Page:The Review of English Studies Vol 1.djvu/405

 stood the title-page of the pamphlet, and contradicted something which it had not declared. The prayers were not given out as the actual compositions of the King, "the regal issue of his own proper zeal." They are plainly described as prayers "used by his Majesty." The distinction between a prayer written and a prayer used is a very real one; for a prayer may be read or recited by persons who have not composed it themselves. Dr. Johnson was justified when he said, "The use of it by adaptation was innocent."

, who died on March 23, 1925, was born in 1868. He graduated as Master of Arts at St. Andrews University in 1894, taking First Class Honours in Mental Philosophy; he also studied in Germany. For some years he was a master at Ayr Academy and afterwards at Glasgow Academy. In 1907 he was appointed Queen Margaret Lecturer in English Literature at Glasgow University.

In 1905 he published his James Macpherson, a brief but scholarly introduction to the Ossian controversy and an admirable study of Macpherson's poems. The evidence that Macpherson's stories, regarded as rivals to those of authentic tradition, are no more than modern shams is carefully summed up, and the history of their fabrication clearly related. At the same time justice is done to Macpherson's "sensitive and poetic mind."

The University of St. Andrews conferred on him the degree of Doctor of Letters in 1912.

In 1921 he edited The Sonnets of Milton. His notes add considerably to the body of information about Milton's friends, and his introduction corrects a number of current misconceptions about the forms of Milton's sonnets and their relation to those of the Italian masters.

Of his shorter studies Tragedy (Essays and Studies, English Association, vol. viii.) is the most interesting. His examination of the philosophers who to put the Universe in the right insist on the guilt of the Individual, and his answer to the question, "Is it possible for a wholly innocent person to be the hero of a tragedy?" reveal his powers of enjoying and interpreting the poets. This capacity to understand the heart of his subject combined with his scholarly delight in detail gave distinction to all his work.

A life of Shakespeare was unfinished at his death.

P. A.