Most interesting and most illuminating. Now for Dr. Hammerton on smaller matters. He assures us that “if one will only read the anecdotes of village ‘loonies’ with which Scots literature abounds—especially Dean Ramsay’s Reminiscences and The Laird o’ Logan—he will find that the average Scots idiot was a creature of considerably more humour than the average Englishman”—which is a palpable hit. Also, “Only once have I felt inclined to wince in reading anything of Barrie’s, and that was one chapter entitled, ‘Making the Best of it,’ in A Window in Thrums; for here it seemed to me he was dwelling on an unworthy element of character which is more typical of the English rural and working classes than of the Scots. I mean the flattering of wealthy fools with a view to largess.”
Dr. Hammerton is quite amusing. His notion of the tremendousness of Dr. Barrie and of the vast superiority of the Scotch does him credit. One day, perhaps, he will wake up to the fact that Dr. Barrie is not among the persons who write literature. And even though Dr. Hammerton should never realise it, the fact remains.
X
THE SCOT IN LETTERS
Dr. Archer was once at pains to prove that his countrymen had contributed “at least their share” of good works to the main stream of English literature. Dr. Archer did this with the help, I believe, of an anthology by Mr. Henley. Properly wielded, an anthology is an excellent weapon, inasmuch as you can prove almost anything out of it. In the supposition that Scotland has done admirably by letters, Dr. Archer has the support of a large body of Scotchmen. For my own part I am quite ready to admit that she has done her best. What a poor best that is, everybody is aware, though so far as I know it is now for the first time set forth in print. When one comes to look upon English literature in the mass, beginning with Chaucer and coming down to Tennyson, and dealing only with the larger forces which have gone to the production of it, one perceives at once that Scotland’s share in the matter has been so small as to be scarcely worth counting. Against Chaucer, perhaps, she can place James I., but the difference is as the difference between chalk and cheese. Against Shakespeare and the Elizabethan dramatists she has nothing to show you, good, bad, or indifferent. Against Milton I suppose she will offer you Drummond of Hawthornden, and for Shelley and Keats, Burns. And of course she vaunts herself on Scott and Carlyle, and takes a certain haughty pride in the fact that R. L. Stevenson was Scotch.
To James I. and Drummond of Hawthornden she is welcome; both of them are what may be termed tolerable poets, and there the matter ends. Of Burns and his work I have already given my view, but I would say here that while at the present moment his popularity is of the widest and has all the appearances of stability, the circumstance that he wrote in a vernacular must ultimately relegate him to a position of comparative obscurity. As Scotland gradually extricates herself from the sloughs of barbarism in which she wallows so joyfully, she will inevitably shed her uncouth dialect, and, as soon as that is accomplished, Burns, excepting as a curiosity, will no longer exist.
For Scott and Carlyle little need be said. Both, I believe, have had their day. Scott, erstwhile the Wizard of the North, is rapidly dropping out of public favour. At the present moment he is what may be styled “a school-prize classic.” Ivanhoe and The Lady of the Lake, once considered to be marvellous performances, are now doled out to grubby children for punctual attendance at board schools. In the libraries, public and private, Scott, of course, figures, but the public library statistics go to indicate that he is not being read with avidity, and in private libraries he is felt to be rather a cumberer of space. Talking to a well-known Scotch critic as to the general decay of interest in Scott, I found him to be under no illusion on the point, and he electrified me by saying, “Scott—well, of course! But between ourselves, man, I cannot read the d⸺ books.” This is pretty well everybody’s case. To avow that you have not read Scott is still, perhaps, to confess to a defect in your reading. All the same, if you are a person of average tendencies, you have not read Scott, neither do you propose to do so.
Thomas Carlyle—“true Thomas” as Dr. Archer pathetically dubs him—is another Scotch rocket which has already touched its highest and begun to descend. Both intellectually and as an artist Carlyle, it is true, was worth a dozen Scotts, but he was a Scotchman, and come as near it as he may, a Scotchman cannot do enduring work. So that Carlyle, in the natural order of things, is, as one might say, dropping down the ladder rung by rung. He has ceased to be a “force.” People have discovered that his so-called gospel is a somewhat cheap and snobbish affair. All that is really left of him is The French Revolution, which survives because of a certain vividness of style. For the rest, Carlyle looks like going to pieces. A century hence he will be of no more account than Christopher North is to-day.
As to Stevenson, while the Scotch are disposed to brag about him when occasion arises, they have always fought more or less shy of him. He has never been admitted to that cordial intimacy of relation which a Scotchman extends alike to Robbie Burns and Dr. R. S. Crockett. As a matter of fact, he wrote too well and with too sincere a regard for the finer elements of literature to be properly understood in Scotland. Further, he took the precaution not to interlard his English with such phrases as “ben the hoose,” “getting a wee doited,” and so forth. He had no use for Scotch idioms, and when he dropped into them he was sorry for it. And he did not stiffen his pages with panegyric of the Scotch character. In fact, Stevenson tacitly refused to have anything to do with the advertising of his countrymen. He had the good sense to perceive that if you are to use the English language as a medium for expression, you might as well use it skilfully and decently while you are about it. More than all, he did not boast of having been born in a wynd, or of having pu’d fine gowans wi’ Jeanie, the auld sweetie wife’s dochter at Drumkettle.