8o FAMOUS SCOTS 



the means of corrupting history, and the largest class of 

 readers will ever prefer to read it, in the phrase of 

 Macaulay, with their feet on the fender. To that 

 class, therefore, the political crisis of 1638, one of no 

 less magnitude than the French Revolution, will ever be 

 obscured by airy talk about religious intolerance and 

 popular fanaticism. The history of Scotland in con- 

 sequence becomes either, as Carlyle said, a mere 

 hunting-ground for intriguing Guises or else is left to the 

 novelist with the Mucklewraths, wild men, and carica- 

 tures. Even yet the mere English reader of Hume 

 and Robertson has not got beyond the phrases of ' iron 

 reformers ' and ' beautiful queens.' The intrepidity of 

 Knox, like the conduct of Luther at the Diet, becomes 

 material for the sentimentalist to decry or the lati- 

 tudinarian to bewail. The courtly Dean Stanley 

 approaches the maudlin in his remarks at this stage, 

 and he thinks of Scott as he ' murmured the lay of 

 Prince Charlie on the hills of Pausilippo, and stood 

 rapt in silent devotion before the tomb of the Stuarts 

 in St. Peter.' But the admirers of the greatest of all 

 novelists will remember also no less his statement that 

 he gave the heart without giving the head, and will 

 even regard it as a merely temporary aberration, like 

 his presence at Carlton House with the Prince Regent, 

 where, says Lockhart with curious lack of humour, 

 1 that nothing might be wanting, the Prince sang several 

 capital songs ! ' The spell of Sir Walter should not 

 blind us to the real and the false in the national story. 



