was then
and for seven years continued to be gardener to a gentle-
man in that neighbourhood. In 1766, that he might
"have it in his power to keep his children under his
own eye, till they could discern between good and evil,"^
he leased from his employer the farm of Mount Oliphant.
There he remained till 1777. It was during the years
spent upon this farm that Robert Burns received the
greater part of his irregular education. A beginning had
been made even earlier. Robert was sent first of all to
a school at Alloway Mill ; but when, after a few months,
the teacher received another appointment, William Burnes
joined with four of his neighbours to engage a tutor for
their children. The person selected, John Murdoch, was
a man of sense and character ; and though he left that
part of the country about the year 1768, he had already
exercised a considerable influence upon the future poet's
mind. Robert was afterwards sent, at the age of thirteen
or fourteen, for a summer quarter to Dalrymple. Either
^Burns's Letter to Dr. Moore.

ROBERT BURNS. 1 3 5

for economy or because the services of both could not
be spared, he and his brother Gilbert attended in alternate
weeks. In the following summer Robert went to Ayr
to study English grammar under his former teacher Mur-
doch, who had now returned. His time was so broken
with calls to help with the harvest, that he was under
tuition only three weeks. During this time however he
not only improved his Enghsh, but acquired a smattering
of French, which he afterwards increased by his own
industry. This accomplishment, rare for a peasant's son,
procured for Burns some notice ; and there is evidence
in his letters that he was himself not a little proud of
it. A short time which he spent in his nineteenth summer
studying surveying at Kirkoswald completes the record
of Burns's school education. It seems meagre enough;
but his real education was much better than it seems.
We have to add the precept and example of a father
who, when he could not procure professional instruction
for his sons, " borrowed Salmon's Geographical Grajuviar
for us, and endeavoured to make us acquainted with the
history and situation of the different countries of the
world; while, from a book society in Ayr, he procured
for us the reading of Derham's Physics atid Astro-Theology,
and Ray's Wisdom of God in the Creation^ to give us
some idea of Astronomy and Natural History"; of a
father who, moreover, " was at great pains, while we accom-
panied him in the labours of the farm, to lead the con-
versation to such subjects as might tend to increase our
knowledge, or confirm us in habits of virtue." ^ The truth
is. Burns received a training not only superior to his

^ Gilbert Burns.

1 36 SCO TTISH LITER A TURE.

position as a peasant's son, but better far than that of
multitudes who stood much higher than he in social
station. The attempt which has been frequently made
by his countrymen to exalt him by exaggerating his diffi-
culties in respect of training, is as unwise as it is uncalled
for. It is a poor pedantry which regards education as a
thing of schools and colleges only. Burns was fortunate
in the moral and intellectual atmosphere of his early
home. The material conditions of his life were doubt-
less painfully cramping — they left him, as we know, at
times " half mad, half fed, half sarkit " — but it may be
questioned whether the lack of a more extensive and
systematic education ever seriously embarrassed his
genius. It is possible, perhaps it is not even im-
probable, that he would have found more hindrance
in a palace or a castle than in the "auld clay big-
gin'."

In the year 1777 William Burnes removed to the farm
of Lochlea, in the parish of Tarbolton. There his family
lived in comfort for four years ; but afterwards there sprang
up a dispute between the landlord and his tenant, which
was decided by arbitration against Burnes. He died a
ruined man in February, 1784. William Burnes was, it
is clear, one of the noblest specimens of the Scottish
peasant, a man in many respects closely resembling the
father of Thomas Carlyle. It need not be matter for
surprise that, notwithstanding a good head and a stainless
conscience, fortune was uniformly against him. " I have
met," says his great son, " with few who understood ' men,
their manners, and their ways ' equal to him ; but stubborn
ungainly integrity, and headlong ungovernable irascibility,

ROBER T B URNS. I 3 7

are disqualifying circumstances; consequently, I was born
a very poor man's son." ^

Before the crisis in their father's affairs came, the
brothers, Robert and Gilbert, had taken the farm of
Mossgiel in Mauchline parish. This bargain also was a
luckless one. Late seasons acting upon a cold soil
seriously injured the crops of the four years which Burns
spent upon the farm. A considerable part of the stock
was lost, and the prospect was black. In the summer of
1786 Burns was on the point of sailing in despair for
Jamaica. The means of paying for his passage he got
by the publication, almost at the last moment, of a
collection of his poems, which yielded him a profit of
nearly ;^2o. But for this he must, to use his own phrase,
have indented himself Well known as the passage is,
what follows is best told in his own vivid words to Dr.
Moore. "As soon as I was master of nine guineas, the
price of wafting me to the torrid zone, I took a steerage
passage in the first ship that was to sail from the Clyde ;
for 'hungry ruin had me in the wind.' I had been for
some days skulking from covert to covert, under all the
terrors of a jail; as some ill-advised people had uncoupled
the merciless pack of the law at my heels. I had taken
the last farewell of my few friends ; my chest was on the
road to Greenock ; I had composed the last song I should
ever measure in Caledonia, ' The gloomy night is gathering
fast,' when a letter from Dr. Blacklock to a friend of
mine overthrew all my schemes, by opening new prospects
to my poetic ambition. The doctor belonged to a set of
critics for whose applause I had not dared to hope. His

1 Burns to Dr. Moore.

138 SCO TTISH LITER A TURK.

opinion, that I would meet with encouragement in Edin-
burgh for a second edition, fired me so much, that away
I posted for that city, without a single acquaintance, or a
single letter of introduction."

This was the turning point in Burns's life. It was also
an event of the greatest importance for English Hterature.
But here, unfortunately, other questions besides literary
ones claim attention. " The terrors of a jail " menaced
Burns because he was required to find security for the
maintenance of his illegitimate twin children by Jean
Armour. In recent times much mischievous nonsense
has been written about the " allowance " necessary in
estimating the frailties of men of genius ; and Burns has
had more than his share of this allowance meted out to
him. All that can wisely be said on this point was said
long ago by Carlyle in one of the finest passages of moral
criticism in the whole range of literature : — " Not the few
inches of deflection from the mathematical orbit, which
are so easily measured, but the ratio of these to the whole
diameter, constitutes the real aberration. This orbit may
be a planet, its diameter the breadth of the solar system ;
or it may be a city hippodrome ; nay, the circle of a
ginhorse, its diameter a score of feet or paces. But the
inches of deflection only are measured; and it is assumed
that the diameter of the ginhorse, and that of the planet,
will yield the same ratio when compared with them ! Here
lies the root of many a blind, cru-el condemnation of
Burnses, Swifts, Rousseaus, which are never listened to with
approval. Granted, the ship comes into harbour with
shrouds and tackle damaged ; the pilot is blameworthy ;
he has not been all-wise and all-powerful ; but to know

ROBER T BURNS. 1 39

ho7v blameworthy, tell us first whether his voyage has been
round the Globe, or only to Ramsgate and the Isle of
Dogs."^ So much may fairly be said for Burns. His
character may be, will be, found infinitely higher and
nobler than that of the smooth, self-complacent respec-
tability, unstained by any fault which human law or
ordinary conventional opinion can lay finger upon, but
unlighted also by any lofty aspiration or generous deed, and
chargeable only before a higher bar with the one fault of
a restrained and safe, but constant and immedicable self-
ishness. But all this should not blind us to facts, or
lead us to juggle with truth. If we do, we shall fall into
a mistake more serious than the mistake involved in that
neglect of proportion which Carlyle condemns. The sins
of a man of genius are not in themselves less than the
same sins in smaller men : in that sense there need be
and there ought to be no "allowance."

The facts in Burns's life which have roused all the
controversy as to his character are really simple. Through
his youth and early manhood he lived as might have been
expected of his father's son, a life of simple virtue. While
he worked at Lochlea he was allowed by his father the
wages of other labourers, with which he provided himself
with all his clothing as well as all his pleasures. At
Mossgiel, which was a joint venture of the whole family,
his allowance was ;^7 per annum, and his expenses
never exceeded it.- Under such circumstances anything
approaching debauchery was impossible. But already the
germs of evil were in him. In 1781 he went to Irvine
to learn the trade of a flax-dresser, and there mixed with
1 Essay on Burns. ^ Gilbert Burns.

1 40 SCO TTISH LIT ERA TURK.

company of a more libertine complexion than any he had
yet met. His looser principles in later years, both as to
drink and in his relations with women, may be traced
back to this period. The first evidence of the evil in-
fluence exercised upon him was the birth of that ille-
gitimate child celebrated in The Poefs Welcome. It was
however a different affair which occasioned his trouble
at the time when he meditated flight across the Atlantic.
The mother of the twins whom he was called upon to
support was Jean Armour, afterwards his wife. The affair
was, and is, unfortunately too easily paralleled among
Scottish rustics; but in Burns's case the fact that it was
only one of several gives an ugly aspect of libertinism to
his life.

Burns was always unfalteringly true in owning and
facing his sin. From an honourable desire to spare her
as much as possible of shame and reproach, he con-
tracted an irregular marriage with Jean Armour. This
was at the hour of his darkest fortune. He had neither
the means of supporting his wife in Scotland, nor could
he take her with him abroad. Consequently, Armour,
the father, induced his daughter to destroy the papers
establishing her marriage. Burns was wild with grief
and indignation ; and Wilson and other critics have taken
his view of it and have denounced the conduct of
Armour in unmeasured language. That he was sub-
sequently harsh is indisputable ; and- that in persuading
his daughter to take this course he showed callousness
with regard to her reputation is also clear : but that
his conduct was altogether without excuse is not so
■evident. It must be recollected that Burns's character

ROBERT BURNS. 141

was already stained ; and that while public opinion
among the lower classes in Scotland is shamefully tolerant
of one such aberration, with respect to more than one
it is tolerably severe. Armour had some ground for
fearing that such a man might not be the best husband
for his daughter. Again, with respect to the marriage, two
points must be borne in mind. On the one hand it
was valid : hence Burns's indignation with the father,
whom he regarded as a man coming between him and
his wife and thrusting them apart ; hence too his
charges of perjury against Jean. On the other hand
it was irregular : hence the possibility of annulling it
by the simple destruction of the document in Jean's
possession — the sole evidence of its existence. The legal
aspect of the act of destruction may be doubtful ; but
the inviolability of the marriage ought not to be pleaded
by the apologists of Burns, seeing he was willing after-
wards to earn "a certificate as a bachelor" by undergoing
the discipline of the Kirk. The fact that any minister
could have proposed to give him such a certificate shows
how dubious at the best was the relation between Burns
and Jean Armour.

It was under the pressure of this unhappy affair that
Burns made his preparations for exile. How his prospects
brightened and his plans changed has been already told.
Nothing in all his history is better known than the story
of his visit to Edinburgh in November, 1786. The
critics, and that society which the critics did so much
to rule, received him with enthusiasm. On the whole,
the welcome they gave the poet was honourable alike to
their judgment as critics and to their character as men ;

142 SCO TTISH LIT ERA TURE.

yet it was not free from an element to which objection
might be taken. Sometimes an unnecessary emphasis was
laid on the ploughman, the inspired ploughman. With
some exceptions, and these as was natural were just the
best men, Edinburgh society betrayed a disposition,
essentially vulgar and small-minded, to stare astonished,
not at the man, but at the peasant. The marvel was
less that the human mind should display such powers
as those of Burns than that they should be lodged in a
creature so low in the social scale. It must be added
however that in later years this contemptible spirit has
been far more conspicuous than it was at the poet's first
appearance. Burns, on his part, seems to have borne
himself in trying circumstances singularly well, steering
an even course between the extremes of subservience
and self-assertiveness.

That the critics recognised Burns readily and praised
him generously was creditable to their penetration, but
not surprising. The accepted models of excellence were
indeed very different from anything he offered ; but he
was by no means unheralded. The whole poetic move-
ment of the century in Scotland, from Ramsay with his
editorial labours and original compositions, to Fergusson,
seems now like a preparation for such a poet as Burns.
The critical mind therefore was not unduly startled by
his appearance. And again, the merit of his work was
such, both in degree and in kind, that immediate recog-
nition was easy and natural. The critics, on his first
appearance in Edinburgh, judged him by the Kilmarnock
volume, a small collection, but one containing quite an
astonishing amount of his best work. The Twa Dogs,

ROBERT BURNS. 143

The Holy Fair, tiie Address to the Deil, The Vision,
The Auld Farmer^ s New-Year-Morning Salutatiofi to his
Atdd Mare Maggie, The Cotter''s Saturday Night, To a
Mouse, To a Mountain Daisy, The Bard^s Epitaph, and
the Epistles To James Smith and To a Young Friend,
though by no means all that is of high excellence in the
Kilmarnock edition, were sufficient to stamp their author
as a poet of extraordinary genius. Their merit also was
simple and obvious. The very social position of the
writer helped the critics to the right decision. They
might have felt a shock of surprise if a man like John
Home, cultured even as they were themselves, had written
so; but it was natural that the man who had driven his
plough over the daisy and ruined the mouse's nest, should
sing of them.

The attention paid to Burns in the capital, and the
more soHd gains reaped from the Edinburgh edition,
sufficed to change his whole life. He remained in Edin-
burgh during the whole of the winter of 1786-87. The
company he associated with was mixed. He consorted now
with the leaders of society, now with spirits humbler but
at least as congenial. Among the latter his chief associate
came to be William Nicoll, a master in the High School,
whom Burns has graphically described as possessing a
mind like his body — "he has a confounded strong in-kneed
sort of soul." In truth, the man's faults were conspicuous,
his merits were chiefly, though not altogether, the creation
of the poet's fancy. Association with him did Burns an
injury both in himself and in his relation to the higher
society. Their regard for him was already on the wane
when in May he left Edinburgh for a tour on the

1 44 SCO TTISH LITER A TURE.

Border. The summer passed in renewed visits to Edin-
burgh and tours in the Highlands. Some of his biog-
raphers and critics have been distressed to find that his
travels were productive of so little verse, and needlessly
puzzled to account for their barrenness. The truth is
obvious that Burns was not one of those who deliberately
sit down to make a description. Much as he loved
nature, he loved humanity more ; and though no one
described better than he, his best descriptions are always
called forth by some theme to which they are merely inci-
dental, and they derive half their beauty from their setting,
or from the sentiment imparted to them by the subject.
Purely descriptive poetry was in the main a growth later
than the days of Burns.

The following winter, 1787-88, Burns again passed princi-
pally in Edinburgh. But though he enjoyed the society, im-
measurably more brilliant and varied than Scotland yielded
anywhere else, he had always the good sense to see that
the life was one which could not last. The Edinburgh
volume yielded him a sum variously stated at from ;^4oo
to ;^7oo — a difference which may probably be accounted
for largely by the mode of computation, whether gross
or net profit be taken, whether the amount he possessed
on leaving Edinburgh or the amount paid by the pub-
lisher be understood. At any rate he was in a position
of comparative ease and comfort. To his brother Gilbert,
who was still struggling at Mauchline to support himself
and his mother, he lent about ^200. With the rest he
determined to stock a farm. A Dumfriesshire gentleman,
Miller of Dalswinton, whose name is well known in con-
nexion with the history of steam navigation, offered him

ROBERT BURNS. HS

any of his unlet farms at a rent to be fixed by the poet
himself. It is almost needless to say that the honourable
liberality of the landlord was met by an equally honourable
fairness on the part of the tenant. Burns made careful
inquiries, fixed upon the farm of Ellisland, had it valued
by two men of practical skill, and offered the rent which
their judgment sanctioned. Mr. Miller accepted it, and
Burns imagined himself settled for life. As a further step
towards his settlement he made a public profession of
marriage with Jean Armour. She was not immediately
able to accompany him to Ellisland, where he resided
from the middle of June, 1788; but she followed him
there in December. For a few months after she joined
him. Burns was happier than at any other period of his
life.

It was only however for a very short time that he
trusted exclusively to farming for his livelihood. Before
he left Edinburgh he had made interest to secure an
appointment in the excise; and was soon, through the
influence of Robert Graham of Fintry, one of the Com-
missioners of the Scottish Board of Excise, made " ganger "
for the district in which he lived. The well-meant attempt
to combine two occupations proved unfortunate. The
farm was necessarily left largely in charge of servants,
and, partly at least from that cause, was unremunerative.
The melancholy which always beset Burns, and which
was deepened by the sense of his ill success in the
struggle for life, drove him to excesses which at the
beginning of the Ellisland period he was careful to avoid.
After four seasons he threw up the lease and removed,

towards the close of 1791, to Dumfries.
VOL. 11. K

1 46 SCO TTISH LIT ERA TURE.

Henceforward Burns was dependent upon the excise.
His income from this source had not hitherto exceeded
jQt^o a year: on his removal to Dumfries it was raised
to ;^7o- The prospect of further promotion was clouded
by his imprudent expressions of sympathy with the French
revolution. How far these expressions permanently in-
jured him is not clear; but it is certain that their con-
sequences were humiliation and mental anguish, and the
obscuring of that " star of hope " whose light he so
sorely needed. It must be admitted that the servant of
state who so far forgot himself as to send a present of
cannon to a power on the verge of war with his own
country, put those who were set over him in a difficult
position ; and it would seem that the fault was rather
that of society for thrusting such a being as Burns into
the position of an excise officer, than of his superiors,
who could scarcely pass over unnoticed so wild a freak.
For this and other causes the closing years of his life
were years of sad decline. His own conduct at this
time has been severely condemned. Currie says much
and suggests far more as to the personal degradation
of Burns. It is pretty certain however that he judged
too harshly. Burns was at no time a model of correct
respectability; but he was never a habitual debauchee.
At the beginning of the Dumfries period, as at the begin-
ning of his residence at EUisland, he was most careful
of his conduct. It was the loss of hope that made him
reckless in his life. The picture of his closing days is
extremely painful. He who had once been the darling
of Edinburgh society was to be seen on the shady side
of the principal street of Dumfries, "while the opposite

ROBERT BURNS. 147

side was gay with successive groups of gentlemen and
ladies, all drawn together for the festivities of the night
[a county ball], not one of Avhom seemed willing to
recognise him." ^ He applied to himself the words, al-
ready quoted, of Lady Grizzel Baillie's song, " His bonnet
stood aye fu' round on his broo." With him "life's day"
was now " near the gloamin'." His mind was distracted
with anxiety as he contemplated the future of his family,
his body was worn with disease. Under the double strain,
physical and mental, he sank, July 21st, 1796, at the age
of thirty-seven.

Adequate length of days is indispensable to the pro-
duction of any monumental work. Milton spent nearly
as much time as was granted for the whole mortal career
of Burns in what he regarded as a mere apprenticeship
to the art of poetry. It is indispensable too that oppor-
tunity should be granted as well as time. Those Greek
philosophers, whose superb wisdom, discredited for a
wliile by the youthful self-assurance of modern science,
is again enforcing recognition, insist upon nothing so
much as the need of o-xoA?; to the noble mind. In
this respect Burns was still more unfortunate than in the
matter of time. His thirty-seven years of life were
shorter for effective purposes of art than the nine-and-
twenty of Shelley, hardly longer than the five-and-
twenty of Keats.

The crushing weight of circumstance becomes evident
when we contemplate his career from his first introduc-
tion to the world till his death. A period of ten years
passed between the publication of the Kilmarnock edition

^ Lockhart.

148 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

and the closing of the grave. For the purposes of poetry
they ought to have been far more valuable than all the
time that went before. They did not prove so. The
cause must lie either in the man or his environment.
The man was not blameless ; but it was not he who
was chiefly to blame. Few probably who study Burns
will arrive at the conclusion that his was one of those
minds which bloom early and fade early. A shrewd
observer remarked of his great countryman and suc-
cessor, Scott, that his sense was even more extraordinary
than his genius. Strange as it may seem to many, the
same assertion may be made with only a little less truth
of Burns. He possessed a clear, penetrating, logical
intellect, a sound and vigorous judgment. Once and
again in his poems he delights the ideaUst with his
flashes of inspiration; but just as frequently he captivates
the man of common sense, who finds his own sober
views of life expressed by the poet with infinitely more
of force and point than he could give them. But
sagacity of judgment and strength of reason are qualities
which do not soon decay, which, on the contrary, seldom,
in a rich mind, reach their full maturity till an age later
than Burns ever saw. And the poems, when closely
examined, give no countenance to the notion that Burns's
mind was unprogressive. It is rather the limited quantity
of the work and the fugitive character of the pieces that
occasion disappointment. There is _ no sustained flight,
there are rarely even pieces as long as he had written in
his earlier days. On occasion, it is true, as in Tain 0'
Shanter, he proves that he can equal anything he had
done before ; but as a rule he contents himself with the

ROBERT BURNS. 149

lyric cry, the expression of the moment's emotion in
song. It was unfortunately all that increasing responsi-
bilities and cankering disquiet left possible for him.
Even in his early manhood Burns had little enough of
peace of mind; but he had more than he ever afterwards
enjoyed. He had given fewer "hostages to fortune";
he had youthful buoyancy to lift him above his troubles;
and the result is seen in the fact that, notwithstanding
his youth, his work then is wider in its range than it
ever was in his more mature years.

The literary work of Burns is divisible into two
periods. The first ends with the publication of the
Kilmarnock volume; the second covers the rest of his
life. The division is justified by the marked difference
in the character of the work produced in the two
periods. In the earlier, satires, pictures of rural life, and
familiar epistles predominate ; in the later, and in an
always increasing degree as time passed, songs take the
first place. In each period there is of course an inter-
mixture of the work characteristic of the other ; but the
dominant note in either case is unmistakeable.

There has always been diversity of opinion as to the
relative merits of the two classes of poems, or what
comes to much the same thing, the two periods. Per-
haps, on the whole, the loss of the songs would be the
more irreparable; but it may be questioned whether the
miscellaneous poems do not contain more conclusive
evidence of the greatness of the poet. The poems com-
posed previous to the first visit to Edinburgh display
nearly all Burns's highest powers — his humour, his satire,
his pathos, the force and truth of his style, his insight

1 5 O SCO TTISH LITER A TURE.

into nature. In so young a man nothing is more re-
markable than their wide range. The scathing satire of
Holy Willies Prayer, the humour tinged with pathos
of the Address to the Deil, the poetic feehng mingling
with the ludicrous in Death and Dr. Hornbook, the
elevation of The Vision, the beautiful descriptions of
simple rural peace and piety in The Cotter's Saturday
Night, the sympathy and exquisite purity of style in
the verses to the mouse and the daisy, the shrewdness
and sober-minded wisdom of the Epistle to a Voting
Friend, the astonishing self-knowledge of The Bard's
Epitaph — these display a range and variety of power
which few poets have equalled.

