The Works of the Ettrick Shepherd #267846

It is gratifying to think that such genuine excellence has obtained a correspondent recognition. The productions of the Ettrick Shepherd, by their own intrinsic excellence, have won their way, and secured their proper place among the lasting literary achieve ments of our countrymen. While they excited the admiration of the bygone period, and made the public to wonder that they could have been written by any one under such adverse circumstances as his, their popularity was not, like that of so many contem poraneous works, confined to their own day. They have stood the severest ordeal of criticism, and every year has only added to their reputation. Like the national characteristics of Scotland, which they so well illustrate, they have only been hardened into permanence by the trial through which they have passed unscathed; and they bid fair to endure as long as Scottish individuality continues to be prized and cherished. And although the fashion of things may change with the mutations of time, the Ettrick Shepherd's writings, along with those of Scott and of Burns, will still continue to be valued as the faithful transcripts of an existence dear to memory, though its forms have become obsolete, as well as of those more solid and substantial national virtues which neither fashion can change nor time eradicate.