"These are such outrageous disorders that it were better for the nation they were sold to the Gallies or West-Indies, than that they should continue any longer to be a burden and curse upon us.” 1 It is a singular illustration of the irony of human affairs that the remedy for this alarming state of matters should have been implicit in that very legislative enactment which Fletcher did his utmost to defeat. He was not an infallible prophet; which indeed it is given to few to be. But whether he was right or wrong in his opinions, correct or mistaken in his forecasts, he is well worth studying both for the independence of the views which he presents, and for the uncompromising energy with which he asserts them. From The Second Discourse, &c., p. 144. CHAPTER VI THE AUGUSTAN AGE: PROSE WE are not here directly concerned with the political, economical, and social consequences of the sad and sorrowful Union. Neither the inflammation of reckonings nor the diminished size of pint stoups must divert our attention; and it is unnecessary to dwell upon the risks to which an honest man became exposed from gaugers and excisemen in the innocent act of fetching a bit anker of brandy from Leith to the Lawnmarket. We may note, however, incidentally that the Union of the Parliaments gave the critical impulse to a movement which began a century before with the Union of the Crowns. The exodus of the greater Scottish nobility from the Scottish capital went on apace, so that early in the nineteenth century Dr. Peter Morris could assure his correspondent that "there is scarcely one of the première noblesse that retains even the appearance of supporting a house in Edinburgh; and by far the greater part of them are quite as ignorant of it as of any other provincial town in the island.” 1 After 1707, professional and business men began to seek in England, and particularly in London, the opening for their abilities which their native country was unable to afford. Both in the West end of the town and in the City there was 1 Peter's Letters to his Kinsfolk, 3 vols. Edin., 1819, vol. i. p. 212. a busy and influential colony of Scots doctors towards the middle of the eighteenth century; among them, Cheyne, Clephane, and Armstrong. Millar, perhaps the leading publisher of his age, was a Scot, and so were Strahan and Murray. The most successful literary hacks of their day, Smollett and Campbell, came from beyond the Tweed. Even at the bar, the competition of the immigrants became really formidable. The outburst of hatred against everything Scotch which marked the decade between 1760 and 1770 was an expression of feelings which had doubtless been smouldering for many years. Hume is never tired of railing against "the factious barbarians of London, who will hate me because I am a Scotsman and am not a Whig, and despise me because I am a man of letters." But an impartial observer must allow that this anti-Calédonian rage, however discreditable, was a most natural emotion. No one probably will maintain that a similar invasion of Scotland by the English would have been received by the natives with complacency or even equanimity. What is really remarkable is that the outburst has never been repeated, though the prosperity of the Scot abroad has increased by leaps and bounds, and though he has appropriated a very ample share of the common heritage.2 No more striking Burton's Life and Correspondence of David Hume, 2 vols. Edin., 1846, vol. ii. p. 290. 2 The most familiar manifestation of the prejudice against the Scots is, of course, the half-serious, half-jocular growl of Dr. Johnson. To find the sentiment at its bitterest we must repair to Churchill's Prophecy of Famine, where we read : "Jockey, whose manly high-boned cheeks to crown, E'en from the rising to the setting day; testimony could be offered to the constitutional good-nature and generosity of the English people. The most important result of the Union from our point of view is the complete disappearance of the Scottish dialect as a vehicle of serious prose, and as the medium of conversation among the educated classes of the community. The process of extinction has naturally been more gradual as regards the spoken than as regards the written word, but it has been none the less sure. What "the mail-coach and the Berwick smacks" I have left undone in completing the work of consolidation has been achieved by the railroad and the locomotive. Scotticisms and provincialisms may be met with in abundance in the speech of the trading, mercantile, and professional classes; but the old Scottish dialect as a thing of worth and honour has practically disappeared. Even among the artisans and the peasantry it is too rarely to be heard in its native purity and vigour; and in the vicinity of large towns it has been deplorably contaminated by the odious slang of the musichall and the gutter. As might have been expected, accent and intonation long survived vocabulary and idiom. Dr. Alexander Carlyle-than whom there is no higher authority on all that pertains to the social life of Scotland in the eighteenth century-mentions that his aunt from London taught him to read English "with just pronunciation and a very tolerable accent-an accomplishment which in those days was very rare."2 Principal Robertson, we have it from the same witness, "spoke broad Scotch in point of pronunciation and accent or tone," though "his was the language of literature and taste, and of an enlightened and liberal mind." 3 It was the same with David Hume,4 though his intimate friend, Adam Smith (perhaps as the result of six years at Oxford), spoke pure and correct English without Lockhart, Life of Scott, 1 vol., Edin., 1893, p. 140. Autobiography, Edin., 1860, p. 4. I 2 3 Ibid., p. 494. 4 Burton's Hume, vol. ii. p. 440. any appearance of constraint. On the other hand, Dr. Hutton, the celebrated geologist, employed broad Scotch phrases as well as "a broad Scotch accent, which often heightened the humour of what he said." 2 As a set-off to him, Dr. Black, no less illustrious in chemistry than his brother-savant in geology, "spoke with the English pronunciation, with punctilious accuracy of expression, both in point of matter and manner." But the sustained effort after an English accent came later, and an association formed in the early sixties of the eighteenth century by a number of influential people for promoting the use of the English language by means of a teacher qualified to impart the true English pronunciation,3 came to an untimely end, amid the ridicule of the general. Scott, from beginning to end, remained "broadly Scotch" in his speech, and had a burr besides.4 His conversation as reported by Lockhart is full of racy and idiomatic Scotch expressions, but it is obvious that he used them always in inverted commas, so to speak.5 His aunt had spoken "her native language pure and undiluted, but without the slightest tincture of that vulgarity which now seems almost unavoidable in the oral use of a dialect so long banished from Courts."6 All the authorities are agreed as to Rae, Life of Smith, p. 28. Yet Smith now and then lapses into a Scotticism, e.g. "machine" = vehicle. (Theory of Moral Sentiments, ed. 1853, p. 260.) Scott, Misc. Prose Works, vol. xix. p. 334. Dr. Carlyle thinks that the "gross mistake" of supposing the Scotch people to be devoid of humour could be demonstrated "by any person old enough to remember the times when the Scottish dialect was spoken in purity in the low country" (Autob., p. 222). 3 So late as 1824, the original prospectus of the Edinburgh Academy, in which Scott took so warm an interest, promises an English master "who shall have a pure English accent; the mere circumstance of his being born within the boundary of England not to be considered indispensable." 4 Lockhart, Life, ut sup., p. 25. 5 The unconscious Scotticisms in his writing are not very numerous, or at least not very obtrusive. But he certainly speaks in a letter of receiving a thing in a present, and in The Antiquary, ch. i., of taking out a ticket for a coach. 6 Lockhart, Life, p. 21. |