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Johnson, on account of the unhappy difference in their politicks, upon my repeating this passage to him, exclaimed 'Oil of vitriol ! BOSWELL. Psalms, cxli. 5. 'We all love Beattie, he had said. Ante, ii. 148. This, I find, is a Scotticism.
"And in order to guard against any misinterpretation of my reasons for making this disposition of my property," your Aunt says, "I wish to put it on record that I had previously drawn up another will, bequeathing my effects to be divided between my two nephews Ernest and Ronald Le Breton equally; that I communicated the contents of that will" a horrid Scotticism "to my nephew Ernest; and that at his express desire I have now revoked it, and drawn up this present testament, leaving the share intended for him to his brother Ronald."
Paul should carry weight in life; and I think, friendly reader, that we shall believe that it is wisely and kindly meant, if the like should come to you and me. We all understand what is meant, when we hear it said that a man is doing very well, or has done very well, considering. I do not know whether it is a Scotticism to stop short at that point of the sentence.
'I thought it, he says, 'at least equal to, if not superior, to many of Allan Ramsay's epistles, and that the merit of these and much other Scottish poetry seemed to consist principally in the knack of the expression; but here there was a strain of interesting sentiment, and the Scotticism of the language scarcely seemed affected, but appeared to be the natural language of the poet. It startles us to hear Gilbert talking thus of the Scotticism, after having heard so much of Robert Burns writing naturally in the speech of his home and county.
The woman's accent, though uncouth enough, sounds yet kindly in my ear; for I have never yet forgotten the desolate effect produced on my infant organs, when I heard on all sides your slow and broad northern pronunciation, which was to me the tone of a foreign land. I am sensible I myself have since that time acquired Scotch in perfection, and many a Scotticism withal.
The literary men of Edinburgh, who would rather have been convicted of a breach of etiquette than of a Scotticism, tried to induce him to write pure English; but the Scotch words which he first heard from his mother's lips seemed to possess more "o' Nature's fire." He ended by touching the heart of Scotland and making her feel more proud of this dialect, of him, and of herself.
In mountain vernacular the Old English strong past tense still lives in begun, drunk, holped, rung, shrunk, sprung, stunk, sung, sunk, swum. The variant whupped is a Scotticism. Whope is sometimes used in the present tense, but whup is more common.
It was in his library at Salamanca that he once explained to an Englishman the meaning of a particular Scotticism in Robert Burns; and it was there that he congratulated another Englishman on his having read Rural Rides, "the hall-mark," he said, "of the man of letters who is no mere man of letters, but also a man."
In this sense, we should discern in the use of the word screw, something analogous to the expressive Scotticism, which says of a perverse and impracticable man, that he is a thrown person; that is, a person who has got a thraw or twist; or rather, a person the machinery of whose mind works as machinery might be conceived to work which had got a thraw or twist.
I fear she was often shocked at our easy Saxon ways, though Tom and I thought ourselves models of thrift. Once, it was on a Sunday, Tom and I, with a party of friends, had had a very long walk, a regular pedestrian excursion, thirty miles, there or thereabouts, to use a Scotticism, and poor Tom was quite knocked up and confined to bed for several days.
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