Of living novelists to carry on the succession we have still a distinguished contingent. Besides names, less familiar, the following have achieved a wide reputation, namely, Dr. John Watson (Ian Maclaren), Neil Munro, Fiona Macleod, Katherine Tynan, and W. B. Yeats. These writers are distinctly Celtic in style, idiom, and sentiment. They have all the passion, yearning, imagination, and emotion of the Gael, combined with his wonderful gift of story-telling and of local colour. There are other writers of distinction, such as Andrew Lang, Dr. Douglas Hyde, Sir Charles Gavan Duffy, Dr. Sigerson, Dr. Todhunter, Stopford A. Brooke, Edmund Jones, T. W. Rolleston, Miss Eleanor Hull, Miss Jessie L. Weston, Miss Goodrich Frere, and Miss Emily Lawless, who have done much of later years to popularise the Celtic lore and literature, and to extend its sway over English letters. Through books of history and philology which have been issuing from the press in a steady flow for decades past, the tide of Celtic influence still continues to rise and permeate every department of English literature. So that from that little spring we saw welling up in the fifth century, and which at first yielded but a few words of Celtic import to incipient English, we have been able to trace a continuous stream, gaining in volume and momentum through the centuries, until now it is like a mighty Missouri which mingles its waters with the broader and more potent Mississippi, to be carried to the great ocean of human intercourse, and lose itself in the common good. CHAPTER XVII THE PRINTED LITERATURE OF THE SCOTTISH GAEL Two interesting bibliographies—Surprising revelations—First Gaelic printed book—Meagre output prior to the Forty-five—Earliest original works issued—No complete Bible in type before 1801—Nineteenth century activity—The Highlander’s favourite books—A revelation of character—His printed literature mainly religious—Translations—The two books in greatest demand—Dearth of the masterpieces of other languages—The most popular of English religious writers—of native bards—Gaelic poetry—The printed succession—Notable books—Account of the Gaelic grammars—Dictionaries—Periodicals—Value of the literature. A close study of the printed literature of the Scottish Gael leads to some surprising and even wholly unexpected revelations. Happily, we have the materials for such a scrutiny within moderate compass, a fact which cannot be predicated of the more comprehensive and ubiquitous English. It is an amazing circumstance—indeed the _Spectator_, some seventy years ago, dubbed it “a piece of Highland dilettanteism”—that one should be found enthusiastic enough to attempt to make an exhaustive bibliography of the printed Gaelic output of Scotland. Yet such a devotee has emerged not once, but twice within the last century.