On the Scotch Character
ON THE SCOTCH CHARACTER.(1)
(A Fragment.)
________
THE Scotch nation are a body-corporate. They hang to-
gether like a swarm of bees. I do not know how it may be
among themselves, but with us they are all united as one
man. They are not straggling individuals, but embodied,
formidable abstractions—determined personifications of the
land they come from. A Scotchman gets on in the world,
because he is not one, but many. He moves in himself a
host, drawn up in battle-array, and armed at all points
against all impugners. He is a double existence—he stands
for himself and his country. Every Scotchman is bond and
surety for every other Scotchman—he thinks nothing Scotch
foreign to him. If you see a Scotchman in the street, you
may be almost sure it is another Scotchman he is arm in arm
with; and what is more, you may be sure they are talking
of Scotchmen. Begin at the Arctic Circle, and they take
Scotland in their way back. Plant the foot of the compasses
in the meridian, and they turn it by degrees to “Edina’s
darling seat”(2)—true as the needle to the Pole. If you happen
to say it is a high wind, they say there are high winds in
they smile at this as a local prejudice, and remind you of the
Calton Hill.(5) The conversation wanders and is impertinent,
unless it hangs by this loop. It “runs the great circle, and
is still at home.”(6) You would think there was no other place
in the world but Scotland, but that they strive to convince
[Page 368]
[Page 368]
you at every turn of its superiority to all other places. No-
thing goes down but Scotch Magazines and Reviews, Scotch
airs, Scotch bravery, Scotch hospitality, Scotch novels, and
Scotch logic. Some one the other day at a literary dinner
in Scotland apologized for alluding to the name of Shakespear(7)
so often, because he was not a Scotchman. What a blessing
that the Duke of Wellington(8) was not a Scotchman, or we
should never have heard the last of him! Even Sir Walter
Scott,(9) I understand, talks of the Scotch Novels in all com-
panies; and by waving the title of the author, is at liberty
to repeat the subject ad infinitum.
Lismahago(10) in Smollett is a striking and laughable picture
of this national propensity. He maintained with good dis-
cretion and method that oat-cakes were better than wheaten
bread, and that the air of the old town of Edinburgh was
sweet and salubrious. He was a favourable specimen of the
class—acute though pertinacious, pleasant but wrong.* In
general, his countrymen only plod on with the national cha-
racter fastened behind them, looking round with wary eye
and warning voice to those who would pick out a single ar-
ticle of their precious charge; and are as drawling and trou-
blesome as if they were hired by the hour to disclaim and
exemplify all the vices of which they stand accused. Is this
repulsive egotism peculiar to them merely in their travelling
capacity, when they have to make their way among strangers,
and are jealous of the honour of the parent-country, on which
they have ungraciously turned their backs? So Lord Ers-
kine,(11) after an absence of fifty years, made an appropriate
eulogy on the place of his birth, and having traced the feel-
ing of patriotism in himself to its source in that habitual
* Some persons have asserted that the Scotch have no humour. It is in
vain to set up this plea, since Smollett was a Scotchman.
[Page 369]
[Page 369]
attachment which all wandering tribes have to their places
of fixed residence, turned his horses’ heads towards England
—and farewell sentiment!
The Irish and others, who come and stay among us, how-
ever full they may be of the same prejudice, keep it in a
great measure to themselves, and do not vent it in all com-
panies and on all occasions, proper or improper. The na-
tives of the sister-kingdom in particular rather cut their
country like a poor relation, are shy of being seen in one
another’s company, and try to soften down the brogue into a
natural gentility of expression. A Scotchman, on the con-
trary, is never easy but when his favourite subject is started,
treats it with unqualified breadth of accent, and seems assured
that every one else must be as fond of talking of Scotland
and Scotchmen as he is.
Is it a relic of the ancient system of clanship? And are the
Scotch pitted against all the rest of the world, on the same
principle that they formerly herded and banded together under
some chosen leader, and harried the neighbouring district?
This seems to be the most likely solution. A feeling of antipa-
thy and partisanship, of offensive and defensive warfare, may
be considered as necessary to the mind of a Scotchman. He
is nothing in himself but as he is opposed to or in league with
others. He must be for or against somebody. He must
have a cause to fight for; a point to carry in argument. He
is not an unit, but an aggregate; he is not a link, but a chain.
