Page:English Historical Review Volume 35.djvu/303

 h 1920 REVIEWS OF BOOKS 295 gifts may be traced in such an essay as that on the Scottish nobility and their part in the national history. Once and again they had the destinies of their country in their hands ; it was they who gave Scotland its limited monarchy ; the Reformation and the Covenants were largely their work, and but for them the Revolution and the Union might have had no place in our history. The assertions are more disputable than most of their author's state- ments, but the arguments by which he supports them show both insight and a sympathetic wisdom which came from reflexion. The subjects of the eleven essays are varied ; the largest contribution to our actual knowledge of fact is to be found in a paper on the intellectual influence exerted by Scotland on the Continent. In recent years French and German scholars have given their attention to the subject, and with some unexpected results. In the sphere of imaginative literature, it appears, Scotland has made a double contribution : it supplied new themes, new motives, and new inspiration, and it gave to the world certain novel theories regarding the nature of genius and the conditions under which it works. The essay traces, though too briefly, the influence long known to have been exerted by James Thomson and James Macpherson, and reveals the effect upon the eighteenth-century German thought of the work of Lord Kames and Alexander Gerard. There is a very happy chapter on Scotland in the eighteenth century, a period in which Hume Brown was so completely at home that in speaking of it he always exercised the gracious offices of a host ; and a paper on literature and history is full of suggestive thought and apposite illustration. The essays were well worth collecting, and they justify Lord Haldane's remark that Hume Brown was never commonplace, even in dealing with common topics. Robert S. Rait.