Skip to main content

Full text of "An Edinburgh eleven; pencil portraits from college life"

See other formats


UC-NRLF 


B    3    132    Mlb 

nlrargli 

Eleven 


Gavin  Ogilvy 


''British  Weekly  Extras,  No.  III. 


AN    EDINBURGH    ELEVEN 


WORKS   BY  THE   SAME  AUTHOR. 

Auld  Licht  Idylls.      Tenth  Edilion.     Civicn  Svo.     Buckram. 

6s. 
Auld  Licht  Idylls.    Edition  de Luxe.    With  Eighteen  Etchings 

by  William  Hole,  R.S.A.    Large  post  ^to.    31s.  6d. 

When  a  Man's  Single.      A  Stoi7  of  Literary  Life.      Tenth 
Edition.      Croivn  >^vo.      Buckram.      6s. 

A  Window   in   Thrums.      Fourteenth  Edition.    Crown  Svo. 

Buckram.    6s. 
My  Lady  Nicotine.     Si.xtli  Edition.     Croivn  Sw.    Buckram. 

6s. 


THE     THISTLE     EDITION. 

J.  M.  BARRIES   WORKS. 
Vol.  I.  AULD  LICHT  IDYLLS  and  BETTER  DEAD. 
II.  WHEN  A   MAN'S  SINGLE. 
in.  WINDOW     IN    THRUMS    AND    AN     EDIN- 
BURGH   ELEVEN. 
IV.  MY   LADY   NICOTINE, 
v.-vi.  THE   LITTLE   MINISTER.      2  Vols, 
vii.-vill.  SENTIMENTAL     TOM?»IY      .and     MARGARET 
OGILVY. 

A  superb  uniform  and  complete  Edition,  illustrated  with 
sixteen  photogravures.  Printed  in  bold  type,  from  new- 
plates,  on  a  fine  deckle-edged  paper,  £s  L'^s.  per  set,  the 
volumes  not  sold  separately.  Fifty  copies  on  Imperial  Hand- 
made Japanese  paper,  ;^io  los.  per  set. 


LONDON  :   HODDER   AND    STOUGHTON, 
27,  PATERNOSTER   ROW. 


AN    EDINBURGH    ELEVEN 


|lciin(  IJortraits  from  (L^oKcgc  ICife 


J.    M.    BARRIE 


THIRD  EDITION 


ITonboit 
HODDER    AND    STOUGHTON 

27,    TATERNOSTER   ROW 

MUCCCXC\T 


w 


^\ 


0 


3B 


'/- 


•^  'c^^^ 


CONTENTS 


I.  Lord  Rosebery 
II.  Professor  Masson    . 

III.  Professor  Blackie  . 

IV.  Professor  Calderwood 
V.  Professor  Tait 

VI.  Professor  Fraser    . 
VI I.  Professor  Chrystal 
VIII.  Professor  Sellar 
IX.   Mr.  Joseph  Thomson 
X.  Mr.  Robert  Louis  Stevenson 
XL  Rev.  Walter  C.  Smith,  D.D. 


PAOE 

7 
17 
27 
35 
45 
57 
(^5 
77 
89 

97 
109 


29'^  ^y^ 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2008  with  funding  from 

IVIicrosoft  Corporation 


http://www.archive.org/details/elevenedinburghpOObarrrich 


LORD     ROSEBERY. 

THE  first  time  I  ever  saw  Lord  Rosebery 
was  in  Edinburgh  when  I  was  a  student, 
and  I  flung  a  clod  of  earth  at  him.  He  was 
a  peer  ;  those  were  my  politics. 

I  missed  him,  and  I  have  heard  a  good 
many  journalists  say  since  then  that  he  is  a 
difficult  man  to  hit.  One  who  began  by 
liking  him  and  is  now  scornful,  which  is  just 
the  reverse  process  from  mine,  told  me  the 
reason  why.  He  had  some  brochures  to 
write  on  the  Liberal  leaders,  and  got  on 
nicely  till  he  reached  Lord  Rosebery,  where 
he  stuck.  In  vain  he  walked  round  his  lord- 
ship, looking  for  an  opening.  The  man  was 
naturally  indignant  ;  he  is  the  father  of  a 
family. 

Lord  Rosebery  is  forty-one  years  of  age, 
and  has  missed  many  opportunities  of  becom- 
ing  the    bosom    friend    of    Lord    Randolph 


S'  ■'  ''  '  ■'  AN'  EDINBURGH   ELEVEN. 