He belongs to the regiment. I should hardly call a Scotch-
man conceited, though there is often something that borders
strongly on the appearance of it. He has (speaking in the
lump) no personal or individual pretensions. He is not
proud of himself, but of being a Scotchman. He has no ex-
istence or excellence except what he derives from some ex-
ternal accident, or shares with some body of men. He is a
[Page 370]
[Page 370]
of some party, he espouses some creed, he is great in some
controversy, he was bred in some University, has attended a
certain course of lectures, understands Gaelic, and upon oc-
casion wears the Highland dress. An Englishman is satis-
fied with the character of his country, and proceeds to set
up for himself; an Irishman despairs of that of his, and leaves
it to shift for itself; a Scotchman pretends to respectability
as such, and owes it to his country to make you hate the
very name by his ceaseless importunity and intolerance in
its behalf. An Irishman is mostly vain of his person,
an Englishman of his understanding, a Frenchman of his
politeness—a Scotchman thanks God for the place of his
birth. The face of a Scotchman is to him accordingly the
face of a friend. It is enough for him to let you know that
he speaks the dialect that Wilkie(16) speaks, that he has sat in
company with the Author of Waverley.(17) He does not endea-
vour to put forward his own notions so much as to inform
you of the school in politics, in morals, in physic, in which
he is an adept; nor does he attempt to overpower you
by wit, by reason, by eloquence, but to tire you out by
dint of verbal logic; and in common-places it must be con-
fessed that he is invincible. There he is teres et rotundus.(18)
He fortifies himself in these, circumvallation within circum-
vallation, till his strong-hold is impregnable by art and na-
ture. I never knew a Scotchman give up an argument but
once. It was a very learned man, the Editor of an Ency-
clopedia,—not my friend, Mr. Macvey Napier.(19) On some
one’s proposing the question why Greek should not be
printed in the Roman type, this gentleman answered, that in
that case it would be impossible to distinguish the two
languages. Every one stared, and it was asked how at this
rate we distinguished French from English? It was the for-
[Page 371]
[Page 371]
lorn hope. Any one else would have laughed, and confessed
the blunder. But the Editor was a grave man—made an ob-
stinate defence (the best his situation allowed of) and yielded
in the forms and with the honours of war.
A Scotchman is generally a dealer in staple-propositions,
and not in rarities and curiosities of the understanding. He
does not like an idea the worse for its coming to him from a
reputable, well-authenticated source, as I conceive he might
feel more respect for a son of Burns(20) than for Burns himself,
on the same hereditary or genealogical principle. He swears
not easily put down. He takes the word of a Professor in
the University-chair in a point of philosophy as he formerly
took the Laird’s(23) word in a matter of life and death; and has
the names of the Says, the Benthams, the Mills, the Mal-
thuses,(24) in his mouth, instead of the Montroses, the Gordons,
and the Macullamores.(25) He follows in a train; he enlists
under some standard; he comes under some collateral de-
scription. He is of the tribe of Issachar, and not of Judah.
He stickles for no higher distinction than that of his clan, or
vicinage.* In a word, the Scotch are the creatures of
inveterate habit. They pin their faith on example and au-
thority. All their ideas are cast in a previous mould, and
rivetted to those of others. It is not a single blow, but a re-
petition of blows, that leaves an impression on them. They
* This may be in part the reason of the blunder they have made in laying
so much stress on what they call the Cockney School in Poetry(27)—as if the peo-
ple in London were proud of that distinction, and really thought it a particu-
lar honour to get their living in the metropolis, as the Scottish “Kernes and
Gallowglasses”(28) think it a wonderful step in their progress through life to be
able to hire a lodging and pay scot and lot(29) in the good town of Edinburgh.
B B
[Page 372]
The genius of their greatest living writer is the genius of
national tradition. He has “damnable iteration in him;”(30)
but hardly one grain of sheer invention. His mind is turned
instinctively backward on the past—he cannot project it
forward to the future. He has not the faculty of imagining
any thing, either in individual or general truth, different from
what has been handed down to him for such. Give him
costume, dialect, manners, popular superstitions, grotesque
characters, supernatural events, and local scenery, and he is
a prodigy, a man-monster among writers—take these actu-
ally embodied and endless materials from him, and he is a
common man, with as little original power of mind as he
has (unfortunately) independence or boldness of spirit!——
The Scotch, with all their mechanical, wholesale attach-
ment to names and parties, are venal in politics,* and cow-
ardly in friendship. They crouch to power; and would be
more disposed to fall upon and crush, than come forward
to the support of, a sinking individual. They are not like
La Fleur(31) in the Sentimental Journey, who advanced three
steps forward to his master when the Gens-d’Armes arrested
him: they are like the Maitre d’Hotel, who retired three
paces backwards on the same occasion. They will support
a generic denomination, where they have numbers to sup-
port them again: they make a great gulp, and swallow down
a feudal lord with all the retinue he can muster—the more,
the merrier—but of a single unprotected straggler they
are shy, jealous, scrupulous in the extreme as to character,
inquisitive as to connections, curious in all the particulars of
birth, parentage and education. Setting his prejudices of
* It was not always so. But by knocking on the head the Jacobite loy-
alty of the Scotch, their political integrity of principle has been destroyed
and dissipated to all the winds of Heaven.
