Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 5.djvu/125

Rh share of the fabulous early history which it is a proud and pleasing task for savages to frame, and which generally protrudes itself into the knowledge possessed by civilized ages, from the unwillingness of mankind to diminish their own claims to consideration, by lessening the glory of their ancestors. The form and consistence of that genealogy which traced the first of Scottish kings to a period some centuries before the Christian era, seems to have been concocted by the Highland senachies, who sang the descent of our monarchs at their coronation. Andrew Wyntoun and John Fordun soberly incorporated the long line thus framed into their chronicle of the Scottish nation from the commencement of the world. Major followed their example with some variations, and Geoffry of Monmouth and Geoffry Keating, respectively incorporated the whole with English and Irish history, the latter much about the same period when Innes wrote, busying himself with tracing the matter to a period anterior to the deluge. The rich and grotesque garb of fable which the whole assumed under Hector Bœce is known to many, if not in the original crabbed Latin, at least in the simple translation of Bellenden. It is discreditable to the memory of Buchanan, that, instead of directing his acute mind to the discovery of truth, he adopted, in many respects, the genealogy just sanctioned, and prepared lives for the monarchs created by fiction, suited as practical comments on his own political views. The fables had now received the sanction of a classical authority—Scotland was called κατ' εξοχην "the ancient kingdom;" and grave Englishmen wondered at the hoary antiquity of our line of monarchs. At length, when the antiquity of the race of England had been curtailed, some thought it unfit that that of Scotland should remain untouched—and several English antiquaries, such as Humphry Lhuyd, bishop Usher, bishop Lloyd, and bishop Nicholson, bestowed some calm hints on its improbability, which were speedily drowned by the fierce replies of the Scottish antiquaries, headed by Sir George M'Kenzie.

Such was the state of historical knowledge in Scotland when Innes wrote; and a Scotsman dared to look the line of ancestry claimed by his monarch calmly in the face, and, after due consideration, to strike from it forty crowned heads. The essay is divided into four parts, in which the author successively treats,—of the progress of the Romans in Scotland—of the history of the Mæats, the Strathclyde Britons or Welsh, who existed in the southern part of Scotland—of that of the Caledonians or Picts, who inhabited the whole of the northern portion previously to the arrival of the Scots from Ireland—and of the Scots, the ancestors of the present Highlanders. Examining the foundation on which Bœce supports his forty supernumerary kings, he shows, by very good negative evidence, that two chroniclers, on which that author lays the burden of much of his extraordinary matter, named Veremund and Campbell, never existed, and shows that the genealogists had, by an ingenious device, made Fergus the first, king of the Scots, Fergus the second, and had placed another Fergus sufficiently far behind him in chronology, to admit a complement of kings to be placed betwixt the two. Besides the detection of the fabulous part of our history, this work supplies us with an excellent critical dissertation on the various early inhabitants of the country; and the author has, with much pains and care, added an appendix of original documents, which have been highly useful to inquirers into Scottish history. The language in which the whole is clothed is simple, pleasing, and far more correct than that of most Scotsmen who wrote during the same period; while there is a calm dignity, and a philosophical correctness in the arguments, previously unknown to the subject, and which, it had been well if those who have followed the same track had imitated. Pinkerton, who would allow no man to be prejudiced on the subject of Scotland with impunity except himself, never can mention the work of Innes without some token of respect,