Author: MACCULLOCH (JOHN). [BROWNE (JAMES)]:
Title: A Critical Examination of Dr. Macculloch's work on the Highlands and Western Isles of Scotland.
Description: Edinburgh: Printed for Daniel Lizars..., 1825. FIRST EDITION. 8vo, 178 x 112 mms., pp. [iv], including half-title, contemporary half calf, marbled boards (rubbed), spine gilt, red leather label; slight wear to joints, but a very good copy. The title refers to a book by the surgeon and geologist John Macculloch (1773 - 1835) entitled The Highlands and Western Islands of Scotland (1824), in which he argued, or at least asserted, that the occupants of Scotland's highlands were lazy and should be cleared from the land. Needless to say, the book did not meet with universal approval. Browne's book begins with a survey of recent works on the highlands and highlanders, with, for example, this observation on Samuel Johnson's : "full of grumbling, saucy, ill-natured observations, the spawn of a mind contracted and illiberal, deeply imbued with prejudice, and incomparably more enamoured of antithesis than truth,--the whole being delivered in that pompous domineering tone of insolent superiority, which, from long habit and slavish acquiescence, had become habitual and natural to him...." Browne's critical examination of Macculloch's work meets with ever more invective and abuse. The Quarterly Review noted in 1827 that "The unexampled unanimity of opinion which has been expressed by the Literary Press of this Country on this Spirited Defence of the Highlanders, has placed its character as a work of Controversy in a more conspicuous light than any other work of the kind which has appeared since M'Nicoll's Remarks on Johnson." L. J. Bruce-Chwatt, "John Macculloch, M. D., F. R. S. (1773 - 1835) (The Precursor of the Discipline of Malariology," in Medical History (1977), 21; 155 - 164.

Keywords: history CONTROVERSY prose Scottish Enlightenment


See more books from our catalog: History