“The arguments of general vindication,” continues he, “rise powerful before my sight, like the Highland bands in full array. A louder strain of apologetic speech swells my words. What if it should rise high as the unconquered summits of Scotia’s hills, and call back, with voice sweet as Caledonian song, the days of ancient Scotish heroes; or attempt the powerful speech of the Latian orator, or his of Greece! The subject, methinks, would well accord with the attempt: _Cupidum, Scotia optima, vires deficiunt_. I leave this to the _king of songs_, Dunbar and Dunkeld, Douglas in _Virgilian_ strains, and later poets, Ramsay, Ferguson, and Burns, awake from your graves; you have already immortalized the Scotish dialect in raptured melody! Lend me your golden target and well-pointed spear, that I might victoriously pursue, to the extremity of South Britain, reproachful ignorance and scorn still lurking there: let impartial candour seize their usurped throne. Great, then, is the birth of this national dialect,” &c. So far so good. We have some sympathy with the rhapsodist, whose enthusiasm kindles at the names of Allan Ramsay and of Burns; nay, we are willing to hear (with a grain of allowance) that “the manly eloquence of the Scotish bar affords a singular pleasure to the candid English hearer, and gives merit and dignity to the noble speakers, who retain so much of their own dialect and tempered propriety of English sounds, that they may be emphatically termed _British orators_.” But we confess that we lose our patient decorum, and are almost provoked to laughter, when our philological Quixote seriously sets about to prove that Adam and Eve spoke broad Scotch in Paradise. How angry has this grave patriot reason to be with his ingenious countryman Beattie,[56] the celebrated champion of _Truth_, who acknowledges that he never could, when a boy or man, look at a certain translation of Ajax’s speech into one of the vulgar Scotch dialects without laughing!