Scottish Literature

Towards the close of the period certain verse-writers appear who, though differing from their Middle Scots predecessors, be long as much to this period as to the next. In language they are still Scottish ; if they show any southern affectations, it is (all echoes of the older "aureate" style notwithstanding) the affecta tion of Tudor and Elizabethan English. This poetry, like that of the early half of the period, is courtly ; its differences are the differences between the atmosphere of the reigns of the first and fourth Jameses and that of the sixth. When the sixth James be comes the first of England, a more thorough transformation is discernible. In the centre of this group is the king himself, poet and writer of prose ; but he yields in competence to Alexander Scott (q.v.) and Alexander Montgomerie (q.v.). Their interest on the formal side is retrospective, but it is possible to find, even in the persistent reiteration of mediaeval sentiment and methods, a fresh feeling for nature and a lyrical quality of later timbre. With these may be named the minors, William Fowler (q.v.), Alexander Arbuthnot (q.v.) and John Rolland (q.v.).

The Third Period.

Strict accuracy would place the date of transition to the third period earlier than 1600 or 1603, for there is evidence in the 16th century, even outside diplomatic and of ficial correspondence, of the intermingling of the north and south. It is, however, when James is established on his new throne that we have clear signs of the changes at work. The recital of the names of the Anglo-Scots poets will make this clear : Robert Ker, earl of Ancram, best known for his Sonnet in Praise of a Solitary Life; Sir David Murray of Gorthy, who wrote The tragicall Death of Sophonisba; Sir William Alexander (q.v.) afterwards earl of Stirling; William Drummond, laird of Hawthornden (q.v.) ; Sir Robert Aytoun (q.v.) ; James Grahame, marquess of Montrose; Patrick Hannay; and the covenanting Sir William Mure of Rowallan (q.v.). In prose there is Drummond and that strange genius Sir Thomas Urquhart (q.v.) ; a crowd of polemical writers, mostly ecclesiastics; all the historians, including Spots wood and Calderwood. Outside this transformed Scots the activ ities of the Latinists continued ; as shown in the publication by the poet Arthur Johnston (q.v.) of the two volumes of Delitiae poe tarum Scotorum huius aevi illustrium (1637), and in the writings of John Barclay (q.v.) author of the Argenis, Sir Robert Aytoun, Thomas Dempster (q.v.), David Hume of Godscroft, Sir John Scot of Scotstarvet, best known for his Staggering State, Sir Thomas Craig, author of the Jus Feudale and Andrew Melville.

There is nothing in Scots to balance this English and Latin list. The play Philotus, a poor example in a genre rarely attempted in the North, is indebted to the South for more than its subject. The philological tractate Of the Orthographie and Congruitie of the Britan Tongue by Alexander Hume (not the verse writer) is in its language a medley ; and William Lithgow had travelled too widely to retain his native speech in purity, even in his indifferent verse. Scraps may be unearthed as mediocre as the Answer to

Curat Caddel's Satyre upon the Whigs, which attempts to revive the mere vulgarity of the Scots "flyting." The only contributions which redeem these ioo years and more from the charge of dis respect to the native muse come from the pen of the Sempills.

We are attracted to Beltrees and his kinsmen less by their craftsmanship than by the fact that they supplied the leaders of the vernacular revival of the i8th century with many subjects and verse-models, and that by their treatment of these subjects and models, based on the practice of an earlier day, they complete the evidence of the continuity of the domestic popular type of Scots verse. In the 18th century the literary union of the North and South is complete. The Scot, whatever dialectal habits marked his speech, wrote the English of Englishmen. The story of this later expression is part of the story of English literature : to it we leave James Thomson, Adam Smith, David Hume, James Boswell and Sir Walter Scott. In the vernacular revival begun by Allan Ramsay, continued by Fergusson and completed by Burns, these later Scots restored a tradition, not so much because it was national, as because it directly helped the general protest against the artificiality of the century. Yet even they did not abjure the "southern manner," and their work in it is a matter of some critical significance, whatever may be said of its inferiority in craftsmanship.

It is not until after the Forty-five that we find any great manifestation of originality in the literature of the Scottish High lands. The reasons for this are not far to seek. Scotch Gaelic was from the outset seriously handicapped by the great activity of the professional literary class in Ireland. We may say that down to the beginning of the 18th century the literary language of the Highlands was the Gaelic of Ireland. During the dark days of the penal laws and with the extinction of the men of letters and their patrons in Ireland, an opportunity was given to the native Scottish muse to develop her powers. Further, after Culloden the causes of the clan feuds and animosities of the past were removed. The Highlands, perhaps for the first time in history, formed a compact whole and settled down to peace and quietude. A remarkable outburst of literary activity ensued, and the latter half of the i8th century is the period which Scottish writers love to call the golden age of Gaelic poetry. But before we attempt to deal with this period in detail, we must examine the scanty literary products of Gaelic Scotland prior to the i8th century.