[Page 373]
[Page 373]
country, religion, or party aside, you have no hold of a
Scotchman but by his self-interest. If it is for his credit or
advantage to stand by you, he will do it: otherwise, it will
go very much against both his stomach and his conscience
to do so, and you must e’en shift for yourself. You may
trust something to the generosity or magnanimity of an Eng-
lishman or an Irishman; they act from an impulse of the blood
or from a sense of justice: a Scotchman (the exceptions are
splendid indeed) uniformly calculates the consequences to
himself. He is naturally faithful to a leader, as I said before,
that is, to a powerful head; but his fidelity amounts to little
more than servility. He is a bigot to the shadow of power
and authority, a slave to prejudice and custom, and a coward
in every thing else. He has not a particle of mental cou-
rage. Cæsar’s wife was not to be suspected; and it is the
same with a Scotchman’s friend. If a word is said against
your moral character, they shun you like a plague-spot.
They are not only afraid of a charge being proved true
against you, but they dare not disprove it, lest by clearing
you of it they should be supposed a party to what had no
existence or foundation. They thus imbibe a bad opinion of
you from hearsay, and conceal the good they know of you
both from themselves and the world. If your political or-
thodoxy is called in question, they take the alarm as much
as if they were apprehensive of being involved in a charge
of high treason. One would think that the whole country
laboured, as they did SIXTY YEARS SINCE,(32) under an imputa-
tion of disaffection, and were exposed to the utmost vigilance
of the police, so that each person had too little character for
loyalty himself to run any additional risk by his neighbour’s
bad name. This is not the case at present: but they carry
their precautions and circumspection in this respect to such
an idle and stupid excess, as can only be accounted for from
[Page 374]
[Page 374]
local circumstances and history—that is to say, from the
effects of that long system of suspicion, persecution and sur-
veilance,(33) to which they were exposed during a century of
ridiculous (at least of unsuccessful) wars and rebellions, in
favour of the House of Stuart.(34) They suffered much for
self-love must be excused to look at home. On my once
complaining to a Scotchman of what I thought a direliction(37)
of his client’s cause by the counsel for the defendant in a
prosecution for libel, I received for answer—That “Mr.——
had defended the accused as far as he could, consistently with
his character,”—though the only character the Learned Gen-
tleman could boast, had been acquired by his skill, if not
his courage, in resisting prosecutions of this kind.
The delicate sensibility (not to say soreness) of the Scotch
in matters of moral reputation, may in like manner be ac-
counted for (indirectly) from their domiciliary system of
church-government, of Kirk-assemblies, and Ruling Elders:
and in the unprincipled assurance with which aspersions of
this sort are thrown out, and the panic-terror which they
strike into the timid or hypocritical, one may see the remain-
he called up the ghost of Dr. Hornbook,(40) but did not lay
the spirit of cant and lying in the cunning North! ——
Something however, it must be confessed, has been done;
a change has been effected. Extremes meet; and the Saint
has been (in some instances) merged in the Sinner. The
essential character of the Scotch is determined self-will, the
driving at a purpose; so that whatever they undertake, they
make thorough-stitch work, and carry as far as it will go.
This is the case in the pretensions some of their writers have
lately set up to a contempt for Cutty-Stools, and to all the
freedom of wit and humour. They have been so long under
[Page 375]
[Page 375]
interdict that they break out with double violence, and stop
at nothing. Of all blackguards (I use the term for want
of any other) a Scotch blackguard is for this reason the
worst.(41) First, the character sits ill upon him for want of use,
and is sure to be most outrageously caricatured. He is only
just broke loose from the shackles of regularity and restraint,
and is forced to play strange antics to be convinced that they are
not still clinging to his heels. Secondly, formality, hypocri-
sy, and a deference to opinion, are the “sins that most easily
beset him.”(42) When therefore he has once made up his mind
to disregard appearances, he becomes totally reckless of cha-
racter, and “at one bound high overleaps all bound”(43) of de-
cency and common sense. Again, there is perhaps a natural
hardness and want of nervous sensibility about the Scotch,
which renders them (rules and the consideration of conse-
quences apart) not very nice or scrupulous in their proceed-
ings. If they are not withheld by conscience or prudence,
they have no mauvaise honte,(44) no involuntary qualms or tre-
mors, to qualify their effrontery and disregard of principle. Their
impudence is extreme, their malice is cold-blooded, covert,
crawling, deliberate, without the frailty or excuse of passion.