Among the poems of Burns, the satires on the Kirk
form a class by themselves. They belong, by date of
composition, if not of publication, for the most part to the
earliest period of his authorship. Their force and bold-
ness at once drew, and have ever since fixed attention.
Their extraordinary merit as satires has been universally
acknowledged ; but, as is always the case where powerful
and important interests are touched, most diverse judg-
ments have been passed upon their matter. Feeling was
naturally embittered when the questions immediately in
dispute were new ; but the essence of the matter Burns
dealt with never grows old ; and consequently we find
that to this day there are men who cannot read or think
of these satires with patience, or speak of them with
ordinary fairness. They are treated as writings, powerful
indeed, but disagreeable and of evil tendency, things which,
for the good of the world and for Burns's reputation as a
man, ought never to have been written, and should now

ROBERT BURNS. 1 5 1

be sunk in oblivion. On the contrary, the world has been
the better for them. To appreciate fairly the bearing of
the satires upon the character of Burns, it is necessary to
remember the circumstances in which they were produced.
If they are judged in the abstract, the impression left is
unfavourable to him as a man. There is much in them
that would be better expunged ; they frequently violate
taste, jar upon the feelings, bring roughly forward matters
which, as a rule, are better treated with a wise reticence.
Some bitterness was inevitable at the time. When the
satires were composed, in the words of Burns himself,
" polemical divinity was putting the country half mad."
The Kirk was split into the parties of the Auld Light
and the New Light. The " Auld Lights " professed ex-
treme Calvinism in doctrine, and supported a policy of
unvarying conservatism with regard to the customs and
observances of their religion ; the " New Lights " professed
more respect for works than for faith as it was apt to be
understood, and advocated throughout a policy of Hberal-
ism. More than two hundred years had passed since
the triumph of the principles of the Reformation under
the leadership of Knox. Presbyterianism, forced through-
out its first century into an unceasing conflict against an
opposition often bigoted and unreasonable, and almost always
injudiciously pressed, had emerged from the struggle vic-
torious, but narrowed and intolerant. Another century of
undisputed supremacy had done little or nothing to widen
and humanise it. Grace and beauty are the growth of
peace and prosperity. But peace had been so long denied
to religion in Scotland that when it came the germ from
which those qualities might have sprung was dead. They

152 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

were altogether absent from the pubHc rehgion of Burns's
day. We must however distinguish between that and
private reHgion, the simple unreasoned piety of the heart,
the religion which ennobles the life of the individual and
the family. This has rarely flourished in greater perfection
than among the Scottish peasantry of a hundred years ago.
Burns had seen it in his own father's home ; and if he
proved the relentless satirist of systematic Calvinism, he
proved also the sympathetic poet and eulogist of fireside
piety.

Official Presbyterianism, as Burns knew it, was of iron
strength. It followed out its propositions to their con-
clusion with a merciless logic. More, perhaps, than any
other system evolved by the wit of man, it insisted upon
that scientific interpretation of the words of the Bible which
Matthew Arnold deprecated ; more than any other it
neglected that deeper although less definite literary inter-
pretation which he would have substituted. Consequently,
it had become eminently non-human, in some aspects even
inhuman. After two hundred chequered years, the Re-
formed Kirk itself stood in need of reform. It had done
a great work for Scotland ; but, even at the best, the good
it brought had not been attained without a large price;
and now the price exacted seemed to many, and to Burns
among the rest, too great for the return. Theological
fetters were cramping the movement and deforming the
growth of the nation. The satires of Burns are to be
regarded as blows struck for liberation from those fetters.

Burns then was a reformer as well as a poet. He
was the Lindsay of his age, wielding with infinitely
superior skill a weapon far keener than that which

ROBER T B URNS. 1 5 3

Lindsay used with such effect against the abuses of
Romanism. Like Lindsay, he is to be judged with
reference to his main purpose and general effect. In
satire rigid justice is impossible; there must be a
brightening of the Hght on one side, a deepening of
the shades on the other. What may fairly be demanded
of the satirist is that he shall on the whole help that
which is honourable and true. The question therefore
is whether Burns did so or not. If his satires loosened
the hold of religion in Scotland, it must be answered
in the negative ; if without striking at the principles of
religion they helped to clear away abuses, to make
religion more acceptable to the human heart, as well
as the human head, more kindly and at the same time
more truly rational, then, whatever the damage they may
have done to the orthodoxy of the poet's day, the
answer must be affirmative.

Burns was at heart a religious man. Carlyle, in most
respects so appreciative and so keen-sighted, is surely in
error when he says that Burns had no religion. " His
religion, at best, is an anxious wish ; like that of
Rabelais, 'a great Perhaps.'" There is only a half truth
in this. There are few things regarding the unseen of
which Burns was sure. If he had been required to reduce
his creed to definite propositions, for the truth of which
he could confidently answer, they would not have been
numerous. The outward acts of rehgion too attracted
him little, and were but sparingly practised by him. He
was not in the ordinary sense devotional. But his faith
was constant in something higher than that which can
be seen and handled, higher too than those prudential

I 54 SCO TTISH LITER A TURK.

maxims of morality which are justified to the worldly
mind by the plea that on the whole they tend to
pleasure here. Burns was a creature of emotion. His
patriotism, his friendship, and his love were all glorified
by a magic light, the contribution of his own soul. But
this light was to him the most real of all things ; and
the view of man and nature through such a light, the
regulation of one's relations to them by it, is akin to
religion. Burns nowhere attacks the fundamental prin-
ciples of natural religion ; on the contrary, there is much
in his writings that supports them. In that beautiful though
unequal piece, The Cotter's Saturday Night, which ought
always to be remembered along with the satires, we see
how deep and how sincere was the poet's sympathy
with a pious life. In the satires themselves there is
nothing to imply that this sympathy was affected or un-
real, or that he ever lost it. There is no ridicule of the
fundamental points of the Christian faith — unless we
regard as fundamental the extreme deductions of Calvin-
ism. What he satirises has been for the most part
either changed or suffered to sink into oblivion. The
greater part of the censure he has incurred has been on
account of passages in which he merely expressed in the
strongest and plainest language the creed of the ultra-
orthodox ; and it has been incurred because that creed
will not bear expression. Holy Willie's Prayer is
appalling reading ; but the opening stanzas, the most
terrible of all, are neither more nor less than a fearless
and unshrinking statement of the doctrine of salvation
as it was understood by the party satirised. If the
satirist is blameworthy for stating the doctrine, still

ROBER T B URNS. 1 5 5

more are they blameworthy who preached it. This
portentous theory long survived Burns's day. Men who
are still in the prime of life can remember how the
doctrine of election, with all its revolting accompani-
ments, used to be undisguisedly preached in country
pulpits. Probably there are places where it is still
preached ; but for a long time the better minds of the
country have been growing more and more hostile to
such teaching, and utterances inconsistent with or openly
contradictory of it have become increasingly frequent.
The doctrine of eternal punishment has similarly lost
favour. Burns had often heard it expounded in all its
ghastly literalism — the

"Vast, unbottom'd, boundless pit,
Fill'd fu' o' lowin' brunstane,
Whase ragin' flame, an' scorchin' heat
Wad melt the hardest whunstane,"

was preached as a physical reality. One of the herds
in The Holy Fair describes it with such effect that

"The half-asleep start up \vi' fear.
An' think they hear it roarin'."

It was also the most important reahty. The tidings pro-
claimed to an expectant people are "tidings o' dam-
7iatmiP It is worthy of notice that Burns owed this
telling point to the suggestion of that model of propriety,
Dr. Blair. He had originally written " tidings o' salva-
tion " ; but the superior truth of the word suggested by
Blair at once commended it to the poet.

Burns however satirised much more than mere doc-
trines. Observances, often as important as they, and the

1 5^ SCO TTISH LITERA TURE.

spirit underlying both creed and observance, which is
always much more important than either, passed also
beneath his censure. The Holy Fair is the most con-
spicuous example of his manner of dealing with objection-
able observances. It is well known, and yet almost
incredible, that he was painting from life. The practice
of making the celebration of the Lord's Supper an occasion
for gathering together the people of a wide neighbourhood
had once been justified; and in days of great religious
fervour the evils of such a gathering would be slight.
The practice however, though habit had blinded people
to the abuses incident to it, had long survived the exist-
ence of a degree of fervour capable of sanctifying it.
The facts, those "stubborn chiels," were on the side of
Burns, and his attack was the death-knell of holy fairs. ^
It is less easy to change the heart than the outward
habits ; and there is reason to fear that hypocrisy, self-
righteousness, the behef in the efficacy of " faith " to
cover the absence of "works," exist even now. Never-
theless, Burns has performed no greater service to his
country than in his condemnation of these besetting sins,
his holding up to the "unco guid" the mirror that reflects
not appearance but reality, his contrast of the Hyperion
faith and the satyr conduct.

It is seldom however that Burns's pieces are purely
satirical. Facit i?tdig?tatio versum can rarely be written
of him. His great charm lies in the mixture of pure
poetic feeling, or of careless fun and kindly humour, with
the more biting satire. Holy Willie's Prayer, which per-

^ Revivalism, I believe, occasionally resuscitates the Holy Fair even
to this day.

ROBER T B URNS. 1 5 7

haps for sheer force surpasses anything he ever wrote,
unless it be the Ode to the Memory of Mrs. Oszuald 0
Auchincruive, is almost the only example his works pre-
sent of satire absolutely unmixed and unrelieved. In
The Twa Herds, the humorous iteration of the metaphor
of the shepherd and the tiock, the references to "worry-
ing tykes," "waifs and crocks," and "mangy sheep," the
question whether the herds should be chosen for or by
the brutes, move to laughter. The poet is more amused
than angry as he writes. In The Holy Fair, the beautiful
opening picture of the rising sun, the caller air, the hirp-
ling hares, might stand in any other context; and the
humours of the meeting fill the mind quite as much as
the blast of the "Lord's ain trumpet." It is however in
pieces unconnected with the Kirk that the satire passes
most readily and freely into humour. Of such pieces
the best is Death and Dr. Hornbook. There are few if
any satires in the English language more poetical in char-
acter. From the point of view of the victim it is no
doubt severe, even mercilessly severe ; and personal satire
of this description is so open to abuse, so dangerous in
its consequences, that it is as a rule objectionable. Burns
has been far more blamed for his Kirk satires than for
this ; but the moral right of the satirist to attack the
Kirk seems far clearer than his right to set upon the
luckless dominie and druggist Wilson.^ Classes and class
interests are generally powerful enough to defend them-
selves : if they suffer it is because they are faulty. But

^ Of course Holy Willie comes under the same class with Ho7-nbook
as an attack upon an individual ; though the general questions it
raises are now far more interesting than the personal one.

I 5 8 SCO TTISH LIT ERA TURE.

an individual may be innocent and yet be powerless
against the shafts of scorn and ridicule. Such was the
case in the present instance. Death and Dr. Hornbook
drove the victim, a pedantic but harmless person who
eked out by quackery the scanty living he won as a village
schoolmaster, from the place where he was settled. It
is pleasant to know that the change improved his fortune;
but the fact that he was for a time cast adrift upon the
world, proves what a dangerous weapon personal satire
is in a powerful hand.

If however we put aside the question of the poet's
right to choose such a subject, it is evident that in
Death a?id Dr. Hornbook the mood of Burns was more
favourable to the production of poetry than in the more
serious satires. The person satirised was too insignificant
to rouse any deep feeling of anger. The whole treat-
ment is light and playful. The key-note is struck in the
opening scene — the poet " canty " with the " clachan
yill," setting his staff to keep himself steady, and vainly
attempting to count the horns of the moon. This intro-
duction takes away the horror from the "something" that
he encounters. Notwithstanding the awful insignia it
bears, the apparition is a friendly one, and the conver-
sation is easy and familiar. Throughout, the ludicrous
prevails over the terrible. The satire is admirably
mingled with humour. Hornbook and his pretensions
are presented in so rich a setting of the writer's imagin-
ation that the mind dwells rather on the irresistible
picture of the tipsy poet hob-nobbing with Death than
on the doings of the village apothecary.

This mingling of satire with humour is characteristic

ROBERT BURNS. 1 59

of Burns. Humour is the essence of some of his very
best pieces and an element in most of them. It is this
quality, combined with the vigorous narrative, which has
given Tarn d Shanter such a firm hold on the popular
mind ; it is this which has led some of the most com-
petent critics to rank The Jolly .Beggars as the first of
all Burns's works; it is this which gives their charm to
the Address to the Deil, The Twa Dogs, The Death of
Mailie, and most of the epistles. After the rare sim-
plicity of style through which mainly he has been
influential upon literature, there is no quality in Burns
so conspicuous or so precious as this gift of humour.
He had wit too as his works prove; but, like others
of his countrymen, he was more distinguished for wit
touched with that sympathy which makes it humour.
The humour of the Scotch is generally described as dry;
and a study of collections like that of Dean Ramsay at
once explains and justifies the epithet. The humour of
Burns however is warm rather than dry. The spring of
it lies in the ready sympathy which enabled him to
identify himself with the subject of his thought whatever
it might be, human or brute, animate or inanimate.
Sometimes this power of sympathy shows itself, as in the
lines To a Mountain Daisy, in a tremulous sensitiveness
which is not humorous. This piece has rather the
accent of Wordsworth, who, with less humour than
almost any poet of equal note, possessed a transcendent
power of sympathy. It is also as heavily charged as
Wordsworth's work with the "pathetic fallacy"; and the
style is as pure and perfect as his at its best. If we
turn to what is generally considered the companion

1 60 SCO TTISH LIT ERA TURK.

piece, the verses To a Mouse, we detect the note of
humour. The sensitiveness is equally dehcate, the sym-
pathy even more keen. The closer kinship to man in
the mouse gives rise to the new feeling. The " wee,
sleekit, cowerin', timorous beastie" is nearer to the heart
of the poet than the " wee, modest, crimson-tipped
flower."

Nowhere does the tenderness of Burns's nature show
itself more clearly than in his treatment of animals. He
was familiar with them, had made his dogs companions,
had been fellow-labourer with the horse, was under the
daily necessity of tending and caring for the cows and
sheep. He had also known physical hardship, and could
realise their sufferings from winter storm and cold. His
references to animals are frequent, and almost always
happy. Half the beauty of the fine opening stanzas of
A Winter Night is due to the pitying sympathy with the
animals exposed to the fury of the storm. The familiar
Epistles are frequently enriched with graphic touches of a
similar nature ; and the poems specially devoted to animals
display in fuller measure the accuracy of observation and
the exact knowledge revealed elsewhere by glimpses.
The Death of Mailie, the lightest of them, borders on
burlesque. There is more of tenderness in The Auid
Fartjiers Salutation to his Afare Maggie; and, though
less popular, it is a far finer piece than the former. The
youth and age of the animal are Avith exquisite feeling
worked in with the youth and age of the man. They
have shared both the pleasures and the toils of life; they
have worn to crazy years together; the animal has been
so intimately associated with the man's pleasures and

ROBER T B URNS. 1 6 1

troubles that he sees in her an animated chronicle of
his life. But the best of this class of poems is un-
doubtedly The Twa Dogs. Here also man and the
animal are made to reflect light upon one another; but
in this instance the point of view is that of the dog,
and the charm of the piece is not a little due to this
inversion of the usual order. It is only at the opening
that it can be said to be a picture of animal life ; but
that opening passage is perfect. Of all animals the dog
has attracted most attention from men ; but often as he
and his ways have been described, they have never been
painted with more ease and mastery, or with more truth,
than in the beginning of Burns's tale. It was a happy
thought to make the two interlocutors representatives of
different social grades. Caesar, the " gentleman and
scholar," is in the canine world what Glencairn or Daer
was in that above it. Luath, the ploughman's collie,
stands to him in the relation of the poor but self-respect-
ing peasant to these nobles. Up to the opening of their
conversation every touch is, as all who know dogs must
perceive, as true as it is vivid. Afterwards the piece is
practically a criticism of two ranks of human society,
which, however, frequently derives a special piquancy from
the character of the speakers.

In the Address to the Deil Burns found a subject
peculiarly suited to the play of his humour; and in few
of his pieces does it show more favourably. As in the
case of Death and Dr. Hornbook, he stands on a height
of imaginative superiority and plays with his subject.
The grotesque superstitions current in Scotland with
respect to the personage celebrated by the piece become

VOL. II. L

1 62 SCO TTISH LITER A TURE.

merely a vehicle for the finer thoughts of the poet. The
concluding stanza, though hackneyed with quotation, pos-
sesses an indestructible beauty of sentiment — the hope
for amendment in the prince of the powers of darkness
himself, and the sorrow for even his fate. It has been
less commonly noted that the second stanza, in which
the poet calls upon Satan to listen to him, is in much
the same spirit. He will not believe that even the devil
is as black as he is painted, that even he can find
pleasure in the torment of the helpless.

But for riotous luxuriance. The Jolly Beggars overtops all
that Burns ever wrote. Probably no poem more graphic
exists in literature. It describes what the writer had
actually seen, and not otherwise would its extreme vivid-
ness seem to be attainable. Poosie Nansie's, where the
revels took place, was a sort of tramps' lodging-house and
inn at Mauchline. As Burns and two of his companions
were one night passing up the street, themselves elevated,
they were attracted by the sound of merry-making within,
and at Burns's suggestion they entered. Thus he got his
subject. It was a dangerous one. In meaner hands, in
the hands of the mere realist, the result must have been a
scene of sordid squalor. Nothing more strikingly shows
the power of Burns than the fact that, without sacrificing
truth, he contrives to give an altogether different aspect
to it. The rags and dirt are there, but they are merely a
foil to the mirth and jollity of the tattered revellers.
They even heighten the general effect. Defiance of fate
is nowhere more impressive, though also it is nowhere
more common, than among those who stand on the very
verge of destitution. Besides, the nakedness is due to

ROBERT BURNS. 163

the revelry : it is to quench their thirst that the beggars
"toom their pocks and pawn their duds."

T/ie Jolly Beggars is remarkable also for its truth of
portraiture. No figure is elaborately drawn, but each has
the attribute of life. The few lines of recitativo, which
join the songs together, give the character in outline, and
the song itself, which is always appropriate to the singer,
fills up the sketch. The songs are ill fitted for the drawing-
room, and some of the most vigorous passages are hardly
suitable for quotation ; but the animal, man, not so much
immoral as non-moral, was never better depicted. It is
to be noticed however that even here, in a scene of the
loudest and lowest revelry. Burns finds room and occasion
for pure natural beauty. The meeting of the beggars takes

place

" When lyart leaves bestrew the yird,
Or, wavering like the bauckie-bird,

Bedim cauld Boreas' blast ;
When hailstanes drive wi' bitter skyte,
And infant frosts begin to bite,
In hoary cranreuch drest."

No simile could be more happy than the comparison of
the fate of autumn leaves in the northern blast to the
bat's wavering flight. There is nothing forced in the in-
troduction of the lines. The wintry landscape, so well
drawn in a few words, forms a fitting contrast to the
light and warmth in the haunt of the beggars. We have
simply to forgive ' Boreas ' : he and all his fraternity were
the legacy of the earlier eighteenth century to Burns.
Again, in the beautiful stanzas that open A Winter Night
it is Boreas that "shivers thro' the leafless bower," and
Phoebus that "gies a short-liv'd glower Far south the

1 64 SCO TTISH LITER A TURK.

lift"; and in many another fine passage there are similar
blots. But they never seriously blemish the truth of the
pictures.

Burns's pieces are all so short that they cannot be
said to present conclusive evidence that he possessed
the power of poetic construction. A song is but the
record of a single mood ; there are no diverse elements
to be harmonised in it. Even the longer poems — satires,
epistles, and tales — are almost all simple in structure. In
The Jolly Beggars, more than anywhere else, he had to
grapple with difficulties of construction ; and he did so
with conspicuous success. Though the poem is not long
the number of figures is considerable ; and they are pre-
sented not as units, but dramatically, as parts of a
whole. The loves of the soldier, the tinker, the fiddler,
and the bard, with the quarrel which a common passion
stirs up between the "caird" and the "pigmy scraper,"
give colour and life to the entire poem. And with
admirable judgment Burns closes it with a song which
sums up its philosophy, and is besides one of the most
spirited in our anthology : —

"See the smoking bowl before us!
Mark our jovial ragged ring !
Round and round take up the chorus,
And in raptures let us sing.

Chorus. — "A fig for those by law protected !
Liberty's a glorious feast !
Courts for cowards were erected,
Churches built to please the priest.

"What is title? What is treasure?
What is reputation's care ?

ROBERT BURNS. 1 65

If we lead a life of pleasure,
'Tis no matter how or where !

•'A fig, etc,

"With the ready trick and fable,
Round we wander all the day ;
And at night, in barn or stable,
Hug our doxies on the hay.

"A fig, etc.

"Does the train-attended carriage
Thro' the country lighter rove?
Does the sober bed of marriage
Witness brighter scenes of love ?

"A fig, etc.

"Life is all a variorum,

We regard not how it goes ;
Let them cant about decorum
Who have characters to lose.

"A fig, etc.

" Here's to budgets, bags, and wallets !
Here's to all the wandering train !
Here's our ragged brats and callets !
One and all cry out, Amen !

"A fig, etc."

Rapidity and skill of transition are noticeable in
most of the work of Burns. Considering their modest
length, his poems are surprisingly varied ; for he was
daring to the verge of temerity in binding together
elements seemingly, but, as he proved, not really incon-
gruous. One of his boldest ventures is the stanza
descriptive of the soldier falling on the battlefield in the
postscript to his Earnest Cry and Prayer to the Scotch
Representatives. This is the heroic in the midst of

1 66 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

burlesque. Yet though the rise to the lofty tone is
abrupt and though it is maintained but for a moment,
the stanza seems perfectly in place. But the best
specimens of this power are to be found in the
tale of Taui d Shanter. It was with reference to this
poem that Scott most justly remarked, "No poet,
with the exception of Shakespeare, ever possessed the
power of exciting the most varied and discordant emo-
tions with such rapid transitions." The subject, the
adventure of a drunken rustic with witches, promises
merely amusement ; but as the Address to the Deil is
lifted above the vulgar superstitions on which it is
founded, not merely by the masterly humour with which
they are presented, but still more by refinement of
sentiment exhibited, it might almost seem, in defiance of
the theme, so the wealth of the poet's imagination
clothes the tale of Tcmi o' Shanter in a magnificence not
its own. It would be difficult to find a more beautiful
series of similes than that contained in the well-known
passage beginning, " But pleasures are like poppies
spread." The storm is described with wonderful energy ;
and yet how rapidly the tone changes in it. At one
moment the author's imagination is filled with the conflict
of the elements. It is not the storm as felt by Tam,
but the storm as conceived in the poet's soul that is
depicted. The dreary night, the raging wind, the rattling
showers, the thunder and the lightning — it is a storm
that might have beat upon the head of Lear. " The
speedy gleams the darkness swallow'd" — this is daringly
imaginative, yet truer than photography. Scenes of winter
tempest had a fascination for Burns. In The Vision he

ROBERT BURNS. 167

notes a taste for them as one of his own character-
istics : —

" I saw thee seek the sounding shore,
Delighted with the dashing roar;
Or when the North his fleecy store

Drove through the sky,
I saw grim Nature's visage hoar
Struck thy young eye."

