THE COMPANIONS OF PICKLE.*

Tim book is quite as much of an explanation and a justifica- tion of, as it is the sequel to, that remarkable volume of revela- tions styled Pickle the Spy, which, when it appeared not very tong rip, fluttered the dovecots of a sentimental Jacobitism. Mr. Lang has not, indeed, been profoundly moved by the wrath of the Highland clergyman, who in Gaelic and in a haste which appears to have occasioned a mixing of metaphors, accused him of "not leaving miraked a dunghill in search for a cudgel wherewith to maltreat the Highlanders, parti- cularly those who rose in '45." He certainly does not withdraw from a single one of the positions he took up in Pickle the Spy. He maintains, as before, the identity of the younger Glengarry with Pickle, and brings forward a number of additional facts in support of his contention, such as the similarity of their handwriting, the intimacy of Glen- garry with Baron Kennedy, who was undoubtedly a friend of Pickle, and the promises made by Henry Pelham to the spy regarding the Highland chieftain. Mr. Lang, as we think, has proved his case up to the hilt ; Mr. A. H. Millar, the only Scottish antiquary of any repute who hesitated to -accept it, has fallen into line with him. As a matter of fact, we must either accept his views or be prepared to believe that Pickle personated Glengarry for a number of years, in talk no less than in correspondence. While, however, Mr. Lang has declined to secure peace with the assailants of his " Pickle " theory by making any "graceful concessions " ; while, indeed, lie has set himself to prove that in the '45 period, there were greater Highland scoundrels and traitors than even Glengarry, he has some consolation to offer to the too frantic Jacobites. He declares that the perfidy, of which -so many proofs have come to light, was by no means peculiarly Celtic :—" The history of Scotland, till after the Reformation, is full of examples, in which Lowlanders unscrupulously used the worst weapons of the weak. Historical conditions, not race, gave birth to the Douglases and Brunstons, whom Barisdaile, Glengarry, and others, imitated on a smaller scale. These men were the exceptions, the rare exceptions, in a race illustrious for loyalty." Besides, too high an opinion came, within a century or so, to be taken of the Highlanders. While for fifteen hundred years Lowlanders had been content to accept the views of the clans taken by the old authorities, like Dio Cassius and Glides, that they were "bloody freebooters" -and bestiala Picti, to Scott " Was left the discovery of the virtues of the honest cateran, who looked on cattle-lifting as an ennobling occupation in the intervals of war. Sir Walter's opinion ran through Europe like the Fiery Cross. His grandson, Hugh Littlejohn, stirred up by -the Tales of a Grandfather,' dirked his small biother slightly with a pair of scissors, in his childish enthusiasm ! Even the moral Wordsworth, moved by Scott, had a good word for Rob Roy."

Again :—

"A life of plunder, however romantic and however little • The Companimis of Pickle e being a Request to " P:ekle the Spy." By Andrew Zuni. London : Longman. and O. regarded as immoral or degrading by Highland opinion, really did foster in educated men the most astonishing perfidy. This is the last vice we look for in the generous cateran ; and indeed the outlaws of Glen Moriston were as loyal to their Prince as Lochiel. But the prevalent opinion that robbery sanctioned by tradition does not degrade the general character can be proved to be an error. We read about Cluny that, in 1742-5, he held the usual belief. 'He was certain it' (the habit of robbery) proceeded only from the remains of barbarism, for he had many convincing proofs that in other respects the dispositions of the people in these parts were generally as benevolent, humane, and even generous as those of any country whatever.' Cluny was right about the untutored man of the people, but he was wrong about a few educated chiefs who encouraged and lived on an unfortunate tradition."

