confidence as to my sentiments, just at the very juncture when
neither the sentiments nor (perhaps) the language had been
sufficiently considered.

FRIDAY. - You have not yet heard of my book? - FOUR GREAT SCOTSMEN
- John Knox, David Hume, Robert Burns, Walter Scott. These, their
lives, their work, the social media in which they lived and worked,
with, if I can so make it, the strong current of the race making
itself felt underneath and throughout - this is my idea. You must
tell me what you think of it. The Knox will really be new matter,
as his life hitherto has been disgracefully written, and the events
are romantic and rapid; the character very strong, salient, and
worthy; much interest as to the future of Scotland, and as to that
part of him which was truly modern under his Hebrew disguise.
Hume, of course, the urbane, cheerful, gentlemanly, letter-writing
eighteenth century, full of attraction, and much that I don't yet
know as to his work. Burns, the sentimental side that there is in
most Scotsmen, his poor troubled existence, how far his poems were
his personally, and how far national, the question of the framework
of society in Scotland, and its fatal effect upon the finest
natures. Scott again, the ever delightful man, sane, courageous,
admirable; the birth of Romance, in a dawn that was a sunset;
snobbery, conservatism, the wrong thread in History, and notably in
that of his own land. VOILA, MADAME, LE MENU. COMMENT LE TROUVEZ-
VOUS? IL Y A DE LA BONNE VIANDO, SI ON PARVIENT A LA CUIRE
CONVENABLEMENT.

R. L. S.