"The dear at her piano. Miss Eliza is twelve years old-she will be quite accomplished. She has a fortune from my father of her own. She will settle very well."

"No doubt, ma'am."

"You shall see her, Mr Stukely. She is a simple-minded creatureall life and nature. I will call herMiss Eliza-Miss Eliza," bawled the good lady from the bottom of the stairs.

There was a loud giggle in reply, and nothing more.

"She is such a timid creature. must fetch her.-Pardon me."

I

The lady curtsied and vanished from my presence, with a dignity, which, cut up in little, would have furnished handsomely a dozen families. For a few minutes I stood in active expectation of the threatened visitation. It did not come. By degrees I ceased to look for it, and at last I let it pass from my remembrance altogether. My mind had weightier thought to bear, and it came with fearful pressure. What was I to do? -whither flee next for help? The last, the only hope, was dissipated. The anchor to which I had fondly held,

dreaming of stability and security, had slipped from my clutch, and had cast me hopelessly adrift. I felt the hot blood mounting to my cheek and brain, as I took courage to look with steadiness upon my isolated, desperate condition. The room grew too confined; it was with difficulty I breathed, and I rushed into the open air. "Never," I vowed, "should that inhuman door be closed again upon me." But I walked afterwards for three hours through the long streets of the strange town, and again and again I found myself before the only dwelling that contained human creatures who knew me, to whom I could speak—and I was inclined to ring the bell again-to obtain admittance-ask advice-seek aid. Twenty times, pride, anger, and disgust, interposed to restrain my steps, and to protect me against further insult-if not from further suffering and sorrow. Weakness, inclination, the fear of starvation, of a horrid death from hunger-these were in the opposite balance, and I was content at length to submit to new mortification

-to deeper self-abasement. The man had asked me to his table. Who knew what would arise from such a meeting

-what sparks of generosity and tender feeling might be elicited from the social board? It was due to my poor mother to make one more attempt. This idea had not occurred to me before. I was glad to find it rising thus to check the dangerous tendency of my evil passions-passions that ever repay indulgence by treachery and betrayal. Emboldened by the insti-gation of a virtuous principle, sustained by its presence, once more I visited my relatives.

THE memory of Dr Jamieson deserves to be cherished by his countrymen with reverence and gratitude. This amiable and excellent man can claim the praise of having, in no ordinary degree, by his innocent and patriotic pursuits, cultivated that love of country, and that study of native character, which contribute so much to foster a generous emulation and a salutary self-respect. He devoted the learned leisure of a long life to the investigation of our vernacular language and literature, and has widely disseminated a knowledge and an admiration of both among all who claim acquaintance with European philology. While the poems of Burns, and the romances of Scott, have endeared the graces of our modern Doric to many a feeling heart and lively fancy, the Dictionary of the Scottish language has reached the minds of the scientific as well as of the simple, and recalls the important truth, that the phraseology which astonishes or delights us in the Antiquary or the Heart of Midlothian, in the vision of Alloway Kirk or the Address to the Mountain Daisy, is not wholly the rude dialect of rustic men; but is a relic of a rich and noble tongue, which, in the compositions of Barbour, Dunbar, and Douglas, could rival the contemporary productions of England

herself.

We willingly avail ourselves of the appearance of a neat reprint of the Scottish Dictionary, to offer our humble estimate of the merits of the work and of its author; and as this new edition does not profess to give any correctory annotations, or any deduction of the science to a more modern stage of its progress, it seems the more necessary to submit some observations, which may assist our readers in appreciating the precise weight and authority to which the dictionary is entitled.

