Bute took an infinity of pains over his English Breviary, polishing and repolishing his version of the mediæval Latin text over and over again, and correcting and revising the proofs with such meticulous care as greatly to add to the expense of the production (which was defrayed by himself, not by the publishers) and also to the delay in bringing out the work. Probably few books of the size and character of these two portly volumes were ever printed with a smaller proportion of typographical errors; but Bute professed himself far from satisfied with the work on its appearance. Sending a copy to a friend, he wrote:
There are a good many things in it—blunders and oversights (mostly mine, not the printers', who have done their work extraordinarily well)—which make me anything but contented with it. I am on the whole, seeing the book in print, least dissatisfied with the rendering of the prayers, in which I venture to think I have not quite failed to reproduce to some extent the measured and sonorous dignity of the original Latin.
Reviewers, as a rule, received the Breviary with respectful admiration, their tributes being, however, paid in many cases less to the work itself than to the astonishing industry of the translator. Bute himself was disappointed at the slowness of the sale. "I hope," he wrote to a friend at Oxford, "you will speak of it if occasion offers, as the circulation is not large." And some months later he wrote again, "I am very glad that you find the Breviary of use, and that there are others who do the same. It is not, however, a feeling as yet very widely disseminated among the public, seeing that I am still £300 out of pocket by having published it."
There was, in truth, no very considerable body of educated English-speaking readers to whom these two ponderous and necessarily expensive tomes were likely to appeal. The Catholic clergy had no money to spare for literary luxuries, and felt no special need of an English version of their familiar office-book: the Catholic laity, devoid for the most part of all liturgical taste, and nurtured on modern methods and manuals of devotion, knew and cared little about the ancient and official prayer of the Church, either in Latin or in English; and thus those chiefly interested in this really monumental work, to which the translator had devoted such prolonged and unwearied labour, proved to be, not (pathetically enough) his own co-religionists, but a small group of scholars and devotees mostly belonging to one section of the Church of England, and including liturgiologists of acknowledged eminence. In some religious houses, however, both of men and women, the Breviary was introduced, and greatly valued, as a means of instructing novices and others in the Divine Office; and in a certain number of Anglican communities, especially in the United States, it was brought into use as the regular office-book. Bute always heard with sincere gratification of any instances of this which were brought to his knowledge.[[7]]
1882, The Scottish Review
Next to the Breviary, the "beloved child" of his brain, which was published in the autumn of 1879, Bute's chief literary labours may be said to have been in connection with the quarterly Scottish Review, to which he first became a contributor in 1882, and of which he afterwards assumed the control, purchasing the periodical outright in 1886. A series of his letters dealing with the Review, all eminently characteristic of the writer, have been preserved, mostly addressed to the editor, the Rev. W. Metcalfe, an Established Church minister of Paisley, who was afterwards closely associated with him during his Rectorship of St. Andrews University, and was during a long series of years one of his most intimate friends and most regular correspondents. One of his first letters, in reply to one suggesting certain subjects for possible articles from his pen, shows the complete frankness with which, when necessary, he acknowledged his own ignorance.
Dumfries House,
October 10, 1882.
I am sensible of the kindness of your offer, but I know my own limitations. About prehistoric antiquities I can write nothing, for I know nothing; and of the Scots Men-at-Arms I know if possible even less. For the latter subject I could no doubt "mug up," as Arthur Pendennis did for his articles in the Pall Mall Gazette; but cui bono? As for early Scottish Christianity, the subject is too vast: you might almost as well ask me for an article on the history of the human race. It must be done in fragments. I think I might try my hand on some scrap, say the ancient Celtic Hymns, in Latin; and I am now taking steps to ascertain if there are known to be any more of such compositions than I already possess—also to get a legible transcript of one of mine, a (to me) illegible lithographic facsimile of an ancient Codex.... As to the Men-at-Arms, I am of opinion that Mrs. Maxwell Scott of Abbotsford would do this well. She is somewhat of an invalid, and spends much time in study, in which she has the advantage both of great natural ability and of her illustrious great-grandfather's admirable library. She is (unreasonably) diffident; but were the article once written, I feel sure you would not find yourself in search of any excuse not to print it.
1883, Contributions to the Scottish Review