The seal might have seemed set on this process by Scotland’s ultimate loss of political independence, with the Union of the Parliaments in 1707, but this in fact helped to trigger one of the country’s greatest literary and intellectual flowerings.

The ground was laid early in the 18th century when politically frustrated Scotsmen set out to define and champion a native literary tradition, initially by collecting, anthologising and emulating older Scottish writing in such publications as James Watson’s Choice Collection of Comic and Serious Scots Poems (c 1706-11). Other leading pioneers of this movement, such as Allan Ramsay and Robert Fergusson, continued attempts to renegotiate the role of Scots as a literary language, paving the way for the extraordinary achievements of Robert Burns (1759-96).

A farmer’s son, schooled both in Shakespeare and the popular folk-tales and ballads of the day, Burns wrote with equal fluency in English and Scots, often forging subtly varied alloys of the two. His tragically curtailed, though nonetheless copious oeuvre encompasses political and social satire, love lyrics, rhetorical verse, adapted traditional forms such as animal poems and verse epistles, narrative epic, pastoral, laments and celebratory tributes, as well as many of the most exquisitely written songs – mostly set to old Scottish airs – to be found in any language.

The breadth of Burns’s vision can be ascribed in no small part to his having lived at the height of the 18th-century era known today as 'the Scottish Enlightenment', when Scots thinkers led the European avant-garde in fields as diverse as philosophy (David Hume), economics (Adam Smith) and sociology (Adam Ferguson). According to the spirit of the age, theirs and other writings also addressed law, morality, aesthetics, politics, the nature of knowledge and - in Smith’s case - even astronomy, famously prompting the French author Voltaire to declare: 'We look to Scotland for all our ideas of civilisation'.

The other towering literary figure of this period was Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832). Variously influenced by the post-Union vogue for antiquarianism, by early German romanticism, and by the turbulent folk history of his beloved Borders region, as well as by the Enlightenment, Scott is widely credited as the inventor of the historical novel. As such, he was a key influence in turn on such international greats as Victor Hugo, Balzac, Dumas and Tolstoy, while Mark Twain even blamed him for the American Civil War, on the basis that his work’s romantic sensibilities had formed the character of the South.

Even within Scotland, opinions remain divided on the effects wrought by Scott’s romances and reinventions of Scottish history, which for good and ill have shaped the world’s perceptions of the country and its culture ever since. Nevertheless, his success in popularising Scottish subjects and themes among a worldwide reading public, and in introducing Scots vernacular dialogue to mainstream fiction, ensures his place in the pantheon, while many Enlightenment arguments over the 'progressive' (or otherwise) nature of history and humanity find expression in his work.

After the Jacobites’ decisive final defeat at Culloden in 1746, Gaelic was subjected to a sustained and draconian campaign of governmental attrition, including the proscription of Highland dress and the banning of bagpipes, on pain of imprisonment, transportation and even death. As the SSPCK was already discovering, however, it’s hard to wipe out an actual language, at least one still spoken by around a quarter of the population - and all the more so when those who speak it feel themselves collectively under attack.

With Culloden also sounding a final death-knell for the long-moribund Highland clan system and its associated bardic protocols, Gaelic’s self-defence included a defiant flowering of new poetry, again spurring on its literary evolution. Although informed by older traditions, writers like Alasdair Mac Mhaighstir Alasdair (1695-1770), Donnchadh Bàn Mac an t’Saoir (1724-1812), Dùghall Bochanan (1716-1768) and Uilleam Ros (1762-90) carried Gaelic forward into new stylistic, formal and technical territory. Another milestone in the language’s written history was the publication of the first Gaelic Bible in 1767 – commissioned, ironically enough, by the SSPCK.

Against a combined backdrop of Scottish Enlightenment and European Romanticism, by far the most famous name in Gaelic literature from this period is James MacPherson (1736-96), In 1760 he published Fragments of Ancient Poetry Collected in the Highlands, presenting it as translations of surviving passages from an ancient Gaelic saga about the legendary hero Fingal, as told by his son, Ossian. While controversy has continued ever since concerning the authenticity of MacPherson’s sources and the extent of his embellishment, his attempt to position Gaelic’s poetic heritage alongside classical epics like The Iliad and The Odyssey proved hugely influential, with Fragments and succeeding volumes being translated into dozens of languages.

As well as all the major English Romantic poets, Ossian fans included Napoleon, Goethe and Mendelssohn, while MacPherson’s impact also can be clearly felt in the work of Robert Burns and Sir Walter Scott. More broadly, it was a key factor in the shift of cultural identity that the leading Scottish historian Tom Devine has dubbed 'Highlandism', by which Highlanders themselves were cast in the picturesque but doomed role of 'noble savage', while emblematic aspects and accoutrements of Highland culture – tartan and bagpipes, hills and heather - were co-opted to represent Scotland as a whole. Even MacPherson’s sternest critics, however, will at least concede that the vogue he created inspired others to assemble several of the great Gaelic poetry collections.