In "The Minstrelsy of the
Scottish Border" (1802-3) Sir Walter gave this account of the
persecutions. "Had the system of coercion been continued until our day,
Blair and Robertson would have preached in the wilderness, and only
discovered their powers of eloquence and composition by rolling along a
deeper torrent of gloomy fanaticism. . . . The genius of the persecuted
became stubborn, obstinate, and ferocious." He did not, in his romance,
draw a complete picture of the whole persecution, but he did show, by
that insolence of Bothwell at Milnwood, which stirs the most sluggish
blood, how the people were misused. This scene, to Dr. McCrie's mind, is
"a mere farce," because it is enlivened by Manse's declamations. Scott
displays the abominable horrors of the torture as forcibly as literature
may dare to do. But Dr. McCrie is not satisfied, because Macbriar, the
tortured man, had been taken in arms. Some innocent person should have
been put in the Boot, to please Dr. McCrie. He never remarks that
Macbriar conquers our sympathy by his fortitude. He complains of what the
Covenanters themselves called "the language of Canaan," which is put into
their mouths, "a strange, ridiculous, and incoherent jargon compounded of
Scripture phrases, and cant terms peculiar to their own party opinions in
ecclesiastical politics." But what other language did many of them speak?
"Oh, all ye that can pray, tell all the Lord's people to try, by mourning
and prayer, if ye can taigle him, taigle him especially in Scotland, for
we fear, he will depart from it.
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