FRUITS IN THERE SEASON

All the same, I concede that the Scotch really do love learning. I gather, too, from unbiassed sources that they starve their mothers and make gin-mules of their fathers to get it. And when it is gotten, what a monstrous and unlovely possession it usually turns out to be. For your Scotchman always takes knowledge for wisdom. His learning consists wholly of “facts and figures,” all grouped methodically round that heaven-sent date, A.D. 1314,[9] and if you cannot tell him off-hand the salary of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the population of Otaheite and the names of the fixed stars, he votes you a damned ignorant Southron, and goes about telling his friends that he shouldn’t wonder if you never went to “the schule.” It may rejoice him to know that his readiness to answer all manner of questions involving book learning is in point of fact the beginnings of a species of idiocy. Persons of whom this idiocy has got properly hold are styled by the medical profession “idiot savants.” “In all asylums,” says Professor Vivian Poore, “you will find idiot savants.… There used to be at Earlswood—and I saw him when I visited Earlswood—an idiot quite incapable of taking care of himself, but who had a most extraordinary memory. When I went to the asylum the superintendent said to me: ‘Ask that man anything you like.’ It was rather a strange thing to be told to do; I said: ‘What kind of thing shall I ask about?’ And he said: ‘Any ordinary bit of knowledge.’ I said: ‘Tell me about Socrates.’ The idiot then drew himself up like a child would who was about to repeat a lesson, gave a cough, and told me about Socrates.… He knew a great deal more about Socrates than I did; he knew when he was born, why he was condemned, the name of his wife, and everything that was essential to be known. This he repeated without difficulty. The superintendent gave a grin and said: ‘Would you like to ask him anything else?’ I was afraid that the man might ask me something. I said: ‘What do you know about comets?’ Immediately he gave me—I presume correctly—all the facts about the chief comets, their periods of revolution, the names of the best known, and so on. Nothing that had ever been read by this patient did he seem to forget. The words which had been read to him seemed to have stuck to the cells of his brain like so much superior glue, and nothing would eradicate it.”[10]

How very, very, very Scotch! Who has not met just this idiot savant in a newspaper office, at the meetings of absurd societies, at the houses of uncultivated people? And always, always, he is Scotch. And always, always, he has that sententious trick of drawing himself up to launching into his subject by way of the self-satisfied cough of conscious knowledge.

And now, to make a handsome end for a brilliant chapter, let us remember

I.That Hadrian had the excellent sense to build a wall for the purpose of keeping the Scotch out of England.
II.That for a thousand years the Scot was England’s bitterest enemy, and plotted and made war against her with France.
III.That the Scotch deserted that large lame woman (and, according to the Scotch, that paragon of all the virtues), Mary Stuart, in her hour of direst need.
IV.That it was the Scotch who sold Charles I. (and a Stuart) to the Parliamentarians for £400,000.
V.That the Stuarts were the wickedest and stupidest kings Europe has ever known.
VI.That the Scotch are in point of fact quite the dullest race of white men in the world, and that they “knock along” simply by virtue of the Scottish superstition coupled with plod, thrift, a gravid manner, and the ordinary endowments of mediocrity.
VII.That it was a Scotchman who introduced thistles into Canada, and that, very likely, it was a Scotchman who introduced rabbits into Australia.

II
PREDECESSORS

From the day he first clapped eyes on him, the Englishman has felt that there was something wrong about the Scotchman. And this feeling rapidly crystallised itself into literature. Many early ballads against the Scotch are to be found by him who cares to look for them. That Chaucer did not love Scotchmen is pretty certain, though there is nothing in his writings to prove it. The same holds true of Spenser. But when one comes to Shakespeare the case is very much altered. There can be no getting away from the circumstance that Shakespeare knew his Scotchman through and through. Any Scot who is feeling a desire to be particularly humble and to learn the real truth about himself and his compatriots should read and read again the tragedy of Macbeth. Of course, Shakespeare does not count much in Scotland. Whenever a Scottish writer of the old school has to speak of him, he does so with a grumbling grudgingness as who should say, “The man was a genius, but not a Scot, what a peety!”