ighlanders
were never expressed by letters, till some little books of piety were
translated, and a metrical version of the Psalms was made by the Synod of
Argyle. Whoever therefore now writes in this language, spells according
to his own perception of the sound, and his own idea of the power of the
letters. The Welsh and the Irish are cultivated tongues. The Welsh, two
hundred years ago, insulted their English neighbours for the instability
of their Orthography; while the Earse merely floated in the breath of the
people, and could therefore receive little improvement.

When a language begins to teem with books, it is tending to refinement;
as those who undertake to teach others must have undergone some labour in
improving themselves, they set a proportionate value on their own
thoughts, and wish to enforce them by efficacious expressions; speech
becomes embodied and permanent; different modes and phrases are compared,
and the best obtains an establishment. By degrees one age improves upon
another. Exactness is first obtained, and afterwards elegance. But
diction, merely vocal, is always in its childhood. As no man leaves his
eloquence behind him, the new generations have all to learn. There may
possibly be books without a polished language, but there can be no
polished language without books.

That the Bards could not read more than the rest of their countrymen, it
is reasonable to suppose; because, if they had read, they could probably
have written; and how high their compositions may reasonably be rated, an
inquirer may best judge by considering what stores of imagery, what
principles of ratiocination, what comprehension of knowledge, and what
delicacy of elocution he has known any man attain who cannot read. The
state of the Bards was yet more hopeless. He that cannot read, may now
converse with those that can; but the Bard was a barbarian among
barbarians, who, knowing nothing himself, lived with others that knew no
more.

There has lately been in the Islands one of these illiterate poets, who
hearing the Bible read at church, is said to have turned the sacred
history into verse. I heard part of a dialogue, composed by him,
translated by a young lady in Mull, and thought it had more meaning than
I expected from a man totally uneducated; but he had some opportunities
of knowledge; he lived among a learned people. After all that has been
done for the instruction of the Highlanders, the antipathy between