[[65]] Jeronymo Osorio (1506-1580), called "the Cicero of Portugal:" "Men began to hunt more after words than matter; more after the choiceness of the phrase, and the round and clean composition of the sentence, and the sweet falling of the clauses, and the varying and illustration of their works with tropes and figures, than after the weight of matter, worth of subject, soundness of argument, life of invention, or depth of judgment. Then grew the flowing and watery vein of Osorius the Portugal bishop, to be in price."—Bacon: Of the Advancement of Learning, I. iv. 2.
[[66]] Andrew Fletcher, of Saltoun (1655-1716), in his Account of a Conversation concerning a Right Regulation of Governments for the Common Good of Mankind, says: "I knew a very wise man" who "believed if a man were permitted to make all the ballads, he need not care who should make the laws of a nation."
[[67]] Richard Glover (1712-1785) was once famous for his epic Leonidas. There is an account of him, with specimens of his work, in Ward's English Poets. Nothing can better illustrate Carlyle's lack of a judicial habit of mind than his coupling Glover's name with Gray's. Read once more the Elegy written in a Country Churchyard, and form your own idea of the correctness of Carlyle's opinion.
[[68]] Apparently Carlyle's memory was treacherous, like that of ordinary mortals: man and work are both given incorrectly here. Human Nature in its Fourfold State, by Thomas Boston (1677-1732), is still a classic of the Calvinistic theology.
[[69]] The names are all readily found in any cyclopædia; except possibly that of Charles Batteux (1713-1780), who, as might be inferred from the text, was a French literary critic of the same school as Boileau.
[[70]] At one time Hume's residence in France, where he composed his Treatise on Human Nature.
[[71]] Chapter xi. of Book I. of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations has the title Of the Rent of Land. The Natural History of Religion is by Hume.
[[72]] In spite of the example of Burns, the publisher of Waverley hesitated for some time to accept the manuscript, on account of the Scotch dialect interwoven in it. Now, on the contrary, a local dialect seems a commendation to a work of fiction.
[[73]] Burns, in his autobiographical letter to Dr. Moore (August 2, 1787), says, in reference to The History of Sir William Wallace, one of his first books: "The story of Wallace poured a Scotch prejudice in my veins, which will boil along there till the flood-gates of life shut in eternal rest." The reader will by this time have noticed Carlyle's carelessness about small points.
[[74]] This may refer to Burns's poetical epistles to David Sillar and John Lapraik, obscure poets of his own time; or, more probably, to his erecting a memorial, at his own expense, over the neglected grave of Fergusson.