MRS. OLIPHANT'S " ROYAL EDINBURGH."* Ennanusas is one of a
small group of European cities—to which Venice, Florence, and Rome belong—that, owing either to the romance of their history, or the everlasting charm of their natural situation, cannot be too frequently eulogised; that, at all events, enthusiastic lovers have felt compelled to pour forth their souls upon. Scott has sung of Edinburgh ; Burns has raved of it, in, it must be admitted, the most mechanical of all his poems. Within the last few years, Mr. R. L. Steven- son, wbo, like Scott, is a native of Edinburgh, has devoted a volume to it. And now comes Mrs. Oliphant with a prose-poem on Edinburgh—not Edinburgh of the Kirk or of the Parliament House, but Royal Edinburgh,—" Seated on the rocks which are more old than any history, though those precipices are now veiled with verdure and softness, and the iron way of triumphant modern science runs at their feet; with her crown of sacred architecture hanging over her among the mists, and the little primeval shrine mounted upon her highest ridge ; with her palace, all too small for the requirements of an enlarged and splendid royalty, and the great crouched and dormant sentinel of nature, watching over her through all the centuries." At first sight, Mrs. Oliphant would almost seem to have under- taken a perilous enterprise, that of making "wonders from the familiar start." But she has remarkable, and indeed, unique qualifications for the task she has essayed. She knows and loves, as no contemporary writer of fiction knows and loves, the life and character which are to be found in Scotch country-houses; and to the owners of such country-houses, Edinburgh—in spite of the superior wealth, population, and go-a-headness of Glasgow—must always be the capital of the country ; and the " Royal " aspects of Edinburgh must be far more interesting than any other. Mrs. Oliphant is proud of Edinburgh, as the true Greek was proud of the City of the Violet Crown. Then Royal Edinburgh is associated with and suggests "the true pathos and sublime "—more especially the pathos—of Scotch history. It is associated with the prolonged tragedy of the Stuarts,—that doomed race, the life of almost every representative of which was bound in shallows and in miseries. An exceptionally pathetic interest attaches, in the very first chapter of this book, if not to the life—for that was, on the whole, happy and serene—certainly to the death of the first Scotch Queen of any note, Queen Margaret, the wife of Malcolm Canmore, who in all probability did more than any human being, to Saxonise and civilise Scotland. She was literally on her death-bed, when her son Ethelred -enteral bearing, but not at first telling, the news that her husband and her eldest son had been defeated and killed in battle in the North of England. " The sight of his mother in extremity almost gone, no doubt confused the poor boy, still little more than a stripling, and with that weight of disaster on his head, —and he answered to her faltering inquiry at first that all was well. Margaret adjured him by the holy cross in her arms to tell her the truth ; then, when she heard of the double blow, burst out in an impassioned cry, I thank thee, Lord, thou gayest me this agony to bear in my death-hour: Her life had been much blessed ; she had known few sorrows ; it was as a crown to that pure and lovelit existence that she had this moment of bitterest anguish before God gave to His beloved sleep." No living writer of fiction has a greater power than Mrs. Oliphant of both realising and idealising pathos,—at once the misery which lies at its foundation and the consolations which it secures for itself. Here, therefore, she is in her element from her first page to her last.
The contents of Royal Edinburgh are arranged with great -skill and in such a manner as to do ample justice to the saints, prophets, and poets whom, as well as Kings, Mrs. Oliphant brings into her historical net. The first part is devoted entirely to Margaret of Scotland, whose death we have already alluded to, and who figures as both Queen and Saint. In this chapter Mrs. Oliphant is seen at her very best; there is probably no better—there is certainly no brighter—account in existence of the dawn of civilisation in Scotland. The second part is de- -voted to the five Stuart Kings of the name of James, of whom the first, who was a far-seeing legislator and a more than average poet, is really the only one of whom Scot- land can be whole-heartedly proud. It must be allowed, however, that all of them, even James ITT., are seen to greater
• Royal Edinburgh her Saints, Kings, Prophets, and Poets. By Mrs. Oliphant. With Illustrations by George Reid, M.B.A. London and New York : Macmillan and CO. 1890.
advantage in Mrs. Oliphant's pages than in those of moat historians : she, to all intents and purposes, takes their side in their struggle with the ruffianly and rapacious nobles who seem to deserve Carlyle's description of "hyenas," for not one, not even " Bell-the-Cat " Douglas, bears himself with genuine distinction, or even Italian picturesqueness. Mrs. Oliphant is more fortunate in the third part of her book, in which she treats of the time of the prophets who gave Queen Mary so much trouble. In this portion of her work, Mrs. Oliphant does ample and equal justice to George Buchanan and to John Knox. Mrs. Oliphant is thoroughly successful in her treatment of Knox. She steers a middle course between Mr. Skelton, and those thoroughgoing worshippers of whom Mr. Froude is perhaps the leading representative in modern English literature. " A perfectly dauntless nature fearing nothing, the self-confidence of an inspired prophet, the high tyrannical impulse of a swift and fiery genius impatient of lesser spirits, were all in him, making of him the imperative, absolute autocrat he was ; but yet no higher ambition, no more noble purpose, ever inspired a man He was too eager, too restless, too intent upon doing everything, forcing the wheels of the great universe, and clutching at his aim, whatever conditions of nature might oppose—to be wholly heroic. Yet there are none of the smoother or even more lovable figures of history whom it would be less possible to strike from off the list of heroes." This is the truth about the altogether unique influence of Knox. Mrs. Oliphant's judgment on George Buchanan, whom she designates the scholar of the Reformation, and who is as much of an Erasmus as Scotland was capable of producing, is no less discriminating than her judgment on Knox. Her defence of Buchanan against the charge of having personally forged the celebrated Casket Letters, used with such fatal effect against Mary, is eminently skilful, and at the same time delightfully feminine. "A woman's distracted soul, divided between passion and shame, the very exaltation of guilty self-abandonment and the horror of conscious depravity and despair, is not a thing which can be imagined or embodied by the first ready
pen, or even able intellect To imagine Buchanan, an old man of the world, somewhat coarse, fond of a rough jest, little used to women, and past the age of passion, as producing that tragical and terrible revelation, is almost more than impossible ; it is an insult to the reader's in- telligence." The third and final part of Royal Edinburgh is designated " The Modern City," and consists of essays on Allan Ramsay, Robert Burns, and Walter Scott, under the titles of " A Burgher Poet," " The Guest of Edinburgh," and " The Shakespeare of Scotland." Of these three essays, the best is unquestionably that on Allan Ramsay, mainly, no doubt, because it is practically impossible for even Mre. Oliphant to say anything fresh upon either Burns or Scott. But Allan Ramsay has been somewhat neglected of late, and neglected, for one reason, because he has been superseded. Mrs. Oliphant's essay on the wig-making poet who did so much to bring back Scotland, and not Scotland alone, to an appre- ciation of Nature, will revive an interest in him, Royal Edinburgh is abundantly and richly, Illustrated by Mr. George Reid, one of the first of living Scotch artists. The bulk of them are devoted to exhibiting Edinburgh as a whole under all sorts of conditions—one view of the 'city after night has fallen is superb—and to reproducing those portions of it which are especially Royal. But various other Scotch towns arc associated with the history of Monarchy and of Edinburgh, and so Mr. Reid's illustrations deal with, among other places, St. Andrews, Dunfermline, and Stirling. Between letterpress and illustrations, Royal Edin- burgh reproduces the tragedy, the glory, and the picturesque- ness of Scotch history as no other work has done.
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