Churchill.  They  were  at  Eton  together  and 
at  Oxford,  and  have  met  since.  As  a  boy 
the  Liberal  played  at  horses,  and  the  Tory 
at  running  off  with  other  boys'  caps.  Lord 
Randolph  was  the  more  distinguished  at  the 
University.  One  day  a  proctor  ran  him 
down  in  the  streets  smoking  in  his  cap  and 
gown.  The  undergraduate  remarked  on  the 
changeability  of  the  weather,  but  the  proctor, 
gasping  at  such  bravado,  demanded  his  name 
and  college.  Lord  Randolph  failed  to  turn 
up  next  day  at  St.  Edmund  Hall  to  be  lec- 
tured, but  strolled  to  the  proctor's  house  about 
dinner-time.  "  Does  a  fellow,  name  of  Moore, 
live  here  ?  "  he  asked.  The  footman  contrived 
not  to  faint.  "  He  do,"  he  replied,  severely  ; 
"but  he  are  at  dinner."  "  Ah  !  take  him  in  my 
card,"  said  the  unabashed  caller.  The  Merton 
books  tell  that  for  this  the  noble  lord  was 
fined  ten  pounds. 

There  was  a  time  when  Lord  Rosebery 
would  have  reformed  the  House  of  Lords  to 
a  site  nearer  Newmarket.  As  politics  took  a 
firmer  grip  of  him,  it  was  Newmarket  that 
seemed  a  long  way  off.     One  day  at  Edin- 


LORD    ROSEBERY.  9 

burgh  he  realized  the  disadvantage  of  owning 
swift  horses.  His  brougham  had  met  him 
at  Waverley  Station  to  take  him  to  Dalmeny. 
Lord  Rosebery  opened  the  door  of  the  car- 
riage to  put  in  some  papers,  and  then  turned 
away.  The  coachman,  too  well  bred  to  look 
round,  heard  the  door  shut,  and  thinking  that 
his  master  was  inside,  set  off  at  once.  Pur- 
suit was  attempted,  but  what  was  there  in 
Edinburgh  streets  to  make  up  on  those 
horses  ?  The  coachman  drove  seven  miles, 
until  he  reached  a  point  in  the  Dalmeny 
parks  where  it  was  his  lordship's  custom  to 
alight  and  open  a  gate.  Here  the  brougham 
stood  for  some  minutes,  awaiting  Lord  Rose- 
bery's  convenience.  At  last  the  coachman 
became  uneasy  and  dismounted.  His  brain 
reeled  when  he  saw  an  empty  brougham.  He 
could  have  sworn  to  seeing  his  lordship  enter. 
There  were  his  papers.  What  had  happened  ? 
With  a  quaking  hand  the  horses  were  turned, 
and,  driving  back,  the  coachman  looked  fear- 
fully along  the  sides  of  the  road.  He  met 
Lord  Rosebery  travelling  in  great  good 
humour  by  the  luggage  omnibus. 


lO  AN    EDINBURGH   ELEVEN. 

Whatever  is  to  be  Lord  Rosebery's  future, 
he  has  reached  that  stage  in  a  statesman's 
career  when  his  opponents  cease  to  question 
his  capacity.  His  speeches  showed  him  long 
ago  a  man  of  brilliant  parts.  His  tenure  of 
the  Foreign  Office  proved  him  heavy  metal. 
Were  the  Gladstonians  to  return  to  power,  the 
other  Cabinet  posts  might  go  anywhere,  but 
the  Foreign  Secretary  is  arranged  for.  Where 
his  predecessors  had  clouded  their  meaning  in 
words  till  it  was  as  wrapped  up  as  a  Mussul- 
man's head.  Lord  Rosebery's  were  the  straight- 
forward dispatches  of  a  man  with  his  mind 
made  up.  German  influence  was  spoken  of ; 
Count  Herbert  Bismarck  had  been  seen  shoot- 
ing Lord  Rosebery's  partridges.  This  was  the 
evidence  :  there  has  never  been  any  other, 
except  that  German  methods  commended 
themselves  to  the  Minister  rather  than  those 
of  France.  His  relations  with  the  French 
Government  were  cordial.  "  The  talk  of 
Bismarck's  shadow  behind  Rosebery,"  a  great 
French  politician  said  lately,  "  I  put  aside 
with  a  smile  ;  but  how  about  the  Jews  ? " 
Probably  few  persons  realize  what  a  power  the 


LORD   ROSEBERY.  1  I 

Jews  are  in  Europe,  and  in  Lord  Rosebery's 
position  he  is  a  strong  man  if  he  holds  his 
own  with  them.  Any  fears  on  that  ground 
have,  I  should  say,  been  laid  by  his  record 
at  the  Foreign  Office. 

