1891 - 92 .] Chair man’ s Opening Address. 3 
liiterature, wliich, equally with Science, is an object of the institu- 
tion of the Royal Society. I have to repeat this expression of 
regret. Of the 76 papers read before us, only one was of a purely 
literary character, and this was, as has been the case for some time, 
contributed by my ever active minded and ready penned friend, 
Emeritus-Professor Blackie. This paper was on the bi-stratitication 
of the Greek language, as it is at present spoken and written in 
Greece. There are two phases of Greek, the Romaic used in con- 
versation by all classes, and the neo-classical used in the newspapers, 
the courts of law, the parliament, and in the great majority of 
literary works. The interest of Professor Blackie’s paper consisted 
in recalling a similar state of matters that existed in our own 
country in the last century and beginning of this, where the Scottish 
language, or dialect, was generally used in conversation, but the 
English language or dialect was as generally used for literary 
composition. It is a satisfaction to me personally that I lived long 
enough back to hear the Scottish language used constantly, especially 
by my maternal relatives, in ordinary family conversation, whilst 
they could put on their English, as they would their best dinner 
dress, when they had strangers among them. I hope that it may yet, 
on account of its pithiness and national character, maintain some 
ground among us as a spoken language, notwithstanding the sneers 
of some, alas ! even of our ovrn countrymen, who treat it naso adunco 
as vulgar, because it is the language of our peasantry. Such persons 
I venture to call imperfectly educated, because they know not the 
language, perhaps some of them never heard the names, of our poets, 
* Blind Harry the historian of Wallace, John Barbour the historian of 
the Bruce, King James I. the royal author of “The King’s Quhair” 
and other poems, Dunbar the writer of “ The Thistle and the 
Rose,” Gawain Douglas, the Episcopal son of Archibald Bell-the- 
cat, 
“ More pleased that in a barbarous age 
He gave to Scotland Yirgil’s page, 
Than that beneath his rule he held 
The bishopric of fair Dunkeld ; ” 
our Scottish Satirist David Lindsay, and our prose writers Lindsay 
of Pitscottie, and the clerical historian Calderwood. 
The Scottish dialect in this country, and the Romaic in Greece 
