36 ROYAL SOCIEfY OF CANADA 



The Gael is intensely religious. He turns to verse for adequate 

 utterance when profoundly stirred with sacred thoughts. At the 

 time of the first emigration to Canada, Dugald Buchanan, the greatest 

 religious poet of the race, flourished. His spiritual songs were seized 

 with remarkable avidity and were known in every cottage in the land. 

 Seldom have religious verse in any language had such extensive cir- 

 culation. Next to Holy Writ the early emigrant prized Buchanan, 

 and many a log-*cabin in the busih, rang, on Sabbath-day, with the 

 chorus of his hymns. Canadian editions were printed, and they are 

 still in use by some who could not tell whether the author had lived 

 in the eighteenth (as he did) or in the nineteentih century, or whether 

 h'e was a native of Canada or of Perthshire, so thoroughly have these 

 hymns become a part of the Canadian G-aelic folk-song. Buchanan 

 cho'se subjects which gave scope to his powerful imagination. For 

 instance : '• The Greatness of God," " The Sufferings of Christ," " The 

 Day of Judgment," " The Skull," " Prayer," etc. He was known 

 among the literary men of his tim'e as a gTeat poet. An account of an 

 interesting interview between him and David Hume, the historian, has 

 come down. These two were discussing the merits of some authors 

 when Hume observed that it was impossible to imagine anything more 

 sublime than the following lines, which he reipeated: 



" The cloud-capt towers, the gorgeous palaces, 

 The solemn temples, the great globe Itself, 

 Yea, all which it inherits shall dissolve. 

 And like the baseless fabric of a vision — 

 Leave not a wreck behind." 



Buchanan admitted the beauty and sublimity of the lines, but, 

 said, he could produce a passage more sublime, and repeated the fol- 

 lowing verses : 



" And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from 

 whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there were found 

 no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before 

 God: and the books were opened; and another book was opened, which 

 is the book of life: and the dead were Judged out of those things whiich 

 were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea 

 gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up 

 the dead which were in them; and they were judged every man accord- 

 ing to the works." 



Hume, it is said, admitted the superiority of Buchanan's quotation, 

 as an example of the sublime in literature. 



After Bucihanan came Patrick Grant, a sweeter, if a weaker poet. 

 Grant's hymns have, from the time of their first appearance, been widely 

 known and popular in Canada and are still read with pleasure and 