They club their vices and their venality together, and by
the help of both together are invincible. The choice spirits
who have lately figured in a much-talked-of publication,(45) with
“old Sylvanus at their head,”—
“Leaning on cypress stadle stout,”—(46)
herd of Satyrs——
“And with their horned feet they beat the ground!”—(49)
that is to say, the floor of Mr. Blackwood’s shop! There
is one other publication, a match for this in flagrant impu-
Editor is supposed, for the honour of Scotland, to be an
Irishman. What the BEACON(51) might have proved, there is no
saying; but it would have been curious to have seen some
articles of Sir Walter’s undoubted hand proceeding from this
quarter, as it has been always contended that Blackwood’s
Edinburgh Magazine was too low and scurrilous a publica-
tion for him to have any share in it. The adventure of the
Beacon has perhaps discovered to Sir Walter’s admirers
and the friends of humanity in general, that
“Entire affection scorneth nicer hands!”(52)
one morning on Thomson,(54) the Author of The Seasons, at a
late hour, and on expressing his surprise at the poet’s not
having risen sooner, received for answer,—“I had no motive,
young man!” A Scotchman acts always from a motive, and
on due consideration; and if he does not act right or with
a view to honest ends, is more dangerous than any one else.
Others may plead the vices of their blood in extenuation of
their errors; but a Scotchman is a machine, and should be
constructed on sound moral, and philosophical principles,
or should be put a stop to altogether.
[N. B. A Defence of the Scotch, shortly.]
EDITORIAL NOTES
EDITORIAL NOTES
[1] “On the Scotch Character”, by William Hazlitt (1778-1830). Edited by Franca Dellarosa.
[2] Robert Burns, Address to Edinburgh (1786): “Edina! Scotia’s darling seat! | All hail thy palaces and tow’rs, | Where once beneath a Monarch’s feet, | Sat Legislation’s sov’reign pow’rs!”.
[3] Hampstead, wealthy area located in the northwest part of London.
[4] Highgate, suburban area in northwest London.
[5] Calton Hill, a hill rising in the centre of Edinburgh, Scotland.
[6] William Cowper, The Task (1785), bk. 4, “The Winter Evening”, ll. 118-119: “While fancy, like the finger of a clock, | Runs the great circuit, and is still at home”.
[7] A recurring spelling for Shakespeare at the time of writing.
[8] Arthur Wellesley (1759-1852), first Duke of Wellington.
[9] Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832), Scottish novelist, poet and historian.
[10] Lieutenant Obadiah Lismahago, a character in the epistolary novel The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771), by Scottish satirical novelist Tobias Smollett (1721-71).
[11] Thomas Erskine, 1st Baron Erskine (1750-1823) was an Edinburgh-born British Whig lawyer and politician. In the course of his professional career, he defended politicians and reformers on charges of treason, during the phase of repressive home policy carried out by the British government in the aftermath of the French revolution. He served as Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain between 1806 and 1807. As P.P. Howe’s edition of the Hazlitt essay reports, “Lord Erskine was entertained at a banquet in Edinburgh on Feb. 21, 1820. He had not been in Scotland for more than fifty years.” (Hazlitt 1933, 17:397n).
[12] Brunonian, of or relating to John Brown (1735-88), a Scottish physician who theorised that disease was caused by either excessive or inadequate stimulation.
[13] Cameronian, name given to the Scottish Covenanters who followed Presbyterian leader Richard Cameron (1648-80).
[14] Jacobite, supporter of the exiled Stuart King James II (1633-1701) after the Glorious Revolution and of the restoration of the Catholic House of Stuart to the British throne.
[15] Covenanter, name given to Scottish Presbyterians across the seventeenth century, who subscribed to the 1638 National Covenant and the 1643 Solemn League and Covenant, intended to defend their form of church government and worship practices.
[16] Sir David Wilkie (1785-1841), Scottish genre and portrait painter.
[17] Sir Walter Scott.
[18] Horace, Satires (II.vii.86): “smooth and round”.
[19] Macvey Napier (1776-1847), Scottish lawyer, professor of conveyancing at the University of Edinburgh, and chief editor of the 7th edition of The Encyclopedia Britannica. He became Francis Jeffrey’s successor as editor of The Edinburgh Review in 1829.
