Gossip about Letters and Letter-Writers (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Scottish Correspondence. 19 Russell and Archbishop Tillotson is characterized by its humility and unaffected piety. Scottish Correspondence of Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. According to Professor Innes, ' letters of correspondence are hardly met with in Scotch repositories till the sixteenth century, and even to the end of that century they are incredibly meagre and unsatisfactory.' For many admirable illustrations of Scottish correspondence during the two following centuries, I cannot do better than refer to the privately printed volumes relative to the Stirlings of Keir, the Maxwells of Pollok, the Steuarts of Grandtully, the Carnegies Earls of South- esk, and the Montgomeries Earls of Eglin- ton, which have appeared within the last few years, under the editorship of my learned friend Mr. William Fraser. Each of these sumptuous works embraces a large number of highly interesting letters, with facsimiles of the more important signatures, and occasionally of entire letters. In the Montgomerie Collection (to which I must confine my remarks), the2O Correspondence of thc letters amount to no fewer than 332, and may be roughly classified under the two heads of historical and domestic; but not unfrequently the same effusion exhibits a curious combination of both characteristics. Some of the most interesting letters of the former class are addressed to Alexander, sixth Earl of Eglin- ton, ?popularly called ' Greysteel n?who took a very prominent part in public affairs during the reigns of Charles I. and II.?and relate to such important subjects as the subscription of the Covenant, London politics, Montrose's march, the Convention of Estates, and the death of Cromwell. Among the occasional writers are the Marquis of Montrose, General Dalzell of Binns, General Monc...