to "the fierce and
unreasonable set of extra-Presbyterians," Wodrow's High Flyers. "We have
no delight to dwell either upon the atrocities or absurdities of a people
whose ignorance and fanaticism were rendered frantic by persecution."
To sum up the controversy, we may say that Scott was unfair, if at all,
in tone rather than in statement. He grants to the Covenanters dauntless
resolution and fortitude; he admits their wrongs; we cannot see, on the
evidence of their literature, that he exaggerates their grotesqueness,
their superstition, their impossible attitude as of Israelites under a
Theocracy, which only existed as an ideal, or their ruthlessness on
certain occasions. The books of Wodrow, Kirkton, and Patrick Walker, the
sermons, the ghost stories, the dying speeches, the direct testimony of
their own historians, prove all that Scott says, a hundred times over.
The facts are correct, the testimony to the presence of another, an
angelic temper, remains immortal in the figure of Bessie McLure. But an
unfairness of tone may be detected in the choice of such names as
Kettledrummle and Poundtext: probably the "jog-trot" friends of the
Indulgence have more right to complain than the "high-flying" friends of
the Covenant. Scott had Cavalier sympathies, as Macaulay had Covenanting
sympathies. That Scott is more unjust to the Covenanters than Macaulay to
Claverhouse historians will scarcely maintain. Neither history or fiction
would be very delightful if they were warless. This must serve as an
apology more needed by Macaulay--than by Sir Walter. His reply to Dr.
McCrie is marked by excellent temper, humour, and good humor. The
"Quarterly Review" ends with the well known reference to his brother
Tom's suspected authorship: "We intended here to conclude this long
article, when a strong report reached us of certain transatlantic
confessions, which, if genuine (though of this we know nothing), assign a
different author to those volumes than the party suspected by our
Scottish correspondents. Yet a critic may be excused for seizing upon the
nearest suspected person, or the principle happily expressed by
Claverhouse in a letter to the Earl of Linlithgow. He had been, it seems,
in search of a gifted weaver who used to hold forth at conventicles: 'I
sent for the webster, they brought in his brother for him: though he,
maybe, cannot preach like his brother, I doubt not but he is as well
principled as he, wherefore I thought it woul