_Pol._ What do you read, my lord? _Ham._ Words, words, words! _Pol._ What is the matter, my lord? _Ham._ Between who? _Pol._ I mean the matter that you read, my lord. _Ham._ Slanders, Sir. SHAKSPEARE. IF there be nothing by which the Athens really profits so much as her law, there is nothing of which she is so ready, or so willing to boast, as her literature. That is, as it were, her Benjamin--her youngest-born child--the darling of her dotage, so to speak; and it is loved and lauded in proportion to the lateness of its appearance. In the whole literature of Scotland there is, indeed, a wonderful hiatus,--an interruption, for which it would be impossible to account, if one were not to look at her political and religious history. Previous to the Reformation, the bards of Scotland sung as sweetly, and her monks were as full and fabulous in their chronicles as those of any other part of the world; and that dawn of intellect--that day-spring of the mind, shone as warmly and as well upon the bleak hills of Caledonia, as upon the green pastures of more fertile lands. The classical elegance, and the keen and searching satire of Buchannan, the stern and stubborn eloquence of Knox, and the polished but manly sentences of Melville, will bear a comparison with any thing that appeared contemporaneously in other countries: but after them, there comes a dreary and desolate blank; and while other nations are rapidly running the career of knowledge, adding book to book, and illustrious name to illustrious name, Scotland appears not in the catalogue, except in a manner which is even more melancholy than if she appeared not at all. How is this to be accounted for? In theory it would be impossible: with the facts before one, it becomes the easiest thing in the world.