His pictures of such scenes are usually excellent. In
Tam d Shanter however it would have been artistically
indefensible to let this spirit range unrestrained. After
the few terse lines descriptive of the storm we go back
to the hero, Tam, " skelping on thro' dub and mire," hold-
ing fast his bonnet, and "crooning" a song to himself.
In the apparition in Kirk AUoway we find the same
bold diversity. The dance of the witches and the piping
of their musician are ludicrous, the objects upon the in-
fernal altar are awful, even horrible, and carry us to the
very boundary of the permissible in art. But with exquisite
dexterity Burns secures the effect of further detail without
the shock it must have given. The concluding lines of

the passage,

"Wi' mair o' horrible and awfu',
Which ev'n to name wad be unlawfu',"

leave the imagination free to revel in those shadowy
terrors which, from their very vagueness, are so much
more fearful, though less ghastly, than the grim reality.

Poems of the class which have just been considered
were, as has been already said, for the most part the
product of Burns's youth. In after years he generally
contented himself with songs. He has himself told of his
youthful ambition, that he

1 68 SCO TTISH LITER A TURK.

"For puir auld Scotland's sake,
Some usefu' plan or book could make,
Or sing a sang at least."

As years went on, fortune more and more restricted him
to the Hteral singing of the song. He had cherished
the dream of some time devoting his life to poetry. He
could never realise this ambition ; and it was fortunate
for his own happiness, and fortunate for his country,
that he had at his command a mode of poetic expression
adapted better than any other to his condition. Burns
was throughout his life intensely patriotic. Whatever
seemed to him to redound to the glory of Scotland
awakened his interest and fired his imagination. He had
been led therefore, by his patriotic prejudice as well as
by his native taste, to make a special study of Scottish
poetry. He knew not only the work of men of established
reputation, like Ramsay and Fergusson, but was intimately
acquainted with the scraps of ballads and songs current
among the peasantry. It became the task of his closing
years to revise, amend, and complete those fragments,
or to write entirely new sets of verses to old popular
tunes. The inference that Burns attempted the writing
of songs in his later days only would be a false one.
On the contrary, the song. Handsome Nell, composed at
the age of fifteen, was, he says, the first of all his per-
formances; and ever afterwards he loved to touch the
lyric string. But only in later days did he attempt song-
writing extensively ; and as he then wrote hardly any
other kind of verse, the songs are naturally associated
with the latter part of his life, just as the other poems
are with the opening of his career.

ROBERT BURNS. 169

In criticising the songs of Burns it is essential to take
account of their historical connexions. They by no
means stand alone. Both music and verse have their
roots in the past : and they are not so much associated
as fused together ; for the songs of Burns, like Scottish
songs in general, are emphatically meant to be sung.
In collections such as those of Ramsay, Oswald, and
Herd, we see the nature of the foundation upon which
Burns built; but in his day, besides these song-books,
there still lingered numberless fragments which had never
been printed, and of which many are now lost beyond
recovery. The copious remarks written by Burns on
the margins of Johnson's Scots Musical Museum, and
afterwards printed (with interpolations) by Cromek, prove
the care with which he studied all the materials acces-
sible to him. He was not the first in the field, but he
was gifted with far greater genius than any who preceded
him, and he had also more reverence for the forgotten
poets whose remains he handled. He says in his first
Commonplace-Book that it had given him many a heart-
ache to reflect that the very names of the "glorious old
bards" who had penned the ancient ballads were for-
gotten. Again, in a letter to Tytler of Woodhouselee,
he says, " I invariably hold it sacrilege to add anything
of my own to help out with the shattered wrecks of
these venerable old compositions." Everyone knows, and
probably i^w lament, that Burns's practice was widely
different from his profession here ; but there is ample
proof that the reverence he professed was real.

From his habit of working upon the basis of the old
popular songs it results that many of the lyrics which

1 70 SCO TTISH LIT ERA TURE.

pass under the name of Burns are his only in part.
The fact that he contributed extensively to the two great
collections of Scottish songs, Johnson's Scots Musical
Museum and Thomson's Select Melodies of Scotland, both
undertaken in his time, had in this respect a great
influence upon his work. Their object was to give as
complete a body as possible of tunes and songs. Burns
could not make the tunes, but he could and did fit
them with words, or, where fragments of songs already
existed, he could complete them. In many cases the
precise relation of his work to the old cannot be deter-
mined ; but enough is known to prove the enormous
importance of his emendations and additions. He almost
always improved what he touched ; and he frequently
purified what was loose and licentious.

Of all the songs added to, altered, or rewritten by
Burns, the best known is Auld Lang Syne. In the letter
to Thomson (Sept., 1793) in which he encloses it, Burns
speaks of his version as *' the old song of the olden
times, which has never been in print, nor even in
manuscript, until I took it down from an old man's
singing." There is however no doubt that it is his
own ; and a comparison of his lines with the older
versions in Ramsay and Watson illustrates his wonderful
power of turning mediocre verse into beautiful poetry.
Somebody is another exquisite song partly founded upon
Ramsay but lifted far above the original. In My Love's
like a red, I'ed rose, Burns merely sought to give com-
pleteness to a fragment that might fairly vie with his
own work. He supplied some lines to eke out the
beautiful verses, O gi?i my love ivere yo?i red rose ; but he

ROBERT BURNS. 17 ^

needed no one to tell him that the old was in a higher
strain than the new. The same inferiority to the original
marks the alterations he made in the fine old song, Aye
7i<aukin, Of But this inferiority is quite exceptional. In
most of the cases where we know the extent of the
changes made by Burns, it is clear that nearly every
touch is an improvement. In the still more numerous
cases where the popularity of the version of Burns has
driven the older song completely out of memory, we
may safely infer the relative merits from the effect pro-
duced by the one upon the other.

One of the most difficult parts of Burns's task in thus
piecing out the old remains of Scottish song was to bring
his own thought into harmony with the original. He
did it with admirable tact ; and when he had any con-
siderable groundwork given him there was no other
course open. But just in proportion to the freedom given
his hand, we find him ennobling the old tunes with verses
of a strength, or a tenderness, or a humour, not to be
found in the originals. Thus he found the old chorus,

'* My wife's a wanton wee thing,
My wife's a wanton wee thing,
My wife's a wanton wee thing,
She'll no be ruled by me."

Burns supplied the air with verses which do not need
the apology with which he introduces them in his letter
to Thomson (Nov. 8, 1792) : —

" She is a winsome wee thing,
She is a handsome wee thing,
She is a bonnie wee thing,
This sweet wee wife o' mine.

1/2 SCO TTISH LIT ERA TURK.

" I never saw a fairer,
I never lo'ed a dearer,
And niest my heart I'll wear her,
YoY fear my jewel tine.

" She is a winsome wee thing,
She is a handsome wee thing,
She is a bonnie wee thing.
This sweet wee wife o' mine.

" The warld's wrack we share o't ;
The warstle and the care o't,
Wi' her I'll blithely bear it.
And think my lot divine.

The " light horse gallop of the air," as Burns calls it
in the letter to Thomson enclosing his own version, is
not forgotten ; but a world of grace and tenderness is
added. How magnificently again does he lift the materials
of Macp}iersons Raitt out of the commonplace into the
heroic in that " wild stormful song," MacpJiersojis Farewell.
Compare

" I've lived a life of sturt and strife ;
I die by treacherie :
It burns my heart, I must depart,
And not avenged be,"
with

" I've spent my time in rioting,

Debauch'd my health and strength ;
I've pillaged, plunder'd, murdered.

But now, alas, at length,
I'm brought to punishment direct ;

Pale death draws near to me ;
This end I never did project.
To hang upon a tree."

The comparison is interesting, chiefly as illustrating the
•difference between the versifier and the inspired poet.

ROBERT BURNS. 173

It was not the flat inanities of such Hnes as these that
Burns had in his mind when he wrote the Farewell.
The same character and the same event were before both
writers — and the one produced this lukewarm trickle, the
other that torrent of fire.

Thus it is always. Burns is happiest when the model
he follows is such as to offer him not guidance, which
means constraint, but suggestion. That he habitually
sought for suggestion no one will ever regret who con-
siders what he gained by doing so. To this habit is due
the fact that of all songs those of Burns are the most
singable. He was no musician, but he had enough of
taste and knowledge to seize the spirit of the simple
Scottish tunes. His correspondence with Thomson is full
of penetrating remarks upon the connexion between the
verse and the melody to which it was to be sung, and
the constraint laid upon the writer of the words by the
character of the music. In one letter (September, 1793)
he gives a detailed and most interesting account of his
manner of composition : — " ' Laddie, lie near me,' must
lie by me for some time. I do not know the air; and
until I am complete master of a tune, in my own singing
(such as it is), I can never compose for it. My way is :
I consider the poetic sentiment correspondent to my
idea of the musical expression ; then choose my theme ;
begin one stanza; when that is composed, which is
generally the most difficult part of the business, I walk
out, sit down now and then, look out for objects in
nature around me that are in unison and harmony with
the cogitations of my fancy, and workings of my bosom ;
humming every now and then the air with the verses I

1 74 SCO TTISH LIT ERA TURE.

have framed. When I feel my muse beginning to jade,
I retire to the solitary fireside of my study, and there
commit my effusions to paper ; swinging at intervals on
the hind legs of my elbow-chair, by way of calling forth
my own critical strictures, as my pen goes on. Seriously,
this, at home, is almost invariably my way." The whole
correspondence with Thomson is worthy of close attention.
It shows that the songs of Burns, though often rapidly
written, were not mere sports of chance, but the conscious
product of high art. It shows also that Burns could write
vigorous prose as well as powerful verse, and deserves
much of the praise sometimes uncritically lavished on the
high-flown and unnatural letters to Clarinda.-^ Thomson's
part in it however is trying to the temper. The self-
sufficiency of his meddling emendations, which Burns too
frequently accepted, is insufferable.

The crowning grace of the songs of Burns then, their
peculiar fitness for their purpose, is seen to be the result
of thought and conscientious care. It is in this respect

^ Not only the letters to Clarinda, but the prose of Burns generally,
has sometimes been extravagantly praised. To say that it is superior
or even equal to his poetry is foolish exaggeration. It is how-
ever true that Burns wrote good, expressive, energetic prose. His
letters, besides being extremely readat)le, are a mine of information
as to his own character, and might therefore with advantage be
more generally read. The letter to Dr. Moore is an admirable
autobiographic sketch ; and in his general correspondence Burns,
with less deliberate purpose, gives an equally clear revelation of
himself. The most remarkable feature of his correspondence is the
sympathy and adaptability it displays on the part of the writer.
Probably without clear consciousness, certainly without hypocrisy,
Burns takes a colour from the mind he is addressing ; so that, if
judged by the tone only, the several series of letters to different
correspondents might be supposed to be the work of different men.

ROBERT BURNS. 1 75

chiefly that they stand pre-eminent. There are Enghsh
lyrics, notably some of the songs of Tennyson, which as
poetry match the best of them ; but there are no English
lyrics, at least since the days of Shakespeare, that are so
perfectly adapted to singing. But in his search for this
quality Burns found more than he looked for. To the
careful adaptation of the verses to the tunes we may
ascribe, in part at least, their wonderful variety. He
quotes in one of his letters (to Thomson, Jan., 1795)
a critical dictum " that love and wine are the exclusive
themes for song-writing." There needs only a reference
to Burns himself to prove that this opinion cannot be
maintained ; but probably the proof would have been less
conclusive but for his close study of the spirit of the
tunes, leading to a dehcate gradation of the sentiment
of the verse. The truth is that the range of the song is
just the range of simple human emotion ; and Burns has
covered nearly the whole of it. Duncan Gray is a song
of pure humour. In the bacchanalian jollity of Willie
brevo'd a peck d maut we have the only rival of Toddlin'
hame. Auld Lang Syne is by universal acceptance the
song of friendship. Scots wha hue is probably the finest
patriotic song ever written. Kenmnres on and awa' and
Does hauglify Gaul invasion threat are different notes in
the same key, the latter in a semi-playful tone which
does not conceal its essential seriousness. In Go fetch
to me a pint 0' untie love is mingled with the heroism
not of the patriot but of the soldier; while Macpherson's
Farewell immortalises that of the outlaw. Gloomy Night
is the expression of the heart of the exile. A man's a
man for a that, though its author declared it to be " not

1 76 SCO TTISH LIT ERA TURE.

really poetry," is the special song of manly independence.
The variety is almost endless. It remains indeed true
that the majority of the songs are songs of love; but it
would be a great mistake to suppose that there is no
variety concealed under this general description. It is
love of many kinds and sung in many keys, from the
emotion not earthly at all of Mary in Heaven, to the
sufficiently worldly note oi Hey for a lass 7vi a tocher, or the
less sordid, but light and careless spirit oi Last May a braw
liwoer, or the spirited defiance of O for ane-and-twenty,
Tarn ; from the heart-broken youthful passion of Ac fond
kiss and then we sever, to the calm but deep affection of
the evening of life in Johji Anderson, my jo. The ex-
cellence is at least as conspicuous as the variety of these
songs. The mere names of a few of the best are enough
to impress the mind with their exquisite quality. Besides
those already mentioned, the class of love-songs alone
yields Highland Mary, Behind yon hills where J^ugar
flows, Afy Nannie's awa, Mary Morison, Of a the airts.
The Posie, Flow gently, sweet Afton, and Oh, wert thou
in the caiild blast. These form a collection unrivalled in
English literature. It must suffice to quote the last.
Dr. John Brown, who possessed a critical faculty un-
surpassed for delicacy, has declared it to be " the most
perfect, the finest love-song in our or in any language;
the love being affectionate more than passionate, love in
possession not in pursuit." ^

"Oh, wert thou in the cauld blast,
On yonder lea, on yonder lea,
My plaidie to the angry airt,

I'd shelter thee, I'd shelter thee :

^ Horae Subsecivae, 2nd Series.

ROBERT BURNS. "^77

Or did misfortune's bitter storms

Around thee blaw, around thee blaw,

Thy bield should be my bosom,
To share it a', to share it a'.

Or were I in the wildest waste,

Sae bleak and bare, sae bleak and bare,
The desert were a paradise,

If thou wert there, if thou wert there :
Or were I monarch of the globe

With thee to reign, with thee to reign,
The brightest jewel in my crown

Wad be my queen, wad be my queen."

Such are the works of a mind singularly rich in poetic
gifts. They are all individually slight; even collectively
they are by no means a full and sufficient expression of what
was in the man. He entertained various designs of a more
ambitious character ; but he was never able to carry them
out. Regret for the failure of his plans might however be
wasted. It is in part at least to the fact that his poetry
is, so to speak, so portable, that Burns owes his un-
equalled popularity. The circumstances of modem life
are such that no long poem can penetrate the mass of
the people. Picked men of the labouring classes may
doubtless make themselves masters of Hamlet, or Para-
dise Lost, or Paracelsus ; but the multitude never. We
speak of some English poets as popular, and contrast
them with others who are said to appeal only to a
limited class; but no poet is popular in England as
Burns is in Scotland, none appeals to the mass. There
are degrees of narrowness in their audience, but it always
is narrow. Burns on the contrary has been one of the
most powerful educative influences of his country; and
the fact may console us, as it would assuredly have con-

VOL. II. M

178 SCO TTISH LITER A TURK.

soled him, for any injury his reputation may, in the
judgment of the academies, have sustained through the
defects of his education or other untoward circumstances
of his hfe.

There remain only one or two points that still call
for notice. One is the curious charge of "provinciality"
which has been brought against Burns by one of the
most refined and penetrating of English critics, Matthew
Arnold, and partly countenanced by another, Mr. Ruskin.
Burns, says Arnold, lives in a world of Scotch drink,
Scotch religion, and Scotch manners. For Burns, says
Mr, Ruskin, the moon must rise over the Cumnock hills.
This criticism has been conclusively answered by Mr.
Nichol in his admirable essay on Burns. " Provincialism "
means a narrowness of thought and sympathy, leading a man
to take what is temporary and local for that which is eternal
and universal. No man was ever entirely free from error
of this kind ; but it is strange indeed to charge specially
with it the man whose sympathy embraced not merely
the human race, but the mouse, the daisy, the very devil
himself; and whose thought, remaining loyal to principles
of order, was at war with all the mere conventions of
his day, social, religious, and political. The secret of the
error is to be sought in some confusion of mind as to
the meaning of provincialism ; and the words of Mr. Ruskin
furnish the key. The charge that Burns must make the
sun glint over the moors beneath his eye, the moon rise
over the hills that bound his view — what is it but a
charge that he uses the concrete instead of the abstract,
the real and vivid in preference to the vague and un-
known? Would he have been greater if he had made

ROBERT BURNS. 1/9

the sun glitter on Soracte, or the moon rise over the
Alban Mount? Arnold's accusation rests on the same
fallacy. The atmosphere of Scotch drink, Scotch religion,
and Scotch manners, no more makes Dr. Hornbook and
Holy Willie, and Tam o' Shanter, and the glorious com-
pany of beggars provincial, than Falstafif's potations of
sack in an Eastcheap tavern make his humour local and
evanescent. The question in respect to Burns, as to
every poet, is, what is the quality of the jewel clasped in
the local setting? That the setting is local certainly
does not detract from its value.

As the use of a dialect naturally suggests provincialism,
it is not improbable that the language in which Burns
wrote had something to do with the charge thus brought
against him. Yet his employment of it is very far from
justifying the criticism. In regard to Burns's work
nothing needs more to be insisted upon than the
exquisite taste with which he varies the language,
because no important element of his poetic power has
been less appreciated. Mr. Ruskin, strangely enough in
view of the mistake into which he fell, pointed it out
years ago ; but general recognition of it has been
hindered by the common acceptance of the judgment
that Burns's English verse is much inferior to his Scotch.
This judgment is in the main sound ; but the inferiority
has been exaggerated, and the few conspicuous excep-
tions to its truth have been ignored. To Mary m
Heaven contains not one word of Scotch; nor does the
powerful and terrible Ode Sacred to the Memory of Mrs.
Oswald of Auchincruive ; and in the song Gloomy Night
the one exception is the now half-Anglicised "bonnie." A

1 80 SCO TTISH L IT ERA TURE.

number of other excellent poems or parts of poems might
be mentioned in which there is little or no Scotch. The
truth is, Burns modified his language to suit his theme,
and did it with inimitable tact and delicacy. He never
forgot — or perhaps he never remembered, but native taste
silently instructed him — that vernacular Scotch, though a
dialect with a literature, was still a dialect. It was there-
fore in its nature colloquial. The development it had
received was mainly such as fitted it to express the
feelings, wants, and aspirations of unsophisticated people.
Within its own limits it was admirable — strong, ex-
pressive, copious ; but a literary language has to dis-
charge many functions for which it was quite inadequate.
Science, philosophy, all the apparatus of learning had to
be sought outside its bounds. It was not even capable
of expressing equally all the emotions of the heart.
Though it contained words finely expressive of heroism
and patriotism, these were sentiments not calling for
daily utterance, and the vocabulary for them was con-
sequently by comparison meagre. Naturally so ; for the
union had merged the national life of Scotland in that
of England. Lowland Scotch was a speech which, while
it traced back its lineage to the same root as southern
English, had long developed on independent lines, but
had now ceased to do so. It was no longer self-
sufficing : the northern shoot had to be grafted on a
southern stock.

It is obvious that this state of matters offered a golden
opportunity to any poet capable of taking advantage of
it. Barnes and Tennyson have shown that even the
EngUsh dialects can be used with literary effect. But

ROBER T BURNS. 1 8 1

an English dialect is a mere patois ; Lowland Scotch
with its generations of literary cultivation stands on a
different level. One of the great merits of Burns is
that he perceived more clearly by far than any of his
predecessors at once the extent and the limits of its
capabilities. It is highly improbable that he could have
enunciated the principle by which he guided himself;
but his works prove that he was, whether consciously or
not, guided by a principle, Ramsay and Fergusson were
not. They wrote English poems as well as Scotch ;
but it is only now and then that we can detect a
reason for their choice of language. With Burns on the
contrary, as with Scott after him, it is only now and
then that we are bafifled. He did indeed sometimes write
English when he had better not have written at all ; but
when he was really inspired he glided almost unobserved
— that is, by any one to whom the Scotch presents no
difficulty — from one to the other.

From the nature of the case we should expect that
the poems most deeply concerned with the daily life of
the peasantry — their hopes and fears, their interests and
amusements — would contain the largest proportion of
Scotch words ; and a very brief examination shows that
they do. Wherever the feeling is peculiarly homely,
wherever it appeals specially to men in their everyday
moods, there the vernacular element is richest and least
restrained. Poems devoted to rural observances, like
Hallo7veen, or poems of broad humour, like Duncan Gray, are
Scotch. The familiar epistles and the satires are likewise
rich in the vernacular. Humour, wherever it enters, has
a powerful effect upon the diction of Burns. Perhaps

1 82 SCO TTISH LITER A TURE.

this is best seen by contrasting the vocabulary of the Hnes
To a Mouse with that of the lines To a Motinfain Daisy.
The lament for the ruin of the mouse's home has been
already noticed as touched with humour; it is also
deeply Scotch. The lines on the daisy, which are
destitute of the humorous element, present far fewer
difficulties to a person unfamiliar with the language.

In the same way, pity, tenderness, and playfulness are
all expressed in Scotch. We see this in the sympathetic
description of the cattle exposed to the storm in A
Winters Night, and in the more light and careless
songs. We see it perhaps best by contrast in the deeper
songs. Those whose keynote is tenderness, like Of a the
airts and Oh, wert thou in the cauld Mast, are Scotch ;
but To Mary in Heaven is pure English. Here the
idea of a dead love was felt by the poet to demand
utterance in language more aloof from common life.
And it is the same principle which prevails throughout.
Wherever the sentiment is unusually elevated or un-
usually far removed from his habitual tone of mind,
Burns's diction is English. It may be objected that the
sentiment of Burns is never more elevated than in Scots
wha hae, the language of which is Scotch. But it is not
Scotch in the sense in which The Holy Fair or the Address
to the Deil is Scotch. The words are all English — there is
only an occasional dialectical variation in spelling and pro-
nunciation. So too the song. Go fetch to me a fint of
wine, which is as much a song of heroism as of love,
shows Scotch near the vanishing point ; and in Mac-
phersoiis Farewell there is little of Scotch but the chorus.

The best evidence however of the sensitiveness of

ROBERT BURNS. 1 8 3

Burns to this principle of diction is to be found in
pieces which are in part pronouncedly Scotch, but which
vary with the changes of the subject. Ta77i 0^ Shanter
is conspicuously such a piece. In it, as was to be ex-
pected, Scotch prevails. The introduction, the descrip-
tion of the potations of Tarn, of the dance of the
witches, and of the wild chase, are all rich in dialect.
But the series of similes illustrating the fleeting character
of pleasure are pure English ; and so, except in pro-
nunciation, is the picture of the storm at its wildest: —

"Before him Doon pours all his floods;
The doubling storm rolls through the woods ;
The lightnings flash from pole to pole ;
Near and more near the thundei^s roll."

