Blair Collection > Celtic magazine > Volume 2

74 THE CELTIC MAGAZINE.
piece was so little appreciated in his day that he only received, during
his life, the sum of £10 under this agreement; and, after his deatli, his
wife sold her entire right over the work for the sum of eight pounds
sterling. The first edition of the poems of Robert Burns realised a profit
of only twenty pounds, while one copy of the same edition sold recently,
in a London saleroom, for forty-nine guineas. Harvey, the discoverer of
tha circulation of the blood, was considered in his time a " dangerous
person," and liis discovery was rejected by the whole scientific world with
"a singular unanimity." The discovery and ai^jjlication of chloroform
was howled against from many a pulpit throughout the country as a direct
interference with the decrees of the all-Avise Creator of the Universe.
Thomas Carlyle could not get a publisher to bring out his " Sartor Ee-
sartus;" Disraeli could not get a hearing when he first essayed to address
the House of Commons; Burke, Bright, and Cobden were considered the
wildest demagogues. We all know the treatment Galileo received from
the great lights of his day. But the cycles of time have done their work,
and the popular opinion regarding these great men has been mellowed
down into a proper appreciation of their superiority over their contemporary
detractors. We have no hesitation in placing the author of the work before
us among those who^e names will be more illustrious in the future than in
the present, and predicting that he will secure the place in the niche of future
fame which his splendid abilities and original genius deserve ; the deprecia-
tory remarks which we hear occasionally made concerning him, as crotchety,
eccentric, and crack-brained, only strengthen our opinion that the Professor
is at least a generation in advance of the time in which Ave live, and head
and slioulders, in Celtic matters at least, and in broad human sympathy,
above his fellows, and consequently they can neither understand him
nor appreciate his great gifts.
The author informs us that that veiy clever John Bull, notwithstanding
his cleverness and practicability, has committed some great blunders, which
have not even a flash of brilliancy to redeem their stupidity — among
which stand out prominently, " Ireland, the Education of the People, and
the Scottish Highlands." He describes hoAv mistaken ideas of political
economy led, first, to the existence of a rank population which no one
cared to weed, and afterwards to the other extreme of driving the people out
of the country, "to stock it largely with sheep or deer, to reap large
rentals with an absolute immunity from poor-rates and
poachers." This was often done to humour a heartless factor, and
" partly from the servility of the local press, writing too often in the
interest of lairds and lawyers — partly from the pernicious influence of the
selfish maxim that a man may do what he likes Avith his OAvn." Public
opinion did nothing to preserve the Highlanders, but rather encouraged
the idea that the sooner the country Avas disemboAvelled of all human
habitation, and left in the undisturbed possession of sea-gulls, stags, and
salmon, so much tlie better. While these vieAvs Avere allowed full play,
"the real blood of the people Avas being drained away; halls once re-
sonant Avith rich social merriment, and reverberant Avith the traditions of
a chivalrous and high-souled manhood, were dumb as death, or replaced
by more pretentious edifices, Avhich Avere Celtic in nothing but the ground
on which they stood ; the language and the music Avhicli even till noAV