despised or neglected, had been compelled yet again to hear the instructions
which he had formerly uttered, and to bethink themselves how wofully these
instructions had been forgot. In short, their attention had been irresistibly
called to the subject of the Scottish Reformation, and the principles upon which
their church had been founded, and to the inquiry as to whether these prin-
ciples were still in operation, or hastening to become a mere dead letter. And
this inquiry was neither unnecessary nor in vain. A death-blow was struck at
that Erastianism which had lately become so predominant in the Church of Scotland; and such was the spirit of research among the mouldering records of its
long-neglected library, and the ardour with which they were published and
diffused, that the former ignorance and indifference could be tolerated no
longer. These effects went on from year to year, and their result we know.
Scotland is now awake, and the creed which was almost filched from her relaxing hand, is held with as tight a grasp as ever.
The next literary undertaking in which we find Dr. M’Crie employed, was a conflict with an antagonist every way worthy of his prowess. The "Great Unknown" was now in the ascendant, and as he wrote to amuse, he was sure of the sympathies of at least three fourths of the community. Such he must have felt when he gave to the world the tale of "Old Mortality," in which the Covenanters were held up to derision, while their sufferings were described as justly merited. All this was enough for the novel-reading public, that was too ignorant to know, and too idle to inquire, and accordingly the statements of Sir Walter Scott, embodied as they were in so attractive a form, were received as veritable history. Nothing was now more common in England, and it may be added in Scotland also, than to hear the martyr-spirit of the days of the covenant laughed at, and its choicest adherents represented as madmen, fanatics, and cut-throats. It was needful that the "Author of Waverley" should be met by a fitting antagonist, and this he soon found in the author of the life of John Knox. No two such other men could have been Bulled from the crowded ranks of British literature the one so completely the type of ancient feudalism and Episcopacy ingrafted on modern Toryism, and the other of the sturdy independence of the good old Whiggamores, and the Presbyterian devotedness of Drumclog and the Grassmarket. Dr. M'Crie had also the greater right to step forward on this occasion, as the prince of novelists had intruded into a field too sacred for a mere holiday tale. An elaborate review of "Old Mortality" was therefore written, and published in the first three numbers of the "Christian Instructor" for the year 1817. It could scarcely have been expected from one so competent to the task as Dr. M'Crie, that it would have been otherwise than a complete historical refutation of the misstatements of the novel, and a successful vindication of the villified Covenanters. But it was also something more than this in the eyes of Scott and his admirers; for it attacked him with a strength of wit and power of sarcasm that threatened to turn the laugh against himself, and foil him at his own chosen weapon. So at least he felt, and his complaints upon the subject, as well as his attempted defence in the "Quarterly Review," bespoke a mind ill at ease about the issue of such a controversy. The result was that the novelist was generally condemned, and that his tale, notwithstanding the popularity which at first attended it, sank in popular estimation, and became one of the least valued of all his admired productions.
The success with which the Life of Knox was attended, would have been