The industry of Dr Jamieson as a lexicographer is entitled to the highest praise. He has diligently amassed a vast store of valuable materials, and has collected all the scattered rays of elucidation which he found within his reach. Numerous illustrative works of northern history, philology, and antiquities, were explored by him,

with a labour which love alone could have maintained; and if all our other monuments should perish, the result of Dr Jamieson's researches would still afford an intelligible and honourable representation of our national disposition and peculiarities. His pages present many a faithful picture of the habits and modes of life, the passages of joy and sadness, the scenes of mourning and of merry-making, which prevailed among a people of remarkable character, sedate and serious, devout and intellectual, yet filled with strong passions and warm fancies, and possessing a keen sense both of ridicule and of tenderness. His citations of vernacular poetry supply a bright anthology of genius of a corresponding kind-rustic simplicity and heartfelt kindliness, broad humour and riotous merriment, biting sarcasm and sagacious thought. These elements were caught and collected at a time when they were yet well understood, and when they still wore those marked features which time and refinement have been rapidly effacing. As a rich repository of native literature, manners, and antiquities, the great work of Dr Jamieson may be considered as invaluable to his countrymen.

Of Dr Jamieson's merits as a philologer we must speak with more caution and qualification. It is perhaps little discredit to him that his knowledge of kindred languages was more derived from the hortus siccus of indexes and vocabularies, than imbibed amidst the living groves and breathing gardens of literature and speech.

But it must be further confessed that he had imperfectly mastered the pecuculiar types and transitions of the Teutonic tongues, as connected or contrasted with each other, and that generally he was an unskilful etymologist, and a lax grammarian.

In adverting to faults which truth will not suffer us to conceal, it is exclusively our object to guard against their influence on others, and not on account of their existence to detract from the personal merits of the man. In speaking of Dr Jamieson as we have done in this respect, we feel how little it tends to his dispraise when

we advert to the imperfections and inaccuracies of Johnson's great work in the same department, and remember how the public were imposed upon by the empty and impudent quackeries of Tooke. The last thirty years have done more for Teutonic philology than had been accomplished in the previous century. Dr Jamieson studied and wrote in the spirit of a period which preceded the recent discoveries; and he has now the disadvantage of being read and criticized after those discoveries have been matured and made familiar. Those who have been even partially initiated in the rigi 1 schools of the present day, are apt to look with contempt and surprise on others with whom Wachter and Junius, or even Ihre and Adelung, are still infallible authorities. But our excellent lexicographer was too old to profit by this modern reformation, even if its results had reached his ears, and, like the monk with the misprinted missal, he would probably to the last have preferred his old mumpsimus to our new sumpsimus.

An occurrence in Dr Jamieson's life, which seems to have awakened his attention to the studies which afterwards distinguished him, gave them also unfortunately an erroneous direction. The incident to which we refer, is alluded to in his original dissertation prefixed to the dictionary, and is fully detailed in the biographical memoir inserted in the present edition:

"The doctor had not yet projected his great work, the dictionary; the first idea of which arose accidentally from the conversation of one of the many distinguished persons whom he met at Mr Dempster's residence; Dunnichen being long the frequent rendezvous of not merely the most eminent men of Scotland, but of such learned foreigners as from time to time visited the country. This was the learned Grim Thorkelin, professor of antiquities in Copenhagen. Up to this period Dr Jamieson had held the common opinion, that the Scottish is not a language, and nothing more than a corrupt dialect of the English, or at least of the Anglo-Saxon. The learned Danish professor first undeceived him-though full conviction came tardily-and proved, to his satisfaction, that there are many words in our national tongue which have never passed through the channel of AngloSaxon, nor been spoken in England. Before leaving Dunnichen, Thorkelin re

quested the doctor to note down for him all the singular words used in that part of the country, no matter how vulgar he might himself consider them; and to give the received meaning of each. Jamieson

laughed at the request, saying, 'What would you do, sir, with our vulgar words? they are merely corruptions of English.' Thorkelin, who spoke English fluently, replied with considerable warmth, 'If that fantast Johnson had said so, I would have forgiven him, because of his ignorance and prejudice: but I cannot make the same excuse for you, when you speak in this contemptuous manner of the language of your country, which is, in fact, more ancient than the English. I have now spent four months in Angus and Sutherland, and I have met with between three and four hundred words purely Gothic, that were never used in Anglo-Saxon. You will admit that I am pretty well acquainted with Gothic. I am a Goth, a native of Iceland, the inhabitants of which are an unmixed race, who speak the same language which their ancestors brought from Norway a thousand years ago. All or most of these words which I have noted down, are familiar to me in my native island. If you do not find out the sense of some of the terms which strike you as singular, send them to me; and I am pretty certain I shall be able to explain them to you.' Jamieson, to oblige the learned stranger, forthwith purchased a twopenny paper book, and began to write down all the remarkable or uncouth words of the district. From such small beginnings, made more than twenty years before any part of the work was published, arose the four large quarto volumes of his DICTIONARY and SUPPLEMENT, the revolution in his opinion as to the origin of the Scottish language, and that theory of its origin which he has maintained in the learned dissertations which accompany the dictionary."