In 21ie Vision again the opening stanzas, and they are
the finest, are pure Scotch ; but the entrance of Coila
chastens the poet's language. Though she is a Scottish
muse he describes the glories of her mantle in verses
essentially English, and her own words are English too.
The same change of language is seen when we compare
the first half of The Cotter's Saturday Night with the
stanzas descriptive of the worship of the family and
the patriotic prayer which closes the poem. The division
is here marked with peculiar clearness. Even the
Cotter's preparations for worship are narrated in Scotch;
but from his utterance of " Let us worship God," the
diction changes. Illustrations might be multiplied ; but
very frequently the change betrays itself in a line, per-
haps even in a word. In such cases its character would
not be obvious in quotation ; but it reveals itself to

1 84 SCO TTISH LITER A TURE.

any one who is willing to read Burns with care and able
to read him with taste.

Of the many judgments which have been pronounced
upon Burns, three, of which two are in verse and one
in prose, have been specially distinguished for depth
and truth. The last is that of Carlyle. The other two
are respectively by Wordsworth and by Burns himself.
Wordsworth, in the beautiful stanzas At the Grave of Burns,
and in the Thoughts suggested the day following, contents
himself with setting his seal to the poet's judgment of
himself, which he declares to be all that is required
of the biographer. And still, after a hundred years, the
well-known lines of The Bard's Epitaph present the best
and justest view of the significance of his life : —

" Is there a whim-inspired fool,
Owre fast for thought, owre hot for rule,
Owre blate to seek, owre proud to snool.

Let him draw near ;
And owre this grassy heap sing dool,
And drap a tear.

"Is there a bard of rustic song,
Who, noteless, steals the crowds among,
That weekly this area throng,

O, pass not by !
But with a frater-feeling strong,

Here, heave a sigh.

"Is there a man, whose judgmen't clear
Can others teach the course to steer,
Yet runs, himself, life's mad career,

Wild as the wave?
Here pause — and, thro' the starting tear.

Survey this grave.

ROBER T B URNS. 1 8 5

"The poor inhabitant below
Was quick to learn, and wise to know,
And keenly felt the friendly glow,

And softer flame.
But thoughtless follies laid him low,

And stain'd his name.

"Reader, attend! Whether thy soul
Soars fancy's flights beyond the pole.
Or darkling grubs this earthly hole,

In low pursuit ;
Know, prudent, cautious self-control

Is wisdom's root."

CHAPTER XL

SIR WALTER SCOTT.

There is perhaps nothing more fortunate in the literary
history of Scotland than the opportune appearance of the
two greatest figures in its later annals. On the one hand,
the country had long been ripening for them; on the
other, the time was rapidly coming when the absorption
of Scottish life in the wider life of England would make
a distinctive treatment of northern subjects difficult, if not
impracticable. Burns and Scott would have been impossible
either much before or much after the time when they
appeared. At an earlier period they would have found
themselves cramped by the circumstances of the country ;
later, they would indeed have been free to work ; but
they would have found national characteristics in rapid
process of obliteration.

The connexion between the history of a nation and
its literature is nowhere more clearly shown than in the
case of Scotland; for there it is -not obscured, as it
generally is, by the very continuity of the literature. We
find in the life of the nation two great movements
separated by centuries ; and we find in its literature two
great periods, also wide apart. We conjecture, and an

S/R WALTER SCOTT. 1 8/

examination of the facts justifies the conjecture, that there
is here more than a coincidence. The older Scotland
was the outcome of the War of Independence ; and the
older Scottish literature, from Barbour's Bruce to The
Complaynt of Scotland and the lofty and sonorous Latin
verse of Buchanan, owes its distinctive features to that
great struggle. The later Scotland was created by the
Reformation and the union with England ; and the later
Scottish literature, whether in the way of agreement or
of opposition, shows deeply marked traces of the fact.
But in both cases the literary response to the historic
impulse was slow, just because in both cases the struggle
was for very life. In the later instance it did not come
fully till the close of the eighteenth and the beginning
of the nineteenth centuries. Burns and Scott are the
mature fruit of the teaching of Knox and of the accession
of the Stuarts to the English throne. Burns has filled the
popular imagination more than Scott ; but it is Scott who
is, in the most catholic sense, the representative of the
mind of his country. It was he who, it has been well
said, gave Scotland a citizenship in literature.

The facts of Scott's life need be recapitulated only in
the briefest fashion. They are enshrined in a biography
which has no superior in English, except Boswell's
Johnso7i.

Walter Scott, who was the son of a respectable Edin-
burgh lawyer, was born on 15th August, 1771. A series
of accidents threatened to cut him off in early childhood.
His first nurse proved to be ill of consumption, which, but
for the warning of a physician, she would probably have
communicated to her nursling. Another nurse was on the

1 8 8 SCO TTISH LITER A TURK.

point of murdering him. The malady which resulted in a
life-long lameness is hardly to be regretted, as it probably
spoiled an ordinary dragoon, and made a good poet and a
great novelist. Scott in after years described himself
with truth as "a rattle-sculled half-lawyer, half-sportsman,
through whose head a regiment of horse has been exer-
cising since he was five years old." ^ He was educated
in the manner usual at that time with Scotch boys of good
position, first at the High School, and afterwards at the
University of his native city; but owing to the uncertain
state of his health his attendance was irregular. The
intervals occasioned by illness were spent in desultory
reading, and in picking up the ballads and legends with
which his frequent residence with friends on the Border
made him familiar; but, notwithstanding his own declara-
tion that he had since " had too frequently reason to
repent that few ever read so much, and to so little pur-
pose," it can hardly be doubted that this unsystematic
self-education was more fruitful than any regular training
he could have received. In the year 1786, when he was
apprenticed to his father, the non-professional part of
Scott's education, so far as it depended upon schools and
colleges, came to an end. His service in his father's
office however was only preliminary to his adoption of
the higher walk of the profession of law. He was called
to the bar in 1792. It would be a great mistake to regard
Scott's studies in law as the perfunctory occupation of a
man whose best intellect was always given to other things.
He worked hard, and acquired not only, like his own
Jonathan Oldbuck, a mastery of the principles which

1 Letter to Miss Seward, Lockhart, ii. 59.

SIR WALTER SCOTT. 1 89

happened to excite his interest, but also an extensive
acquaintance with legal detail. It was owing not exclu-
sively to the fact that he had other tastes, but partly also
to accident, that he did not become a great lawyer. His
application to professional studies, besides furnishing him
with an exhaustless store of topics and illustrations, which
he used in his writings generally with discretion, though
at times perhaps to excess, gave his mind a discipline in
habits of patience, order, and system, to which probably
must be ascribed his extraordinary fertility.

At the time when Scott was called to the bar, and for
years afterwards, he looked upon law as the profession
by which he was to make his living and to rise in the
world. He early developed literary tastes ; but it was
long before he thought of making literature, to use his
own phrase, even his staff; and to the end of his life he
never consented to let it become his crutch. Looking
back however upon his early life it is easy to see that
much which appeared at the time trivial or accidental
was really a training of the best kind for what was to be
his true life-work. The scenery, the ballads, and the
legends of the Border, impressed upon him in his
grandfather's house at Sandy-Knowe and his aunt's at
Kelso, left deep and lasting marks on his mind. The
journeys which he had to undertake into the Highlands
in connexion with his father's business made him familiar
with scenes and characters of another description. But
it was in 1792, the year of his call to the bar, that
he may be said to have also received, unknown to him-
self, his call to literature. It was then that, in company
with Robert Shortreed, he made his first "raid" into

1 90 SCO TTISH LITER A TURE.

Liddesdale. The raid was repeated annually during
seven successive years ; and the fruit of these visits was
that intimate knowledge of the geography of the Border
glens, of the character of their inhabitants, and of the
relics of Border literature, so abundantly manifested in
his works, from the Border Minst?-elsy to Castle Dangerous.
A purpose grew out of these originally purposeless or
purely pleasurable excursions. Scott's mind was ready to
burst into blaze with any spark, and did indeed catch
fire at more than one point. He was at this time
studying German. The wild ballads of Burger caught his
fancy; and in 1796 he made his first appearance in
literature as a translator. Three years later followed the
more important venture of the translation of Goethe's
Goetz von Berlichingen. " Monk " Lewis was at this time
at the height of his fame; and Scott, on the strength of
his translations from Burger, was asked to contribute to
Tales of Wotider. Spenser, Ariosto, and Ossian, with a host
of others of the romantic school, were likewise objects of
his youthful study. All these elements of the literature of
romance met in a mind already sufficiently sympathetic ;
and Scott's private history during these years deepened
the impression they produced. His early and unsuccessful
passion for Miss Stuart Belches, the memory of which
clung to him till death, added that touch of the tragic
which gives dignity to romance. But the eye accustomed
to " the moonlight of romance " sometimes loses the
more valuable faculty of seeing objects in the light of
common day. Scott would probably in any case have
been saved from this misfortune by his strong sense and
vigorous character ; but he soon had the additional safe-

SIR WALTER SCOTT. 19I

guard of a subject to work upon which not only fed his
appetite for romance but demanded research and extensive
investigation. The subject was the ballad Hterature of the
Scottish Border. He had already, in boyhood, made
acquaintance with Percy's Reliqiies, a collection which
influenced him profoundly, not so much in the way of
forming a taste which had already a strong bias towards
popular poetry, as in giving it respectability and the
sanction of a scholarly name. It is very possible that, but
for the Reliques, The Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border
would never have been collected and written. About the
importance of the service Scott thus did to literature there
can be no doubt. His methods may in some respects be
challenged. He did not scruple to collate versions, nor
to add or amend j and consequently it is not always
possible to be sure that what he gives is the authentic
traditionary version. Nevertheless, the debt which the
student of ballad poetry owes to him is incalculable.
He was not only himself an untiring investigator both of
MSS. and of oral tradition, but he had the capacity of
rousing others to enthusiasm in the service. The Min-
strelsy is a collection which no man could have brought
together without many and willing assistants, and in
which few could have enlisted those assistants so success-
fully as Scott.

But besides the great intrinsic merit of the Minstrelsy
as a collection of ballads, it has a special significance in
the history of Scott. His task as editor not only con-
firmed his literary tastes, but also gave him an admirable
training for the original work of the future. It gave him
that knowledge, at once wide and minute, of Border life

1 92 SCO TTISH LITER A TURE.

and character which has never since been equalled,
hardly even rivalled. The original ballads which he
composed in imitation of the ancient models, either for
the Minstrelsy or independently, gave him the practice
in composition and versification which was desirable as a
preliminary to a bolder and longer flight. Not that
Scott's ballads are to be regarded as inferior in quality
to his more ambitious poems. On the contrary, from
Glenfinlas and the Eve of St. John and Cadyow Castle to
the ballad of Harlaiv, written when he had ceased to
write verse readily, many of his happiest pictures and
touches are to be found in ballads. It would be difficult
to point to anything finer of its kind than the picture in
Cadyoiv Castle of the murder of Regent Murray. Much
of what is most characteristic and best in Scott's verse
is exemplified in these few stanzas — his fire and rapidity
and vividness, his wealth of historical detail, his mastery
of proper names. And in these ballad compositions the
judgment of the author is as conspicuous as his genius.
Modern ballad writers have as a rule fallen into one of
two mistakes. They have either imitated slavishly the
ancient models, and proved once again the impossibility
of recalling unchanged a past form of art; or, by over-
. loading the simple structure of popular poetry with
modern sentiment and reflection, they have missed its
characteristic charm. Scott steered a middle course.
Master as he was to an unequalled degree of the diction
and turns of thought of the ballad writers, he made no
serious and sustained attempt to speak their language.
His aim was not to produce identical but similar effects;
and while he moulded his verse on the old popular poetry

SIR WALTER SCOTT. 193

he freely admitted the changes which time had made
necessary. None could play the part of an imitator
better than Scott when he chose ; but the following
frankly modern verses from Cadyow Castle may be taken
to represent his ballad work at the best : —

"Dark Morton, girt with many a spear,
Murder's foul minion, led the van ;
And clash'd their broadswords in the rear
The wild Macfarlanes' plaided clan.

" Glencairn and stout Parkhead were nigh,
Obsequious at their Regent's rein,
And haggard Lindsay's iron eye.
That saw fair Mary weep in vain.

'"Mid pennon'd spears, a steely grove,
Proud Murray's plumage floated high ;
Scarce could his trampling charger move,
So close the minions crowded nigh.

" From the rais'd vizor's shade, his eye.
Dark-rolling, glanced the ranks along,
And his steel truncheon, waved on high,
Seem'd marshalling the iron throng.

"But yet his sadden'd brow confess'd
A passing shade of doubt and awe ;
Some fiend was whispering in his breast,
' Beware of injured Bothwellhaugh ! '

"The death-shot parts — the charger springs —
Wild rises tumult's startling roar !
And Murray's plumy helmet rings —
Rings on the ground, to rise no more."

The success of the Minstrelsy gave Scott a position as
a man of letters, and the gradual failure of his hopes of
professional eminence helped to fix his thoughts upon

VOL. II. N

194 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

the new career opening before him. His appointment
in 1799 as Sheriff of Selkirkshire, as it furnished the
nucleus of an income, rendered him more careless of the
drudgery of the Parliament House \ and for some years
before his appointment in 1806 as one of the principal
Clerks of Session (without immediate emolument), he
may be regarded as having withdrawn from the com-
petitive work of his profession. In the meantime his
edition of the romance of Sir Tristrem, a number of
contributions to the Edinburgh Review, which had been
just recently started, and some minor productions, testi-
fied, as well as the Minstrelsy, to his literary activity.
Further, he had already in hand the poem which ulti-
mately received the name of The Lay of the Last
Minstrel. It was begun in the autumn of 1802, and was
originally intended to form part of the third volume of
the Mitistrelsy, but swelled to such a bulk as to require
separate publication. Three years passed before it ap-
peared. The enthusiasm with which it was received is
well known. The more sober judgment of posterity has
also been given ; and neither the merits nor the faults
of Scott are of such a recondite description that much
change need be expected in the critical verdict.

The story of the origin of the Lay has been told by
Scott himself. The first suggestion came from the
Countess of Dalkeith, who wanted a ballad on the
Border legend of Gilpin Horner. -The kick of a horse,
by confining Scott for a few days to his room, gave him
leisure to expand the ballad into the first canto of a
poem. The finished poem bears marks of the accidental
character of its origin. It is loosely constructed; and

SIR WALTER SCOTT. 195

the part of the Goblin Page in particular, though it has
found defenders, is generally, and probably with justice,
condemned as unworthy of the poem. In truth, the
whole of the supernatural element, with the exception of
the opening of the wizard's grave, is weak and ineffective.
As a restorer of romance, Scott was right in giving the
supernatural a place in his work ; and it may be pleaded
that the supernatural of popular poetry is, like Scott's, of
a somewhat materialistic and mundane character. But
the elves and fairies, the ghosts and corpse-lights of the
ballads produce in their proper context a very different
effect from Scott's mischievous page, his feeble mountain
spirit and river spirit, or the poor spells of the Ladye of
Branksome. It must be reiterated that the business of
a restorer is not to repeat what has been done before,
but to produce similar effects by adapting the old to
time and circumstance. Here for once Scott's tact has
forsaken him. He introduces changes indeed into the
old supernatural^no ballad-maker ever imagined such
spirits as the spirits of mountain and river — but they are
changes which enfeeble and emasculate.

But in the case of Scott, more than of most men, it
is unprofitable to dwell on shortcomings. His very excell-
ences are bound up with his defects. "I am sensible,"
he wrote long afterwards, " that if there be anything good
about my poetry or prose either, it is a hurried frankness
of composition, which pleases soldiers, sailors, and young
people of bold and active dispositions " ; and no wiser
word of criticism has ever been written upon him. But
this " hurried frankness " is hardly to be reconciled with
care of construction any more than with delicate beauties

1 96 SCO TTISH LITER A TURE.

of language. Scott learnt afterwards to avoid the more
obvious faults ; but in his first great effort he had not
the practice which partly dispenses with the need of care.
Notwithstanding great and obvious defects however, the
Lay was a contribution to the reviving poetry of romance
by far the most worthy, in its own line, that had yet
appeared. Tlie Ancietit Mariner, of much higher poetic
merit, is too dissimilar to come into comparison. Christ-
abel, from which Scott borrowed the idea of the measure,
but to which his indebtedness has been frequently ex-
aggerated, was still in MS. Scott was the first man of
real genius who successfully attempted romantic narrative ;
and the wide popularity he achieved was partly due to
priority in the field. It was still more due however to
merit. He was not only the first in his own peculiar
domain, but he remained the best. Byron in his early
narrative poems followed Scott's lead; and in the popular
judgment the scholar beat the master. But few of those
who most heartily admire Byron, and who most warmly
assert his superiority to Scott in poetry, will base his
reputation upon the narrative poems in which he follows
the author of the Lay. There is much tinsel in Byron's
narrative ; Scott's, whatever its defects otherwise, is always
genuine.

The Lay was remarkable, in the first place, for the energy
of the verse, and for the vividness and power with which
the author portrayed a wild and stirring life. But it proved
also that there had at last arisen a man who could trans-
late history into poetry. Nothing is finer in Scott, nothing
more characteristic, than the way in which he utilised the
facts of history to heighten the sentiment of his verse : —

SIR WALTER SCOTT, 197

"Full many a scutcheon and banner riven,
Shook in the cold night-wind of heaven,

Around the screened altar's pale ;
And there the dying lamps did burn.
Before thy low and lonely urn,
O gallant Chief of Otterbourne !

And thine, dark Knight of Liddesdale !
O fading honours of the dead !
O high ambition, lowly laid ! "

It is to passages like this ; or like that in which the
course of Teviot through ages of war to a time of peace
is contrasted with the darkening "tide of human time,"
or like the admirable picture of the aged minstrel, that
the mind turns in thinking of the Lay, more even than
to the ride of Deloraine.

But above all the Lay indicated the rise of a poet as
hostile as Wordsworth, though not as obtrusively so, to the
methods hitherto in vogue in poetry. It is a singular
fate which has made Scott, Tory in politics and wor-
shipper of the past, in spite of himself a revolutionist
in literature. It is true, he held no theory such as
Wordsworth propounded as to the character of the sub-
jects or the diction appropriate to poetry. On the
contrary, he was driven by a kind of intellectual necessity
to the choice of subjects remote from ordinary life; and
if his general style was simple, the simplicity was not
due to critical acquiescence in Wordsworth's doctrine.
There is in Scott, as Avell as in eighteenth century poetry,
a kind of conventionality; but the one is the conven-
tionality of romance, the other of classicism. Scott's
mosstroopers are not, nor were they intended to be, a
picture of the real Borderers of the sixteenth century.

1 98 SCO TTISH LITER A TURK.

It is only in such passages as that which describes the
approach of Watt TinUnn, where he is founding directly
on the ballads, that he verges upon realism. And it is
not merely in the circumstances with which he surrounds
his characters that Scott deviates from literal fact. Senti-
ment too is partly conventional. It is the sentiment of
chivalry grafted on the rude stock of Border manners.
Contrast with anything in Scott Wordsworth's Song at
the Feast of Brougham Castle. In the hands of Scott
noble blood would assert itself, and Clifford would act in
the spirit of the minstrel's song. Wordsworth, on the
contrary, accepts and, as it were, consecrates the fact that
training more than descent would form him. But this
element of conventionality does not bring Scott any
nearer to the models of the eighteenth century. In
subject, in measure, in treatment, in almost every essen-
tial, he is opposed to them. What he admires is what
they contemned. The "light-horseman sort of stanza,"
the careless force and headlong speed of style, the
battles and broils and sudden deaths, are all as foreign
to the school of Pope as it is possible to conceive.

The success of the Lay confirmed Scott in his literary
bent and embarked him upon a poetical career which
continued for about eight years. He was, it is true, during
those years much more than a writer of poems. Not to
speak of his professional duties, which were always con-
scientiously discharged, he wrote, articles and edited
works to an extraordinary extent. But even the vol-
uminous editions of Dryden and Swift, which would
have filled so much of most lives, are mere episodes in
that of Scott. Further, in the very year of the publica-

SIR WALTER SCOTT. 199

tion of the Lay, he was on the point of attempting a prose
romance ; but the change in the course of Scott's life was
postponed by the unfavourable opinion of the critical
friend to whom the early chapters of Waverley were
submitted. He was still so far from regarding poetry as
his business, that, in a letter to Ellis after the publication
of the Lay, he disclaims any intention of making another
serious effort in verse, "unless I should by some strange
accident reside so long in the Highlands, and make
myself master of their ancient manners, so as to paint
them with some degree of accuracy in a kind of com-
panion to the Minstrel Lay."^ A little later however
the great popularity of the Lay caused him to change
his mind. In November, 1806, he was already engaged
upon Marmion, and it appeared in February, 1808.

There has been a pretty general consensus of critical
opinion in favour of this poem as the best that Scott ever
wrote. The wonder is, not that this should be the common
judgment, but that there should have been so much of
hesitancy in pronouncing it. A very large number of those
who prefer Marmion nevertheless rank it but a little way
before the Lay. Jeffrey, the chief of contemporary critics,
declared it to be "rather clearer that it had greater faults
than that it had greater beauties," though he was inclined
to believe that it had both. As regards the faults, there
are two which are perhaps more conspicuous than any
that mark the Lay. These are the want of connexion
between the introductions to the cantos and the story
itself, and the stain upon the character of the central
figure. There is artistically no defence for the introductory

^ Lockhart, ii. 51.

200 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

epistles. They interrupt the flow of the narrative. They
are simply independent poems bound together in the same
volume with the Tale of Flodden Field. But just for this
reason the fault is of little consequence. It is easy to
read the introductions before or after the narrative ; and
then the story of Marmion stands out clear, distinct, and
continuous. The Lay contains no violation so flagrant of
the law of unity ; but the story of the Goblin Page is in
truth a far more serious blemish, because it affects the
very fabric of the poem.

The forgery by Marmion is not to be so lightly treated.
Byron, in the English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, justly
criticised the hero, "now forging scrolls, now foremost in
the fight." That Scott, of all men, with his lofty notions
of the influence of high descent and of chivalric ideals,
should have fallen into such an error, is astonishing.
There is no sufficient reason why the central character of
a work of art should not be at once a villain and the
technical hero ; but the villainy ought to be great and
bold, not mean and contemptible. Scott himself was
afterwards fully sensible of his error, but, having published
the poem, he determined to let it stand. This is one of
the instances, comparatively few in number, to which those
can point who have censured him for sacrificing his art
to his hurry to come before the public. The defence
which he made for himself in the epistle to Erskine pre-
fixed to canto iii., and which he repeated and amplified
in the course of his career as a novelist, was probably in
the main sound. The haste which would have been
ruinous to most men suited him. "The works and pas-
sages in which I have succeeded," says he in the intro-

5//? IV ALTER SCOTT. 20I

duction to The Fortunes of jV/ge/, "have uniformly been
written with the greatest rapidity ; and when I have seen
some of these placed in opposition with others, and com-
mended as more highly finished, I could appeal to pen
and standish, that the parts in which I have come feebly
off, were much the more laboured."

