60 FAMOUS SCOTS 



not unpleasing attempt to weave the lives of the two 

 poets into an imaginative narrative. On their appear- 

 ance, the papers were quoted as original reminiscences, 

 though a more discriminating criticism could not have 

 failed to detect their real nature. Miller possessed 

 the logical and personal element too strong to merge 

 his own individuality successfully in the characters of 

 others. The dramatic faculty was deficient. Yet it 

 was not quite an unfortunate attempt to thus antici- 

 pate such a sketch as Dr. Hutchison Stirling has so 

 admirably worked out in his Burns in Drama. 



Into a very different arena he was now to be drawn. 

 Politically and ecclesiastically, it was a period of excite- 

 ment. In 1829 Catholic Emancipation had no sooner 

 been passed than O'Connell brought in his motions for 

 the Repeal and the Tithe War. The latter was a pro- 

 test by the Romanists against paying tithes for the 

 maintenance of the Irish Church, whose incumbents 

 were a mere outpost of the Tory and Episcopalian 

 party, converting, as Lord Rosebery has said, nobody, 

 and alienating everybody. On the withdrawal of Grey, 

 and the fall of Peel, Lord Melbourne had carried on for 

 years a sort of guerilla warfare with a varying majority, 

 too dependent on the Irish vote to give general satisfac- 

 tion. The Tithe Act, however, was passed, and this 

 made the support of the English clergy in Ireland a 

 charge upon rent. The position in which matters then 

 stood with the Government will be clearly seen by a 

 reference to the admirable speech of Macaulay, in May 



