Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland Part 6

In our own day, Dr. Murray of Oxford has compiled an illuminating grammar of the language, indicating the various dialects of the Lowlands and their geographical areas. Local antiquarians have also written out lists of words special to particular counties. Dialect books, such as the entertaining _Johnnie Gibb of Gushetneuk_, as well as Mr. Barrie's delightful sketches, have put excellent specimens of provincial speech within the hands of a wide circle of readers. A good dictionary of modern Scotch, dealing with what has been written during the last two centuries, would be a very useful and a very interesting compendium. It would show that a great many expressive words employed by thirteenth century English writers are still in use on the Scotch side of the Border.

There is no denying the fact that book-English will soon push out the relics of the old Scotch tongue. Burns will soon be read by lexicon, even in the shire of Ayr. Men now write poetry in Scotch as boys at Eton and Harrow write Latin verses, the result in both cases being, as a rule, hideous and artificial doggrel. The little book, _Wee Macgregor_, written in what may be called the Scotch c.o.c.kney dialect, was a brave and amusing attempt to phonograph the talk of a Glasgow boy of the lower middle cla.s.s. The unlovely speech employed by the author is, happily, quite unlike the careful and deliberate speech of the educated citizen of Glasgow or Paisley. The main differences between the educated Scot and the educated Englishman are that the vowel sounds of the former are pure and that _r_ and _h_ have a real value in most words where these letters occur.

It seems to me a _very undesirable_ thing that a uniform system of p.r.o.nunciation should be aimed at in every country of the British Isles.

So long as clear and expressive enunciation of English is attained, intelligible differences of vocalisation, pitch, and even of vocabulary, are allowable, and at times positively charming. Monotony is the bane of life.

CHOICE BOOKS.

"Whether the books are borrowed books or no That show their varied stature row on row Along your walls, there will I truly find The image of your character and mind.

Light, flimsy novels suit the flying train Or _Western Isle_ excursions of Macbrayne, Where, dazed by gleaming firths of visible heat, The torpid soul disdains substantial meat; But oft-read volumes, to which men recur The whole year round, bespeak the character."

The above lines, written by some unknown poetaster, indicate that it is the book we read over and over again that has the greatest potency in our education. I quite agree with the author, and I love to behold the well-thumbed pocket-edition that speaks to the eye of much handling and frequent perusal. There are very few books _worth_ reading once that are not worth reading oftener. Hobbes used to say that if he had read as much literature as the majority of men, he would have been as ignorant as they. In that remark what depths of meaning lie! The sage of Malmesbury attributed his success in philosophy to his habit of judicious selection--to the fact that he concentrated his attention on those authors who were likely to help the development of his powers.

Selection is more required now than in Hobbes's time. Few men would care to read more than a hundred books through in a year, and yet there are twenty thousand volumes added annually to the shelves of the British Museum.

THE ESSAYISTS.

It has been my privilege, during the last three or four years, to examine with more or less care something like four hundred bookcases, containing works on all departments of literature. _I am inclined to turn away in disgust if the Essayists are not patronised._

Those delightful Essayists! Happy is the man who has his shelves full of them--writers who talk sense with wanton heed and giddy cunning, who spread their souls out on paper, who disarm hostility by taking you completely into their confidence. Addison, with the roguish gleam in his eye as he is calculating the number of sponges in the cost of a lady's finery; Goldsmith, in his London garret, talking of the ludicrous escapades of the Man in Black; Lamb luxuriating in reminiscences of Old Benchers. All these splendid, unsystematic delights, mingled with the breezes of byegone summers and the sunsets of long ago! Old ghosts whisper you their secrets; you hear the brush of sweeping garments that have been moth-eaten these hundred years. Crowded streets of people appear before the eye of fancy--London in the days of Anne and the Georges. In the company of such wits, there are no slow-moving hours: you have in them friends who never need tire you, for should the slightest tedium intervene, you may, without offence, stop their flow of conversation. Our living intimates are p.r.o.ne to drynesses and huffs; but these old prattling wits ever welcome us with a smile of affability.

A BANFF THEORY.

