embodied, but whose final extinction his patriotic zeal sufficed to prevent.
And all this was to be accomplished, not by the snug Fellow of a college, reposing in learned leisure in the deep shadow of Gothic halls which the sound of
the world could not reach, with half-a-mile of library before and behind him; or a church dignitary, whose whole time could be devoted to the defence of that
church in which he was a high-titled and richly-guerdoned stipendiary; but by one who had the weekly and daily toil of a Scottish Secession minister to interrupt him, as well as its very scanty emoluments to impede his efforts and limit his literary resources. And all this for what? not to write the life of one whose memory was universally cherished, and whose record all would be eager
to read. The whole literary world was now united against John Knox, whose very name was the signal for ridicule or execration. The man whose heart
was so hard and pitiless, that the tears of Mary fell on it as upon cold iron who demolished stately architectures and fair churches from sheer hatred of
whatever was grand or beautiful who shared in, or at least who countenanced the foulest assassinations of the period and who had finally imposed upon the
land a sour, shrivelled, and soul-stunting creed, under the name of a reformation, which, thanks to Moderatism! the country was now getting rid of this
was he whom M'Crie, under every disadvantage, and at every hazard, was resolved to chronicle and to vindicate. Of all the thousands and myriads whom
his "Life of Knox" has delighted, how few are able to take into account the difficulties under which the author laboured, and the high heroic devotedness
in which the task was pursued to the close!
The materials for this important work, as may readily be surmised, had been long in accumulating: as for the Life itself, it appears to have been fairly commenced in 1807, and it was published in 1811. On its appearance, the public for a while was silent: many were doubtless astonished that such a subject should have been chosen at all, while not a few must have wondered that it could be handled so well. A complete change was to be wrought upon public feeling, and the obloquy of two centuries to be recanted; but by what literary organ was such a palinode to be commenced? At length "the song began from Jove," for the first key-note was sounded, and the chorus led by no less a journal than the "Edinburgh Review," now the great oracle of the world of criticism, while the article itself was written by no less a personage than Jeffrey, the hierophant and Pontifex Maximus of critics. After commencing his critique with an allusion to those distinguished benefactors whose merits the world has been tardy in acknowledging, the reviewer thus continues: "Among the many who have suffered by this partiality of fortune, we scarcely know any one to whom harder measure has been dealt, than the eminent person who is the subject of the work before us. In the reformed island of Great Britain no honours now wait on the memory of the greatest of the British reformers; and even among us zealous Presbyterians of the north, the name of Knox, to whom our Presbyterian Church is indebted, not merely for its establishment, but its existence, is oftener remembered for reproach than for veneration; and his apostolical zeal and sanctity, his heroic courage, his learning, talents, and accomplishments, are all coldly forgotten; while a thousand tongues are still ready to pour out their censure or derision of his fierceness, his ambition, and his bigotry. Some part of this injustice we must probably be content to ascribe to the fatality to which we have already made reference; but some part, at least, seems to admit of a better explanation." After having stated these
