In approaching this part of his task, in the fifth chapter, our author gives a very elaborate and highly colored picture of the religion of Scotland. It is _too_ well done. Like some of Macaulay's descriptions, it is so very striking as to impress us almost inevitably as a caricature. Every statement in which the horrors and cruelties of Calvinism are described is indeed reinforced by ample citations or plentiful references in the footnotes. But some of these seem capable of a different inference from that drawn in the text. For instance, he charges the Scottish clergy with teaching, that, though the arrangements originally made by the Deity to punish his creatures were ample, "they were insufficient; and hell, not being big enough to contain the countless victims incessantly poured into it, had in these latter days been enlarged. There was now sufficient room." He supports the charge by this reference to Abernethy,--"Hell has enlarged itself,"--apparently not being aware that Abernethy was merely quoting from Isaiah. He says that to write poetry was considered by the Scotch clergy to be a grievous offence, and worthy of special condemnation. He supports his statement by this reference: "A mastership in a grammar school was offered in 1767 to John Wilson, the author of 'Clyde'" (a poet, by the by, not found among the twenty John Wilsons commemorated by Watt). "But, says his biographer, the magistrates and ministers of Greenock thought fit, before they would admit Mr. Wilson to the superintendence of the grammar school, to stipulate that he should abandon 'the profane and unprofitable art of poem-making.'" This fact, however, by no means proves that poetry was considered, theologically, a sin, for perhaps it was regarded practically as only a disqualification. It is to be feared that many of our school committees now--country shopkeepers, perhaps, or city aldermen--would, apart from Calvinism, think that a poet must be necessarily a dreamer and an unpractical man.
A few exaggerations of this kind there may be. But, on the whole, the account seems to be correctly given; and it is one which will do good.
In the remaining portion of the second volume Mr. Buckle gives a very vigorous description of the intellectual progress of the Scotch during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. His account of Adam Smith as a writer is peculiarly brilliant. His views of Hume and Reid are ably drawn. Thence he proceeds to discuss the discoveries of Black and Leslie in natural philosophy, of Smith and Hutton in geology, of Cavendish in chemistry, of Cullen and Hunter in physiology and pathology. These discussions are interesting, and show a great range of knowledge and power of study in the writer. Yet they are episodes, and have little bearing on the main course of his thought.