While speaking of Essayists, I ought to mention a peculiar Banffshire theorist who addressed me in the following words: "Give me an old set of _Blackwood_ in the Kit North days, and I can easily forego your pinchbeck stories and propagandist novels of to-day. I put the most interesting period for reading at _sixty years ago_, and I think Scott must have known the charm of that number when he gave the alternative t.i.tle to _Waverley_. It is pleasant to know how the world wagged when your grandfather was a ruddy egg-purloining rogue of five. When I read farther back than a century, I feel imagination flagging--the Merry Monarch is not much more to me than John the Baptist. But the men of the forties stand out clear and distinct. If I have never seen an out-and-out fiery Chartist, I have at least seen some smouldering specimens--men with much of the eloquence and a little of the enterprise of the original five-pointers. It may be that as I grow older, my most interesting historical period will move with me, keeping always at a distance of sixty years from the present, until, when I get within hail of the Psalmist's stint, I shall be most interested in childish things."

These words rather staggered me, and set me thinking of geometrical _loci_. A man holding such views would find it difficult to obtain a bird's-eye view of history.

GOLDSMITH IN GAELIC.

If I had an adequate knowledge of Gaelic, combined with plenty of money and leisure, I should set myself the task of translating the whole of Goldsmith's Essays and Tales into that language, for the benefit of those who had no English. It would be a great feat if one could impress on the modern Celtic mind the conviction that piety and diversion are by no means incompatible. Goldsmith's _Auburn_ introduces us to the most delightful prospect on earth: a simple village community, unacquainted with luxury and uncorrupted by vice. The inhabitants are full of health and joy--they till the soil and gain ample satisfaction for their unambitious wants. Life pa.s.ses along bringing a pleasant succession of happy hours. After the labours of the day, the young people dance merrily on the green, and the old folk look on and regret that their own legs are too stiff to keep time to the fiddles. Certain Highland landlords might also read with advantage the exquisitely pathetic lines in which the poet pictures the desolation and ruin of the rural paradise, and perhaps conclude therefrom that, when glen and strath are depleted of their inhabitants, and these latter driven over the seas to seek a foothold in strange lands, it is the very heart's blood of Britain that is being drained away.

On the whole, probably no English writer has given such genuine delight as Goldsmith, and such genuine instruction too. Ineradicably frivolous, culpably negligent of the morrow, whimsically vain and living all his days from hand to mouth, he had the faculty of drawing upon himself the pity, and even the contempt, of his a.s.sociates. But in the eyes of posterity, his happy-go-lucky life is amply redeemed by the work he has left behind him, for _it_ is pure and good. His river of speech flows ever on shining like molten gold. No man of his time possessed the adroit knack of bright writing in a more eminent degree. The pawky humour of his side-hits, the blending of light and shade in the process of the narrative, the beauty and melody that can be noted even in the sound of the sentences, combine to delight the judgment, the ear, and the fancy. Though the _Vicar of Wakefield_ is a prose production, it produces all the effect of a poem on the affections of the heart. Of wit, properly speaking, it is as full as any volume of _The Spectator_; with humour it is flooded from beginning to end; and in those pathetic delineations of life which no one can read without being profoundly touched, there are few poems so rich.

BIBLIA ABIBLIA.

In many (indeed most) houses I have visited, I see in the bookcase large publications in six or seven well-bound parts and as good as new, dealing with subjects of little interest to anyone who breathes the vital air of heaven. Such t.i.tles as _Science for All_, _The Thames from its Source to the Sea_, _The Queens of England_ are among the commonest on the boards of the books I allude to. The presence of these editions indicates that the possessor at a certain period of his life was shy and could not say _no_ to that limb of the Evil One--the book-canva.s.ser. The latter individual is the forerunner of the colporteur, who will bring you, if you wish poetry, an edition of the works of Shakespeare which is peculiarly ill-adapted for holding in the hand and reading. The print is large, the page is in size like a miniature wall-map, and the ill.u.s.trations are got up with an easy defiance of archeology. The annotations, though stolen, are distinguished for extreme futility.