[20] Robert Burns (1759-96), Scottish poet and lyricist, considered the national poet of Scotland.
[21] The Edinburgh Review, or The Critical Journal, an eminent Scottish political and literary magazine, founded by Francis Jeffrey, Sydney Smith, and Henry Brougham, and published between 1802 and 1929.
[22] The Blackwood’s Magazine was a Tory British magazine and miscellany (1817-1980), founded by the Scottish publisher and bookseller William Blackwood (1776-1834). Formerly called Edinburgh Monthly Magazine, it was soon known as Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, featuring a typically fierce and controversial tone. The magazine was at the centre of the Cockney School controversy (see below).
[23] Laird: “A member of the Scottish landed gentry; an owner of an estate” (OED).
[24] the Says … the Malthuses: a list of eighteenth-century thinkers and economists, including Jean-Baptiste Say (1767-1842); Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832); James Mill (1773-1836); and Thomas Robert Malthus (1766-1834). Hazlitt would take up the point in Characteristics (1823), an essay in the form of a series of aphorisms “in the manner of Rochefoucault’s Maxims”, as reads the subtitle. See Hazlitt 1932, 9:227 and Hazlitt 1933, 17:397n.
[25] All Scottish clans: the Grahams of Montrose, and Clans Gordon and Macullamore.
[26] strengh: obsolete spelling of strength.
[27] “Cockney School” was the scornful name coined in 1817 by the Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine to identify and revile the circle of London writers and intellectuals gathering around Leigh Hunt. The group included John Keats, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley, William Hazlitt, and painter Benjamin Robert Haydon.
[28] Shakespeare, Macbeth (I.ii.13). ‘Kernes’ were light-armed Irish or Scottish foot-soldiers. ‘Gallowglasses’ were a class of elite soldiers who served primarily as bodyguards to Celtic chieftains.
[29] Duty paid towards municipal expenses; a local or municipal tax (OED).
[30] Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part I, I.ii.101. The quote is also in Hazlitt’s essay “On the Character of Cobbett”, contained in Table Talks, Essays on Men and Manners (1822).
[31] A character in Laurence Sterne’s comic novel A Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy (1768), which recounts the journey through France of a sensitive young man named Yorick and his servant La Fleur.
[32] Subtitle of Walter Scott’s novel Waverley; or ‘Tis Sixty Years Since (1814).
[33] Misspelling of surveillance.
[34] House of Stuart, royal house of Scotland from 1371 and of England from 1603. It was interrupted in 1649 by the establishment of the Commonwealth but was restored in 1660. It ended in 1714 when the British crown passed to the house of Hanover.
[35] King James VI of Scotland (1567-1625) and I of England (1603-1625).
[36] The restoration of the Catholic House of Stuart to the British throne.
[37] direliction: misprint for dereliction.
[38] Penance-Sheets: a form of public chastisement or atonement, consisting in wearing a white sheet, and still practiced across the eighteenth century.
[39] Cutty-Stools: stools or seats formerly placed in a conspicuous position in some Scottish churches, intended to seat a person who was required to make a public penance in church (OED).
[40] See Robert Burns’s poem Death and Doctor Hornbook (1785).
[41] blackguard: “A person, esp. a man, who behaves in a dishonourable or contemptible way; someone worthless or despicable; a villain” (OED).
[42] See Hebrews, 12:1.
[43] John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667), IV.181: “At one slight bound high overleap’d all bound.”
[44] mauvaise honte: false shame or modesty (OED).
[45] Blackwood’s Magazine.
[46] Cf. Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene (1590), I.vi.8-15. The same passage is the source for the line that follows below.
[47] See the oratorio Judas Maccabaeus (1746) composed by Georg Friedrich Handel on a libretto written by Thomas Morell.
[48] In Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726), the Yahoos are a humanoid race of brutes, tamed into submission by the Houyhnhnms, a race of intelligent horses.
[49] Spenser, The Fairie Queene, I.vi.15.
[50] John Bull, a Sunday newspaper founded in December 1820 by Englishman Theodore Hook (1788-1841).
[51] The Beacon was a short-lived, staunchly conservative Edinburgh publication. It was established in 1820, and Walter Scott was involved both as an investor and contributor, and harshly criticized for this reason. Cf. Wu 2007, 2:90.
[52] Cf. The Faerie Queene, I.viii.40.
[53] Charles Burney (1726-1814), English music historian, musician and composer.
[54] James Thomson (1700-48), Scottish poet. He published the series of four poems The Seasons in 1730.
Ultimo aggiornamento
01.09.2025