Only let
a thing, whether temporal or spiritual, be considered genteel in
England, and if it be not followed it is strange indeed; so Scott's
writings not only made the greater part of the nation Jacobite, but
Popish.
Here some people will exclaim--whose opinions remain sound and
uncontaminated--what you say is perhaps true with respect to the
Jacobite nonsense at present so prevalent being derived from
Scott's novels, but the Popish nonsense, which people of the
genteeler classes are so fond of, is derived from Oxford. We sent
our sons to Oxford nice honest lads, educated in the principles of
the Church of England, and at the end of the first term they came
home puppies, talking Popish nonsense, which they had learned from
the pedants to whose care we had entrusted them; ay, not only
Popery but Jacobitism, which they hardly carried with them from
home, for we never heard them talking Jacobitism before they had
been at Oxford; but now their conversation is a farrago of Popish
and Jacobite stuff--"Complines and Claverse." Now, what these
honest folks say is, to a certain extent, founded on fact; the
Popery which has overflowed the land during the last fourteen or
fifteen years, has come immediately from Oxford, and likewise some
of the Jacobitism, Popish and Jacobite nonsense, and little or
nothing else, having been taught at Oxford for about that number of
years.
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