ancestors are only to be gleaned from musty records and
chronicles, the authors of which seem perversely to have
conspired to suppress in their narratives all interesting
details, in order to find room for flowers of monkish eloquence,
or trite reflections upon morals. To match an English and a
Scottish author in the rival task of embodying and reviving the
traditions of their respective countries, would be, you alleged,
in the highest degree unequal and unjust. The Scottish magician,
you said, was, like Lucan's witch, at liberty to walk over the
recent field of battle, and to select for the subject of
resuscitation by his sorceries, a body whose limbs had recently
quivered with existence, and whose throat had but just uttered
the last note of agony. Such a subject even the powerful Erictho
was compelled to select, as alone capable of being reanimated
even by "her" potent magic---

------gelidas leto scrutata medullas,
Pulmonis rigidi stantes sine vulnere fibras
Invenit, et vocem defuncto in corpore quaerit.

The English author, on the other hand, without supposing him less
of a conjuror than the Northern Warlock, can, you observed, only
have the liberty of selecting his subject amidst the dust of
antiquity, where nothing was to be found but dry, sapless,
mouldering, and disjointed bones, such as those which filled the
valley of Jehoshaphat. You expressed, besides, your
apprehension, that the unpatriotic prejudices of my countrymen
would not allow fair play to such a work as that of which I
endeavoured to demonstrate the probable success. And this, you
said, was not entirely owing to the more general prejudice in