BLACKWOOD'S EDINBURGH MAGAZINE. No XXV. APRIL 1819. VOL. V. THE POETICAL REMAINS OF THE LATE DR JOHN LEYDEN." WITHOUT a strong spirit of nationality no people could build up any thing ike a national literature. Every reflecting mind, therefore, must be disposed not to pardon only, but to approve all manifestations of it that betoken a sense of dignity, and challenge an appeal to reasoret, offensive in an and to truth. The pride of invialal, it is det do not too generally entertain an unreasonable impatience of the ascendancy of the genius of England, and, since we must say so, a very unjust and illiberal determination to undervalue certain excellencies to which they themselves have never yet been able to attain. There is little or no erudition in Scotland, and yet instead of acknow hibited by a whole tful to see exPeople does well tople-and that ledging and deploring our ignorance, self which has good loftily of it- and setting ourselves strenuously to the nor need Nations fears to shew, reformation of our exceedingly defec faith in their own exroclaim their tive system of public education, we be certain virtues pation. If there turn about on our English neighbours have been, in faculties which with an air of most ludicrous and probrought more especial manner, voking self-assurance, and laugh at to action through the course them for possessing that knowledge of history, they are entitled to which we are so disgracefully destiopriate them as national charac- tute. With us the epithet of Scholar teristics,-nor would that people be is an epithet of contempt-and men worthy of their own ancestral glories, of the very shallowest pretensionswho did not boldly avow their pride with but small acuteness and no readin the moral or intellectual powers by ing-are daily heard talking with levity which those glories were won, and and scorn of the best scholars of Eng without the continued possession of land. In this way, we have reached which they could serve only to darken to an undisturbed contentment with the melancholy gloom of present de- our ignorance-and having discovered gradation. that book-learning is suitable to pedants only, we have become, by the mere force of theorizing, a nation of philosophers. We are disposed to think that, upon the whole, the national pride of Scotsmen is manly and enlightened. Within the last hundred years Scotland has produced more men of genius than during all her previous historyand she who was so long the barbarian sister of civilized England has shewn herself but little inferior to her friendly rival either in stateliness or beauty. But we are greatly mistaken, if along with a proper pride in the achievements of our own genius, Scotsmen The effects of all this are most lamentable. While every little townevery village in England contains its accomplished scholars, Scotland is contented with her men of common sense, who take the liberty of thinking for themselves. A coarseness-a hardness-and a nakedness of mind universally prevails. Men of rich and various lore are nowhere to be found • The Poetical Remains of the late Dr John Leyden, with Memoirs of his Life, by the Rev. James Morton. Constable, Edinburgh, 1819. among us. A few gifted spirits have raised the character of our country's genius-but though knowledge be spread among the lower ranks of society, perhaps almost to that precise extent advantageous to a state, none will be found to deny that the higher orders are almost universally unacquainted with all ancient literature and philosophy, and that, with few exceptions, the Scots literati are the most superficial men on earth. The inferiority of Scotsmen, in general, to Englishmen, in all those accomplishments which are essential to a well-educated gentleman, is, we suspect, pretty forcibly felt even by themselves, when they happen to cross the Tweed. But when we are all together in a body, as for example, here in Edinburgh, we can talk with a magnanimous derision of the slender clerks of the south; and a solitary Englishman, surrounded by a dozen or a score of us Scotch philosophers, seems to us to shrink into very small dimensions. The southerns are themselves not unfrequently imposed upon by our airs of superiority in our own capital,and we have ourselves seen strangers of genuine talent and erudition listening, without being aware of the absurdity, to the emptiest of all pretenders, the Editor of the Supplement, and his eternal, " "Twas I, Says the fly, With my little eye." It is true, that we are yet poor,and perhaps our poverty may account for our want of erudition. But we ought to make a better use of our philosophy, than to undervalue the inaterials on which alone any philosophy can speculate to much purpose. Our ignorance ought not to be our pride, and instead of deriding that knowledge, which as a nation we have hitherto been prevented from acquiring, either by the poverty of our country, or by the defective character of our schools and universities, we ought rather to shew a generous admiration and a generous envy of the happier scholar of the south, trusting, that we may imbibe something of their spirit, and ere long to enjoy some of their manifold advantages. When, however, amidst this universal dearth of knowledge, a man of great acquirements happens to arise, we set no bounds to our national in the phenomenon,-and comparing him, not with the learned men of learned countries, but with the inerudite literati around us, we hail his advent with songs of triumph, and much to our satisfaction, place him without ceremony at the head of all the scholars of Europe. We then most inconsistently rave about those acquirements in him, which we have all along undervalued in others--and in doing so, can it be denied, that we are exhibiting a senseless and repulsive nationality? We cannot help thinking that something of this sort has happened in the case of Dr John Leyden,-that his countrymen have bestowed on him a reputation beyond his deserts,— endeavoured to raise him to an eminence among scholars, from which, in process of time, he must inevitably be made to descend. Nothing less will satisfy us, than to compare him with Sir William Jones, been wanting persons pubic firm, that Leyden was the greater man of the two, and that the world sustained the greater loss in his premature death. This we conceive is carrying Scotch nationality not to the verge, but into the very heart of folly. It would be to no purpose to shew, that Sir William Jes enjoyed far greater advantages than the superiority of the feyden; for wholly independent of theseer was by nature, a far greater man. He was, an universal, a perfect scholar. He was not actuated by the vain desire of knowing more than other men; but he loved and sought knowledge purely for its own sake. He had, therefore, no satisfaction in any acquirement that was not solid and complete.Truth, and truth alone, could satisfy him; and in all his researches, he advanced not a single step without a sure footing, and never journeyed on till he had dispersed the mist and the darkness. There was no quackery about him. With all his manifold accomplishments, there was a simple dignity in his manners and in his mind, that spoke not only the scholar but the philosopher; and no faith could have been placed in truth, had Sir William Jones but once in his life pretended to any knowledge which he did not possess. But in every department of learning he was equal to the most learned; and ft has been well |