But when full allowance has been made for these
blemishes, and moreover for the fact that there is noth-
ing at all in Marmwn to set against the singularly felici-
tous conception of the aged minstrel, nor even against
the fine apostrophes put into his mouth at the opening
of some of the cantos, it nevertheless seems clear that
Marmion, so much more firmly knit, so much stronger
both in conception and execution, ought to rank above
the earlier poem. The narrative is powerful, rapid, and
absorbing. There is a good deal that is second rate,
parts even that are quite commonplace; but there are
more passages and longer passages of high merit than
are to be found anywhere else in Scott's poetry. The
canto on Flodden has been called "the finest battle-piece
since Homer," and probably deserves the praise. " There
are few men," it has been said, "who have not at some
time or other thought the worse of themselves that they
are not soldiers"; and no one perhaps of all who have
shared this feeling has read the last canto of Marmwn
without a quickened pulse and a heightened colour. The
"hurried frankness" is here exactly suited to the subject,
and it rises in dignity with the greatness of the theme.

But though the description of the battle is the longest,
it is by no means the only passage of high excellence
in Marviion. There is much admirable verse in the

202 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

second canto. The description of Edinburgh as seen
from Blackford Hill is justly celebrated as perhaps the
best poetical picture Scott ever drew ; and the character
of Sir David Lindsay is in another way only less admir-
able.

The introductory epistles, though out of place where
they stand, are, when viewed in their true light as inde-
pendent poems, admirable. They extend collectively to
about 1,500 hnes ; and probably nowhere in Scott will
there be found within an equal space so much that is
good mingled with so little dross. They have moreover
the peculiar interest which attaches to the autobio-
graphical fragments of genius ; an interest enhanced by
the fact, proved not only by the epistles themselves, but
by the fragment prefixed to Lockhart's biography, and by
the Journal recently published, that Scott could when he
wished be one of the most frank and charming of auto-
biographers. In the present case he speaks with all the
warmth and openness of intimacy and affection to six
of his dearest friends. These epistles in fact give him
a place in another style of poetry than that which he
commonly cultivated, a fact obscured only by their arbi-
trary association with Marmion.

From the publication of Marmioti Scott's career in
poetry was a downward one. Between the years 1810-15
he issued five poems of considerable length, three of
them on a scale and on a plan similar to those of the
two earlier tales ; the other two, T/ie Bridal of Triermain
and The Vision of Don Roderick, shorter and different
in style and purpose. After 181 5, with the unimportant
exception of Harold the Dauntless, Scott wrote no long

SIR WALTER SCOTT. 203

piece. He himself explained his abandonment of poetry
by reference to the superior popularity and success
of Byron; and doubtless that was the immediate cause
of the change in his literary career. But there was a
deeper cause at work. Scott seems to have exhausted
his poetic vein. It is difficult otherwise to understand
how it comes that, at a time when his mind ought to
have been, and when his own works in prose prove that
it was, at its best and brightest; when years had added
strength without yet withdrawing the glow and fire of
youth, his poetry should exhibit the indubitable marks
of decay. In The Lady of the Lake the decline was not
conspicuous to the author's contemporaries ; on the con-
trary, Jeffrey was inclined to prefer it to his former works ;
and the demand for it, surpassing that for either of its
predecessors, proved the public to be with him. The
reason doubtless was that, as a mere story, the Lady is
perhaps the best of Scott's poems. It excels also in
scenic interest. The meeting and blending of Lowlands
and Highlands, both in scenery and character, affords
unrivalled opportunities for the picturesque. It came
besides more nearly home to the popular imagination;
for, though the date of the story is earlier than that of
the Lay, the Highland clan system had so long survived
the mosstroopers, as well as the feudal knights of
Marmion, that the tale appealed to readers as something
comparatively close to their own experience. For these
reasons, among others, the Lady is to this day more often
referred to, and probably more often read, than any other
of Scott's poems. Nevertheless, its intrinsic merits are far
lower than those of Martnion, and considerably lower than

204 SCO TTISH LITER A TURE.

those of the Lay. The author is less master of his
subject than he is in his first poem; the subject itself is
less grand and massive than that of Marmion. Much,
too, is written ad captandum populum. Of the secret of
the king's identity Scott in his introduction of 1830 says:
"I relied on it with the same hope of producing effect
with which the Irish postboy is said to reserve a 'trot
for the avenue.' " Too much of this aiming at effect is
evident throughout the poem. Taine, in the course of
an extremely shallow and unjust criticism, makes unreality,
a desire for mere effect, his gravest charge against Scott.
*'He is in history, as he is at Abbotsford, bent on
arranging points of view and Gothic halls. The moon
will come in well there between the towers ; here is a
nicely placed breastplate, the ray of light which it throws
back is pleasant to see on these old hangings; suppose
we took out the feudal garments from the wardrobe and
invited the guests to a masquerade." ^ This criticism,
essentially untrue of Scott in general, finds more justifi-
cation in The Lady of the Lake than in any other of
his works. The love-story, always weak in Scott's poems,
but more conspicuously so in Ellen than in Clare or
Margaret; the stagey figure of the banished Douglas; the
Harper, faint reflection of the Last Minstrel; — all these
elements and more are meant to captivate the multitude.
There are fine scattered passages. The Chase is splen-
didly fresh and vigorous, the best part unquestionably of
the poem ; and the battle has a large share of the fire
and greatness which Scott never failed to impart to the
clash of men in mortal strife. But the highest point of
'^History of English Literature, translated by H. Van Laun, iii. 434.

SIR V/ ALTER SCOTT. 20 5

The Lady of the Lake is below the highest point of
Marmion.

The Lady of the Lake was the last poem by Scott that
was received with full popular favour. The decline in his
poetic power became manifest to ordinary readers in
Rokeby and The Lord of the Isles. The falling off in
popularity was not more than was justified by the differ-
ence in workmanship between these poems and J/«rww^z/
but it was a good deal more than the difference between
them and The Lady of the Lake warranted. Something
no doubt was due, as Scott always thought, to the fact
that in the interval had come the morning when Byron
"awoke and found himself famous." Still more perhaps
was due to the fact that the public ear had become
accustomed to, and perhaps a trifle weary of Scott's verse,
and more critical of its defects. Both these poems, like
their immediate predecessor, contain passages not unworthy
of the author at his best ; but both as a whole fail to
reach a high level. In The Lord of the Isles the description
of Bannockburn must be regarded as a companion picture
to Flodden; but, though good, is clearly inferior to that
magnificent battle piece. In Rokeby, which of all Scott's
poems has had least justice done to it — which some
might say is the only one that has not been overpraised
— the story is less attractive to the fancy ; but it is power-
fully told, and in the somewhat monotonous verse there
are at least a few great passages. Charles Reade has
happily quoted one of these as illustrative of that insight
into character which was afterwards displayed by the
novelist. When Bertram is meditating the murder of
Mortham, it is the memory of benefits he has conferred,

206 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

not of those he has received, that ahuost stays his
hand : —

" I heard, and thought how, side by side,
We two had turn'd the battle's tide,
In many a well-debated field,
Where Bertram's breast was Philip's shield.
I thought on Darien's deserts pale.
Where death bestrides the evening gale ;
How o'er my friend my cloak I threw,
And fenceless faced the deadly dew ;
I thought on Quariana's cliff,
Where, rescued from our foundering skiff.
Through the white breakers' wrath I bore
Exhausted Mortham to the shore ;
And when his side an arrow found,
I suck'd the Indian's venom'd wound.
These thoughts like torrents rush'd along.
To sweep away my purpose strong."

It is worthy of note that in Rokeby Scott gives the most
convincing proof of his lyrical power. There are a few
fine lyrics in the earlier poems, as for example the Coro-
nach in The Lady of the Lake ; but the songs of Rokeby
are on the whole superior to those of any of the other
poems. " Brignall banks are wild and fair " is a beautiful
piece ; and the following is more beautiful still : —

" ' A weary lot is thine, fair maid,

A weary lot is thine !
To pull the thorn thy brow to braid,

And press the rue for wine !
A lightsome eye, a soldier's mien,

A feather of the blue,
A doublet of the Lincoln green, —

No more of me you knew,
My love !

No more of me you knew.

SIR WALTER SCOTT. 20/

" ' This morn is merry June, I trow,

The rose is budding fain ;
But she shall bloom in winter's snow,

Ere we two meet again.'
He turn'd his charger as he spake,

Upon the river shore,
He gave his bridal reins a shake.

Said, ' Adieu for evermore,
My love !

And adieu for evermore.'"

The lyric was the only strain of poetry which Scott
retained in after years. He enriched his novels with
verse of a quality to prove to all capable of judging
that the Great Unknown was a poet of no mean order.
In these lyrics there is a fineness of touch hardly to
be expected of their author. In the songs of Meg
Merrilies, Twist ye, twine ye, and Wasted, weary,
wherefore stay ; in the Serenade Song and other scraps
of verse in The Pirate; in the lines on Time in The
Antiquary ; in many an original fragment prefixed to
his chapters when invention proved easier than recol-
lection ; and in occasional verses like the exquisite
lines beginning "The sun upon the Weirdlaw Hill,"
we have proof that Scott was, when he pleased, as much
master of the minute touch as of the broad bold strokes
of the painter of Flodden Field. It cannot however
be matter of regret that, after 1815, his verses were,
with the exception of Harold the Dauntless, only occasional.
He could never have stood in the first rank of poetry.
He had given the world all or nearly all he had to give
in the way of versified romance ; and, unknown to him-
self, a far greater career was on the point of opening to
him.

208 SCO TTISH LIT ERA TURK.

But before the change in his Hterary career took place
there had been a change in his life which demands
notice, because it is very intimately related to the
subsequent course of his writings. Those connexions
also had meanwhile been formed which governed his
life to its close.

Scott married in 1797. His first home was a modest
cottage at Lasswade. Thence he removed in 1804 to
Ashestiel, near Selkirk ; and strangely enough he made
the " flitting " unwillingly, in compliance with pressure
put upon him by the Lord Lieutenant of Selkirkshire,
that he might conform to a law requiring a sheriff
to reside at least four months in the year within
the bounds of his jurisdiction. But the change which
made him a resident in his own Borderland, the
home from infancy of his imagination, was too con-
genial to be long regarded as a disagreeable necessity.
Years afterwards he said to Washington Irving, "When
I have been for some time in the rich scenery about
Edinburgh, which is like ornamented garden land, I
begin to wish myself back again among my own honest
grey hills ; and if I did not see the heather, at least
once a year, / think I should die."'^ About the same
time, what between literary profits, professional income,
and the bequest of his uncle, Captain Robert Scott,
his worldly circumstances were very much improved.
Lockhart calculates that, independent of the proceeds
of literature and other uncertain sources of wealth,
Scott was now in receipt of a fixed income of about
;^iooo a year, to which was added in 1806 the pro-
^ Irving, quoted by Lockhart, iv. 92.

SIR WALTER SCOTT. 209

spect of an ultimate ^800 more from the Clerkship
of Session. With increase of means came naturally
enlarged notions of living ; but, what proved to be more
important than any increase of his own expenses, the
possession of his uncle's legacy, which Scott had
originally intended to invest in the purchase of land,
tempted him to embark in commercial enterprise. Some
years before an old schoolfellow, James Ballantyne, had
started business as a printer. He was encouraged and
assisted by Scott, and the business grew till it was too
large for his capital. He approached his old companion,
to whom he was already indebted, with a request for
another loan. Scott answered that he could not ad-
vance more by way of loan, but was willing to embark
a suitable amount of capital to purchase a third share
of the business. Thus was formed the connexion of
all others the most influential upon Scott's career, the
source of his darkest troubles, but the spring also of his
most strenuous and successful exertions. " Its effects,"
says Lockhart, " were in truth so mixed and balanced
during the vicissitudes of a long and vigorous career,
that I at this moment doubt whether it ought, on the
whole, to be considered with more of satisfaction or of
regret." This partnership was entered into in 1805. In
1809 Scott involved himself in commerce still further,
and most disastrously, by the establishment of a new
house, John Ballantyne & Co., booksellers, of which he
was also partner. The head of this firm, a brother of
James Ballantyne, was a man destitute alike of capital
and character; and nothing in Scott's career is more
surprising than his willingness to associate himself so

VOL. II. o

2 1 0 SCO TTISH LIT ERA TURK.

intimately with such a person. A quarrel with the great
Edinburgh publisher, Constable, tempted him to start
this second firm. It was unfortunate from the beginning;
managed as it was by John Ballantyne it could not be
otherwise. Scott himself was much to blame ; for no
small share of the embarrassments of the firm was due
to injudicious recommendations by him. But he had
deep reason to complain of the concealments and evasions
of his principal partner, who habitually neglected to make
timely provision for the calls which he knew or should
have known were impending upon them. The troubles
came to a crisis in 1813, when Scott had a foretaste of
the bitterness of the doom which awaited him at a later
day, and when a crash was only averted by the assist-
ance of the Duke of Buccleuch and of the once hostile
but now friendly house of Constable. This may be con-
sidered the end of the publishing house of Ballantyne ;
but the entanglements it had woven round him long
continued to fetter Scott.

During these same years Scott was gradually entering
upon the life by which he is himself best known. His first
purchase of land was made in 181 1. The farm between
Melrose and Selkirk which he bought was then known
by the name of the Clarty {i.e. Dirty) Hole ; but he re-
christened it from the neighbouring passage of the Tweed
by the now famous title of Abbotsford. In the following
year he removed from Ashestiel to. his new home; and
for many a day he was full of plans for building and for
the purchase and improvement of land, until by the union
of small properties whose owners he bought out, he created
an estate. At the same time, by the gradual enlargement

SIR WALTER SCOTT. 211

of his originally modest plans for building, he reared the
castle with which his name is more intimately associated
than perhaps the name of any other English man of letters
has ever been with the place in which he lived.

With Scott's efforts to consolidate the estate and build
the mansion of Abbotsford are connected some of the
chief problems regarding his character. Money was re-
quired to gratify these desires. It was required also in
connexion with his still unavowed commercial ventures.
The consequence is that money matters fill a large portion
of his life, and that his character has been in this point
much misread. There was a time, as Mr. Ruskin points
out, when good people looked upon Scott, Burns, and
Byron as the world, the flesh, and the devil. WorldUness
has thus been considered the keynote of his character ;
and he has been charged with a love of money, unworthy
in any man, but a hundred times unworthy in one so
gifted. It would be untrue to say that there is no founda-
tion for the charge. Lockhart, scrupulously fair, though
deeply attached to the memory of Scott, says, " I dare
not deny that he set more of his affections, during great
part of his life, upon worldly things, wealth among others,
than might have become such an intellect."^ But to regard
him as a mere vulgar money-lover is a profound mistake.
Scott's appetite for wealth was intimately connected with the
higher dreams of his imagination. He lived in the ideal
world of old romance so long that he was mastered by
the desire to realise his visions. He was to be the founder
of a family, and Abbotsford its seat. The almost un-
bounded hospitality exercised there for years was quite

1 vi. 98.

212 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

in keeping with the part which the owner aspired to
play. His ambition was no doubt a mistaken, but it was
far from a vulgar one. It was, on the contrary, peculiarly
fitted to his imaginative character. Abbotsford was a
" romance in stone and lime," in a sense not thought of
by the man who merely regards its architecture.

The removal from Ashestiel took place in 1812. Scott's
poetic period was already near its close. It has been
mentioned that he wrote the introductory chapters to
Waverley as early as 1805. He submitted those chapters
to William Erskine, the friend on whose critical judgment
he chiefly relied. The verdict was so unfavourable that
Scott was induced to drop the project ; but as Erskine
founded only on the portion which precedes the hero's
departure for Scotland, his condemnation of a work after-
wards so successful reflects no great discredit on his
literary taste. In 18 10 Scott appears to have turned
again to this old fragment ; for Lockhart prints a letter of
that year from James Ballantyne with reference to it.
Without pronouncing an absolute condemnation, Ballan-
tyne spoke so coldly that Scott once more threw it aside.
Fmally, in 18 13, in rummaging an old cabinet in search
of fishing tackle, he came upon the half-forgotten fragment,
and determined to finish it. The completed novel of
Waverley was published in 18 14. Its brilliant and imme-
diate success determined Scott's literary course for the rest
of his life. Waverley was the first of a great series of
novels which, taken all in all, are unparalleled in the annals
of English fiction. It is questionable whether any man
ever wrote so much upon whose time so many claims —
legal, social, and miscellaneous — were made and met ;

5/y? U^ ALTER SCOTT. 21 T,

though, if productiveness be measured merely by the
quantity written, smaller men have in this respect sur-
passed Scott. There have been others who in the judg-
ment of some, though this is more questionable, have
equalled and even excelled Scott's best work. But in the
combination of quantity with high quality, Scott stands
alone among the great writers of English fiction.

It has been customary to assert that Scott's best novels
were all produced within a few years of Waverley, and
that there is manifest afterwards a great falling off. Mr.
Ruskin, though he admits that Scott produced great work
afterwards, draws a sharp line at the severe illness from
which Scott suffered in 1819, and ranks six of the seven
novels written previous to that date above all else their
author ever produced. The six novels thus preferred
above the rest are — Waverley, Guy Mannering, The Anti-
quary, Old Mortality, Rob Roy, and Tlie Beart of Mid-
lothian. It would certainly be impossible to name among
Scott's subsequent works another half dozen fit to stand
beside these ; and the balance of critical opinion inclines
to finding three of the six — namely, Guy Mannering, The
Antiquary, and Old Mortality— X\\Q greatest of all his
writings. But for its feeble close The Heart of Midlothian
would have made a fourth, perhaps the greatest of all.
It is therefore true that the average of Scott's work in the
later period is lower than that of these opening years.
But to say nothing of the chivalric glow and elevation of
Jvanhoe, the mental decay which admitted of the produc-
tion of The Fortunes of Nigel and Quentin Durward was by
no means great ; and the classification which ranks these
as decidedly inferior to Rob Roy is open to serious ques-

2 1 4 SCO TTISH LITER A TURK.

tion. The truth seems to be, not that Scott's intellect
failed, but that he used up for his earlier fictions the
material best suited to his imagination. In later days he
attempted subjects, such as St. Ronaris Well., which had
little attraction for him; but down at least to 1828, when
The Fair Maid of Perth was published, though there were
occasional failures, there was nothing that seems really to
indicate decay. In Count Robert of Paris and Castle
Datigero^is it is painfully manifest.

For fourteen years therefore after the publication of
Waverley, not for five only, Scott continued to produce
work which deserves to be called great. In that period
he wrote considerably over twenty works of fiction, mostly
of three-volume length, though some few are comparatively
short. These novels exhibit a range of power for which
the poems hardly prepare the reader. The same qualities,
both merits and defects, that we find in the verse are
indeed present in the prose. One of the best criticisms
of Scott, the Letters of J. L. Adolphus, was written to prove
from internal evidence that the author of the poems
avowed by Scott and the then nameless author of the
Waverley Novels must be one and the same person ; and
the argument is as conclusive as an argument founded
upon internal evidence can well be. But the highest
qualities of the novels are without any proper parallel
in the poems. The characters are drawn at once with
bolder and subtler strokes than Scott ever displayed in
verse — than perhaps the conditions of narrative poetry
permitted.

Classifications of a man's works are often, perhaps as
a rule, of little value ; and if pushed beyond due limits

S/R WALTER SCOTT. 21 5

they may easily become worse than useless. It will never-
theless be convenient to range Scott's novels under different
heads. One of the most obvious lines of division is that
which separates the historical novels from those of which
the scene is laid in the writer's own day or very near it.
Another is the division between those of which the scene
is laid in Scotland, or better, of which the leading char-
acters are Scotch, and those which relate the adventures
of men and women of other countries.

A distinction is sometimes drawn between historical
novels and novels of manners. The term "historical
novel" may obviously be used in more senses than one.
It may denote a work of fiction the main incidents of
which are historical facts, and the actors all or chiefly
historical personages. In this sense a considerable number
of the plays of Shakespeare are historical dramas. He
no doubt has taken liberties with history ; but though
the sober historian, whose first business is with fact, would
not follow the dramatist, he would name and characterise
the same personages and narrate the same leading events.
If however any of Scott's novels be called historical, they
are not so in this sense. Waveriey, Old Mortality, Qttentin
Dunvard, Ivanhoe, Kenilworth, The Abbot, The Alonastery,
and others, number among their characters names known
to history, and bring before the reader events which have
actually happened. But in every case there is so great
an admixture of characters and incidents purely fictitious,
as essentially to modify the sense in which they are to be
called historical. The novels above named and others
may however be fairly looked upon as pictures of the
state of society in different ages and countries. As such

2l6 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

they fully satisfied Scott's contemporaries. They have
since been attacked as inaccurate and misleading. One
critic complains that costumes, scenery, externals alone
are exact ; another asserts that these very externals are
untrustworthy, and finds his enjoyment of the Waverley
Novels destroyed because the cut of the hero's coat is
not according to the highest fashion of his age. The
critic has not yet been found — at least since Shakes-
peare's fame was established beyond question — so sensi-
tive to violations of history as to be altogether alienated
by the description of Imogen's chamber in a British palace
about the beginning of the Christian era. All the charges
against Scott which have been mentioned are probably
true. Few men have a knowledge of history equal to
that of Scott; and his was not only a wide and general
knowledge, but one which descended at many points to
curiously minute detail. But he wrote rapidly, aimed at
producing broad effects, and trusted to a memory which,
though marvellously tenacious, no doubt frequently de-
ceived him. Besides, he invented freely where memory
failed to furnish him with material. It may then well be
that all the censures passed upon him for inaccuracy are
merited ; but they are unimportant.^

^The fallaciousness of this "minute criticism" could not be better
exposed than in a passage in Mr. Nichol's recently published mono-
graph on Carlyle : — "Applying this minute criticism to The French
Revolution, one reviewer has found that the author has given the
wrong number to a regiment : another esteemed scholar has dis-
covered that there are seven errors in the famous account of the
flight to Varennes, to wit : — the delay in the departure was due to
Bouille, not to the Queen ; she did not lose her way and so delay
the start ; Ste. Menehould is too big to be called a village ; on the
arrest, it was the Queen, not the King, who asked for hot water and

SIR WALTER SCOTT. 217

The objection of those who urge that language, senti-
ment, and characters are essentially modern, seems more
serious than the rather frivolous critical antiquarianism
which takes exception to the colour of a ribbon or the
shape of a bonnet ; and even those who make no preten-
sions to profound historical lore can easily see that,
whatever it is worth, the objection is, at least to a con-
siderable extent, true. In none of his works does Scott
succeed in presenting, it may be added that he never
seriously attempts to present, such a masterly reproduc-
tion of a past style as Thackeray's Esmond. The language
of Cedric the Saxon, of Wamba the jester, and of Gurth
the swineherd, is certainly not the language of Saxon
England in the reign of Coeur de Lion ; and if the
nobler ideals of the days of chivalry are given with spirit
and effect, its meaner side is almost entirely concealed.
Scott knew the fact as well as any of his critics. There
is fortunately one of his imaginative works which can be
brought into direct comparison with a work of research
describing the same district and period. The Lay of the
Last Minstrel gwt^ the poet's representation of the society
which Scott attempted to describe and illustrate as a
historian in his Border Minstrelsy. The difference proves
that, whether Scott was right or wrong in altering history

eggs ; the coach went rather faster than is stated ; and, above all,
infandutn ! it was not painted yellow, but green and black. This
criticism does not in any degree detract from the value of one of the
most vivid and substantially accurate narratives in the range of
European literature. Carlyle's object was to convey the soul of the
Revolution, not to register its upholstery. The annalist, be he dry-
asdust or gossip, is, in legal phrase, 'the devil' of the prose artist,
whose work makes almost as great a demand on the imaginative
faculty as that of the poet."

