erseveringly were they sought after, that during the whole time they
dared not once light a fire, nor attempt fishing from the rocks to
supply themselves with food; and, though they escaped the search, they
never, it is said, completely recovered the horrors 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
testing the justice of the policy that had sent poor Smith into exile,
from his snug southern parish in the Presbytery of Dumfries, to the
remotest island of the Orkneys. The great lesson taught in Providence
during the seventeenth and part of the eighteenth century to our
Scottish country folk seems to have been the lesson of toleration; and
as they were slow, stubborn scholars, the lash was very frequently and
very severely 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 Bangour 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 Vasa,' 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 publication 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 brought the author, on
its publication, so large a sum in the second, can be accounted for only
by a reference to the keen partisanship of the period, and the peculiar
circumstances of parties. The Jacobites, taught by the rebellion of 1715
at once the value of the Highlands