manly freedom. Even the following reark upon a passage in Jortin is not inToduced without a confession of reluct

Ence.

The value of his works would, perhaps, ave been enhanced if he had sometimes forotten that he was so accomplished a philolor. The following quotation from this author characteristic: "Some unpublished sermons Bishop Chandler were sent to me to peThey are such as might be expected him, and upon points in which he was led. He was more a divine than a philo-James the First was more of a king a poet and the Duke of Marlborough more of a general than a pioneer."

This dissertation is concluded by some marks upon the neglect of Greek in otland, and upon the disgraceful dipmas of Aberdeen and St.Andrews; but this gentleman attempts to involve universities in the same disgrace, we eive how very little he is acquainted th their actual state. The concluding ssage we transcribe with sincere apcbation.

Among the circumstances which chiefly rate in retarding the progress of classical ming, may also be enumerated the paucity substantial rewards which await literary inence. The number of professorships in four universities is not very considerable: some of these are apparently in danger being registered among the commodities ey-politicians. To fellowships our colare total strangers. The bursaries, ich might originally afford a competent vision. seem at present to partake of the dure of a mathematical point. The salaof the parish school-masters have dwininto a miserable pittance; and the landders have too generally manifested a reso in to leave them in their present deterioing condition. Many of the parochial achers, as we have lately been assured, do eam half the wages of a journeyman on. The unmerited poverty of these amble scholars has sunk them beneath their per level in society. In England the aracter of a schoolmaster is eminently repectable; and the present age has seen that fession adorned by Parr, Vincent, and Markham. It is to be hoped, and even exeted, that those who value the prospey of Scotland, will exert themselves in meliorating the condition of an order of en whose useful labours entitle them to the tude of their fellow-citizens. Till some exertions of this kind shall be made, we may in silent spectators of the gradual encroachments of ignorance. When an irke species of labour is so poorly rewarded, need not be supposed that men of proper qualifications will often present themselves. ANN. REV. VOL. IÌI.

"The partiality with which the vacancies in our schools are frequently supplied, is another ill-boding circumstance. The claims of the different candidates are professedly decided by a comparative trial; but this ceremony, it is well known, is on many occasions terminated by an act of injustice. The task of examination is generally left to the clergy: and when one of the competitors is properly recommended, his fortune is determined before the slightest enquiry is instituted with respect to his literary qualifications. This conduct indeed may sometimes arise from a distortion of benevolent sentiments; but in the mean time the cause of letters is exposed to deep and lasting injury.

These general assertions it were but too easy to strengthen by an enumeration of particular instances: but this would be a painful, and, perhaps, a dangerous task. The observations which I have already presumed to state, will, I am aware, be sufficient to lent examples of a most baneful species of abundance of hostility. These prevaprovoke abuse, it, however, becomes every good citizen to execrate. When the rewards of literature are openly bestowed upon sycophants, such a remonstrance as the present may be ineffectual, but it certainly cannot be deemed superfluous."

The second dissertation, on the early Scottish drama, occupies only a few pages; the Scots were pulling down churches when they ought to have been building theatres. Calvinism, we will not say Presbyterianism, for that would be to confound the doctrine with the discipline-Calvinism, of course, is hos tile to all that can soften the manners or strengthen the understanding.

Ercildon, whom Mr. Walter Scott has The first biography is of Thomas of immortalized both as a poet and an editor. John Barbour follows at the distance of a century, a writer of very great merit, and his contemporary Winton. These early lives are necessarily brief, so little being known of the authors. The life of king James the first affords more materials. Why are not his works published by some editor who is equal to the task? To rank him above all other royal authors would be but poor praise for one who, in the republic of letters, has so honourably distinguished himself. The King's Quair is a delightful poem, and if Christis Kirk of the Grene be indeed his composition, as there is good reason to believe, king James must, like Chaucer, have been equally qualified to excel in comic as in serious poetry.

Henry the minstrel follows, the blind poet, of whom nothing is known, except K k

that he was blind. After a chapter upon the anonymous productions of this period, we then come to Henryson and Dunbar, both men of considerable genius; the latter in Mr. Ellis's opinion the greatest poet that Scotland has produced; yet several of his poems still remain unpublished, and those which are published have never been printed in a collective form. A complete edition was expected from Mr. Pinkerton, whose antiquarian knowledge would certainly be more worthily employed upon Dunbar than upon Drummond. This was the golden age of Scottish poetry, notwithstanding the sesquipedalian pedantry, wherewith even the best poets were infected. Stephen Hawes is the only English writer who fell into this affectation. But the public soon grew weary of celsitude and pulchritude, and king James in his Evayes of a Pentice in the Divine Art of Poesie among the Reulis & Cautelis to be olservit & escherwit in Scottis Poesie, especially warns the aspirant to beware of rhyming in termis, quhilk is to say, that or binmest your first word in the lyne exceed not twa or thre syllabis at the maist, using thre als seindill as ye He assigns as a reason, that all long words have a syllable in them so very long, that the length thereof eats up in the pronouncing the other syllables in the same words which should be long by position, and therefore spoils the flow ing of the line.

can.

a

"The king being one day surrounded by numerous train of nobility and prelates, Lindsay approached him with due reverence, and began to prefer an humble petition, that he would instal him in an office which was then vacant. "I have," said he, "servit your Grace lang, and luik to be rewardit as others are: and now your maister taylor, at the pleasure of God, is departit; wherefore! wold desire of your Grace to bestow this that he was amazed at such a request from little benefite upon me." The king replied a man who could neither shape nor sew.