After you have begun the purchase of such a book, shame and chagrin drive you to attempt the study of it; but it is of no use, and on each occasion of the very regular advent of the colporteur, you are inclined to swear horribly, after which a period of extreme dejection supervenes when you recollect the many fine things you could purchase for the half-guinea periodically expended. The knowledge of human nature displayed by the man who books the order surpa.s.ses anything in the works of the a.n.a.lytical philosophers. Every artifice of attack is his, and he knows how to play on all the emotions so ably and exhaustively catalogued in the manuals of Professor Bain. I believe a gay and chaffing rejoinder is what he can least overcome. Suggest to him that you are far gone in poverty and offer to _sell_ him a few of your own books. Frequent exercise will confirm your principles, until finally, when you see one of the book-canva.s.sing tribe, you will foresee half an hour's innocent amus.e.m.e.nt.

Certain of the points he so feelingly brings before you may no doubt awaken a responsive echo in your own bosom. You are well aware, for example, that your knowledge of the Queens of England is culpably imperfect. You know you are never likely to go in steadily for the study of const.i.tutional developments, and so are led to admit the reasonableness of tackling history from a lighter and more entertaining point of view. Again, as to the River Thames, one must really grant that a considerable amount of self-complacency and internal sunniness would result from the ability to contradict your friends as to the length in miles of some of its minor tributaries. In science, too, you are no Kepler or Linnaeus, and there is something satisfactory when pedants talk of orbits, planes, bulbs, or beetles, in being able to say that _you have a big book at home that tells all about those things_.

Many people buy books, not because they have a present need for them, but on the chance that at some time in the future such volumes as they see for sale will solve a doubt or answer a need. The precise doubt or the pressing need rarely arises. I met a Celt who had bought a copy of Josephus in most irritating type, in the hope that it would help him to confute a Roman Catholic on the Power of the Keys. Then again, people of a wavering and bird-witted type of mind are constantly changing the subject of their interest: this month they are attacked by the _furor poeticus_, next month it will be a _furor botanicus_ or _politicus_.

Each separate frenzy means expenditure. When Browning is the temporary subject of the mania, a host of expository books on that poet have to be purchased, all of which are duly consigned to the topmost shelves when the soreness of the fit is past. There is also a tendency to purchase, because on the chance opening of a book you light on something that pleases the whim of the moment. It is a thousand to one that when you have bought the book you will not find another item worth perusing in the entire contents. This tendency to buy a book in a panic may be neutralised by remembering the story (whether true or not) of Defoe, who is said to have boomed the languid sale of the dreary _Drelincourt on Death_ by means of a spicy little ghost story as introduction! Buy in haste, repent at leisure.

SECOND-HAND BOOKS.

It is a much pleasanter sight to my eyes to see a bookcase with second-hand books in it, for these are almost always bought to be read.

In a teacher's house near Elgin, I recently saw a most remarkable collection--a veritable ragged regiment of books: single volumes of Plutarch, unexpurgated plays by Farquhar and Mrs. Behn, Civil War pamphlets, and rows of oddities. Mr. Forbes (the owner) was at one period of his life a.s.sistant in Falkirk, and every Sat.u.r.day morning, rain or shine, he proceeded to the city of Glasgow, for no purpose but to roam through the dusty byeways and side streets in quest of bookstalls. He knew all the dealers by name, and they welcomed him, for he never left them without a purchase, however slight. It was a saying of his that while it took half-a-crown to purchase you two hours'

amus.e.m.e.nt at a theatre, for a couple of shillings, or even less, you might divide out a whole Sat.u.r.day most enjoyably in the old book-shops.

