Chapter 2 takes up Goethe’s distinction between a higher and a lower layer of world literature (discussed in the previous chapter) and argues that in complementing the transnational distribution of cultural mediocrity through markets, Goethe envisioned a more elevated sphere organized along a decidedly non-market form of exchange, that is, gifting. I examine Goethe’s correspondence with his translator Thomas Carlyle as a circuitry of world-literary gifting marked by the to-and-fro movement of tangible (books, journals, manuscripts, jewelry, drawings, interior decoration, etc.) and intangible gifts (tribute, reward, cooperation, guidance). Their nexus, I argue, was emblematic of the transition from the ethos of generous sharing in the republic of letters to world literature as a forum interconnecting outstanding representatives of various national literatures. Contributing to the material diffusion of texts and channelling symbolic economies of prestige, their acts of gift-giving prefigured Carlyle’s conception of hero-worship, and the “significant geography” circumscribed by the movement of gifts between Weimar and Scotland morphed into an imperialistic vision of a Teutonic (British-German) world literature.

Chapter 5 gives a detailed account of the trial and execution of Thomas Aikenhead in Edinburgh in 1696–7. The statements that Aikenhead was accused of making are itemised, and their incendiary and openly blasphemous quality is clear. It is also noteworthy that he made such statements in public and seemed reluctant to retract them. This explains the harsh penalty to which he was subjected, which was the subject of much comment at the time. The case also attracted interest in England, not least from John Locke, who preserved various key documents relating to it. Here, Aikenhead’s sources are investigated, including the dangerous books to which he had access in the university library and elsewhere, and his ingenuity in constructing an irreligious ‘system’ from them is asserted.

Chapter 6 provides the background to Archibald Pitcairne’s overtly atheist treatise, Pitcairneana, which is published in full in Chapter 7. It surveys Pitcairne’s career, including his meeting with Isaac Newton in 1692, his medical practice and influence, his passionate Episcopalianism and Jacobitism and his hostility to Presbyterianism, his circle of friends, his library and reading, and his Latin versification. Particular attention is given to his religious views, including the heterodox tract that he circulated in print, Epistola Archimedis, which voiced a deeply subversive view of Christian doctrine, and to Pitcairneana, of which the history of the manuscript and its content is given careful scrutiny.

In his Autobiography, John Stuart Mill asserts that in 1813 he read ‘the first six dialogues (in the common arrangement) of Plato, from the Euthyphro to the Theaetetus inclusive’ (he was then seven years old; he means the Greek text). What was ‘the common arrangement’? In which edition of the text did Mill encounter it? Indeed, which editions did his father James Mill possess, and which is the one he would have chosen for his son’s introduction to Plato and Platonic Greek? The Thrasyllan arrangement familiar to modern readers from Burnet’s Oxford Text was anything but common or usual in earlier centuries. The only credible candidate is the one pioneered in Serranus’ edition of 1578, printed by Stephanus and then adopted widely, whose pagination has remained the standard Plato reference system. The Stephanus order is found in the complete Bipont Plato edition of 1781-87, whose volumes James Mill gradually acquired. Though it cannot be proved that he possessed in 1813 its opening volumes, containing the dialogues John Stuart read, these are a much likelier choice than the far less readily legible 1602 Frankfurt edition, which he almost certainly owned by that date.

The focus of this chapter is the gambling of the elites and primarily gambling for large financial stakes, so-called playing deep. It seeks to provide a picture of how far gambling of different kinds was firmly integrated in the lives of many among the elites, and how the landscape of elite gambling changed across the eighteenth century. However, it also emphasizes the tensions and even contradictions which existed in elite attitudes towards ‘gaming’ and the influence of different milieu on the propensity to gamble and nature of gambling. At its core are a series of case studies of individual gamblers and specific gambling coteries, including a detailed examination of a case of a junior member of a leading Scottish titled family, Lord William Murray of the Murrays of Atholl, for whom gaming was very destructive personally. Gambling, it is often emphasized, was frequently an enactment of the code of honour of the gentleman; but at stake were different, competing versions of honour and masculinity. Gambling divided as much as it united the elites, in terms of habits, conduct, and attitudes.