2 1 8 SCO TTISH LITER A TURE.

for the purposes of his art, he did so deliberately. "rf As
the intellectual heir of the old romancers he could not
well do otherwise. And unless art is to be resolved
into imitation, and bound down to copy fact, it is
hard to see wherein lies the great error. The his-
torical accuracy of his pictures of Graham of Claver-
house, his Louis XL, his Mary Queen of Scots, and even
his King James, may perhaps be challenged : it is more
important from the literary point of view to note that
they are real human beings. And it will not be easy
by any insistence upon errors of detail to shake the
conviction of the unsophisticated reader that Scott's re-
markable pictures of bygone ages are not only spirited
and striking, but in their broad outhnes true. The due
degree of praise and blame may not have been exactly
apportioned by him to the Covenanters and to their
opponents, or to the party of Queen Mary and the party
of the Reformers ; but a fair reading of contemporary
documents would probably convince most students, unless
they had prejudged the case, that there were in Scotland,
in the latter half of the seventeenth century, enthusiasts
capable of all that is ascribed to Burley, and preachers
whose style had a strong resemblance to that of the
ministers of Old Mortality. In Waverley again the dis-
orders and dissensions in the army of the Pretender, the
self-seeking of some of his followers and the disinterested
devotion of others, the general confusion and the fear,
are all faithful historical pictures.

Whether it can in any case be profitable to attempt
much more than Scott has accomplished may be questioned.
Until the present century it can hardly be said that

SM WALTER SCOTT. 219

even the desire existed to represent with fidelity and
accuracy a far distant age. Artists of various kinds did
indeed frequently lay the scene of their works in other
times and countries than their own ; but they reHed upon
the broad facts of human nature rather than upon the
comparatively minute differences of age and race. The
spirit of their work is shown in pictures like Leonardo's
" Last Supper," with its table appointments, not of the age
of Christ, but of the Renaissance ; or in the plays of
Shakespeare founded upon old British history, but repre-
senting manners and characters essentially Elizabethan.
The experience of the last two or three generations
seems to show that, however anachronistic these pictures may
be, the principle at the root of them is artistically sounder
than that which aims at perfect accuracy. For though
the accuracy is in itself highly desirable, in the pursuit
of it freedom and strength, which are much more impor-
tant, have generally been lost. Thackeray's Es?nond
stands out as the one conspicuous triumph of the stricter
historical school ; and its success is accountable in the
first place by the fact that the age chosen is compara-
tively near at hand, and secondly by the fact that the
grade of society represented is that which has left the
fullest documents. Scott himself was one of the first who
aimed at a greater degree of accuracy than had previously
contented the world ; but his practical good sense limited
the aim to the elimination of anachronisms likely to be
offensive to advancing knowledge. He found in history
a boundless store of material for his imagination ; but he
never allowed himself to be cramped by it.

Yet it was not mere caprice or accident which led

220 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

Scott to lay the scenes of most of 'his stories in the
past. Though in a few cases, conspicuously in Guy
Ma?inering and The Antiquary, he succeeds to admir-
ation with materials destitute of the charm of distance
and in no sense historical, it is plain that he is as a
rule happiest when he has the large background of
national life to work upon. With characteristic self-
depreciation he refers to his own style as " the big
bow-wow strain " ; and so much is true, that he neither
did nor probably could work well on the limited canvas
of domestic life. Even in his non-historical novels he
loves to introduce elements of excitement foreign to
common life — in Guy Mannering the smugglers and the
gipsies ; in The Antiquary the alarm of invasion, the
perilous adventure of the Mussel-craig, and the gloom
and tragedy of the Glenallan family. He is fond too
of a supernatural element, and contrives to find a place
for it, or for something which produces like effects, in
the conjuring of the Oxford student, the incantations of
Meg Merrilies, and the German tale translated by Miss
Wardour. Scott rightly felt that distance in time was
necessary to enable him to introduce such elements as
these with full effect into his tales. Whether the his-
torical details, or what is more important, the historical
portraits, are reliable or not, by laying his scene in the
past he attained artistic effects which could not be pro-
duced, or could not be indefinitely, repeated, in novels
describing contemporary manners.

The great strength of Scott lies, there can be little
doubt, in his pictures of Scottish life and character.
They are wonderfully varied and rich. He knew his

S/J^ WALTER SCOTT. 221

countrymen thoroughly ; and, especially in his portraiture
of the peasantry and lower ranks, he put his knowledge
into language of remarkable felicity. In a passage in
The Fortunes of Nigel he has himself explained the
secret of his success : — " For ourselves, we can assure
the reader — and perhaps if we have ever been able to
afford him amusement, it is owing in a great degree to
this cause — that we never found ourselves in company
with the stupidest of all possible companions in a post-
chaise, or with the most arrant cumber-corner that ever
occupied a place in the mail-coach, without finding, that
in the course of our conversation with him, we had some
ideas suggested to us, either grave or gay, or some in-
formation communicated in the course of our journey,
which we should have regretted not to have learned,
and which we should be sorry to have immediately for-
gotten." Lockhart's biography confirms and strengthens
what is here said. Scott was able to draw advantage
from everybody who came in contact with him ; but it
was because of the sympathy and kindness he first ex-
tended to them. The poacher, Tom Purdie, was con-
verted into his devoted servant. "Sir Walter," remarks
someone in Lockhart, "speaks to every man as if they were
blood-relations." ^ " He aye did as the lave did," says
Shortreed, " never made himself the great man, or took ony
airs in the company." - These qualities — perfect readiness
to throw himself into the life of any company, the power
of sympathy which it implied, and the personal charm
proved by his capacity to attract to himself men of the
most widely different character and social station — were
1 V. 322. 2 i. 198.

222 SCO TTISH LIT ERA TURK.

the means by which he accumulated much of the
material he used in his novels. His characters, though
not commonly copies of individuals, nearly all contain
features he had observed in persons whom he had en-
countered. Greater reserve on his part, or lack of
sympathy, would have prevented others from revealing
themselves to him, and impoverished the stores of his
observation.

It was his catholic gift of sympathy which enabled
Scott to break down the barrier of class distinctions,
and thus enriched his novels with those characters of
humble life which are on the whole the best of all he
has drawn. His pictures of the Scottish peasantry are
numerous, varied, almost invariably happy, and in many
cases of supreme excellence. Cuddie Headrigg, slow-
minded, almost stupid, faithful, brave though cautious,
and with some of that gift of dry humour so charac-
teristic of his class, is the Scotch ploughman to the life.
He is "no clear if he can pleugh ony place but the
Mains and Mucklewhame." He is aware of his own
intellectual inferiority to his mother Mause, yet he feels
that " for getting a service or getting forward in the
warld, he could somegate gar the wee pickle sense he
had gang muckle farther than hers, though she could
crack like ony minister o' them a'." His obtuseness is
partly assumed : " There's whiles convenience in looking
a wee stupid." His mother Mause is an admirable con-
trast, quick where her son is dull, an enthusiast, eager
that he should testify and preserve the marriage garment
unsullied, one in whom the fervid strain of her country's
blood has overpowered the caution and obscured the

SIR WALTER SCOTT. 223

shrewdness associated with its cooler side. She is how-
ever as true to life as her son. History has again and
again proved that a zeal which when stirred is too hot
to be discriminating, is as much a Scotch characteristic as
"canniness"; and it was his conviction of this fact, and
his consciousness of the danger of excess involved in it,
that made Scott shrink from the political experiments
which the Edinburgh Whigs of his day were never tired
of advocating.

The religion of Mause is heightened to enthusiasm by
the circumstances of the time, and the enthusiasm par-
takes, as it is apt to do, of absurdity ; but no picture of
the Scottish lower orders would be complete which did not
recognise as part of their permanent character a religion
quieter, but only needing the call of necessity to blaze
out as intense and strong as in the days of the Covenant.
In Davy Deans a zeal as warm as that of Mause, and
more stern, as becomes his sex, is just touched by post-
revolutionary calm : in his son-in-law, Reuben Butler, a
milder disposition and further lapse of time contribute
still more to soften it. But Scott was too true an artist
to confine the religion of his novels to those characters
in which it is the main ingredient. In the grand old
beggar, Edie Ochiltree, nothing is finer than the strain
of homely divinity with which he on occasion diversifies
and enriches his conversation. He has been a soldier,
and in youth has shared the wildness and excesses of his
profession ; but in the evening of his days serious thoughts
come as he wanders by the burnsides. We get some of
the results of his meditations, as well as some insight
into his wilder youth, in his conversation with Lovel in

224 SCO TTISH LITER A TURK.

the ruins of St. Ruth after the duel. " ' We will be
better here ' — said Edie, seating himself on the stone bench,
and stretching the lappet of his blue gown upon the spot,
when he motioned Lovel to sit down beside him — ' We
will be better here than doun below — the air's free and
mild, and the savour of the wall-flowers, and siccan shrubs
as grow on thae ruined wa's, is far mair refreshing than
the damp smell doun below yonder. They smell sweetest
by night-time thae flowers, and they're maist aye seen about
ruined buildings. Now, Maister Lovel, can ony o' you
scholars gie a gude reason for that?'

" Lovel replied in the negative.

" ' I am thinking,' resumed the beggar, ' that they'll be
like mony folks' gude gifts, that often seem maist gracious
in adversity — or maybe it's a parable, to teach us no
to slight them that are in the darkness of sin and the
decav of tribulation, since God sends odours to refresh
the mirkest hour, and flowers and pleasant bushes to
clothe the ruined buildings. And now I wad like a wise
man to tell me whether Heaven is maist pleased wi' the
sight we are looking upon — thae pleasant and quiet lang
streaks o' moonlight that are lying sae still on the floor
o' this auld kirk, and glancing through the great pillars
and stanchions o' the carved windows, and just dancing
like on the leaves o' the dark ivy as the breath o' wind
shakes it — I wonder whether this is mair pleasing to
Heaven than when it was lighted up wi' lamps, and
candles nae doubt, and roughies, and wi* the mirth and
the frankincent that they speak of in the Holy Scrip-
ture, and wi' organs assuredly, and men and women
singers, and sackbuts, and dulcimers, and a' instru-

Sm WALTER SCOTT. 225

ments o' music — I wonder if that was acceptable, or
whether it is of these grand parafle o' ceremonies that
holy writ says ' It is an abomination to me.' I am
thinking, Maister Lovel, if twa puir contrite spirits like

yours and mine fand grace to make our petition ' "

But here he was interrupted in a train of thought not
only beautiful in itself, but appropriate alike to the char-
acter and the situation. Scott was a man of too much
taste to dwell often upon such themes ; but he could use
them with effect when occasion called ; just as, also
upon occasion, he could reawaken the spirit and patriotism
of the old soldier, beggar though he was : — " ' Me no
muckle to fight for, sir?'" exclaims Edie when Oldbuck
suggests that his "stake in the country" is small — '"is
na there the country to fight for, and the burnsides that
I gang daundering beside, and the hearths o' the gude-
wives that gie me my bit bread, and the bits o' weans
that come toddling to play wi' me when I come about
a landward town? — De'il,' he continued, grasping his pike-
staff with great emphasis, 'an' I had as gude pith as I
hae gude-will, and a gude cause, I should gie some o'
them a day's kemping.'" To no one perhaps but to
Shakespeare or to Scott would it have occurred to make
the old beggar, shrewd, sly, humorous, "pawky" in
ordinary circumstances, the sharer of thoughts so solemn,
so lofty, and so just.

But the ordinary pitch in reference to this class of
characters is, as it ought to be, much lower than in the
passages quoted. Dry humour is the most notable feature
in the character of the Scottish peasantry ; and it is this
which is most prominent in Scott's stories. The humour

226 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

is sometimes the property of the character itself, as pre-
eminently in Edie Ochiltree, and partly in Cuddie Head-
rigg; sometimes it is the creation of the author out of
the circumstances in which he places his man, as in the
case of the stubborn, conceited, and dogmatical Richie
Moniplies, or of Dominie Sampson, who, innocent of all
wish to make mirth, is the occasion of much. The
fidelity and lofty disinterestedness of which the Scottish
poor are capable is amply acknowledged in Richie, Cuddie,
Caleb Balderstone and many others ; but so are meanness,
self-seeking, hypocrisy, and scant honesty in Andrew Fair-
service and Bryce Snailsfoot. Andrew is one of the best
of Scott's characters ; and though Bryce is not equal to
him, there are some exquisite touches in his portrait, such
as his rebuke of Mordaunt when he himself is on the
point of plundering the shipwrecked seaman's chest: —
" Dinna swear, sir ; dinna swear, sir — I will endure no
swearing in my presence ; and if you lay a finger on me,
that am taking the lawful spoil of the Egyptians, I will
give ye a lesson ye shall remember from this day to
Yule."

Scott was likewise master of the tragedy and pathos
of humble life. " Ay, ay," said he in the hearing of
Lockhart, speaking of Melrose, "if one could look into
the heart of that little cluster of cottages, no fear but
you would find materials enow for tragedy as well as
comedy. I undertake to say there is some real romance at
this moment going on down there, that, if it could have
justice done to it, would be well worth all the fiction
that was ever spun out of human brains." ^ It is this

^ Lockhart, v. 285.

SIR WALTER SCOTT. 227

full faith in a proposition to which many give only a
half assent, that all humanity is potentially present in
its lowliest as well as its highest specimen, which explains
Scott's thorough mastery of peasant life. His impressive
picture of the Mucklebackets is well known. The whole
story of the Deans family, one of the noblest ever told,
exhibits the same sympathy. Not quite so famous is
the passage of wild but pathetic beauty in which the
wandering Meg Merrilies refers to the ruins of her hut : —
" ' Do you see that blackit and broken end of a sheeling ? —
There my kettle boiled for forty years — there I bore twelve
buirdly sons and daughters — Where are they now? — Where
are the leaves that were on that auld ash-tree at Martin-
mas !— the west wind has made it bare — and I'm stripped
too. — Do you see that saugh tree? — it's but a blackened
rotten stump now — I've sat under it mony a bonnie summer
afternoon, when it hung its gay garlands ower the poppling
water. — I've sat there, and,' elevating her voice, * I've
held you on my knee, Henry Bertram, and sung ye sangs
of the auld barons and their bloody wars. — It will ne'er
be green again, and Meg Merrilies will never sing sangs
mair, be they blithe or sad. But ye'll no forget her? —
and ye'll gar big up the auld w-a's for her sake ? — and
let somebody live there that's ower gude to fear them of
another world. — For if ever the dead came back amang
the living, I'll be seen in this glen mony a night after
these crazed banes are in the mould."

The portraits of persons in a higher rank that are
strikingly excellent are less numerous; but there are
enough of them to show that Scott's power does not
desert him here. He is, it is true, happiest as a rule

228 SCO TTISH LITER A TURE.

where the character presents some outstanding peculiar-
ity. Such is the case with the antiquarianism of Old-
buck, the pedantic learning of the Baron of Bradwardine,
and the mental inconsequence of the far-descended but
weak-minded Godfrey Bertram, who ought to be placed
beside Mrs. Quickly. It is the case also with King
James of The Fortunes of Nigel, a portrait hardly less
eminent in merit than its original was in position. Most
of the details of his manner and character are taken from
contemporary documents ; but a comparison between the
documents in question and Scott's reproduction, and a
study of the way in which he has breathed into the dry
bones the breath of life, affords the most instructive
insight into the workings of creative genius. But there
are not wanting figures in the novels destitute of such
peculiarities, who nevertheless are as fine as almost any
of these. There are several in James's own family. The
Prince Charles of Waverley is a lively sketch ; his ances-
tress, Queen Mary, is depicted with equal felicity and
more elaboration. The Duke of Rothesay, son of Robert
III., quick-witted and high spirited, but shallow, de-
bauched, and reckless, is one of the finest characters
drawn in Scott's later years. Claverhouse, brave soldier
and lofty enthusiast, seeing and owning the resemblance
as well as the contrast between himself and the fanatic,
Balfour of Burley, is, whether true to history or not, a
perfect picture of a gentleman. Fergus Maclvor is a
kindred figure, but less elevated and more stained with
selfish ambition ; in which respect he is finely contrasted
with his enthusiastic and disinterested sister Flora. Scott
was far too true a gentleman himself to fail in painting

SIR IV ALTER SCOTT. 229

•

gentlemen. He shows a power much subtler than that
of giving to a person in his own rank of life the manners
and the sentiments which belong to it; his farmers,
peasants, and servants, though they are never gifted with
an impossible refinement of manner, are, except where the
object is to paint a mean or sordid character, gentlemen at
heart. One instance must suffice where many might be
chosen. In the tragic and pathetic chapter which records
the trial and condemnation ofVich Ian Vohr, Evan Dhu,
his faithful clansman and foster-brother, pledges himself
that if the judge will but pardon his chief, he himself
will go to the Highlands and bring six of the best
of the clan to suffer in his stead. A brutal laugh arises
in court at the extraordinary nature of the proposal. " The
judge checked this indecency, and Evan, looking sternly
around when the murmur abated, ' If the Saxon gentlemen
are laughing,' he said, ' because a poor man, such as me,
thinks my life, or the life of six of my degree, is worth
that of Vich Ian Vohr, it's like enough they may be very
right ; but if they laugh because they think I would not
keep my word, and come back to redeem him, I can
tell them they ken neither the heart of a Hielandman
nor the honour of a gentleman.' "

Scott's female characters are unquestionably less ex-
cellent than the male characters of his novels. The
heroines, like the heroes, are as a rule weak and uninter-
esting. Yet Rebecca of York is a striking exception ;
and Jeanie Deans is perhaps the noblest heroine in fiction
— poor, plain, commonplace in intellect, but more than
redeemed by loftiness of principle and ungrudging self-
devotion. Flora and Rose too, the contrasted heroines

230 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

of Waverley, have considerable merit. And where Scott
steps out of his own rank of hfe and feels himself un-
fettered by the conventionalities of social position, his
women are almost as good as his men. It is because
Jeanie Deans has not exactly the ordinary position of
the heroine that he succeeds so well with her. His
subordinate women are frequently admirable. Meg Dods
is the ideal keeper of an inn that is no " hottle." Her
professional sister, Mrs. M'Candlish, is also excellent.
Ailie Dinmont, Alison Wilson, and women of the humbler
ranks generally, are admirably drawn.

Characters like Meg Merrilies, Noma, and Madge
Wildfire, either wholly or partially insane, are frequently
portrayed by Scott. So are weird beings like Elspeth
Mucklebacket and the crones who dress the corpse in The
Bride of Lafintiermoor. The reason doubtless is that their
presence is a sort of gateway for the awful and the super-
natural, which can no longer be introduced by the older
device of witches. His treatment of insanity is worthy of
study. The three first named of these characters are all
disordered in intellect, but all differently. The minds of
Noma and of Madge are shaken through much the same
causes ; but the effect upon an intellect originally powerful
and a character originally elevated is very different from
that upon one " constitutionally unsettled by giddiness and
vanity." Noma, though of more importance in the action
of the novel, and though theatricaliy impressive, is much
less ably drawn than Madge, whose wild, disjointed volu-
bility, overweening vanity, glimmerings of remorse, and
brief moments of prudence, the signs of a "doubtful,
uncertain, and twilight sort of rationality," constitute to-

S/I? WALTER SCOTT. 231

gether a picture not easily surpassed. But Meg Merrilies
is a creation of higher genius still. Hers is the most
complex case of the three. Her derangement is not the
result of ordinary causes ; nor is it, like Madge's, inten-
sified by original weakness of mind ; it is partly the legacy
of a wild strain of blood ; partly the result of imposture
continued till it produced belief in the actor; partly the
outcome of a life of hardship, misfortune, and war with
society. At her first entrance, there is joviality as well as
wildness and enthusiasm in her character. It darkens
after the quarrel with the laird of Ellangowan ; and age,
the loss of her children, and long association with desperate
men do the rest. Almost to the end it remains doubtful
to onlookers how far she is playing a part, and how far the
victim of self-delusion. The veil is lifted to the reader in
the closing scenes of her life, her guidance of Bertram to
the cave and her deathbed.

I have said that one of the causes of Scott's liking for
such characters was probably that they gave a means of
introducing the awful and the supernatural. It is remark-
able that there is hardly any of his great poems or novels
which does not contain at least some hint of agencies
beyond the common laws of nature. Doubtless this is
partly to be explained by his studies in popular poetry,
where such agencies are common ; but it points also to a
tendency native to his mind. Mr. Hutton views Scott's
as a nature unusually free from superstition, and quotes,
in illustration of his iron nerve, the story how on one
occasion he found himself at an inn where there was no
bed unoccupied, except one which stood in a room in
which lay a corpse. He first satisfied himself that the

232 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

person had not died of any contagious disorder; then
took the other bed, lay down, and never, he says, had a
better night's sleep in his life. That the man who did
this had strong nerves, and that he could at will shake
himself free from those causeless terrors which beset many
who do not yield a moment's assent to the superstitions
which they seem to imply, requires no demonstration.
But it is by no means so clear that Scott's mind was
wholly uninfluenced by superstition. A careful reader of
the biography will probably come to the conclusion that
Lockhart was of a different opinion. The story of " Laird
Nippy," which Lockhart relates with its appropriate com-
ment by Scott before and after the bankruptcy which
brought long-foretold destruction on his family, is sug-
gestive. The Laidlaws of the neighbourhood of Ashestiel,
of whom " Laird Nippy " was one, " traced their descent,
in the ninth degree, to an ancestress who, in the days of
John Knox, fell into trouble from a suspicion of witch-
craft. In her time the Laidlaws were rich and prosperous,
and held rank among the best gentry of Tweeddale; but
in some evil hour, her husband, the head of his blood,
reproached her with her addiction to the black art, and
she, in her anger, cursed the name and lineage of Laidlaw.
Her only son, who stood by, implored her to revoke
the malediction ; but in vain. Next day, however, on the
renewal of his entreaties, she carried him with her into the
woods, made him slay a heifer, sacrificed it to the power
of evil in his presence, and then, collecting the ashes in
her apron, invited the youth to see her commit them to
the river. ' Follow them,' said she, ' from stream to pool
as long as they float visible, and as many streams as you

SIR WALTER SCOTT. 233

shall then have passed, for so many generations shall your
descendants prosper. After that they shall, like the rest
of the name, be poor, and take their part in my curse.'
The streams he counted, were nine ; ' and now,' Scott would
say, ' look round you in this country, and sure enough the
Laidlaws are one and all landless men, with the single
exception of Auld Nippy.' Many times had I heard both
him and William Laidlaw tell this story, before any.suspicion
got abroad that Nippy's wealth rested on insecure founda-
tions. Year after year, we never escorted a stranger by the
Peel, but I heard the tale ; — and at last it came with a
new conclusion ; — ' and now, think whatever we choose
of it, my good friend Nippy is a bankrupt.'"^ And
Lockhart remarks that Scott's air in telling the tale was,
"in spite of his endeavours to the contrary, as grave as
the usual aspect of Laird Nippy of the Peel."