At the same time, the Highlands produced monsters that cannot be accounted for either by the manners of a particular age or by a specially "unfortunate tradition." Such was Colonel Macdonell of Barisdaile, a Highland laird owing nominal allegiance to old Glengarry, a Hercules in size, scholar enough in "the humanities" to adorn his broad- swords with mottoes from the Classics, yet a coward, "the Jonathan Wild of Lochaber and Knoydart," the blackest of traitors, the most inhuman of tyrants. A machine which he invented for the punishment (save the mark !) of inferior thieves to himself is thus described :—

"The supposed criminal was tied to an iron machine, where a ring grasped his feet, and another closed upon his neck, and his hands were received into eyes of iron contrived for that purpose. He had a great weight upon the back of his neck, to which, if he yielded in the least by shrinking downwards, a sharp spike would infallibly run into his chin, which was kept bare for that very purpose."

But a Barisdaile cannot possibly be regarded as a specially Highland product. Culloden, however, made such a career as his for ever impossible. Mr. Lang very properly gives some foils to Barisdaile. One of these is "A Gentleman of ICnoydart," John Macdonell, a young member of the monster's clan.

But the true hero of this book is George Keith, the last

Earl Marischal of Scotland, to whom two chapters—not at all too much—are devoted. He can but be regarded as one of the companions of Pickle in the sense that the spy and traitor had meetings with him and was associated in the same Jacobite plots. There could hardly, indeed, be conceived a

greater contrast than that between young Glengarry and the Earl Marischal, who deserted Jacobitism because he was unable to tolerate Charles Edward. George Keith was in his way one of the most remarkable and typical men of the eighteenth century, and it is to be regretted that, as Mr. Lang assures us, materials for a complete biography of him do not exist. "He was one of those who, as Plato says, are 'naturally good,' naturally examples of righteousness in a naughty world. Nature made him temperate, contented, kind, charitable, brave, and humorous,—who, as Montaigne advises, 'never made a marvel of his own fortunes." Mr. Lang says, and shows, that he was not a great man ; that, on the contrary, "in conspiracy, in war, in government, in diplomacy, he was a rather oddly ineffectual man," and that "he had a genius for goodness and an independence of spirit, a perfect

disinterestedness, an inability to blind himself to disagreeable facts, and to the merits of the opposite side—a balance, in fact, of temperament and of humour—which are inconsistent

with political succcess." He was in many respects the most extraordinary of the many men who risked, and in some cases lost, their all for the cause of the Stuarts. Although he took part in the Rising of 1715, and was in all the important Jacobite plots till he was reconciled to the Hanoverian Government in 1759, and although when he was dying he styled

himself "an old Jacobite," he was a Republican in principle, and for twenty years his favourite companions had been Rousseau, Hume, d'Alembert, Voltaire, and Helvetius. His opinions were, in fact, as chaotic as later in the century were those of the poet Burns, and probably for much the same reason. There is considerable force, at least, in Mr. Lang's explana- tion of the Earl's position that— "When young, a patriotic Scot, and a persecuted Episcopali?a, he saw freedom' in the emancipation of Scotland from a foreign tyrant, the Elector of Hanover ; in the repeal of the Union, and in the relief of his religious body from the tyranny of the Kirk. Till his death he was all for liberty, and could not bear to see even a caged bird. These were the unusual motives (these. and the influence of his mother, a Jacobite 13) family and sentiment) which converted a born Liberal into a pirtisan 4 the King over the water. . Thus this representative of traditional and romantic Scottish loyalty to the Stuarts was essentially a child af the

advanced and emancipated and enlightened century which succeeded that into which he was born."

Sweetness of temper was the strength of the Earl Marischal, as may be gathered from his portrait executed in 1717, which suggests a gentle, and almost soft, edition of Graham of Claverhouse

"He was perhaps the only friend whom Rousseau could not drag into a quarrel or estrange, and the only companion whom Frederick the Great loved so well that be never made experi- ments on him in the art of tyrannical tormenting. Familiar rather than respectful with Voltaire, the Earl, who remembered Swift in his prime, was fond of gossipping with Hume and of bantering d'Alembert. Kind and charitable to all men, he was especially considerate and indulgent to the young, from the little exiled Duke of York to the Soured Elcho, and the still unsuspected .Glengarry. One exception only did the Earl make (unless we believe Rousseau) : he could not endure, and would not be recon- ciled to, Prince Charles."

