SOURCE: "The Problem of the Scottish Poet," in Essays and Studies, Vol. XXI, 1936, pp. 105-23.

Formerly a professor of English and rector at the University of Edinburgh, Grierson wrote and edited a number of books on Sir Walter Scott. In the following excerpt, Grierson discusses the limited role of the Scottish dialect since the eighteenth century and asserts that Burns and Scott were the last representatives of a genuine Scottish poetic tradition.

Throughout the seventeenth, the eighteenth, and even part of the nineteenth century the cultured, educated Scot spoke, among his fellow Scots, his Scottish vernacular; but if he wrote—philosophy, history, theology, poetry, economics, whatever the theme—he wrote in English. The position today is reversed. He speaks English, a northern English certainly, lingua inglese in bocca scozzese (unless early education or social ambition has further polished and disguised his speech), but he may, if he is...