Chapter 6 concerns a largely neglected topic, as it sets out the picture of the Jacobite Rising in 1715-16 which emerges gradually in scattered portions of the third volume of the Tour. Defoe’s treatment of this episode is shown to underline his general approach to Scotland in the wake of the Union in 1707. Among the attributes which enabled hm to cover the issues involved we can observe the length and breadth of his concern with Scotland; his close acquaintance with leading figures on both sides of the border; his familiarity with high politics in Britain since the 1690s; the extent of his contacts with more modest local officials; his very wide experience in trade, a branch of activity he continued to pursue when he reached Edinburgh; his background as a commentator on social and economic topics; his obsessive curiosity with regard to all aspects of geography and topography; and his energy, enabling him to produce a long and elaborate compilation of documents in The History of the Union (1709). Defoe’s account is far from objective; he is unashamedly a partisan of the Union, the Hanoverian regime, and the Whig government. Nevertheless, with great skill Defoe embeds his view of the Rising within the larger case of the Tour, as it contrasts the past and present factors inhibiting progress in Scotland with the future potential opened by the Union and the Hanoverian accession.

This chapter seeks to locate George IV’s fleeting visit to Edinburgh in what cultural historian Peter de Bolla has described as the domain of the scopic. It does so by focusing on the visual culture of the visit as witnessed in the production of images – both official and unofficial – by various artists, including David Wilkie, John Wilson Ewbank and William Home Lizars. This chapter argues that a multiplicity of visual experiences was proffered by the king’s visit to Edinburgh. Not only in the production of traditional art historical media like paintings, engravings and sculpture, but also in the ways in which the city itself in terms of its body politic, its architectural embellishments (‘the Athens of the North’) and its topographical landscape were described as being displayed to the kKing in a sequence of staged tableaux. He, in turn, is described as being revealed to the gawping gaze of his Scottish subjects.

Edinburgh was the first Scottish city where amateur music-making actually formed a major part of a city’s musical life and developed an institutionalized profile. Over the course of the eighteenth century the Edinburgh Musical Society (EMS) eventually created more demand than their members could provide, which led to a growing involvement of professional musicians. In this chapter it will be shown, how the growing professionalization of the concert life was accompanied by an increasing number of benefit events. Like in other regions of the UK, the beneficiaries of these events were mainly the performing musicians themselves. Nevertheless, they did not just follow other British examples as outlined in the other chapters. Through newspaper advertisements, the minutes of the EMS, and other surviving sources, it is possible to closely investigate various benefit concerts in Edinburgh and to distinguish between the different types that were organized either mainly for charitable purposes or that were meant to contribute to the performers’ income. Furthermore, the sources help to reconstruct the background of these events in regard to their venue, their inner structure, and their repertory.

When and how did the Scottish Enlightenment take shape? What were its major influences - Scottish, English, European and other? Can we account for its unique character? Who were its major players? What did they want and achieve? Answers to these basic questions hinge on the debatable nature of the Scottish Enlightenment. Regardless of where one’s emphases fall or the tenor of the Scottish Enlightenment one sees, there is no single context for it. This chapter explores several which were important for all of them.

The Scottish Enlightenment was situated in a particular geography and climate and within distinct population trends. Patrons were important to it. So, too, were institutional contexts and the wider eighteenth-century Republic of Letters. While Edinburgh was at the heart of the Scottish Enlightenment, Glasgow and Aberdeen provide other and differing contexts.

We find that the contexts shaping the Scottish Enlightenment differed from those elsewhere. Culturally diverse and eager for improvement from the late seventeenth century, by 1800, the Scots could boast of an Enlightenment to which belonged several of the century’s best philosophers and historians, its most accomplished political economist and many notable social thinkers, scientists and medical men, rhetoricians, theologians and artists. Their works circulated widely, engendering debate and excitement in Britain, on the Continent and in America.