THE PORTRAITS OF JOHN KNOX. 277 fortunately, too, for any literary reputation Knox may have in this end of the Island, it is written not in the Scottish, but in the common English dialect ; com- pletely intelligible therefore to everybody : read by many in that time ; and still likeliest to be the book any English critic of Knox will have looked into, as his chief original document about tht? man. It is written with very great vehemency ; the excuse for which, so far as it may really need excuse, is to be found in the fact that it was written while the fires of Smithfield were still blazing, on best of Bloody Mary, and not long after Mary of Guise had been raised to the Regency of Scotland : maleficent Crowned "Women these two, covering poor England and poor Scotland with mere ruin and horror, in Knox's judg- ment, — and may we not still say to a considerable extent in that of all candid persons since? The Book is by no means without merit ; has in it various little traits, unconsciously autobiographic and other, which are illuminative and interesting. One ought I to add withal that Knox was no despiser of women ; far the reverse in fact ; his behaviour to good and pious women is full of respect, and his tenderness, his