Sir," rejoined the poet, "that maks nat matter; for you have given bishoprics and benefices to mony standing here about you, and yet they can nouther teach nor presch; and why may not I as weill be your taylor, mocht I can nother shape nor sew; seeing teaching and preaching are nae less requisite to their vocation, than shaping and sewing to ane taylor?"

Few biographical notices remain of the other poets of the age, of Bellen den, sir Richard Maitland, Scot, Arbuthnot, or Montgomery. We now come to our James the first, or rather James the sixth of Scotland, for let Scotland have the credit of him. The Scottish So lomon had his merits, and could we for get the murder of Raleigh, we might Contemplate his reign with complacency, and forgive his pusillagimity and his fel lies. As in his moral character he is less remarkable for any particular vice, than for the total want of all virtue, so bas compositions are rather good for nothing than bad. It was his misfortune to be placed in a situation where every weakness became conspicuous, and to be born some centuries too late. In the gold a ages of dullness Solomon the second should have flourished; that inherent saperstition which Buchanan could eradicate, would then have made him a monk and a saint, and he would have

ritten erudite commentaries upon the postles and doctors of the church, whose tles would have been preserved, and hose praises copied from one bibliorapher by another, secure never to be Cntroverted.

The union well nigh annihilated the cottish, as a written dialect. Alexaner, Gordon, and Drummond immeately wrote in English, and Scotland r nearly two centuries produced no et of her own tongue, considerable cugh to be mentioned in these vomes. Allan Ramsay revived the na-nal poetry; a national feeling, natuand honourable in itse!:, occasioned success, or such a writer as Allan msay could not have succeeded. His cess is to be regretted since it has de Burns a Scottish poet, who should ve been a British one. It mattered not eatly in what dialect Ramsay himself d written; but Burns deserved a wider ere of popularity, for no writer was r more happily qualified to become manently popular. Could he have tten in English with equal powers, would have been read with the same ight in England, and in Ireland, and America, as in the lowlands of Scotd; as it now is we read him as a ign writer, with this provoking difnce, that we never understand him so rly as if he had written in a lange altogether foreign to us; it is English macaronified with some unth tongue, which no Englishman has · studied,—and we, therefore, skip go on, or cast an eye upon the glos, as boys get at the meaning of ner by the Latin translation, and lose spirit. It is a happy thing that we no Welsh-English, or Irish-Eng

!

ndoubtedly Burns secured his im. iate reputation by writing in his conational language. He wrote better, only because he could write necessawith more command and more inti› knowledge, but because he was cut om all the common phrases and tricks beech which are the stock in trade of ersifiers. Instead of the commondiction of words, the meaning of h is misapplied, or so applied as to no meaning at all, he wrote in the language of his readers, to whom, fore, every expression came with its orce and freshness. Hence his poems less intelligible to an Englishman

than the King's Quair, or the Bruce, though the orthography of the two languages has become much more alike. Perhaps, also, he was indebted to the same cause for the patronage which he experienced, though that patronage ended in making him an exciseman!

Mr. Irving considers Scottish and English as being analogous to the different Greek dialects, but this analogy is not correct. The Greek dialects differed chiefly in the terminations of their declined and conjugated words, and in the preference given to one vowel above another: but the vocabulary of all was the same. They might therefore be intermixed for the sake of euphony without occasioning the slightest embarrassment to the reader: now theScottish words which embarrass an Englishman are exclusively Scottish, and these are so numerous that a separate dictionary is necessary to explain them. It has been objected as an incongruity, that Ramsay has checquered his Gentle Shepherd with English phraseologies of affected refine ment. Mr. Irving's defence is singu larly injudicious: " if," he says, " it be absolutely absurd for a Scottish peasant to be introduced speaking the English language, it must have been established as a general rule that a dramatic personage should always employ the language of the country to which he is supposed to belong. According to this hypothesis, Buchanan, Racine, and other poets who have founded their dramas on subjects of the same date, ought to be severely reprehended for having failed to write in Hebrew!" The objection is grievously misunderstood; for the fault complained of is as if Racine had actually written in Hebrew, and occasionally ornamented it

with a little French.

Ramsay, Ross, Dr. Geddes, Ferguson and Burns are the only poets in this part of the work. The work may certainly be considered as a valuable addition to our literary history. We have seldom seen proofs of such wide and well-directed research as are indicated in Mr. Irving's notes. Would not encouragement be found in Scotland for a collected edition of those poets who are here biographized, down to the union, excluding such only as have been edited too recently to need republication? Such a collection would well deserve a national encouragement, and Mr. Irving is eminently qualified for the task.