In one of his Highland lyrics, entitled, “A Dream of Glen Sallach,” Shairp showed that he could be overpowered by the gloom pervading the land of the heather as much as any Gael:— In deep of noon, mysterious dread Fell on me in that glimmering glen, Till as from haunted ground I fled Back to the kindly homes of men. Thanks to that glen! its scenery blends With childhood’s most ideal hour, When Highland hills I made my friends, First owned their beauty, felt their power. And in “The Forest of Sli’-Gaoil” he muses thus of other days:— And doth not this bleak forest ground Live in old epic song renowned? Of him the chief who came of yore To hunting of the mighty boar, And left the deed, to float along The dateless stream of Highland song, A maid’s lorn love, a chief’s death toil. Still speaking in thy name Sli’-Gaoil! Well now may harp of Ossian moan Through long bent grass and worn grey stone: But how could song so long ago, Come loaded with some elder wo? Were then, as now, these hills o’er-cast With shadows of some long-gone past! Did winds, that wandered o’er them, chime Melodies of a lorn foretime? As now, the very mountain burns For something sigh that not returns! Professor Blackie in later life had a similar passionate regard for Celtic literature, and not only did much by poetic renderings into English from the Gaelic, and in other ways, to introduce English readers to the best treasures of the Gaelic past, but also, like Matthew Arnold, was instrumental in founding a Celtic chair, namely, that in Edinburgh University. Of novelists who, like Sir Walter Scott, have drawn their themes and inspiration from Celtic sources, there has been a splendid succession from the days of Tennyson till now. Among others, besides the veteran Dr. George Macdonald, we may mention William Black, Robert Buchanan, and Robert Louis Stevenson, all three now dead, but recognised in their time as men of considerable literary genius. Black’s descriptions, his scenes and incidents and characters in those graphic stories laid in the West Highlands, are well known, and are as full of nature as Stevenson’s thrilling tales of _Kidnapped_ and _Catriona_ are of Celtic passion and adventure. Buchanan’s _Child of Nature_ is now perhaps not so well known as these others, but the plot is laid in the extreme north-west corner of Sutherlandshire, and interprets Gaelic life and character with wonderful verve and insight. All the three writers seem to have caught the magic glamour of the North, and to have been influenced in their style by the Celtic elements.