THREE CENTURIES OF SCOTTISH LITERATURE.* Tins is an interesting and
even notable effort of a quiet kind in literary history and. criticism. Its author is, we observe, Professor of English in a Welsh College ; and the character of its contents and of the style in which they are written— lucid, sensible, almost too flowing—suggests at least the pos- sibility that their original form was that of academic lectures. Mr. Walker writes almost invariably in a painstaking, careful way, as if he knew and wished it to be understood that he must not take too much for granted in the way of knowledge on the part of readers or hearers. This fact—it might be unjust to style it fault—being allowed, we have little but praise for the method which Mr. Walker has pursued, and for the thoroughness with which he has given effect to it. His method is, in brief, simply to indicate the various movements in Scottish literature during the three centuries to which he confines himself, and to associate these with special names. Thus, he identifies the Reformation, in the first instance, with Lindsay and the Wedderburns ; in the second, with George Buchanan; and in the third, with John Knox. After these, we have in due course chapters on the " Anglo- Scottish Poets of the Seventeenth Century," the "Popular Ballads," "The Earlier Songs," "Ramsay to Fergusson," 'The Earlier Anglo-Scottish Poets of the Eighteenth Century," and "The Later Anglo-Scottish Poets of the Eighteenth Century." Finally, Burns and Scott, with whom, in Mr. Walker's opinion, Scottish literature of the Reformation period reaches its end, have chapters specially devoted to them. No doubt the objection may be offered to Mr. Walker's plan that its adoption almost compels him to omit from comment many really important names in litera- ture. Thus, he speaks of certain poets like James Hogg, "in whom the national characteristics are prominent, and who are nevertheless omitted, because there is very little in them which cannot be illustrated under the greater names of Scott and Burns." It is quite true that the large majority of the minor Scotch poets who followed in the wake of Burns no more merit inclusion in a work of this kind, than "the ill-spawned mon- sters," as he styled them, who in his own lifetime were tempted by his success into rushing into print. But Hogg was of a superior calibre. He must not, of course, be taken at his own extravagant estimate, bift he was distinctly different from both Scott and Burns, and was, indeed, as much of an autocrat in Fairyland as Scotland has to show. It may reksonably be contended, therefore, that, as a special type, Hogg ought to have found a place here, as well as, say, the author of The Seasons. Something like over-rigidity also may be urged against a method which has prevented justice from being done to David Hume and Adam Smith, and which virtually dismisses a whole group of Von g-writers as "Baroness Nairne and the other ladies who with her attempted to substitute purity for licentiousness, and innocent mirth for scurrility and low buffoonery."
The general fairness of Mr. Walker's judgments is admirably illustrated by his first volume. Sometimes it tempts him into Producing commonplaces which were really not worth printing, such as, " There is only too much reason to believe that the old songs sung by the peasantry were in general very coarse," and ."notvvithstanding all the jests levelled at the dense impene- trabihty to fun which is said to be a mark of the Scot, humour has been a quality always exceedingly prominent in Scottish literary men." When Mr. Walker deals with the position of certain men in Scottish literature, he is almost invariably in the right. Perhaps he rather exaggerates the influence of Knox; but he does not exaggerate the influence of George Buchanan, who, thanks to Mr. Hume Brown and other writers, is coming to be known as he ought to be. He also does ample justice to Sir David Lindsay, who, although he has not been quite such a phantom as Buchanan, has also been too little regarded. Mr. Walker rightly ranks Lindsay as a Reformer, although his life and death preceded the time when the Reformation first took shape, and although he neither definitely rejected the authority of the Papacy, nor objected to prelacy as a form * Three Centuries of Scottish Literature. By Hugh Walker, M.A. 8 vols. Glasgow James MaoLohoso and 8ous. 1893. of Church government. Upon the poets and poetry intervening between the period of the Reformation and the birth of Burns, Mr. Walker has almost nothing that is really novel, but much that is eminently sensible, to say. Thus, he makes it clear that the late Principal Shairp was too sweeping in his declara- tion, "The oldest extant songs cannot be proved at least to have existed before the year 1600." The "Wyf of Auchter- mochty," " Johne Blyth," "The Wowing of Jok and Jynny," and other pieces can certainly be traced to a period anterior to the beginning of the seventeenth century. Mr. Walker's estimates of Scott and Burns are careful, judicious, and sym- pathetic, although they here and there betray a weak-kneed disposition on the part of their author to express, if not to put faith in, the opinions of others, rather than courageously to assert and stand by his own. No previous writer has dealt more tenderly, and at the same time more prudently, with the life of Burns. His views on the poet's master- pieces will be generally, and, indeed, almost too easily, en- dorsed. His assertion that "'Scots, who, hae ' is probably the finest patriotic song ever written" must, however, be objected to. Principal Shairp and other critics have, perhaps, gone a little too far in describing this poem as, in effect, a rant in favour of liberty. But undoubtedly it was inspired by Burns's contemplation of the French Revolution, not of the actual facts of the Scottish War of Independence ; its note is freedom rather than country. But this is a book which does not deserve hyper-criticism. It is neither brilliant nor profound ; but it is a conscientious and level-headed per- formance. We know no book treating of the same sub- ject which can be so cordially4 recommended for the use of young men and young women in Scotland who are, either in a formal or an informal sense, students of their country and its literature.
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