Although he did not play so distinguished a part in Continental history as his brother, the Marshal Keith, who was Frederick's mentor and comrade, he did his duty as a soldier with credit till the exigencies of Jacobitism made him a conspirator and drove him into exile. It is not quite certain when he was born. He once said that he was twenty-seven in 1712, when he succeeded his father in the earldom. If that be the case, he must have been ninety-three when he died in 1778. Mr. Lang inclines to the belief that he was younger, probably eighty-five. In his youth he fought under Marlborough, and in the later

years of Queen Anne's reign he "lived about town a brilliant Colonel of Horse Guards, short in statue and slight in build, but with a beautiful face and large dark eyes." When the Jacobite Rising of 1715 took place he joined James and Mar, and proved himself somewhat of a strategist in the battle

of Sheriffmuir. After this, George Keith is found, like most of the influential Jacobites, hurrying about all over the Con. tinent and taking part in futile conspiracies. In Paris be was

generally in opposition to Balhaldie, James's agent there, who fares so badly in the recently published Memorials of Murray ,of Broughton, the secretary to Charles Edward, who, although he turned traitor, yet remained—such at least is Mr. Lang's opinion—at heart a Jacobite. In 1719 he and his

brother bad taken part in Alberoni's fruitless expedi- tion to the West Highlands, which ended in the so-called " battle "—which was in reality a fiasco—of Glenshiel.

A.t one time it seemed probable that the two brothers would end their days in Russia. But the sagacity of frederick claimed them both. In James Keith he dis- covered a soldier of the first capacity ; in George an astute diplomatist, whom he sent on embassies to Paris and Madrid. In Potsdam the Earl Marischal spent his

happiest days. Frederick was his staunch friend, and intro- duced him to all the members of his literary circle. The Earl's correspondence with Hume, d'Alembert, and others of 'his friends is that of a humorous old pagan. In one of his letters the old philosopher—for such he considered himself- -says :—" I have received an inestimable treasure, plenary in- dalgences in articulo niortis, with power to bestow some of them on twelve elect souls. One I send to good David Hume ; as I wish you all good things in both worlds, I offer you a place among my chosen." He slipped quietly down the hill, doing kindnesses in a quiet way, " the friend of all created things," including spiders and frogs, and died of old age.

Throughout his book Mr. Lang gives a great amount of useful, if also somewhat scrappy, information as to the social

condition of the Highlands about a century and a half ago ; and in his final chapter, "Old Times and New," he sets him- self expressly to deal with this subject. From what he says,

it is plain that the period before Culloden was not quite the Celtic golden age it has been represented. Even " evictions " were not unknown. Mr. Lang seta himself to show that Mr. Fraser Mackintosh, the "friend of the crofters," is wide of the mark when he maintains that the Forfeiture Commissioners were the first evictors:--" On the whole, a distressed Highlander :need not, it seems, conceive that the old times were free from .distress, or that Chiefs were really always humane. They acted in accordance with their immediate interests. They kept rents low when it paid to have a following, and they screwed rents up when money was more desirable than men." Altogether the present-day descendants of the clansmen, dwelling happily in a realm of forests, hills, and streams, deer and salmon, still retaining Highland courtesy, Highland speech, Highland courage, and Highland hospitality," seem

to be " rrkre fortunate than their cousins in the new times, or their fatfici.s in the old days that were not really golden." The Companions of Pickle is one of the most valuable and agree- able books Mr. Lang has written, and the study of it, especially of those chapters which deal with such men as the "informer" Murray and the loyal Cluny Macpherson, is absolutely necessary to a true understanding of the Scottish Highlands—and still more of the Scottish Highlanders—at the greatest crisis in the history of both.