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268 The Romantic period 1789–1832
profoundly and, out of considerable diversity, a kind of national cultural
identity was created. Perhaps the most significant single Scottish novel
of the time was James Hogg’s psychological study of what is now
called a ‘split personality’ – The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a
Justified Sinner, published in 1824. The fanatical narrator sees it as his
mission to commit a series of murders, ‘justified’ because of his own
faith and religious superiority. It is one of the earliest novels of ‘a
second self’, anticipating Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll
and Mister Hyde by some sixty years, and is one of the strangest and
most disturbing novels of the entire nineteenth century. Here, Hogg’s
narrator uses a kind of alter ego to kill his own brother:
There was scarcely an hour in the day on which my resolves
were not animated by my great friend, till at length I began to
have a longing desire to kill my brother, in particular. Should
any man ever read this scroll, he will wonder at this confession,
and deem it savage and unnatural. So it appeared to me at first,
but a constant thinking of an event changes every one of its
features. I have done all for the best, and as I was prompted, by
one who knew right and wrong much better than I did.