But I am half a Scot by birth, and bred
  A whole one; and my heart flies to my head
  As “Auld Lang Syne” brings Scotland, one and all—­
  Scotch plaids, Scotch snoods, the blue hills and clear streams,
  The Dee, the Don, Balgounie’s brig’s black wall—­
  All my boy feelings, all my gentler dreams
  Of what I then dreamt, clothed in their own pall,
  Like Banquo’s offspring...

Byron’s allusions to Scotland are variable and inconsistent.  His satire on her reviewers was sharpened by the show of national as well as personal antipathy; and when, about the time of its production, a young lady remarked that he had a little of the northern manner of speech, he burst out “Good God!  I hope not.  I would rather the whole d——­d country was sunk in the sea.  I the Scotch accent!” But, in the passage from which we have quoted, the swirl of feeling on the other side continues,—­

  I rail’d at Scots to show my wrath and wit,
  Which must be own’d was sensitive and surly. 
  Yet ’tis in vain such sallies to permit;
  They cannot quench young feelings, fresh and early. 
  I scotch’d, not kill’d, the Scotchman in my blood,
  And love the land of mountain and of flood.

This suggests a few words on a question of more than local interest.  Byron’s most careful biographer has said of him:  “Although on his first expedition to Greece he was dressed in the tartan of the Gordon clan, yet the whole bent of his mind, and the character of his poetry, are anything but Scottish.  Scottish nationality is tainted with narrow and provincial elements.  Byron’s poetic character, on the other hand, is universal and cosmopolitan.  He had no attachment to localities, and never devoted himself to the study of the history of Scotland and its romantic legends.”  Somewhat similarly Thomas Campbell remarks of Burns, “he was the most un-Scotsmanlike of Scotchmen, having no caution.”  Rough national verdicts are apt to be superficial.  Mr. Leslie Stephen, in a review of Hawthorne, has commented on the extent to which the nobler qualities and conquering energy of the English character are hidden, not only from foreigners, but from ourselves, by the “detestable lay figure” of John Bull.  In like manner, the obtrusive type of the “canny Scot” is apt to make critics forget the hot heart that has marked the early annals of the country, from the Hebrides to the Borders, with so much violence, and at the same time has been the source of so much strong feeling and persistent purpose.  Of late years, the struggle for existence, the temptations of a too ambitious and over active people in the race for wealth, and the benumbing effect of the constant profession of beliefs that have ceased to be sincere, have for the most part stifled the fervid fire in calculating prudence.  These qualities have been adequately combined in Scott alone, the one massive and complete literary type of his race.  Burns, to his ruin, had only the fire:  the same is true