not in any but the narrowest sense the unnatural birth of Poesy and Time which he is sometimes held to be. Being a great artist, he derives from a numerous ancestry; and, like all great artists, he is partly an effect of local and peculiar conditions and partly the product of immediate and remote forbears. Genius apart, in fact, he is ultimus Scotorum, the last expression of the old Scots world, and therewith the culmination of a school deep-rooted in the past, which, by producing such men as Dunbar and Scott and Alexander Montgomerie, as Ramsay and Fergusson and the nameless lyrists of the songbooks, made it possible for him to be. W. E. H. LONDON, January 1st, 1896. T. F. H. THE Editors regret to note the following Errata :- Page 41, line 3-delete comma after 'face' in text. |