8 



in both of which our people proceed as half-asleep^ without any 

 lively spirit in contriving or executing, and I really believe much 

 of this proceeds from our low diet, both in eating and drinking. 

 Our common food gives little strength to either body or mind, 

 and our malt drink is the most stupefying stuff ever was con- 

 trived.' The editor. Dr. Colville, contributes a very interesting- 

 preface to this little volume, but I venture to take exception to 

 one small passage of it, in which he says the letters leave no doubt 

 of the fact that Cockburn read and spoke English_, and that 

 farmers like Wight, and even Bell, the gardener, and Dods, the 

 ploughman, understood it, and yet we are told that the speech of 

 Scotsmen, like Cockburn, who sat in the English Parliament after 

 the Union — how did ' English ' creep in here ? I am afraid we 

 shall have a remonstrance ; it certainly was a British Parliament — 

 was the source of wonder and amusement to the southern mem- 

 bers. But after the examples set before us this must be placed 

 alongside some romances of history written for modern con- 

 sumption. Well, I think we may consider the two things much 

 more compatible than Dr. Colville thinks_, because although 

 Cockburn might write the purest of English, his pronunciation in 

 those days might be somewhat unintelligible to an English Parlia- 

 ment, and I think we ourselves can remember men who wrote 

 the purest of English whose accent was the purest Doric which 

 could be conceived, and I myself greatly regret that that accent 

 was ever allowed to die out. Now, I will not detain you any 

 longer, because though this room furnishes an agreeable asylum 

 from the climate outside, yet we have other business which I 

 think more important than making or listening to a speech. But 

 I want to urge — and I think I may urge it from the deep interest 

 you know I take in this Society — I want to urge that in all our 

 projects we should keep in view, and strongly in view, the human 

 aspect of Scottish historical literature. My late friend Sir William 

 Eraser contributed an immense mass of very valuable family litera- 

 ture in the shape of those histories which we all know. I always 

 thought the defect of these histories — and I did not conceal it 

 from himself — was that they did not give sufficient place to the 

 human element. There were too many charters, valuable, no 

 doubt, to the scientific historian, but not popular reading, and not 

 appealing to the special mission of a Society like this. What, I 

 think, we who had so much to do with the foundation of this 

 Society had mainly in view was to preserve for posterity the 