We have much respect for Professor Thorkelin as a learned and laborious man; but when we think of him in con

nexion with Anglo-Saxon philology, and as an editor of the Poem of Beowulf, under the title "De Danorum Rebus Gestis," which is probably the most blundering book that ever issued from the press, we cannot recognise him as an eminent judge in such matters, and the conversation which is here said to have been held confirms our distrust. The Icelander boasts of being a Goth-an appellation to which he was only entitled in the same sense in which it is due to a Cockney or a

Dutchman. But the bias was given, and it affected the whole tenor of Dr Jamieson's future studies. He sought, and seemed to find, a Scandinavian character in all the features of our vernacular tongue, and Scandinavian authorities were almost exclusively consulted for its illustration. In his list of references, we find indeed the dictionaries of Wachter and of Kilian; the one an antiquated work by an able and elegant writer, the other a useful, but undigested mass of miscellaneous and anomalous words, collected from all the shores of the German Ocean, and needing to be analyzed and authenticated before they could be beneficially resorted to. But Dr Jamieson's favourite authorities, quoted on all occasions, both in and out of season, are, Gudmundus Andreæ for Icelandic, and Ihre for Suio-gothic or Swedish-the first of them a very respectable old wife, the second an accurate and extensive scholar, whose judgment and modesty would have shrunk from the undue pre-eminence thus assigned to his very complete and valuable elucidation of a local idiom. For the native works on philology by more recent Germanic writers, we look in vain in Dr Jamieson's list, and we suspect he was little acquainted with their existence. Haltaus's excellent law-glossary, Adelung's standard dictionary, the works of Frisch and Fulda, and the meritorious dissertation of the Dutch Ten Kate, one of the first successful attempts at a comparative view of the Teutonic languages, might all have been consulted with advantage, but seem never to have been dreamed of; while there is something still more singular and surprising in the preparation of an elaborate Scottish dictionary, without the slightest aid even from the Idioticon Hamburgense of Michael Richey, or from the Bremisch and Niedersachsisch Worterbuch, an indispensable companion in labours of this description. In like manner the original Low - Saxon writers seem to have been entirely neglected; and it may be doubted if the Scottish lexicographer's shelves contained a copy even of Reineke Vos, the great mirror of the mind and language of Northern Germany in the middle ages. Of Frisian authorities, which might also have been referred to with much benefit, Dr Jamieson's catalogue is equally bare. We cannot

but think that if his attention had been turned as much to these objects of comparison as to those of a Scandinavian origin, his conclusions would have been different and more impartial, and they would certainly have been entitled to greater weight.

The one-sided views thus formed by Dr Jamieson, and embodied in his dictionary so far back as the year 1808, when it was first published, produced an injurious effect on the study of our vernacular idiom and national antiquities, by drawing an imaginary line of separation on the side both of our Anglo-Saxon and of our Germanic kinsmen. Much time, we conceive, has been wasted in pursuing a false scent, and we are now destitute of a great body of important illustration, which might have been directed on our ancient laws and language, if it had been sought for in the right quarter, and accumulated with the same diligence that has been thus misemployed. We believe, that among the best judges, Dr Jamieson's theory has for many years been generally exploded, and from time to time its errors have been partially exposed. But we are desirous of this favourable opportunity of reviewing the subject, and collecting together as we best may, the scattered observations which it has already excited, or which the more accurate and precise ideas of the day are calculated to suggest.