The extreme frequency with which Scott blends with
his narrative visions, prophecies, and popular superstitions
may fairly lead us to suspect that they were not to his
mind absolutely empty things. The Master of Ravens-
wood's fate is foretold in an old rhyme ; a similar rhyme
foreshadows the restoration of the heir of Ellangowan to
his possessions ; a spectre warns Vich Ian Vohr of ap-
proaching destruction ; and the chief of Clan Alpine is
foredoomed by the prophecy of a Highland seer. Instances
might be multiplied indefinitely. It cannot of course be
supposed that Scott gave a serious assent to such super-
stitions ; but it would seem that he had a vague respect
for them, and that he dallied with them in imagination
till the boundary between belief and disbelief became

1 Lockhart, ii. 187.

2 34 SCO TTISH LIT ERA TURK.

obscured. He was far too imaginative not to feel that
"there are more things in heaven and earth than are
dreamt of in our philosophy"; and he pleased himself as
a poet and a poetic student of history, by leaving vague
and undefined his own attitude towards the legends which
he found inwoven with the records of fact. Where occa-
sion demanded he could sift them as well as any man ;
but he delighted rather to leave popular predictions and
Highland second-sight shrouded in a mist.

If this view of Scott's character be correct, he was not,
in his handling of the supernatural, merely giving the
rein to a lawless fancy, but endeavouring to express some
part of the poet's sense of the mystery that encompasses
life. His manner of doing this is instructive at once
with regard to his own mental constitution and to the
matter upon which he had nourished his mind. Scott is
nowhere the pure idealist. The agency by which marvels
are produced is never of that impalpable description which
we find, for example, in Coleridge. We cannot draw
the line between the powers of earth and the powers
above or under the earth in Christabel and The Aftcient
Marine}'; we can in Scott. He tried once at least to
create a being of the type of Ariel,

" Something betwixt heaven and hell,
Something that neither stood nor fell."

The White Lady of Avenel is a failure that teaches more
than success might have done. She is a failure, because
when a being who ought to be purely spiritual descends
to pranks and tricks, her charm is gone. The author's
mistake lay in his attempting to do what nature had not

S/R WALTER SCOTT. 235

granted him the power of doing. Given a sorcerer, a
soothsayer, a spirit just leaving the body, Scott can use
them with wonderful effect ; but let the connexion
between soul and body be once completely severed, his
power seems gone. The best specimen Scott has left of
this side of his mind is Wandering Willie's tale in Red-
gauntlet, a masterpiece of the weird and grotesque. Its
relation to popular superstition is manifest, but so is its
superiority to vulgar diablerie. It is at once beyond the
ordinary course of nature, and linked to it. Where these
conditions are fulfilled, Scott is generally successful in
producing the impression he desires to produce. Or he
can rouse similar feelings of awe by purely natural means,
by the picture of Meg Merrilies over the body of Brown,
or of Annie Winnie and Ailsie Gourlay over that of old
Ahce. But nowhere within the limits of Scott will be
found the charm of Shakespeare's Ariel, the majesty of
Milton's angels, or the vague suggestiveness of Coleridge's
dreamland.

Some may draw the inference that Scott was wanting
in delicacy and subtlety. This is true, but true only
within limits. His was not the power of the miniature
painter on ivory, nor was it that of the visionary
prophet. Healthy mind and healthy body were both
his ; and the best legacy he has left the world is the
permanent record of the wholesomeness and manliness
of his nature. Carlyle, hopelessly blind to the genius
of his great countryman, is fully sensible that he has
before him in Scott's works a man. The atmosphere of
those works is as fresh at this day as the air of his
own hills; and this perhaps is the best guarantee of their

236 SCO TTISH LITER A TURE.

permanence. Literary fashions change and pass. The
analytical school has had its day of power and influence.
It led to a temporary depreciation of work such as that
of Scott and Byron. But in the rise of the new school
of realism, in the revival of tales of adventure, as well
as in the judgments of recent critics, there are signs of
reaction ; and it seems probable that even Hawthorne,
the finest of the analytical school, in spite of his ex-
quisite style and admirable matter, will be forgotten
before the less elaborate but really more profound Scott.
For, apart from the temporary aberrations of human
judgment, there is nothing more sure to live than simple
truth and force.

Matthew Arnold quotes Wordsworth's remark about
Goethe: "Goethe's poetry was not inevitable enough."
Arnold adds: "The remark is striking and true; no line
in Goethe, as Goethe said himself, but its maker knew
well how it came there." Scott is in this respect like
the great German as little as he is like those poets
about whom probably Wordsworth was thinking, poets
who write in obedience to an overmastering impulse, the
SaLfiwv that speaks through their lips. He is master of
himself whether to begin or not; but once he has
started he must follow where his creations lead him in
defiance of preconceived plan, if any plan has been laid
down. "When," says he, in the introduction to T/ie
Fortunes of Nigel, "When I light on -such a character as
Bailie Jarvie, or Dalgetty, my imagination brightens, and
my conception becomes clearer at every step which I
make in his company, although it leads me many a
weary mile away from the regular road, and forces me

SIR WALTER SCOTT. 237

to leap hedge and ditch to get back into the route
again. If I resist the temptation, as you advise me, my
thoughts become prosy, flat, and dull ; I write painfully
to myself, and under a consciousness of flagging which
makes me flag still more; the sunshine with which fancy
had invested the incidents, departs from them, and leaves
everything dull and gloomy. I am no more the same
author, than the dog in a wheel, condemned to go round
and round for hours, is like the same dog merrily chas-
ing his own tail and gambolling in all the frolic of un-
restrained freedom."

This element of the inevitable is in part the cause of
that irregularity of construction for which Scott has been
justly censured. But it is also the spring of the living
virtue of his characters. They are no mere puppets whose
strings he pulls. They are beings whose development he
can partly guide, but whom he must also be at times
content to follow. And hence we find that Scott has a
subtlety of his own. He has instinctive fineness of touch
in the delineation of character. This shows itself some-
times in the language put into the mouth of the character,
which changes with unerring taste from Scotch to English
as the subject dictates. It appears also in the way in
which some apparently trifling hint, dropped casually, and
by the reader probably forgotten, is taken up again and
made to throw a light upon some actor in the novel.
Thus, in chapter xlii. of IVaverley, Fergus distresses the
good Bailie Macwheeble by recklessly flinging his purse,
on the eve of the battle of Prestonpans, into the apron
of Mrs. Flockhart, and making her his banker or executor
according as he may survive or die. Long afterwards, in

238 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

chapter Ixvi., the BaiUe reverts to this, in his eyes, most
prominent feature of the character of Fergus : — " ' I dinna
wish the young gentleman ill,' he said, ' but I hope that
they that hae got him will keep him, and no let him
back to this Hieland border to plague us wi' black-
mail, and a' manner o' violent, wrongous, and masterfu'
oppression and spoliation, both by himself and others of
his causing, sending, and hounding out; and he cotddna
tak care d the siller whe?i he had gotten it neither, but
Jiang it «' into yon idle queans lap at Edinburgh — but
light come light gane." Again, how admirably, towards
the end of Guy Mannering, light is thrown upon the
character of the usually humble Dominie Sampson : —

'"There is the great Colonel Mannering from the Eastern
Indies, who is a man of great erudition considering his
imperfect opportunities ; and there is, moreover, the great
advocate, Mr. Pleydell, who is also a man of great erudi-
tion, but who descendeth to trifles unbeseeming thereof;
and there is Mr. Andrew Dinmont, whom I do not
understand to have possession of much erudition, but
who, like the patriarchs of old, is cunning in that which
belongeth to flocks and herds. Lastly, there is even I
myself, whose opportunities of collecting erudition, as they
have been greater than those of the aforesaid valuable
persons, have not, if it becomes me to speak, been pre-
termitted by me, in so far as my poor faculties have
enabled me to profit by them.' ....

" The reader may observe that, upon this occasion,
Sampson was infinitely more profuse of words than he

had hitherto exhibited himself. And as

people seldom speak more than usual without exposing

SIR WALTER SCOTT. 239

themselves, he gave those whom he addressed plainly
to understand that while he deferred implicitly to the
opinions and commands, if they chose to impose them,
of almost everyone whom he met with, it was under an
internal conviction, that in the article of eru-di-ti-on, as
he usually pronounced the word, he was infinitely superior
to them all put together."

Critics have, almost without a dissenting voice, fixed
upon their healthiness as the most prominent and most
valuable quality of Scott's novels. There have been and
are considerable differences of opinion as to their intrinsic
worth ; but the verdict has been passed by general agree-
ment that, whether Scott be ranked as a writer high or
low, he is at least genuine. The next conspicuous merit
of the Waverley Novels is the excellence of their portraiture
of character. On this point there has been more dispute ;
and Carlyle leads the hostile critics with the assertion that
Scott is shallow in his delineation of character, working
from the skin inward and never getting to the heart. It
must suffice here to suggest that what Carlyle mistook
for shallowness was really a style and method diametri-
cally opposite to his own. Scott's results are reached
without wrestlings and strivings ; but it does not follow
that they are commonplace. Among the elements which
unite to give Scott's characters their charm, humour is
perhaps the chief. It is the presence of this quality in
greater measure which stamps the novels whose scene is
laid in Scotland, or whose characters are drawn from it,
with the mark of decisive superiority. Vigour of narrative
is likewise characteristic of the Waverley Novels. In the
opening of his works Scott often moves slowly, because

240 SCO TTISH LIT ERA TURK.

he is full of other interests besides that of the mere story ;
but when he sees fit no one can be more rapid and
energetic than he. Ivanhoe, up to the siege of Torquil-
stone, is a model of narrative prose — the best specimen of
this side of his work which Scott has left. Brilliancy and
truth of description, variety of situation as well as of char-
acter, and that breadth of wisdom, suggestive rather of the
statesman than of the novelist, with which he discourses on
any subject raised by the course of the story,^ may also
be noted as features of his work. In other respects merit
is more mingled with defect. Rapidity of execution results
in a style generally simple, natural, and free, but sometimes
clumsy and slovenly. It is never laboured, rarely draws
attention to itself for its excellence, but occasionally does
so for its defects. Rapidity also explains some faults of
construction; but though such faults are not absent, they
are on the whole less frequent and prominent than might
be expected. A sufficient defence has already been given
of this rapidity — it suited the writer better than a more
painstaking method of work, and better brought out his
strength. To it is due largely the sense of easy mastery
with which the novels impress the reader. It is, in short,
part of that healthiness which is the first and greatest
charm of the Waverley Novels.

The miscellaneous writings. The Tales of a Grandfather,
The Life of Napoleon, and the numerous contributions to
periodical literature, must be passed over in silence. But
well known as his life is, the facts of Scott's later years
cannot be left unnoticed.

^ See the passage about the gipsies quoted by Bagehot from Guy
Mannering, and his remarks upon it.

SIR WALTER SCOTT. 241

The novels were not only a source of delight to
readers, they were at the same time a source of wealth
to their author. Scott for many years went on adding
field to field, completing and perfecting his "romance in
stone and lime," and living in Abbotsford the life of
boundless hospitality which his imagination delighted to
consider the duty of his position as founder and head
of a new family. He was during those years as happy, and
as deservedly happy, as the chequered course of human
life will permit any one to be. But long before that time
he had woven round himself toils from which escape was
impossible. His partnership with Ballantyne involved
him in the crisis which brought down the houses of Hurst,
Robinson & Co. in London, and Constable in Edin-
burgh, and with them that of James Ballantyne & Co.
There had been, in 1825, various premonitory mutterings
of the tempest; but by the end of the year calm seemed
assured; and Scott wrote the spirited song of Bo7inie
Dundee under "the same impulse which makes birds sing
when the storm has blown over."^ In the beginning of
the following year it burst in good earnest. Scott was
ruined. He was personally liable for ^117,000, great
part of it represented by "accommodation" bills for
which no consideration had ever been received. He had
been deeply wrong. He had been rash, even reckless,
in his manner of trading. He had allowed this system
of interchange of bills to go on unchecked ; he had even
stimulated it and in a manner made it necessary by
indulgence in the pernicious habit of anticipating profits
and drawing upon the future. His errors are patent;

^ Journal^ December 22, 1825.
VOL. II. Q

242 SCO TTISH LITER A TURE.

but splendidly he redeemed them. He could of course, like
any other debtor, have shielded himself under the law of
bankruptcy. He declined to do so. He asked of the
creditors time, and with time he was sanguine of clearing
ofif all the crushing burden laid upon him. The "Great
Unknown," now become, in his own phrase, " the Too-well
Known," spent the remainder of his life in a dauntless
struggle to discharge his debts. He shortened his days
in the effort, and died with his end unaccomplished; but
between insurance, copyrights, and the generous exer-
tions of Lockhart, the whole was in the end cleared off,
and in 1847 the last creditor of Sir Walter Scott was
paid in full.

In November, 1825, he had begun 2. Joiirjial, suggested
by that of Byron. It is freely quoted by Lockhart and
has recently been published in extenso. This should
not be neglected in a criticism of Scott's works; for
between it and the fragment of autobiography he
adds to his gallery of portraits the noblest figure of
all, himself. Lockhart's almost matchless Life supple-
ments them ; and together they place Scott alongside
of Johnson as one of the two best depicted figures
in our literature. The Journal begins in prosperity ;
soon the clouds gather ; the crash comes ; and then it
leads us through gloom and disaster — shattered fortunes,
dying wife, failing strength, overworn brain ; but manly
resolution and unswerving sense of duty are stronger
than all. There are some passages of touching beauty ;
the whole is a most mournful tragedy. At the close
the only words possible seem to be those of Kent over
Lear : —

SIR WALTER SCOTT. 243

" O, let him pass ! he hates him much
That would upon the rack of this tough world
Stretch him out longer."

The virtues of Scott were many, his faults few and
venial. Those who were dependent upon him loved
him with a devotion which his care for them had well
deserved. His servants were all ready to follow him
in adversity as in prosperity ; some whom he felt bound
to dismiss would take no discharge ; they served not
for money but for affection. About a poor hunch-
backed tailor, William Goodfellow, Lockhart tells a story
for the moral credit of which it might be well worth
while to barter the glory of the Waverley Novels. "Not
long after he had completed his work at Abbotsford,
little Goodfellow fell sick, and as his cabin was near
Chiefswood, I had many opportunities of observing the
Sheriffs kind attention to him in his affliction. I can
never forget, in particular, the evening on which the
poor tailor died. When Scott entered the hovel he
found every thing silent, and inferred from the looks of
the good women in attendance that their patient had
fallen asleep, and that they feared his sleep was the
final one. He murmured some syllables of kind regret ; —
at the sound of his voice the dying tailor unclosed his
eyes, and eagerly and wistfully sat up, clasping his hands
with an expression of rapturous gratefulness and devo-
tion, that, in the midst of deformity, disease, pain, and
wretchedness, was at once beautiful and sublime. He
cried with a loud voice, 'the Lord bless and reward
you,' and expired with the effort."

The profound sadness of Scott's declining years seems

244 SCOTTISH LITERATURE.

a terrible retribution for faults so trivial; yet on full
consideration, now that he has gone to his rest, it is
difficult to wish the facts other than they were. He
was great in his works, great in his prosperous life, but
greatest of all in his closing years of adversity. Lock-
hart finely quotes, " The glory dies not, and the grief is
past."

GLOSSARY.

A', all.

Aboon or abune, above.

Ae, one.

Aik, oak.

Ain, own.

Airt, quarter, ■point of the compass.

Aith, oath.

A-jee, to one side.

Ane, otie.

Anis, ones.

Areist, k^al arrestment.

Auld, old.

Awin, own.

Bairn, child,

Baith, both.

Bane, bone.

Bang, rush.

Bannock, a kind of oat-cake.

Bauckie-bird, bat.

Bauld, bold.

Baw, ball.

Bedeen, quickly.

Beet, add fuel to.

Begouth, began.

Beik, -warm.

Ben, the inner room.

Bent, a kind of coarse grass, an open

field.
Berne, man.
Big, build.
Bing, a heap, a boarded enclosure

for holding grain.
Birneist, burnished.
Bis, hiss like hot iroti plunged into

water.
Black-a-vic'd, black visaged.
Black-mail, a tax paid to freebooters

to secure property from pillage.
Blads, pieces, fragments.
Blashy, deluging.

Blate, bashful.

Blattering, rattling.

Blaw, blow.

Blink, glance.

Blude or bluid, blood.

Bonny, pretty.

Bot or but, without, only.

Bourd, jest.

Bousteous, boisterous.

Brae, hill.

Braid, broad.

Brak or brake, broke.

Branglit, shook, menaced.

Braw, pretty.

Brawnd, brawn.

Breeks, breeches.

Brunstane, brimstone.

Bulk, book.

Buir or bure, bore.

Buirdly, sturdy.

Busk, adorn.

Buss, bush.

But, see bot.

But, the outer room.

Byast, biased.

Ca', call, drive.

Caird, tinker.

Caller or cavvler, fresh.

Canny, quiet.

Canty, merry.

Carl, fellow.

Cauld, cold.

Causey, causeway, street.

Channerin', fretting, grumbling.

Channoun, canon.

Chekin, chicken.

Clachan, a small village.

Claith, cloth.

Cleugh, a hollow between steep banks.

Cleir, clear, bright.

246

GLOSSARY.

Clok, beetle.

Coppare, cupbearer.

Cour, cower.

Couthie, friendly.

Crack, talk.

Crakt, pealed.

Cramasie, crimson.

Cranreuch, hoar-frost.

Crap, crop.

Cray, cry.

Crock, an old ewe past bearing.

Cubiculare, groomoftlie bed-chamber.

Culum, tail.

Cure, care.

Cutty, short.

Daft, mad.

Dauis, dawns.

Daundering, sauntering.

Deid, dead, death.

Deil, devil.

Deme, dame.

Ding, beat.

Dinna, do not.

Dinsome, noisy.

Dissagyist, disgidsed.

Divot, turf.

Divot seat, a seat at the door of a

cottage made of '^ divots. "
Dool, sorrow.
Dousser, more sedate.
Dowie, melancholy.
Draif, drove.
Dreip, drip.
Drib, drop.
Droich, a dwarf.
Ducht, could.
Dule, sorrow.
Dwyning, pining, fading.

Een, eyes.

Eerie or eirie, filled with supersti-
tious fear, fitted to produce such
fear.

Elrich, ghastly, preternatural.

Ewe-buchtin', milking the e7i'cs in
the pen.

Fa',////, befall.
Fae, foe.
Fand, found.
Fash, trouble.
Fasheous, troublesome.
Fear, fair, smooth.
Fecfull, pithy.
Feckless, feeble.

Feckly, mostly.

Feggs, a paltry oath, faith.

F&wsXxG., fierily.

Ferly, marvel.

Fens, fierce.

F\ae,fiay.

F\a.VLc\\X.,fiash.

F\ee,fiy.

Fleetching, flattering.

F\axe, floor.

Flyting, scolding.

Fou or fow, full, tipsy.

Fouth, abundance.

Fowk, folk.

Frae, from.

Frak, hurry.

Fu', full.

Fuffe, puff.

Fyl'd, soiled.

Gaberlunzie, a wallet ; hence, the
beggar ivho carries the wallet.

Gae, go, gave.

Gaist or ghaist, ghost.

Gane, gone.

Gang, go.

Gappocks, gobbets.

Gar, cause.

Garnassing, garnishing.

Gash, sagacious, talkative.

Gate, zuay. Tak' the gate, begin to
go about.

Gaun, going.

Geyre, gear.

Geyzed, leaky for want of moisture.

Gie. give.

Gif, if

Gin, if.

Girn, grin.

Gled, kite.

Glint, glance.

Glower, stare.

Goud, gold.

Govvan, daisy.

Gowdspink, goldfinch.

Gowfer, golfer.

Greislie, grisly.

Grew, shiver.

Grit, great.

Gruntill, snout.

Grymin', sprinkling,

Gud or gudis, goods.

Gude or guid, good.

Gudewife, f?iistress of a house.

Gudlie, goodly.

Gurly, angry, stoj-my.

GLOSSARY.

247

Had, hold.

Hae, have.

Ha'-house, mansion.

Haiss, has, have.

Haith, faith (an oath).

Happit, covered.

Hard, heard.

Hauver-meal, oatrneal.

Hecht, promised.

Heeze, lift, aid.

Heich, high.

Held, head.

Herry, harry, rob.

Heugh, crag.

Heyghlie, highly.

Hing, hang.

Hint, behind.

Hip, miss.

Hirplin, moving crazily, creeping.

Hoill or hole, lohole.

Hoist, cough.

Hulie, slojoly, gently.

Ilk or ilka, each, every.
Ingan, onion.
Ingle, yfr^.
Ither, other.

Jimp, slender.
Jo, sweetheart.

Kail, colewort.

Kail-yard, eabbage-garden.

Kaim or kame, comb.

Keek, peep.

Kemping, striving.

Ken, knozv.

Kep, catch.

Kimmer, gossip.

K.r\ak,gibe.

Know, knoll.

Ky, cows.

Kyste, chest, coffin.

Laigh, low.

Laip, lap.

Laith, loth.

Landward, rustic.

Landward town, /arm buildings re-
mote frotn others.

Lat, let.

Late-wake, another form of ' lyke-
zuake.''

Lave, rest, remainder.

Laverock, lark.

Leeze me, dear is to me. Leeze me

on, tny blessing on,
Leven, lawn.
Lift, sky.

Lightly, slight in love.
Lilting, singing cheerfully.
Lintie, linnet.
Lo'e, love.

Loun, a worthless fellow.
Loup, leap.
Lowisit, unyoked.
Lufe, love.
Lyart, grizzled.
Lyeff, life.
Lykewake, the watching of a dead

body.
Lyre, flesh.

Mair, more.

Maist, most, almost.

Man or maun, must.

Mane, 7noan.

Maut, malt.

Mearelie, merrily.

Meikle, big.

Men is, esteem, make known.

Micht, might.

Mirk, dark.

Mishanter, misfortune.

Misthryue, thrive badly.

Molde, ground, inould.

Mon, must. '

Moul', mould.

Muckle, large, much.

Mumper, mumbler, -mincing speaker.

Mutchkin,//^/.

Mydding, dunghill.

Na, not.
Nae, 710.
Nare, nor.
Nay-says, refusals.
Neep, tur7iip.
Neist or niest, next.
Nicht, night.
Nippy, ?iiggard.
Nocht, not, nought.
Nuk, 7iook.

O'ercome, overplus.

Ony, any.

Or, ere.

Orrow, spare.

Owr, ower, or owre, over, too.

Oxtar, ar7n-pit.

248

GLOSSARY.

Papyngo, parrot.

Parafle, embroidery, ostentatious

display.
Pawky, artful.
Peltrie, trash.
Pentit, painted.
Pertyde, farted.
Pickle, a small quantity.
Plainstanes, pavement.
Plouckie, covered luitli pimples.
Plwch, plough.
Poin'd, distrained, seized,
Poortith, poverty.
Poppling, bubbling.
Pou, pull.

