Political History Part XII

With the failure of the last armed attempt to "break the Union," Scottish history is merged in that of Great Britain; it was a British force that routed the Jacobites at Culloden. After 1745 the men of letters of the country continued with intense eagerness the movement initiated by John Knox, when he wrote in English, not in the old Scots that he learned at his mother's knee. Hutchinson, David Hume, and Robertson were assiduous in avoiding Scotticisms as far as they might; even Burns, who summed up the popular past of Scotland in his vernacular poetry, as a rule wrote English in his letters, and when he wrote English verse he often followed the artificial style of the 18th century. The later famous men of letters, Scott, Carlyle and R. L. Stevenson, appealed as much to English readers as to their countrymen, patriotic as each of them was in his own way.

As early as 1730-1740, the great English public schools and universities began to attract the Scottish youths of the wealthier classes, and now good Scots is seldom heard in conversation and is not always written in popular Scottish novels. Scotland and England, however, will always remain pleasantly distinct by virtue of their historical past and inherited traditions.

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