FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   328   329   330   331   332   333   334   335   336   337   338   339   340   341   342   343   344   345   346   347   348   349   350   351   352  
353   354   355   356   357   358   359   360   361   362   363   364   365   366   367   368   369   370   >>  
t on the throne of these realms; and for Popery, what Popes and Cardinals strove in vain to do for three centuries--brought back its mummeries and nonsense into the temples of the British Isles. Scott during his lifetime had a crowd of imitators, who, whether they wrote history so called--poetry so called--or novels--nobody would call a book a novel if he could call it anything else--wrote Charlie o'er the water nonsense; and now that he has been dead nearly a quarter of a century, there are others daily springing up who are striving to imitate Scott in his Charlie o'er the water nonsense--for nonsense it is, even when flowing from his pen. They, too, must write Jacobite histories, Jacobite songs, and Jacobite novels, and much the same figure as the scoundrel menials in the comedy cut when personating their masters, and retailing their masters' conversation, do they cut as Walter Scotts. In their histories, they too talk about the Prince and Glenfinnan, and the pibroch; and in their songs about "Claverse" and "Bonny Dundee." But though they may be Scots, they are not Walter Scotts. But it is perhaps chiefly in the novel that you see the veritable hog in armour; the time of the novel is of course the '15 or '45; the hero a Jacobite, and connected with one or other of the enterprises of those periods; and the author, to show how unprejudiced he is, and what _original_ views he takes of subjects, must needs speak up for Popery, whenever he has occasion to mention it; though, with all his originality, when he brings his hero and the vagabonds with which he is concerned before a barricadoed house, belonging to the Whigs, he can make them get into it by no other method than that which Scott makes his rioters employ to get into the Tolbooth, _burning down_ the door. To express the more than utter foolishness of this latter Charlie o'er the water nonsense, whether in rhyme or prose, there is but one word, and that word a Scotch word. Scotch, the sorriest of jargons, compared with which even Roth Welsch is dignified and expressive, has yet one word to express what would be inexpressible by any word or combination of words in any language, or in any other jargon in the world; and very properly; for as the nonsense is properly Scotch, so should the word be Scotch which expresses it--that word is "fushionless," pronounced _fooshionless_; and when the writer has called the nonsense fooshionless--and he does call it fooshionl
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   328   329   330   331   332   333   334   335   336   337   338   339   340   341   342   343   344   345   346   347   348   349   350   351   352  
353   354   355   356   357   358   359   360   361   362   363   364   365   366   367   368   369   370   >>  



Top keywords:

nonsense

 

Jacobite

 
Scotch
 

called

 

Charlie

 

histories

 

express

 

Scotts

 

Walter

 

masters


novels

 
properly
 
fooshionless
 

Popery

 
belonging
 

unprejudiced

 

enterprises

 

original

 

periods

 

author


subjects

 

mention

 

concerned

 

vagabonds

 
originality
 

occasion

 
brings
 

barricadoed

 

inexpressible

 

combination


language

 
expressive
 

Welsch

 

dignified

 

jargon

 
writer
 

fooshionl

 
pronounced
 

fushionless

 

expresses


compared

 

jargons

 
Tolbooth
 

burning

 

employ

 
rioters
 

method

 
sorriest
 

foolishness

 

poetry