STOUT. OATMEAL MELVIN'S B96 842844 SPARKLING ALE (Free from Sediment.) Melvin's ALES AND ESTABLISHED MELVIN'S PALE ALE. PREFACE. THE increasing interest taken in the Chronicle year by year, as evidenced by the number of original articles sent in and kindly suggestions offered, is both encouraging and prophetic of the future. So great has been the pressure on our space this year that several valuable contributions have been held over, notwithstanding extension by nearly another sheet. We again thank all who have so generously assisted us in the work, and trust the results of our editorial labours will merit a continuance of their counsel and support. BENRIG, KILMAURS, 16th December, 1904. D. M'NAUGHT. A SKETCH OF SCOTTISH LITERATURE FROM THE EARLIEST TIMES. CHAPTER II. EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. Henry Home, Lord Kames, 1696-1782. N the commencement of the preceding chapter, the names of Hutcheson, Baxter, and David Hume, were briefly noticed in connection with Scottish Philosophy, and the name most appropriate to resume the thread of connection is that of Henry Home, afterwards Lord Kames. By profession, he was a lawyer, and one of David Hume's early correspondents, as well as the confidant of his younger friend in his literary hopes and fears, before he had ventured to appeal to the sentiment and intellect of the public. Since the days of Lord Kames, the profession of the law has done much for literature in Scotland, as well as in England; but no such claim could be made for the profession in remoter times, and Lord Kames did more for the promotion of philosophy and belles lettres in Scotland than all the men in connection with the profession of the law for quite a century previously. Hume was not only greatly indebted to him, but he encouraged Adam Smith to deliver a course of lectures on English literature, and on one occasion, when Adam Smith was being congratulated on the number of able writers whom Scotland had produced, he generously replied-"We must every one of us acknowledge Kames for our master." Henry Home was born at Kames in Berwickshire in 1696; his father was a country gentleman, and his mother was a grand-daughter to Robert Baillie, who was at one time Principal of the Glasgow University, and the Baillie who figured in Carlyle's Miscellanies, Young Home was a for some time under a private tutor in his father's house, but never went to college or university, and, therefore, he was to a large extent self-educated, and his learning. appears to have been acquired only after long and persistent application. Before he had mastered Latin, he had reached full manhood, when he studied with great diligence in order that he might acquire a correct knowledge of civil law. For some time he was a Writer to the Signet, which was at that time regarded as a necessary and proper education for gentlemen of moderate fortune who were anxious to secure a knowledge of the structure of deeds, and of the forms of process before the Court of Session. Animated by an ambition for the higher prizes of the profession, he determined to be an advocate, and after struggling hard to repair the defects of his early education, he was called to the bar in 1724. One of his contemporaries said of him that "he showed that a spirited young man, fond of society, was capable of poring over dull law-books with all the industry of a Dutchman and the ardour of a poet." The devotion which subsequently distinguished the course of his study proved to be of the greatest advantage to him in his practice at the bar. Even though there was much to distract the intellectual life of the times, by the unsettled condition of political affairs prior to the Rebellion of 1745, he had risen to great distinction as an authority on law, and when he was promoted to the Bench in 1752, the estimation the public had formed of his abilities was exceedingly high. Nor can it be said that the hopes and expectations of his friends were wholly disappointed with respect to his great talents, and yet it must be admitted that their susceptibilities were sometimes shocked by his unguarded and reckless speech. Though generous and sympathetic in the main, in trials of life and death he sometimes lowered the majesty of justice by the levity and harshness of his expressions. It was said of him, for example, and on the authority of Lord Cockburn, that when a verdict of murder was *Scotland and Scotsmen in the Eighteenth Century, p. 183, |