SCOTLAND AND SCOTSMEN IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.*
LET us say at once that this is the best book which has appeared on the Scotland of the past—a Scotland not too remote or barbarous to be now uninteresting—since the late Dr. Hill Burton published the Autobiography of Dr. Alexander Carlyle. It embodies the experiences of a sbrewa, sagacious, scholarly • Scotland and Scotsmen in the Esghtstrath Century. From the MSS. of John Ramsay, Esq., of Ochtertyre. Edited by Alexander Allardyce. 2 vols. London and Edinburgh : William Blackwood and Sons. MS. Scotsman, who lived in times when events happened that were worth observing, and when folks had leisure to observe them, and who, owing to his personal circumstances, came across almost every fellow-countryman of his day worth knowing. Mr. Allar- dyce has further done the work of editing entrusted to him with unexceptionable judgment. He had to reduce ten volumes to two, —the ten written, too, by a man who, although towards the end of his life he became garrulous, never became uninteresting, who, being as much a connoisseur in good stories as almost every one of his contemporaries was in strong ale and spirits, had a trick of making his foot-notes more readable than his text, and who left a Carlylian malediction as a legacy to whoever should have the temerity to modify his style or opinions. By careful selec- tion, however, Mr. Allardyce has succeeded in giving us pictures of Scotland, Scotchmen, and Scotchwomen in the latter and more distinguished half of the last century—Mr. Arnold's "world of Scotch manners, Scotch religion, and Scotch drink" —without ignoring the personality of the artist whom he intro- duces to the public. Yet we wish Mr. Allardyce could have brought us closer to his hero, John Ramsay of Ochtertyre,- could have shown us into his sanctum, as well as into his dining- room and his business-parlour. For this John Ramsay, who blossomed from an Edinburgh advocate into a Stirlingshire laird, was evidently a man worth knowing intimately. His life, beginning in 1736 and ending in 1811, embraced the history of Scotland during the most brilliant period of its literary auto- nomy,—the Scotland of Burns and Scott, as well as the Scot- land of Karnes and Forbes of Culloden and Thomas Reid and Blair. Burns visited him at Ochtertyre in 1787, and received from him the most cordial appreciation—" I never witnessed such flashes of intellectual brightness as from Barns, the impulse of the moment, sparks of celestial fire "—and good advice which it would have been well if Burns had taken. To Ochtertyre in 1793 came Scott. He obtained some hints for his romances from Ramsay, and, according to Lockhart, rolled him, George Con- stable, and Clerk of Eldin into Jonathan Oldbuck. Ramsay was a Whig, with a kindly feeling for the Jacobites ; a Presby- terian, and yet a Broad Churchman ; and enough of a scholar to supply his friends, as well as himself, before death with Latin epitaphs. He "had the credit of having been in his youth and manhood a great admirer of the sex." He was one of the first Scotch landlords to endeavour to give a practical application to the principles of scientific forestry. He set an early example of the reclamation of moss-lands. Finally," he was very indulgent to his tenants, was a kind friend, an intelligent country gentle- man, and was highly esteemed by all classes of the com- munity."
These two volumes, extracted from the Ochtertyre manuscripts, are admirably arranged. The first treats of the revival of letters in Scotland, of the Judges—a special chapter is devoted to Ramsay's neighbour and friend, Lord Karnes—of the Church and University before 1745, of men of genius and taste from 1745 to 1763, and of professors and clergymen from 1745 to 1760. The second volume is less full of reminiscences of persons than the first, and deals more largely with the social condition of Scot- land. The leading chapters treat of "The Church and the Secession," "The Scottish Gentry," "Some Scottish Ladies," "Agriculture," "Some Scottish Worthies," and "Experiences of a Landlord." The three last but one are devoted to the Highlands and the Highlanders. The reader of these volumes will come across many eighteenth-century Scotsmen whom he has met with in earlier works—take The Arniston Memoirs, to go no further back—such as Lord Karnes, Lord Hailes, Lord Braxfield, Lord President Forbes, Lord President Dundee, Lord Monboddo, Campbell of The Philosophy of Rhetoric, Beattie of The Minstrel, Skinner of Linshart and " Tullochgorum." Yet there is hardly one of these that Ramsay has not from personal knowledge, or from information specially given him—for he seems to have been a born gossip—something fresh to tell. (Parenthetically, it may be said—for it is hardly possible to avoid saying it—that there is almost as much alcohol in these volumes as there is in The Pickwick Papers or in Dean Ramsay's Reminiscences. If in any page it does not pervade the text, it is sure to be found saturating a foot-note. Whenever one begins reading a new sketch by Ramsay, one also begins to wonder what were the relations of its subject to the bottle ? Ramsay's country, at least in Ramsay's time, positively tempts the appli- cation to it, in a modified form, of the only two pithiest lines in Cowley's best-known anacreontic "Nothing in Scotland's sober found,
