With Lindsay ceased that succession of poets writing in the Scottish dialect which had continued without interruption from the time of Barbour. It was more than a cen tury and a half before another made his appearance. Most of the scholars of that tuna wrote in Latin; but for one vernacular prase work of great merit as a composition, History of the Reformation of Religion within the Realms of Scotland, we are indebted to the leader of the movement, John Knox (q.v.).
We may close our account of this first period by the statement, that down to the period of the reformation every Lowland Scot knew that his language was " Iuglis," and the only one who did not speak of it as such was Gawin Douglas. The accession of king James to the crown of England was unpropitious to the vernacular literature of Scotland. The parliament still met at Edinburgh, but the capital had ceased to be the residence of a court, and the language began to be looked upon as a vulgar dialect of the English. The best authors composed in the classic English of the south. It was in that language Drummond (q.v.) of Hawthornden wrote his verses, archbishop Spottis wood (q.v.) and bishop Burnet their histories, and archbishop Leighton (q.v.) and Henry Scougal their theological works, so far as they were not in Latin.
It might have been expected that the union of the kingdoms, by which Scotland was deprived of a legislature of her own, would have soon extinguished the cultivation of the native literature; but as a matter of fact, it turned out to be otherwise. There was a strong popular prejudice against the union, and this roused a deep feeling of nationality, apart from the old religious divisions. At this time appeared the first Scottish poet of true genius since the dark age of the country's literature set in—Allan Ramsay (q.v.), author of The Gentle Shepherd, which was published in 1725. Ramsay had also the merit of preserving some of those songs and ballads which have since become so famous, but whose authors are quite unknown. How far these works are the productions of an earlier age, and. how far they are the composition of authors living in the 18th c., has
been keenly discussed. Reference may be made to The Romantic Scottish Ballads of Mr. Robert Chambers on the one side, and to The Lady Wardlaw Heresy of Mr. Norval Clyne on the other.
To the deep attachment to the exiled line of kings cherished by a large party in Scot land, and to the interest awakened by the struggles in which this resulted, we owe the exquisite Jacobite songs.
While these feelings were dying away under the influence of the mild government of George III., the close of the century was made famous by the appearance of the most illustrious of Scottish poets. It is almost needless to say a word of Robert Burns (q.v.). Admired by all ranks, he continues to be the chosen classic of the peasantry of the Scot lish Lowlands. It is as an English writer that sir Walter Scott (q.v.) is famous; but many of his lyrical and the dialogues in his novels, where the speakers use their Own northern tongue, entitle him to be ranked as the last and greatest of Scottish writers.
There is, however, no doubt that in spite of the fine and various manifestation of literary genius in the Scottish dialect during the 18th and 19th centuries, that dialect for the last 200 years been going through a process of uninterrupted decay. The intro duction of southern English as the standard or classic form of speech after the union of the crowns, and still more after the union of the parliaments, slowly but surely ruined the old Anglian tongue of Scotland, till most of its peculiarities disappeared, and a jaw gon grew up that was neither pure English nor pure Scotch, but of which nevertheless Scotchmen are curiously proud. Mr. Murray has happily characterized this jargon in which Ramsay, Fergusson, Burns, Scott, Hogg, and Tannahill wrote as "fancy Scotch.' See Craik's History of English Literature and the English Language (1864); David Irvino's History of Scottish Poetry (Edin. 1861); Como Innes's preface to his edition of Barbour's Brus (1656); and Murray's Essay in the Transaettons of the Philological Society (1873).