Burns to this principle of diction is to be found in pieces which are in part pronouncedly Scotch, but which vary with the changes of the subject. Tam o' Shanter is conspicuously such a piece. In it, as was to be expected, Scotch prevails. The introduction, the description of the potations of Tam, of the dance of the witches, and of the wild chase, are all rich in dialect. But the series of similes illustrating the fleeting character of pleasure are pure English; and so, except in pronunciation, is the picture of the storm at its wildest:

"Before him Doon pours all his floods;

The doubling storm rolls through the woods;
The lightnings flash from pole to pole;
Near and more near the thunders roll."

In The Vision again the opening stanzas, and they are the finest, are pure Scotch; but the entrance of Coila chastens the poet's language. Though she is a Scottish muse he describes the glories of her mantle in verses essentially English, and her own words are English too. The same change of language is seen when we compare the first half of The Cotter's Saturday Night with the stanzas descriptive of the worship of the family and the patriotic prayer which closes the poem. The division is here marked with peculiar clearness. Even the Cotter's preparations for worship are narrated in Scotch; but from his utterance of "Let us worship God," the diction changes. Illustrations might be multiplied; but very frequently the change betrays itself in a line, perhaps even in a word. In such cases its character would not be obvious in quotation; but it reveals itself to

any one who is willing to read Burns with care and able to read him with taste.

Of the many judgments which have been pronounced upon Burns, three, of which two are in verse and one in prose, have been specially distinguished for depth and truth. The last is that of Carlyle. The other two are respectively by Wordsworth and by Burns himself. Wordsworth, in the beautiful stanzas At the Grave of Burns, and in the Thoughts suggested the day following, contents himself with setting his seal to the poet's judgment of himself, which he declares to be all that is required of the biographer. And still, after a hundred years, the well-known lines of The Bard's Epitaph present the best and justest view of the significance of his life :—

"Is there a whim-inspired fool,

Owre fast for thought, owre hot for rule,
Owre blate to seek, owre proud to snool,
Let him draw near;

And owre this grassy heap sing dool,
And drap a tear.

"Is there a bard of rustic song,

Who, noteless, steals the crowds among,

That weekly this area throng,

O, pass not by !

But with a frater-feeling strong,
Here, heave a sigh.

"Is there a man, whose judgment clear
Can others teach the course to steer,
Yet runs, himself, life's mad career,
Wild as the wave?

Here pause-and, thro' the starting tear,
Survey this grave.

"The poor inhabitant below

Was quick to learn, and wise to know,
And keenly felt the friendly glow,
And softer flame,

But thoughtless follies laid him low,
And stain'd his name.

"Reader, attend! Whether thy soul
Soars fancy's flights beyond the pole,
Or darkling grubs this earthly hole,
In low pursuit ;

Know, prudent, cautious self-control
Is wisdom's root."

CHAPTER XI.

SIR WALTER SCOTT.

THERE is perhaps nothing more fortunate in the literary history of Scotland than the opportune appearance of the two greatest figures in its later annals. On the one hand, the country had long been ripening for them; on the other, the time was rapidly coming when the absorption of Scottish life in the wider life of England would make a distinctive treatment of northern subjects difficult, if not impracticable. Burns and Scott would have been impossible either much before or much after the time when they appeared. At an earlier period they would have found themselves cramped by the circumstances of the country; later, they would indeed have been free to work; but they would have found national characteristics in rapid process of obliteration.

The connexion between the history of a nation and its literature is nowhere more clearly shown than in the case of Scotland; for there it is not obscured, as it generally is, by the very continuity of the literature. We find in the life of the nation two great movements separated by centuries; and we find in its literature two great periods, also wide apart. We conjecture, and an

examination of the facts justifies the conjecture, that there is here more than a coincidence. The older Scotland

was the outcome of the War of Independence; and the older Scottish literature, from Barbour's Bruce to The Complaynt of Scotland and the lofty and sonorous Latin verse of Buchanan, owes its distinctive features to that great struggle. The later Scotland was created by the Reformation and the union with England; and the later Scottish literature, whether in the way of agreement or of opposition, shows deeply marked traces of the fact. But in both cases the literary response to the historic impulse was slow, just because in both cases the struggle was for very life. In the later instance it did not come fully till the close of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries. Burns and Scott are the mature fruit of the teaching of Knox and of the accession of the Stuarts to the English throne. Burns has filled the popular imagination more than Scott; but it is Scott who is, in the most catholic sense, the representative of the mind of his country. It was he who, it has been well said, gave Scotland a citizenship in literature.

The facts of Scott's life need be recapitulated only in the briefest fashion. They are enshrined in a biography which has no superior in English, except Boswell's Johnson.

Walter Scott, who was the son of a respectable Edinburgh lawyer, was born on 15th August, 1771. A series of accidents threatened to cut him off in early childhood. His first nurse proved to be ill of consumption, which, but for the warning of a physician, she would probably have communicated to her nursling. Another nurse was on the