Powsodie, sheep' s-head brcth,
Prievin', proving, tasting.
Puir, poor.
Pyne, pain.

Quat, quit, let go.

Quean, zi'cncli.

Queir, choir.

Quha, who.

Quhare, where.

Quharefor, zuhcrefor,

Quhat, -what.

Quhen, when.

Quhile, until, while, so long as.

Quhilk, which.

Quhowbeit, howbeit.

Quhyte, white. •

Quo' or quod, quoth.

Raise, rose.
Rang, reigned.
Reesting, drying.
Reid, red.
Reik, smoke.
Richt, right.
Rift, belch.
Rin, run.
Ripe, poke.
Rock, distaff.
Rokelay, cloak.
Roughies, torches.
Row, roll.
Rowth, plenty.
Ruch, rough.
Rude, cross.
Rung, staff.
Rycht, right.
Ryue, burst.

Sackless, innocent.
Sae, so.

Saft, soft.

Sair, sore.

Scar, cliff.

Schaip, tnake go.

Scherwe, serve.

Schiep, sheep.

Schiftis, shifts.

Schowt, shout.

Scour, draught.

Scud, hurry on.

Seally, silly, weak.

Seasit, legally conveyed.

Seware, steward.

Sey, try, prove.

Sey-piece, a piece of work executed

as a proof of skill.
Shaw, a wood in a holloiv.
Sheugh, ditch.
Shogle, dangle.
Shynand, shining.
Siccan, such.
Siller, Silver, money.
Skaith, harm.
Sklent, slope.
Skyte, a smart blow.
Slap, a pass.
Sled, slid.

Sleekit, smooth, cunning.
Sma', small.
Sned, to lop off.
Snod, neat.

Snool, to submit tamely.
Somegate, somehow.
Sowld, should.
Spat, spot.
Spaul, shoulder.
Spier, inquire.
Sponk or spunk, spark.
Spraing, tint.
Spune, spoon.

Spurtill, a slick to stir porridge.
Starn, star.
Staw, stole.
Steek, to shut.
Steird, drove.
Stottis, oxen.
Stoup, a f agon, a prop.
Streikit, stretched, laid out [of a

dead body).
Stryckis, strikes.
Sulde, should.
Syde, long.
Syke, rill.
Syne, next, then.

Taiken, token.

GLOSSARY.

249

Takkand, takln^^.

Tantonie bell, St. Antony's bell.

Tappit hen, crested hen, a measure
containing three quarts.

Targatting, a sort of embroidery.

Tee, tlie nodule of earth from zuhich
the ball is driven in golf.

Teind, tithe.

Tent, care.

Thae, these.

Thesaurare, treasurer.

Thocht, though, thought.

Thoom, thumb,

Thow, thaw.

Thrang, busy, crozuded.

Thraw, twist.

Thud, a loud intermittent noise.

Tine, to be lost.

Tippenny, tjuo-penny.

Toddlin', tottering.

Tocher, dowry.

Tow, to lower by a. rope.

Trews, trousers.

Tuke, took.

Tulchan, a calf's skin stuffed with
straw, used to induce a cow to
give her milk : hence applied to
bishops who held the title of the
office, but were only the means of
getting the temporalities for some
lay person.

Tyll, to.

Tynt, lost.

Unco, ivondcrful.
Unsell, 'worthless.
Usit, used, accustomed.

Vissart, visor.
Vogie, cheerful.

Wa', luall.
Wae, woe.
Wait, k?tozu.

Wallop, to move quickly and clum-
sily.
Waly, alas.
Warstle, strife.
Wat, 2uet.
Waukin', awake.
Wean, child.
Wear or weir, -war.
Wee, little.
Weet, to make wet.
Weill, well.
Whang, slice.
Whiles, sometimes.
Whin, gorse.
Whisht, hush.
Whop, "whip, snatch.
Wicht, man, person.
Wiltu, 7uilt thou.
Wow, woo.

Wrack or wrak, wreck, trash.
Wud, mad.
Wyit or wyte, blame.
Wympler, lock of hair.
Wysing, directing cunningly.

Yird, earth.
Ynewcht, enough.
Yowes, ewes.

Zit, yet.

INDEX.

Adolphus, J. L., ii., 214.

Albania, ii., 48, 94 scq^j.

Alexander, Sir William, i., 132, 134;
Aurora, 135; Monarchicke Tra-
gedies, 133, 136 ; Paracnesis io
Prince Henry, \-^%;JonaiJian, 138;
Doomesday, 138 ; friendship with
Drummond, i., 150; ii., 2.

Allane Matson, i., 194.

Andro and his Cutty Gnn, i., 211.

Aynour, Jean,, ii., 140, 141, 145.

Armstrong, Dr John, ii., 48, 72, 86
passim; h\s Ecommty 0/ Love, 87;
The Art of Preserving Health, 87;
Taste, 90 ; Sketches, 90 ; 92, 98.

Annstrong's Good-night, i., 218.

Arnold, Matthew, ii., 152, 178 ;
quoted, 236.

Arth, Friar William, i., xi8.

Athenian Society, The, ii., 55.

Aye loaukin. Of, i., 214.

Ayton, Sir Robert, i., 132, 141.

Baillie, Lady Grizzel, i., 213.

Ballantyne, James, ii., 209, 212.

Ballantyne, John, ii., 209.

Bannatyne MS., The, i., 25 n., 129,
206.

Bannatyne, Richard, quoted, i.,
107.
I Barbour, John, ii., 187.

Barring of the Door, The, i., 210.

Beaton, Cardinal, i., 29; his assas-
sination, 85, 118, 120.

Beattie, James, ii., 29, 114, 122, 130
scqq.

Blacklock, Thomas, ii., 100,101,137.

Blair, Dr. Hugh, ii., 155.

Blair, Robert, ii., 48, 91 scqq., 98.

Blythsome Wedding, The, i., 197
n., 207, 209.

Bonny Dundee, i., 208 n.

Border Widoid's Lament, The, i.,

188.
Bosvvell, James, ii., 126,
Bowes, Marjory, i., 87.
Brooke, Lord, i., 187.
Broom of Cowden knows. The, i., 199.
Brown, Dr. John, i., 214 n. ; quoted,

ii., 176.
Brown, Mr. P. Hume, his Buchanan,

i-, 49-

Bruce, Michael, ii., 100, 114, 118,
120, 121.

Buchan, Peter, i., 164.

Buchanan, George, quoted, i., 5;
44, 49 passim; cause of the ne-
glect of his works, 51 ; conflict
with the Franciscans, 55 ; Som-
nium, 55 ; Palinodia, 56, 60 ;
Franciscanus, 57, 62 ; his exile,
57 ; Fratrcs Fraterrimi, 58, 65 ;
imprisoned in a monastery, 66 ;
his Tragedies, 67 ; Silvae, 68 ;
Epithalamium, 68 ; De Sphacra,
69; Paraphraseof the Psalms, 70;
relations between him and Mary
Queen of Scots, 72 ; Detect io, 73;
Chamaeleon, 74 ; charged with the
education of James VL, 75 ; De
Jure Regni apud Scotos, 76 ; His-
tory of Scotland, 78 ; character,
80, 205; ii., 187.

Burne the. Minstrel, i., 219.

Burnes, William, ii., 134, 136.

Burns, Gilbert, quoted, ii., 135.

Burns, Robert, i., 60, 143, 192,204,
205, 210 ; quoted, 211 ; ii., 14,
37 ; quoted, 39 ; 42, 47, 67, 134
passim ; proposal to emigrate,
137 ; publication of poems, 137 ;
moral character, 138 ; irregular

INDEX.

251

marriage, 140 ; first visit to Edin-
burgh, 141 ; second winter in Ed-
inburgh, 144 ; removal to Ellis-
land, 145 ; to Dumfries, 145 ;
death, 147; periodsof work, 149 ;
satires on the Kirk, 150 ; humour,
158 ; variety in poems, 165 ; songs,
167 ; relation to the older songs,
169; method of composition, 173;
scope of the songs, 175 ; charge
of provinciality, 178; diction, 179;
estimate of himself, 184, 187.
Byron, Lord, ii., 81, 115, 131, 196;
quoted, 200 ; 203, 205.

Calderwood, David, quoted, i., 23;

40, 41.
Calvin, i., 89, no, 113.
Campbell, Thomas, quoted, ii., 93.
Carlyie, Dr. Alexander, ii., 107.
Carlyle, Thomas, i., 205 ; quoted,

ii-, 138, 153 ; 184, 235, 239.
Chalmers, George, i., 23.
Chappel!, William, i., 194 n., 197

n., 198, 199, 200.
Chatterton, Thomas, ii., 128, 129.
Cock-Laird, The, i., 209.
Coleridge, S. T., ii., 68, 234.
Complaynt of Scotland, The, i., 168,

194, 197, 201 ; ii., 187.
Confession of Faith adopted, i., 98.
Congregation, Lords of the, their

negotiations with England, i., 96;

their attitude towards church pro-
perty, 99.
Constable, Archibald, ii., 210.
Craig, Alexander, i., 132, 141.
Crawford, Robert, ii., 27.
Cromek, R. IL, ii., 169.
Currie, James, ii., 146.

Dempster, Thomas, i., 148.

Discipline, First Book of, i., 99.

Douglas, Gavin, i., 193.

Douglas, Janet, i., 6.

Douglas Tragedy, The, i., 187.

Douglas, John, Bisiiop of St. -An-
drews, i., 124.

Droichis Part of the Play, The, i.,
22.

Drummond, William, i., 132, 140,
148 passim ; his Tearcs for the
death of Alceliades, 150 ; meeting
with Sir W. .Alexander, 150 ;
Poems, Amorous, Funerall, Di-
vine, Past or all, 151 ; Flowers of

Sion, 154; Polemo-Middinia, 155;
Forth Feasting, 155; Benjonson's
visit to, 155 ; Irene, 157 ; History
of the reign of the Five Jatnes^s,
157 ; Cypresse Grove, 157.

Dryden, John, quoted, i., 142.

Dunbar, Gawin, i., 5, 118.

Dunbar, William, i., 2, 55, 205.

Durfey, Thomas, i., 162, 197 n.

Earl Richard, i., 178.
Easy Club, The, ii., 45.
Edom o' Gordo//, i., 187.
Elizabeth, Queen, i., 96, 112.
Erskine, William, ii., 212.
Ettrick Banks, i., 213.
Ew-biights, Mario//, i., 213.

Falconer, William, ii., 100, 114, 115

seqq.
Fergusson, Robert, i., 192 ; ii., 3, 34

passim; English and Scotcli

poems, 37 ; relation to Burns, 39 ;

humour, 40 ; poems on nature,

44; 67, 181.
Finlay, John, i., 164, 166.
Fletcher, Andrew, ofSaltoun, i., 48,

210.
Fowler, William, i., 131.
Furnivall, Mr. Frederick James, i.,

200.

Gaberlunzie Man, The, i., 210.
Geddes, William, quoted, i., 203.
Gifford, William, i., 156.
Gouvea, Andre de, i., 66.
Graham, G. Farquhar, i., 198.
Graham, Robert, of Fintry, ii., 145.
Grahame, Simion, i., 147.

Ha lie Elude, The, i., 22.

Hallam, Henry, i., 70.

Hamilton, William, of Bangour, ii.,
26, 48, 50 seqq.

Hamilton, William, of Gilbertfield,
ii., 4, 24.

Hay, trim, tr///i goe, tr/x, \., 44.

Herd, David, i., 193, 215.

Here awd , there awa\ i., 215.

Home, John, ii., 100, xoj passii/t ;
his Douglas, 108, 109 ; Agis, 109,
112; The Siege of Aq/iileia, 109,
113, 114 ; The Fatal Discovery,
109, 112; Alonzo, 109, 113, 114;
Alfred, 109, 112; Histoiy of the
Rebellion of ijqj, 109, 115.

252

INDEX.

Horace, ii., 21.

Hume, David, of Godscroft, i., 168.

Hume, David (the philosopher), ii.,

loi, 112.
Hunting of the Cheviot Ballads of

the, i., 167, 186.
Hunt is up, i., 45.
Hutton, Mr. R. H., ii., 231.

Inglis, James, Abbot of Culross, i.,

2.
Irving, David, i., 51.
Irving, Washington, quoted, ii., 208.
Italian influence on Scottish Poetry,

i., 131.

James IV., i., 5.

James v., i., s/i/jj/w / 14, 23, 56,

57. 210,
James VI., i., 131, 134.
Jamie Telfer of the Fair Dodhead,

i., 183, 190.
Jamieson, Robert, i., 164.
Jeffrey, Lord, quoted, ii., 199 ; 203.
JoJui Barleycorn, i., 194.
Joiin Dlyth, i., 195.
Jo/ine, come kiss me now, i., 199.
Jolin Grumbly, i., 195.
Johnson, James, his Scots Musical

Museum, ii., 169, 170.
Johnson, Samuel, quoted, ii., 85,

127, 130.
/ Jolly Beggar, The, i., 210.
Jonson, Ben, i., 155.

Kerr, Sir Robert, Earl of Ancrum,
i., 132.

Kinmont Willie, i., 184.

Kirkcaldy of Grange, i., 106, 128.

Knox, John, i., 28 ; quoted, 30; 34,
44, 71, 74, 79, 81, 83 passim; one
of the "Pope's Knights," 84;
attitude on the question of the
assassination of Beaton, 86 ; call
to preach, 87 ; residence in Eng-
land, 87 ; at Geneva, 89 ; Admon-
ition to the Professors of God's
Truth in England, 89 ; quarrel in
the English Congregation at
Frankfort, 90 ; visit to Scotland,
90 ; his encounters with Maitland
of Lethington, 91 ; return to
Geneva, 93 ; First Blast, 94, in ;
return to Scotland, 94 ; First Book
vf Discipline, 99 ; question of
the Mass, 100; interviews with

Mary, loi ; opinion of her, 103 ;
quarrel with Murray, 104 ; opinion
of him, io6 ; second marriage,
105 ; death, 107 ; his position in
theology, 109 ; Treatise on Pre-
destination, no; History of the Re-
formation, 113; "merry bourds,"
117; hisintolerance, 119; sermons,
124 ; claim to prophetic power,
128; 130, 205.
Kyllor, Friar, i., 23.

Lady Anne BotlvweWs Lament, i.,
216.

Laing, David, i., 23.

Lang, Mr. Andrew, i., 172.

Lauder, George, i., 146.

Lawson, James, i., 107.

Lesley, Norman, i., 86.

Lewis, "Monk,"ii., 190.

Leyden, John, ii., 95, 105, 106.

Lindsay, Sir David, i., x passim ;
his Dreme, 7 ; Complaynt to the
Kingis Grace, 12 ; made Lyon
King of Arms, 13 ; his Testameiit
and Complaynt of the Papyngo, 13 ;
minor poems, 19; his freedom
from persecution, 20 ; The Satyre
of the Thrie Estaitis, 18, 21 ; The
Tragedie of the Cardinall, 21, 29 ;
The Historie and Testament of
Squyer Meldrum, 31 ; The Mon-
archie, 31, 32 ; his position with
respect to the Reformation, 34 ;
character of his work, 38 ; 30, 54,
59, 81, 20s ; ii., 152.

Lockhart, J. G., ii. 208; quoted,
209, 211, 221, 226, 232, 243, 244.

Logan, John, ii., 100, 118, 120, 121.

Lollards of Kyle, The, i., i.

Lovely Northern Lass, The, i., 199.

M'Crie, Thomas, quoted, i., 84; lor.

Macpherson, James, ii. , 100, 114,
118, 122 scqq. ; his Highlander,
122; Fragments of Ancient Poetry,
123; Fingal, 122, 123; Temora,
123, 125.

Maidment, James, i., 164.

Maitland MSS., The, i., 129.

Maitland, Thomas, i., 76, 128.

Maitland, William, of Lethington,

i., 74, 9i> 98, 119. 121.
Major, John, 1., 53.
Mallet, David, ii., 48, 70, 8i ; his

William and Margaret, 82 ; The

INDEX.

253

Excursion, 83 ; A?ny)iior and

Tlicodora,%\; dramas, 84; Life of

Bacon, 85 ; 98.
Mary of Guise, i., 97.
Mary Queen of England, i., 89, 90.
Mary Queen of Scots, i., 68, 72, 99

■passim; 121, 123, 127.
Melville, Andrew, i., 71.
Melville, James, i., 40; quoted, 78,

124, 127.
Melville, Sir James, of Halhill,

quoted, i., 79.
Mickle, William Julius, ii., 100, 114,

118; Yix'iLusiad, 119; Syr Martyn,

119; Cinnnor Hall, 119.
Mill, Walter, i., 94.
Miller, Patrick, of Dalswinton. ii.,

144.
Milton, John, i., 78 ; ii., 10, 51, 66,

147.
Minto, Professor, quoted, 11., 16.
Montgomery, Alexander, i., 131,

196 ; ii., 34.
Montrose, Earl of, i., 144.
Motherwell, William, quoted, i.,

188.
Muirland Willie, i., 207.
Murdoch, John, ii., 134, 135.
Mure, Sir William, of Rowallan, i.,

160, 201.
Murray, Sir David, of Gorthy, i.,

132, 140.
Murray, Regent, i., 104, 106.
My jo Janet, i., 209.

Nairne, Baroness, i., 204.

Napier, Mark, i., 145.

Napoleon I., ii., 127.

Nichol, Professor John, ii, 178 ;

quoted, 216 n.
Nicoll, William, ii., 143.
Northumberland, Duke of, i., 88.
Norris, John, ii., 94 n.

Otterburn, Ballads of, i., 167, 185.

Palgrave, Mr. F. T., i., 219.
Percy, Bishop, i., 163 ; ii., 128, 191.
Piper of Kilbarchan, The, i., 207

n.; ii., 26.
Pitscottie, Lindsay of, i., 5.
Polemn-Middinia, i., 155.
Pope, Alexander, ii., 57, 85.

Ramsay, Allan, i., 163, 192, 204, 209,
210 ; ii. 3, 4 passim ; C/irisfs

Kirk on. the Green, 5 ; TIte Gentle
Shepherd, 8, 9 ; Fables, 9 ; The
Vision, 12 ; Lochaber No More,
15 ; humorous elegies, 18 ; songs,
19 ; imitations of Horace, 21 ; 25,
26, 28, 30, 33, 37, 39, 40, 44, 49,
57, 142, 181.

Ramsay, Andrew, ii., 33.

Reade, Charles, ii., 205.

Riccaltoun, Robert, ii., 54, 61.

Rizzio, David, i., 120.

Ross, Alexander, ii., 28 seqq.:
Helenore, 28, 29 ; unpublished
works, 33 ; songs, 34.

Rough, John, i., 87.

Ruskin, Mr. John, ii., 178,179, 211,
213.

Saintsbury, Mr. George, ii., 63.

Scot of Satchells, quoted, i., 182.

Scott, Sir Walter, i.,32; quoted,
100; 164, 205; ii., 31, 95, 148;
quoted, 166; \Z6 passim; studies
in romance, 190; Minstrelsy, 191;
original ballads, 192; Lay, 194;
relation to eighteenth century
poetry, 197; .^hirmion, 199; Lady
of the Lake, 203 ; The Lord of the
Isles, 205 ; Rokeby, 205 ; lyrics,
206 ; removal to Ashestiel, 208 ;
partnership with the Ballantynes,
209; removal to Abbotsford, 210;
money-making, 211; Waverley,
212 ; earlier and later novels, 213;
historical novels, 215 ; non-his-
torical novels, 220 ; novels of
Scottish life and character, 220 ;
female characters, 229 ; treatment
of insanity, 230; the supernatural,
231 ; healthiness, 235 ; irregu-
larities of construction, 236 ; gen-
eral characteristics, 239 ; closing
years, 241 ; Journal, 242.

Scott, Sir William, of Thirlestane,
i., 207 n.

Scrimger, Henry, i., 71.

Semples of Beltrees, The, ii., i.

Semple, Francis, i., 207 n., 208.

Semple, Robert, i., 207 n.

Seneca, i., 61.

Shairp, John Campbell, quoted, i.,
194.

Shakespeare, i., 137; ii., 90, 93.

Skelton, Mr. John, i., 91.

Skene MSS., i., 201.

Spence, Joseph, ii., loi.

254

INDEX.

Speii^, Sir Patrick, i., i66, 185, 186.

190.
Stenhouse, William, i., 201.
Stewart, Margaret, i., 105.
Stewart of Baldynneis, i., 131.
Stirling, Earl of. See Alexander,

Sir William.
Straloch MS., i., 201,

Taine, H. A., quoted, ii., 204.

Tak' your auld cloak about yc, i., 209.

Talbot, Sir Charles, ii., 71, 72.

Tale of Colkclbie Sow, The, i., 193,
201.

Temple, Launcelot, Pseudonym for
Dr. John Armstrong.

Tennyson, Lord, ii., 74.

Thackeray, W. M., ii., 217, 219.

Theological Controversy, Nature of
its influence on Scottish Literature,
i., 129.

There's uaeluck about the house, ii.,
119.

Thomas the Rhymer, i., 170, 176,
191.

Thomson, George, ii., 170, 174.

Thomson, James, i,, 141, 192 ; ii.,
48, 49, 54 passim; his lines On a
Country Life, 55 ; Seasons, 56 ;
Elegy oil James Thorburn, 61 ;
absence of the " pathetic fallacy "
from his works, 67 ; imitated
by Wordsworth and Coleridge,
68; Britannia, ']o; dramas, 70 ;
Liberty, 71 ; The Castle of In-
dolence, 72 ; 86, 90, 98.

Thomson, William, i., 163.
Tod Tin Ha me, i., 211.
Townshend, Charles, quoted, ii.,

103.
Tulloch, John, i., 120.

Veitch, Professor John, i., 160, 190.

Waly, Waly, \., 216.
Wardlaw, Lady, i., 166.
Watson, James, his Choice Collec-
tion, i., 162; ii., 3, 24, 25.
Wedderburn, The brothers, i., i,

40 passim ; their work compared

with that of Lindsay, 47.
Wilkie, William, ii., 100, loi ; The

Rpigoniad, 102 ; Dream, 103 ;

Moral Fables, 105.
Wilson, John, author of Clyde, ii.,

100, 105.
Wilson, John (Christopher North),

ii., 140.
Wishart, George, i., 29, 34, 84.
Witty and Entertaining Exploits of

George Buchanan, The, i., 50.
Wordsworth, William, i., 191; ii.,

50; quoted, 57; 67, 68, 131, 159,

184, 197, 198.
Wowing of Jok and Jynny, The, i.,

196, 207.
Wyf of Auchiermochty, The, i., 195.

Young, Edward, ii., 92.

Young, Peter, i., 75.

Young Beiijie, i., 179.

Young Tamlane, i., 170, 176, ago.

PRINTED BV ROBERT MACLEHOSE, UNIVERSITY PRESS, GLASGOW.

/

DATE DUE

MAR

2 7 1984

iVCLU

j^iv 1 0 im

GAYLORD

PRINTED IN USA.

•..,'

wm

'-mm