SOURCE: "The Scottish Augustans," in Scottish Poetry: A Critical Survey, edited by James Kinsley, Cassell and Company Ltd., 1955, pp. 119-49.

In the following essay, Oliver discusses eighteenth-century Scottish poetry written in English, faulting its didacticism and conventionality, and praising its original treatment of supernatural themes.

The eighteenth-century Scots who wrote English verse, but little or no verse in Scots, are described conveniently by the title of this [essay]—conveniently, but inaccurately. In the sense in which Horace or Pope was Augustan, in poise, clear self-knowledge and serene self-esteem, in mastery of technique and consummate propriety of expression, in a word, in classical perfection, there are no Scottish Augustans. Nor are there many English. The eighteenth-century critics were the first to note the unsatisfactory character of eighteenth-century poetry:

Johnson voices Gray's lament more temperately, but no less decisively [in The Life of Samuel Johnson (1904)]: 'There was no poetry, nothing...