We would not be considered as here intending to speak in a depreciating tone of the merits of Icelandic or Scandinavian literature, or of its usefulness as illustrating all the other Teutonic languages. The slightest knowledge of it will teach us to estimate highly its intrinsic value and relative importance. Though probably less ancient than the Anglo-Saxon, its monuments are peculiarly instructive, both from their number and extent, and from the circumstance that they retained longer the creed and character of Teutonic Paganism. The Elder Edda, as finally edited under the auspices of the Arna-Magnean Curators, is an unrivalled treasure of Teutonic antiquities, and affords the best key to the mythological opinions, and to many obscurities, customs, and idioms, of kindred tribes. But we are now speaking of the peculiar relation subsisting between the Scottish nation and the nations of Scandina

vian origin-a question which is wholly independent of the degree of estimation in which the Scandinavian language or compositions may deserve to be held.

We are not disposed to deny that our vernacular tongue has been affected by Scandinavian influences to a considerable degree, or that there is a large admixture of Norse blood in the veins of our countrymen. The intercourse of Danes and Norwegians with Scotland must have been frequent and extensive, though scarcely perhaps so much so as in the case of England; and traces of that intercourse would appear in our own language as well as in that of our neighbours. But the material enquiry relates to the great and general body of the Scottish people and their language, not to exceptional or accidental portions of either.

this enquiry, but which we are often apt to overlook.

The theory of Dr Jamieson is, that the Scottish language is not a dialect or diversity of the Anglo-Saxon, but is derived from a different and a purer source, being lineally descended from the language of the Picts, whom he considers to have been a Scandinavian tribe. In considering this doctrine, we have no intention to enter on the Pictish controversy, as to which we shall merely observe, in passing, that it seems now to have been nearly decided, by a preponderance of the best opinions, in favour of the Celtic origin of that people. But looking to Dr Jamieson's theory in a broader view, it resolves into two propositions-1st, That from an early period the inhabitants of the Scottish lowlands were Teutonic; and 2d, That these Teutonic inhabitants were Scandinavian, not Saxon. We cannot but think that these opinions, taken in their combined result, are not supported by any sufficient grounds, and that, so far as evidence on the subject exists, they are contradicted by the facts.

1. Our historical information as to the origin and character of the Picts is, at the best, vague and imperfect; and supposing even it could be held that they were of Teutonic blood, we are destitute of any records which can definitively determine to what branch of the Teutonic family they belonged.

When we consider the 'materials which we possess for theorizing on this question, we must be struck with the rashness of those who hazard any dogmatic opinion upon it at all, and still more of those who construct a theory which would draw a line of distinction, in point of origin, between the Teutonic speech of one part of the island and that of the other.

Let us

attend to a few indisputable facts which are of the utmost importance in

2. We are entirely destitute of any remains of the Pictish language which can afford us assistance in our search; for the single word transmitted to us to which a Pictish character is generally ascribed, is, in the most favourable view for Dr Jamieson's friends, a compound of Celtic and Teutonic, and the Teutonic portion of it shows no indication of belonging to one dialect more than to another.

3. We are destitute of any historical record which accounts with certainty for the immigration of the general mass of Scottish lowlanders from any Teutonic country. We may be said, indeed, to be destitute of any history of Scotland at all, till more than a thousand years after the Chris

tian era.

4. We are entirely destitute of any remains of the early Teutonic language of Scotland. Not a fragment of it can be said to exist in any shape. While we can refer to a large and various body of Anglo-Saxon literature, extending, without material change or adulteration, over a range of several hundred years, between the 7th and the 11th century, and while every other Teutonic nation of importance has something of the same kind to show, the literature of Scotland, for the corresponding period, is an utter blank. The most ancient vernacular composition which Scotland can boast, must be referred, at the very earliest, to the end of the 13th century, if indeed there are any earlier than the middle of the fourteenth. And in what state is the language then presented to us? thing but a pure Teutonic form. know, from analogy, that if it had a previous existence, it must have possessed those minute inflections, and those distinctions of grammatical gender which belong to all the other sections of the race, and which assimilate them so closely to the languages of classical antiquity. But the Scottish language, in its earliest known

In any

We