RAMBLES OF A GEOLOGIST. 413 



search, they never, it is said, completely recovered the hor- 

 rors of their term of dreary seclusion, but bore about with 

 them, in broken constitutions, the effects of the hardships to 

 which they had been subjected. They must have had full 

 time and opportunity, during that miserable winter, for test- 

 ing the justice of the policy that had sent poor Smith into 

 exile, from his snug southern parish in the Presbytery of Dum- 

 fries, to the remotest island of the Orkneys. The great les- 

 son taught in Providence during the seventeenth and part of 

 the eighteenth century to our Scottish countryfolk seems to 

 have been the lesson of toleration ; and as they were slow, 

 stubborn scholars, the lash was very frequently and very se- 

 verely applied. One of the Jacobite papers of Mr Petrie's 

 collection, a triumphal poem on the victory of Gladsmuir, 

 which, if less poetical than the Ode of Hamilton of Ban- 

 gour on the same subject, is in no degree less curious, serves 

 to throw very decided light on a passage in literary history 

 which puzzled Dr Johnson, and which scarce any one would 

 think of going to Orkney to settle. 



Johnson states, in his Life of the poet Thomson, that the 

 "first operation" of the act passed in 1739 "for licensing 

 plays" was the " prohibition of ' Gustavus Yasa,' a tragedy 

 of Mr Brook" " Why such a work should be obstructed," 

 he adds, " it is hard to discover." "We learn elsewhere, 

 from the compiler of the " Modern Universal History," if I 

 remember aright, that "so popular did the prohibitory order 

 of the Lord Chamberlain render the play," that, " on its pub- 

 lication the same year, not less than a thousand pounds were 

 the clear produce." It was not, however, until more than 

 sixty years after, when both Johnson and Brook were in their 

 graves, that it was deemed safe to license it for the stage. 

 Now, the fact that a drama, in itself as little dangerous as 

 " Cato" or " Douglas," should have been prohibited by the 

 Government of the day, in the first instance, and should have 



