A LITERARY HISTORY OF SCOTLAND.*

THIS is an entertaining, and up to a certain point a tolerably satisfactory, book. Within the past half-century or so careful investigation has been made by specialists into the origins of Scottish, as of English, literature. Much of that investigation has not had any positive result. Take, for example, the personality of "Huchown of the Awle Ryale," regarding whose identity, as Mr. Millar says, "the din of battle has been as though Mr. Oldbuck and Sir Arthur Wardour were taking part in the fray." Till lately, it is to be feared, even Scottish antiquaries took but little interest in Huchown except as an alliterative poet. But recently one of the most eminent of their number, Dr. George Neilson, of Glasgow, has tried to identify him with Sir Hew of Eglintoun, mentioned by Dunbar in his Lament for the afakharis. The issue has not been, and probably never will be, decided. Mr. Millar—and we are here but giving an example of his pro- cedure—does not attempt to settle it. He merely gives the pros and cans, of the questions in dispute, comes to no other pronouncement than the somewhat halting one that "the hypothesis so ably championed by Dr. Neilson may be provisionally accepted in default of a better," and plays the critic only to the extent of doubting the truth of such rhap- sodical declarations as that Sir Hew or Huchown "ranks among the great formative forces in the literature of the English tongue," and that "no less than Chaucer he set his seal for ever on the literary art of his own generation and of the generations to follow." To sum up and present in a condensed form the labours of antiquarian experts is a piece of useful work, if not very distinguished from the purely literary stand- point. This forms nearly a third of Mr. Millar's achievement, and to this extent his book, while excellent in its way, is certainly not superior, if, indeed, it is not decidedly inferior, to Mr. T. F. Henderson's history of Scottish vernacular litera- ture. Mr. Henderson always suggests the idea that he has at least gone to the fountain-head of original literature—so far as that is now possible—when framing his criticisms. Mr. Millar, on the contrary, is too frequently content with "authorities on authorities." For example, in controverting Lowell's judgment—an eminently superficial judgment, it is true—on Dunbar, he says : "As Mr. Lowell would seem to • A Literary History of Scotland. By J. . U. MiUnr. London: T. Fisher Unwin.

have read comparatively little of his author, his judgment need not disconcert us" ; but instead of proving to the hilt

this very serious charge against a critic, he contents himself with the footnote, "Tests Mr. 0. Smeaton in his William Dunbar."

Yet, as we have said, Mr. Millar is always an entertaining writer. He is full of prejudices and dislikes regarding Scottish writers, and, indeed, Scottish historical personages generally, for the bulk of which he is indebted either to Mr. Andrew Lang or to the late Mr. W. E. Henley, who are clearly the gods of his idolatry, if not his masters in style and

sentiment. So his judgments, especially when he is done with the Makharis and comes to deal with the Reformers and

Covenanters, who are as much the subjects of controversy as they were in their own day, are never lacking in strength.

Take, for example, his estimate of Rutherford :—

" The main characteristic of Rutherford's Letters is their con- sistent abuse of the figurative language of the Hong of Solomon. No sort of speech needs greater tact and discretion to make it tolerable than this. Now tact and discretion were not Rutherford's strong points, and if he was not the only, he was probably the most

grievous offender in this regard I have purposely abstained from quoting the more unctuous of his sallies ; and, indeed, it would be difficult to extract a passage of any length from the Letters which was not disfigured by something ludicrous or vulgar even to the point of gross irreverence Like many worse men, a' made a good end; and our accounts of his death-bed are circumstantial and edifying."

The one-sidedness of this is quite as notable as its cleverness ; indeed, it is more notable. It is safe to say that had there been nothing more in Rutherford's Letters than the qualities which Mr. Millar unfavourably comments on, he would not have gained the hold on his countrymen which the number of present-day works on his "mysticism" shows that he still retains. Mr. Millar demonstrates that he has no sym- pathy, or even patience, with natures which are dominated by a not uncommon kind of soft "religiosity." Strong 'characters which have the defects of their strength appeal much more effectually to him. Thus while he has almost as little love for John Knox as Mr. Andrew Lang, he says of the Reformer's History :— "There are life, vigour, and above all 'temperament' in the book; the temperament not merely of Knox himself, but of thousands of his countrymen concentrated as it were in one man. The very defects which disqualify him for a serious con- troversialist—the very flaws which mar, if they do not altogether obscure, his nobler qualities as a man—are the salt of his History, which stands forth as an unconscious essay in self-portraiture no less masterly than that of Pepys or of Gibbon."

Mr. Millar's critical capacity—the power of skilfully and vividly summing up what his predecessors have said and done—is well illustrated in his treatment of his country's literature in the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth. The truth about Scottish vernacular poetry has never been more adequately told :— " In the Scottish vernacular verse of the eighteenth century we possess one of the happiest illustrations of what is called a 'school' of poetry, culminating in the supreme achievement of an acknowledged and unsurpassed master. The members of the school were numerous, and were drawn from every class of the community and almost every part of the country. But there is a certain unity of tone and feeling, as well as of method and crafts- manship, in the work of all of them. None of them attempted to be original' in the hackneyed sense of the word. Each tried to accommodate his effort to some old and well-proved convention. The new wine was put into old bottles, so to say ; but the old bottles stood the strain. And from many men whom it would be affectation to class as great poets there emanated lyrics which only a practised and delicate sense of discrimination can distin- guish from the writings of men whose pre-eminence it were no less affectation to dispute. The rhythms, the metres, the manner which had been established as the invariable concomitants of Scots poetry upwards of two centuries before, were once more summoned to the poet's aid; and 'emulation' (an almost technical term with Burns in discussing his art) accomplished what less judicious and well-regulated ambition had probably failed to perform."

