awaiting the exhaustion of the whole civilization of which the latter is a typical product in order to achieve its effective synthesis in a succeeding and very different civilization. In the history of civilization therefore the sudden suppression of Scots, with all its unique expressive qualities may prove to have been a providential postponement; it may have been driven underground to emerge more triumphantly later. Its coming musicians and writers must address themselves to it, as Mussorgsky, following Dargomisky’s dictum that “the sound must express the word,” addressed himself to Russian—with Mallarmé’s “adoration for the property of words”; just as they must recollect that the “pure poetry” of some of the contemporary Continental expressionists was anticipated and carried far further long ago in their _Canntaireachd_, or mnemonic notation of the MacCrimmons—a basis upon which they may profitably build. To detail the arguments in support of this “theory of Scots letters” would take up more space than I can afford; but I must interpolate a brief outline of them here, for they bear in one way and another on all the issues with which I am concerned. III Not Burns—Dunbar! That is the phrase which sums up the significant tendency which is belatedly manifesting itself in Scots poetry to-day. At first it may seem absurd to try to recover at this time of day the literary potentialities of a language which has long ago disintegrated into dialects. These dialects even at their richest afford only a very restricted literary medium, capable of little more than kailyard usages, but quite incapable of addressing the full range of literary purpose. They are the _disjecta membra_ of a language; the question is, whether they can be re-integrated and re-vitalized. Can these dry bones live? Like feats have at all events been accomplished elsewhere—in regard to Provençal in France, Catalan in Spain, the Landsmaal in Norway, and so on. Those who would try it in Scots must first of all recover for themselves the full canon of Scots used by the Auld Makars and readapt it to the full requirements of modern self-expression. This is no easy task. Why should it be attempted? One answer is because English is incapable of affording means of expression for certain of the chief elements of Scottish psychology—just as English has no equivalents for many of the most distinctive words in the Scots vocabulary. Another answer is that there is a tendency in world-literature to-day which is driving writers of all countries back to obsolete vocabularies and local variants and specialized usages of language of all kinds. This is not the place to more than indicate considerations such as these. Suffice it to say that a little group of Scottish writers to-day are alive to them and conscious of an overwhelming impulse to return more deeply “into the pit whence we were digged” than any Scot has felt impelled to go for several centuries. Burns, although he used a certain amount