Probably the best points made by Dr. McCrie are his proof that biblical
names were not common among the Covenanteers and that Episcopal eloquence
and Episcopal superstition were often as tardy and as dark as the
eloquence and superstition of the Presbyterians. He carries the war into
the opposite camp, with considerable success. His best answer to "Old
Mortality" would have been a novel, as good and on the whole as fair,
written from the Covenanting side. Hogg attempted this reply, not to
Scott's pleasure according to the Shepherd, in "The Brownie of Bodsbeck."
The Shepherd says that when Scott remarked that the "Brownie" gave an
untrue description of the age, he replied, "It's a devilish deal truer
than yours!" Scott, in his defence, says that to please the friends of
the Covenanters, "their portraits must be drawn without shadow, and the
objects of their political antipathy be blackened, hooved, and horned ere
they will acknowledge the likeness of either." He gives examples of
clemency, and even considerateness, in Dundee; for example, he did not
bring with him a prisoner, "who laboured under a disease rendering it
painful to him to be on horseback." He examines the story of John Brown,
and disproves the blacker circumstances. Yet he appears to hold that
Dundee should have resigned his commission rather than carry out the
orders of Government? Burley's character for ruthlessness is defended by
the evidence of the "Scottish Worthies.
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