This passage shows Mr. Millar at his best, and, it may be added, his fairest, as a critic. He seems more suited to judge the character, tendencies, and results of "movements" in literature than adequately to characterise the work done by individuals in connection with such movements. Thus his estimate of Burns is eminently conventional. It is here an echo of Stevenson, there of Mr. Lang, in a third place of Mr. Henley. When he dogmatises on his own account, as when he says that "The Mouse" and "The Daisy" are "two instances of the failing" of "petty pathos" and are "instinct with nothing save a feeble and even sickly sent- mentality," he goes egregiously astray. A love of animate, and even inanimate, Nature is quite as genuine a sentiment as a love of adventure ; Wordsworthianism is as much based on Nature as Stevensonianism. It is evident that Mr. Millar has a profound hatred of Rousseau and all his works, as reflected to some extent in Scottish literature ; yet he would have done well to remember that Sainte-Beuve says even of the Confessions : "Such pages were, in French literature, the discovery of a new world, a world of sunshine and of fresh- ness which men had near them without having perceived it." Speaking generally, his estimate of Burns is marred by his con- tempt for "the less intelligent section of Burns amateurs." Mr. Millar's judgment of Scott is the most full-blooded piece of writing in his book. But it is more notable for enthusiasm than for patient criticism. He is, however, seen distinctly to advantage in his treatment of contem- poraries and successors—it would be inaccurate to say disciples—of Scott. His pages on Miss Ferrier and Galt are altogether admirable.

At once the most vivacious and the least satisfactory part of Mr. Millar's book is that which deals with Scottish literature in the nineteenth century, and especially in the second half of it. He has no love for " evangelical " religion, and no liking for Dissenters ; he cannot help saying of the " gorgeous " and too prolific George Gilfillan that he "occupied the pulpit of a Secession meeting-house in Dundee." Mr. Millar complains of Gilfillan that there clung to him "a species of mental vulgarity"; but is there not something very like "mental vulgarity" in his own mode of alluding to the fact that Gil- fillan was a minister of the United Presbyterian Church until he retired from it? Then Mr. Millar has the reverse of love for the writers of fiction belonging to the " Kailyard" school. But instead of indicating the weakness of novelists like Mr. Crockett and" Ian Maclaren," as he has revealed the strength of writers like Miss Ferrier and Galt, by means of quotations, he contents himself with passing a series of Jack Bludyer judgments. By far the best piece of criticism in this portion of Mr. Millar's book is his estimate of Robert Louis Stevenson, whom he invariably terms rather pedantically "Mr. Stevenson." While he takes a very high view of the literary achievement of the

greatest of Scott's successors, he is by no means "a common Stevensonian," and speaks out his mind both on the character of the man and the defects of the author :—

" Vain and self-conscious, he had imbibed the pestilent doctrine that conformity to current ideas in the matter of dress, manners, and behaviour is the mark of imbecility. He sank to that worst form of conventionality which consists in being unconventional,' for he was ever the burgess playing the Bohemian, and not the true gipsy. He thought, by eccentricity of garb, and by an apparent neglect of the minutiae of the toilet, to approve himself both great and good ; and although there was a lucid interval in this course of conduct, he returned, towards the close of his third decade, to a policy which, however pardonable in adolescence, can

have no justification in later life In that irresistible romance, Prince Otto, he expended once for all, to the last penny, the stores of his peculiar genius ; and Samoa was not the place in which his treasure-house could be replenished. Youth had passed away, and the world of Europe with its entrancing activities had been left behind for ever; what could the Southern Archipelago offer by way of inspiration in its stead?"

Like many other Scotsmen, Mr. Millar, although he recognises the great merits of George Douglas Brown, looks forward to the advent of a novelist who may do justice to the pro- fessional, commercial, and " middling " classes of Scotland. But he does not look for too much in the shape of literary greatness :— "A Balzac would be unnecessary ; a second Miss Ferrier would suffice, with Miss Ferrier's acrimony a little mollified, though with all her keen scent for absurdities and foibles unimpaired. The tone would have to be pitched low, and melodrama would have to be rigorously eschewed."

Mr. Millar's book is not free from blunders. The father of Burns spelt his name, not " Burns " or " Burness," but "Burnes." Lord Kelvin is not a Scotsman but an Irishman, and a recently dead author is not adequately disposed of by being described as "Alexander Nicolson (1827-9)." Mr. Millar gives some prominence to Alexander Russel, the famous editor of the Scotsman, as being the Northern counterpart to Delane. He then, by way of indicating the character of Russel's humour, tells this story :— " I need only, ex enipli, gratis, refer to one article (written, I am told, in the railway train between' Edinburgh and Loch Leven) a propos of one of the periodical water famines' to which the Modern Athens is subject. A certain Bailie or Councillor Mac- Lachlan, a fishmonger by trade, had been insisting upon the necessity of rigid economy on the part of the citizens in the use of water, and had clinched his argument by the statement that he had not taken a bath for more than a year. Russel referred to the Bailie as 'the foul but philanthropic MacLachlan,' and ex- pressed the hope that his wares 'had not been so long out of the water' as himself."

Unfortunately for Mr. Millar, the article, as was perfectly well known in Edinburgh at the time of its appearance, was not written by Russel at all, but by his successor, Mr. Robert Wallace, who became Member for East Edinburgh. Of Mr. Millar's book as a whole we may say that it brilliantly "renders darkness visible." It proves that a history of Scottish literature is a "felt want," but it does not supply the want.