The delicate sensibility (not to say soreness) of the Scotch in matters of moral reputation, may in like manner be accounted for (indirectly) from their domiciliary system of church-government, of Kirk-assemblies, and Ruling Elders: and in the unprincipled assurance with which aspersions of this sort are thrown out, and the panic-terror which they strike into the timid or hypocritical, one may see the remaining effects of Penance-Sheets and Cutty-Stools! Poor Burns! he called up the ghost of Dr. Hornbook, but did not lay the spirit of cant and lying in the Cunning North!
Something however, it must be confessed, has been done; a change has been effected. Extremes meet; and the Saint has been (in some instances) merged in the Sinner. The essential character of the Scotch is determined self-will, the driving at a purpose; so that whatever they undertake, they make thorough-stitch work, and carry as far as it will go. This is the case in the pretensions some of their writers have lately set up to a contempt for Cutty-Stools, and to all the freedom of wit and humour. They have been so long under interdict that they break out with double violence, and stop at nothing. Of all blackguards (I use the term for want of any other) a Scotch blackguard is for this reason the worst. First, the character sits ill upon him for want of use, and is sure to be most outrageously caricatured. He is only just broke loose from the shackles of regularity and restraint, and is forced to play strange antics to be convinced that they are not still clinging to his heels. Secondly, formality, hypocrisy, and a deference to opinion, are the ‘sins that most easily beset him.’ When therefore he has once made up his mind to disregard appearances, he becomes totally reckless of character, and ‘at one bound high overleaps all bound’ of decency and common sense. Again, there is perhaps a natural hardness and want of nervous sensibility about the Scotch, which renders them (rules and the consideration of consequences apart) not very nice or scrupulous in their proceedings. If they are not withheld by conscience or prudence, they have no mauvaise honte, no involuntary qualms or tremors, to qualify their effrontery and disregard of principle. Their impudence is extreme, their malice is cold-blooded, covert, crawling, deliberate, without the frailty or excuse of passion. They club their vices and their venality together, and by the help of both together are invincible. The choice spirits who have lately figured in a much-talked-of publication, with ‘old Sylvanus at their head,’—
‘Leaning on cypress stadle stout,’—
in their ‘pious orgies’ resemble a troop of Yahoos, or a herd of Satyrs—
‘And with their horned feet they beat the ground!’—
that is to say, the floor of Mr. Blackwood’s shop! There is one other publication, a match for this in flagrant impudence and dauntless dulness, which is the John Bull. The Editor is supposed, for the honour of Scotland, to be an Irishman. What the Beacon might have proved, there is no saying; but it would have been curious to have seen some articles of Sir Walter’s undoubted hand proceeding from this quarter, as it has been always contended that Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine was too low and scurrilous a publication for him to have any share in it. The adventure of the Beacon has perhaps discovered to Sir Walter’s admirers and the friends of humanity in general, that
‘Entire affection scorneth nicer hands!’
Old Dr. Burney, about the middle of the last century, called one morning on Thomson, the Author of The Seasons, at a late hour, and on expressing his surprise at the poet’s not having risen sooner, received for answer,—‘I had no motive, young man!’ A Scotchman acts always from a motive, and on due consideration; and if he does not act right or with a view to honest ends, is more dangerous than any one else. Others may plead the vices of their blood in extenuation of their errors; but a Scotchman is a machine, and should be constructed on sound moral, and philosophical principles, or should be put a stop to altogether.
MY FIRST ACQUAINTANCE WITH POETS
The Liberal.] [1823.