...the Scots grows every day less unpleasing to the English; their peculiarities wear fast away. . . . The great, the learned, the ambitious, and the vain,...the English phrase, and the English pronunciation" (151). Like the wealthy planters and their mulatto children in the West Indies, the Scots elite often...

...seen but little." Yet there are some delightful notes. " The conversation of the Scots," he says, " grows every day less unpleasing to the English ; their...likely to become in half a century provincial and rustick, even to themselves." It is only too true. In good company, he records, Scots is seldom heard,...

...exercises, Ruddiman was dead.106 What praise he had for Scotland would more often be called abuse: 'The conversation of the Scots grows every day less unpleasing to the English.'107 Johnson's A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, published in 1775, is a profound...

...quick, so great, and so general" (73).Johnson found the shift in language particularly remarkable: The conversation of the Scots grows every day less...wear fast away; their dialect is likely to become in a half century provincial and rustic, even to themselves.The great, the learned, the ambitious, and...

...statement seems purposefully to recall one of Johnson's last pronouncements on Scotland in his Journey: "The conversation of the Scots grows every day less...likely to become in half a century provincial and rustick, even to themselves" (147). 84. For more on the "Celtomania" inspired by Macpherson's Ossianic...