Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/102

78 Smith, Robertson, Smollett, all challenge attention as English writers. Burns laboured hard to make himself the reverse of what Mr. Henley has so superficially called him—"a rather unlettered eighteenth-century Englishman." Currie, his first biographer, remarking that Scottish dialect was going out, says that "Burns, never farther south than Carlisle or Newcastle, had less of it than Hume, or perhaps than Robertson." In those days Beattie, an Aberdeen professor and elegant writer, thought it worth while to make out a list of Scoticisms (spelling of Burns and last century writers generally, to indicate the long o in use then) for reproof and instruction. Another Aberdonian professor was said to have carried modernity so far as to speak to his students of Thomas of Shanter and Shoemaker John. In our own time it would be hard to tell the nationality of an author from his printed page. As for the speech that bewrayeth, there are differences enough between any two individuals quite irrespective of their place of origin.

While literary style, like fashion in clothes, discourages the use of the archaic and characteristic, these qualities are persistent in spoken discourse. I have heard Carlyle, and his accent would have been pronounced decidedly provincial by the smart young person, but no one would question his right to a place among the masters of literary English. It is matter of common observation that the man who is consciously in touch with a well-marked vernacular like Scots, educates himself up to a high standard of purity in the use of the literary speech. The English of Inverness has been ascribed to the presence of Cromwell's soldiers, very doubtful models; but it rests on a far older and more philosophic basis. Nor is it confined to Inverness, but marks the use of any language grammatically taught, and never heedlessly employed. What English is more distinct and mellifluous than the utterance of a Highland girl who has acquired it as something apart from her mother-tongue? Only a slovenly Highland preacher would say 'he for the, char for jar, or indulge in the comic effect of yiss and divvel. In a genuine letter from Rob Roy he says: "The man that bought your quhway (quey) divill a farthing he peyd of you." These are the shibboleths which grow up with habit and environment; and so much are we the creatures of ear in speech that slight changes in tone