Bute's own paper on "Ancient Celtic Latin Hymns" appeared in February, 1883, and was the first of over twenty articles contributed by him to the Scottish Review.[[8]] Other articles followed, dealing respectively with St. Patrick, the Scottish Peerage, and the Bayreuth Festival, which he attended for the first time in 1886, the same year in which he acquired control of the Review. The last-named article has a particular interest of its own, as having been written by a man quite devoid (as he himself frankly acknowledged)[[9]] of any æsthetic appreciation of music, but who was yet moved and impressed to an extraordinary degree by the Wagnerian cycle as presented at Bayreuth. "Had you not better," he writes to the editor in sending the Bayreuth article, "submit my Festival to some expert musician of Wagnerian mind, that he may add a few technicalities at appropriate places? (I have indicated in pencil where I think this may fitly be done.)"
The article on St. Patrick aroused some interest, especially in the perennial question of the Saint's birthplace—a subject to which Bute makes whimsical reference in a letter relating to hoped-for contributions from the Rev. Colin Grant,[[10]] the learned priest of Eskadale.
He (G.) is at all sorts of things at this moment, including a memoir of Simon Lord Lovat, also a formal attack on a priest (one M——) who writes an article every six months, making St. Patrick be born in a new place every time, as readily as if he were a kind of early Celtic Homer or Gladstone. Grant swears by Dumbarton; but whenever he crushes M—— in one place it is only to find him giving birth to the Saint again in a new one.
1886, A troublesome Greek
A note to the editor of the Review on the proper designation of a Greek named Bikelas, who had contributed an article, shows the extreme attention paid by Bute to such comparatively subsidiary points. The note was addressed from Dresden, which Lord and Lady Bute were visiting after their pilgrimage to Bayreuth, and where they prolonged their stay for several days (in spite of their usual eagerness to get home), in order to witness there another performance of the Nibelungen Tetralogy which they had seen at Bayreuth a few days previously.
Sept. 14, 1886.
Bikelas kicks against being called "the K. Bikelas": he wants the title "Mr." I tell him that we usually give foreigners the title they use themselves—not "Mr." Thus we say "M." not "Mr." Grévy—"Signor" not "Mr." Depretis—Herr not "Mr." von Hartmann—"Señor" not "Mr." Canovas." Greeks are vulgarly designated "M.," which must be wrong, as, whatever they are, they are not Frenchmen, nor are we. It is a mere blunder founded on ignorance. They themselves always use the style [Greek: ho kúrios]—e.g. [Greek: ho K. peparrêgopoulos]. Consequently I maintain that they should be called in English "the K." So-and-so.[[11]]
Under Bute's regime the columns of the Scottish Review were open to capable writers professing any religion or none; but he seems to have found the latitudinarian views of "[Greek: ho K. Bikelas]" as troublesome as his title.
December 11, 1886.