The Press.
London, England, 1858-03-20 00:00:00

THE PRESS, MARCH 20, 1858.

we are sorry to add that snob offences are on
the increase. Southey predicted that " cheap
literature " would " beat good literature out
" of the market," end if society does not take
care, that prediction will prove true. The
question at issue is, whether a man has a right
to boil down another man's dish into a soup
of his own—spice it a little, and throw in a
vegetable or two—and sell it as a fair article
of trade ? We think we know in what way
such a question will be answered by the re-
spectable and intelligent part of the public.
Mr. Grant's excuse will probably be that he
thinks himselfa better writer than Mr. Napier,
and that his book, as cheaper, will perhaps sell
more. But, waiving the modesty and the
morals of this defence, we humbly venture to
deny the first of these propositions and to
pooh-pooh the second. Mr. Napier is a vigo-
rous and picturesque writer, and with a dash
of sarcastic humour in him which we do not
find that Mr. Grant has borrowed while bor-
rowing his information. We have faults to
find with Mr. Napier, too. He is sometimes
so homely and familiar as to be almost rude.
He totally neglects that most necessary in-
strument, the file. He is savage against poli-
tical opponents to a degree that perhaps im-
pairs his vision, and certainly damages his
taste. Whether he will amend these faults in
" The Life of Dundee," which he has an-
nounced (and which we suppose will be fol-
lowed in a year or two by the " Dundee " of
Mr. Grant), we cannot say. We hope he will
But, with unquestionable faults, he has equally
unquestionable merits. He has vigour and
earnestness. He loves his hero. He honours
the old flays, and has the pluck to fight for
ancient principles and ideas. Mr. Grant's
style is not original nor remarkable ; it does
not want a certain amount of pictorial power,
but is by no means very conspicuous for it.
He does not handle his Jacobite principles
with that pith and power without which they
only provoke pity or contempt in our day. In
a word, he is a cleverish writer at beat. The
element most peculiar to himself is the intro-
duction of a Celtic view of things every now
and then—pardonable enough, but which has
lamentably misled the English in their notions
about Scotland. He still holds the idea that
the Union impoverished Scotland—at which all
sensible Scots now laugh. He attacks the
landlords of the Highlands for the Gaelic emi-
gration, and never allows for the effect of trade
and social change—the operation of which on
the Highlands Dr. Johnson saw and admirably
explained. This shallowness of thought, com
biped with a constant attempt at the pictu-
resque in style, gives his book a truly Celtic
character—a character like that of the High-
land garb, of which the two chief features are
bright colours and nakedness !

Serious readers of history will of course
continue to use Mr. Napier's " Memoirs " as
the standard Life of Montrose, and (though
Mr. Grant ignores their existence) will re-
member the good character given of them by
Lord Stanhope in the Quarterly, by Fraser,
and other periodicals. In case, however, they
are curious in literary history, it may amuse
them to turn over the works of both biogra-
phers together. They will there find that for
.1 Spalding" and " Guthry " Mr. Grant might
in several cases just have put " Napier" at
once; that his account of the very interesting
portrait of Montrose when young (which
Napier discovered in the possession of the
Carnegies erroneously passing for a Carnegie)
is borrowed wholesale, almost, from the pre-
vious biographer ; and that otherwise he fol-
lows in his wake as faithfully as a shark. Of
course, Mr. Grant must omit a great deal, but
still in his smaller space he contrives to make
room for extraneous matter—odds and ends—
often of a military character—the shreds and
parings of other jobs of work—which fill up
space that might have been better occupied.
Is it art that induces him to make a blunder
which though made in one of the earlier books
by Napier is corrected from new authority in
his last one—the blunder, namely, by which
Lady Montrose was made to die when her
husband was only twenty-one, instead of many
years afterwards ? Mr. Grant gives this error
a chapter to itself, probably under the impres-
sion that if he put in a good mistake with due
prominence, everybody would conclude that