HUGH MILLER 43 



within the present century, no more influential book 

 has been published than his Life of Knox, which 

 silently made its appearance in 1811. In the revival of 

 ecclesiastical and national feeling in the country the 

 book will ever remain a classic and a landmark. There 

 it occupies the place which, in the field of classical and 

 historical scholarship, is taken by Wolf's Prolegomena to 

 Homer. Lord Jeffrey could truly declare that to fit 

 one's-self for the task of even a reviewer of M'Crie, the 

 special reading of several years would be necessary. 

 Its influence was at once felt. The * solemn sneer ' of 

 the Humes, Gibbons, Robertsons, and Tytlers, and, be 

 it mentioned with regret, of even Scott in that unworthy 

 squib against the religion of his country, Old Mortality ^ 

 had done much, at least among the literati and the 

 upper classes, to obliterate and sap a belief or knowledge 

 of the great work which had been accomplished for 

 civil liberty by the early reformers; but now the 

 school of flimsy devotees of Mary, Montrose and 

 Claverhouse, with its unctuous retention of the sneer 

 (or, historically meant, compliment) of the Merry Mon- 

 arch as to Presbyterianism being no fit religion for a 

 gentleman, the school whose expiring flicker is seen in 

 Aytoun's Lays of the Scottish Cavaliers, was for ever 

 exploded by the research of M'Crie. It was in an 

 unlucky hour that Scott ventured a reply to the 

 strictures of his reviewer. Never was humiliation more 

 deep or more bitterly felt by the novelist. The novel 

 of Scott is about as gross a caricature as 'Carrion' 