He simply rioted in haggling over a threepenny piece. Even old Henderson feared him. This Henderson was a thirsty old bookseller who kept a shop at the corner of Cowcaddens and Ingram Street, and whose leading speciality was second-hand family Bibles, with the former genealogical leaf riven out and replaced by a clean sheet pasted in for the family of the next purchaser. To him, sitting enthroned on a pile of Bibles, Forbes, entering, spake: "Have you a copy of the _Lives of the Twelve Caesars_?" "Aye, aye," said old Henderson, with a gracious smile; "_thirteen_ if you like." The copy of Suetonius was produced, and "How much do you want for Suet.?" queried Forbes. "Half-a-crown," said old Henderson. "I'll give you ninepence," said Forbes. "Make it one-and-six," said the bookseller, rising from his Biblical throne, "and the book's yours." "I'll give you a shilling and a half of whisky,"

retorted Forbes. "Say a whole gla.s.s and the shilling, and we'll do business," quoth the vendor of volumes. This was agreed upon, and the two retired into the nearest dram-shop to conclude the bargain. Every Sat.u.r.day evening, Forbes came home by the last train, carrying his bundle of volumes. He was careful to fumigate them for the purpose of destroying any microbes, and finally would sprinkle them with _eau de Cologne_ to make them tolerable to the nose. On Sunday, he enjoyed the luxury of desultory reading.

Like Mr. Forbes, I enjoy a ramble among these old shops, and can say, as he said to me at parting:--

"I love the trundling stall Where ragged authors wait the buyer's call, Where, for the tariff of a modest supper, You'll buy a twelvemonth's moral feast in Tupper; Where Virgil's tome is labelled at a groat, And twopence buys what t.i.ttering Flaccus wrote; Where lie the quips of Addison and Steele, And the thrice-blessed songs of Rob Mossgiel; And some that resurrection seek in vain From the swart dust that chokes the lumbering wain."

FAVOURITES.

I have often been asked: "You who are so much on the move, who have had so much train-travelling to do, what books would you recommend for a long railway journey?" I do not know that one man's likes and dislikes in reading are of value save as showing his own limitations, yet there are certain books of which I never tire. I never leave home without the following books handy for perusal: (i.) The _Odes of Horace_, (ii.) The _Sonnets of Shakespeare_, (iii.) A French novel and a few copies of the Paris _Matin_, (iv.) A Greek book of some kind, (v.) Pope or Addison, (vi.) Some Victorian cla.s.sic. The list is varied enough, and has furnished me with much of the material for my speaking.

HORACE.

The pleasant thing about Horace is that his odes are so short: you can read one in a few minutes--shut your eyes and enjoy the mental taste of it--try to repeat it, and, if you fail, consult the original--then, finally (as Pope and many others have done), endeavour to find modern parallels. Suppose, _e.g._, you are reading, as is likely, the first Ode of the first Book, you might find present-day resemblances like the following:--

_Curriculo pulverem._

What mad attractions sway the world!

Some are unhappy save when whirled In motor cars that madly race, To leave a stench in every place, And maim those foolish folk that stray Abroad upon the king's highway.

_Tergeminis honoribus._

Yon babbling wight, of sense forlorn, Who thinks himself a Gladstone born, Although a bailie, still must strain To gain himself a Provost's chain.

And, after that, the worthy prater Aspires to be a legislator; Dreams of St. Stephen's, where he sees Himself hobn.o.bbing with M.P.'s.

_Patrios agros._

But Farmer Bob is somewhat saner-- He minds his stock and is the gainer; Content to pa.s.s his life amid The scenes that his old father did.

With hose in hand he cleans the byre, And saves himself a menial's hire; But gives his girls an education That may unfit them for their station.

But don't ask Bob to tempt the tide, Even on a turbine down the Clyde; Neptune and Ceres don't agree, And farmers hate the name of sea.

_Mox reficit rates._

When Skipper Smith (whose usual goal Is Campbeltown with Ayrshire coal) Is labouring thro' Kilbrannan Sound, He sighs for Troon and solid ground, And swears, if he were safe on sh.o.r.e, He'd never be a sailor more.

But once on sh.o.r.e--he thinks it dull, And soon begins to tar the hull And caulk the timbers of his ship: "I'll try," he says, "another trip."

_Lene Caput._

Some love to mangle turf: I see Them drive their b.a.l.l.s from sandy tee, And think their day's delight begins When they are up among the whins.

Some elders, full of G.o.dly zeal, Turn crazy about rod and reel; And ministers, reputed wise, Take service with the Lord of Flies (Beelzebub), and like the work Better than prosing in a kirk.

_Conjugis immemor._

Sir Samuel Crsus (n.o.ble wight!