But an eternal health goes round.") Ramsay enlarges greatly on the popular Edinburgh clergymen of his time. Of these, the most extraordinary was surely Dr. Alexander Webster, who, about the year 1745, was a foremost man in what subsequently became known as the Evangelical party. He seems to have been a sort of compound of Jan Steen and Dr. Chalmers ; frequented taverns, was averred to have drunk as much claret at the expense of the City of Edinburgh as would have floated a 74-gun ship— although it was "hardly in the power of liquor to affect Dr. Webster's understanding or limbs "—was the friend of Whitfield, rebuked his boon companions without mercy if they were guilty of indecorum or irreverence, and "in the capacity of a counsellor and comforter is said to have displayed astonishing eloquence and knowledge of the human heart ; it being difficult to say whether his exhortations or prayers spoke the more peace to the sick and afflicted, whilst they commanded the admiration and esteem of all who heard him." Ramsay had a high opinion of " Talloch- gorum " Skinner, and visited him in his parsonage—humble to ugliness—in Aberdeenshire. "I had sometimes," he says, "been in the company of men of first-rate wit and genius, but never saw one whose social hour was more truly delightful and instructive than that of Mr. Skinner. Burns, the poet, who had been my guest for some days in October, 1787, came the nearest to him in those unpremeditated flashes of wit and senti- ment, the impulse of the moment, which bespeak a heart pregnant with celestial fire. But sprightliness and exuberance of fancy were less extraordinary in a man of twenty-eight than in one verging upon seventy. Mr. Skinner had what the other wanted, a great deal of learning improved by experience. In him might be beheld a faithful pastor grown old in doing good, and looking forward with joyful hope to the finishing of his course ; and in the other, a child of nature blessed with a fine genius, who gave full scope to his passions, and in his discourse did not always regard time or place." Of Ramsay's numerous and carefully balanced judgments on the Scotch Judges of the latter half of the eighteenth century, perhaps the best are those on Lord Brasfield, the "Scotch Jefferies," who yet seems to improve on closer acquaintance; and on Forbes of Culloden, who was Lord President of the Court of Session at the time of the '45. Forbes was the author of perhaps the best of Scotch puns. "Upon some idle bodies telling him that one of the General officers had said all the President's services were not worth five shillings,' he answered, with good-humoured spleen,—" I thought they were worth three Crowns."
The second volume of this work gives abundant and carious information as to the manners, customs, dress, education, food, and the like, of the Scotland of Ramsay's day, illustrated with entertaining anecdotes. One or two quotations must suffice to show the character of this volume :—
"In a few instances the sons of private gentlemen were bred at home by a tutor ; but the far greater part went to the neighbouring schools, every morning, foul day and fair day, carrying their little dinner with them The reading of our old-fashioned ladies was exceedingly limited, being chiefly confined to books of a religious cast, or at most to the periodical papers published by Addison and
Steele, and the other wits of the last age The breakfasts of our gentry in the beginning of this century differed widely from the present ones, consisting of collops, fish, cold meat, eggs, milk-pottage, drc., to which was added water-gruel, skink—a species of soup peculiar to Scotland—strong ale, or a glass of wine-and-water A very respectable gentleman of this country, being on his death-bed, and giving his son directions about the burial, added, 'For God's sake, John,
give them a hearty drink !' Within the last forty years, country gentlemen of moderate fortune had no footman, contenting themselves with a maid to wait at table. On going from home, they took a labouring servant, in his ordinary apparel, to ride before their cloak-bag In the last age, the most substantial farmers seldom had anything better than a coat of grey or black kelt, spun by their wives. Twice or thrice in a lifetime, perhaps, they had occasion to buy a great-coat of English cloth, as what was home- spun would not keep out rain Not many years ago, in walking upon the high-road every bonnet and hat was lifted to the gentry whom the common people met. It was an unmeaning ex- pression of respect. The first who would not bow the knee to Baal were the Antiburghers when going to church on Sunday. No such thing now takes place."
In this second volume, there are also some pleasant reminis- cences of certain Scotch ladies—Lady Hamilton, of Lady Rachel Drummond, and others—whom Ramsay knew, and whom Miss Ferrier would have delighted to have included in her portrait.gallery. But the moat valuable chapters are those
on the Highlanders, their poetry, their customs, their super- stitions, their fighting capacity, their earth•hunger. After the lapse of nearly a hundred years, these chapters will .bear perusal even now by those who are bent on solving the crofter problem with due regard both to humanity and to political economy. Whatever may be thought of Ramsay's opinions, it is rather odd to read suggestions like this, written so many years ago :—
" To prohibit the extension of sheep-farms would be like fighting with Nature, and would be resented by a very powerful body as a violation
of the rights of property In this view, the planting of domestic colonies in very considerable sheep-estates would not only be an act of justice and mercy, but in the end increase their
value very much at a moderate charge Neither fisheries nor manufactories can be prosecuted to advantage by people who have only cot-houses and kailyards. That may answer very well in a rich corn country where market-towns abound. Bat in the West Highlands and Isles, every man must raise the greatest part of his own food, otherwise he must purchase it at the next seaport at a very high rate. And, therefore, every colony to be established in these countries must have some dependence on the plough or the spade, as well as on trade. To ensure its success, it would be requisite to give every man a lease, not under thirty-eight years certain, upon liberal terms."
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