Lord  Rosebery  had  once  a  conversation 
with  Prince  Bismarck,  to  which,  owing  to  some 
oversight,  the  Paris  correspondent  of  the 
Times  was  not  invited.  M.  Blowitz  only 
smiled  good-naturedly,  and  of  course  his 
report  of  the  proceedings  appeared  all  the 
same.  Some  time  afterwards  Lord  Rose- 
bery was  introduced  to  this  remarkable  man, 
who,  as  is  well  known,  carries  Cabinet 
appointments  in  his  pocket,  and  compli- 
mented him  on  his  report.  "Ah,  it  was  all 
right,  was  it  ?  "  asked  Blowitz,  beaming.  Lord 
Rosebery  explained  that  any  fault  it  had  was 
that  it  was  all  wrong.  "  Then  if  Bismarck  did 
not  say  that  to  you,"  said  Blowitz,  regally, 
"I  know  he  intended  to  say  it." 

The  "  Uncrowned  King  of  Scotland  "  is  a 
title  that  has  been  made  for  Lord  Rosebery, 
whose  country  has  had  faith  in  him  from  the 
beginning.     Mr.  Gladstone  is  the  only  other 


12  AN   EDINBURGH   ELEVEN. 

man  who  can  make  so  many  Scotsmen  take 
politics  as  if  it  were  the  Highland  Fling. 
Once  when  Lord  Rosebery  was  firing  an 
Edinburgh  audience  to  the  delirium  point, 
an  old  man  in  the  hall  shouted  out,  "  I  dinna 
hear  a  word  he  says,  but  it's  grand,  it's 
grand  !  "  During  the  first  Midlothian  cam- 
paign Mr.  Gladstone  and  Lord  Rosebery  were 
the  father  and  son  of  the  Scottish  people. 
Lord  Rosebery  rode  into  fame  on  the  top  of 
that  wave,  and  he  has  kept  his  place  in  the 
hearts  of  the  people,  and  in  oleographs  'on 
their  walls,  ever  since.  In  all  Scottish  matters 
he  has  the  enthusiasm  of  a  Burns  dinner,  and 
his  humour  enables  him  to  pay  compliments. 
When  he  says  agreeable  things  to  Scotsmen 
about  their  country,  there  is  a  twinkle  in  his 
eye  and  in  theirs  to  which  English  scribes  can- 
not give  a  meaning.  He  has  unveiled  so  many 
Burns'  statues  that  an  American  lecturess 
explains,  "  Curious  thing,  but  I  feel  somehow 
I  am  connected  with  Lord  Rosebery.  I  go 
to  a  place  and  deliver  a  lecture  on  Burns  ; 
they  collect  subscriptions  for  a  statue,  and  he 
unveils  it."     Such  is  the  delic^ht  of  the  Scottish 


LORD   ROSEBERY.  I  3 

students  in  Lord  Rosebciy,  that  he  may  be 
said  to  have  made  the  triumphal  tour  of  the 
northern  universities  as  their  Lord  Rector  ; 
he  lost  the  post  in  Glasgow  lately  through  a 
quibble,  but  had  the  honour  with  the  votes. 
His  address  to  the  Edinburgh  undergraduates 
on  "  Patriotism  "  was  the  best  thing  he  ever 
did  outside  politics,  and  made  the  students  his 
for  life.  Some  of  them  had  smuggled  into  the 
hall  a  chair  with  "  Gaelic  chair  "  placarded  on 
it,  and  the  Lord  Rector  unwittingly  played 
into  their  hands.  In  a  noble  peroration  he 
exhorted  his  hearers  to  high  aims  in  life. 
"  Raise  your  country,"  he  exclaimed  (cheers)  ; 
"  raise  yourselves  (renewed  cheering)  ;  raise 
your  university"  (thunders  of  applause). 
From  the  back  of  the  hall  came  a  solemn 
voice,  "  Raise  the  chair  !  "  Up  went  the  Gaelic 
chair. 

Even  Lord  Rosebery's  views  on  Imperial 
Federation  can  become  a  compliment  to 
Scotland.  Having  been  all  over  the  world 
himself,  and  felt  how  he  grew  on  his  travels, 
Lord  Rosebery  maintains  that  every  British 
statesman  should  visit  India  and  the  Colonies. 


14  AN   EDINBURGH    ELEVEN. 

He  said  that  first  at  a  semi-public  dinner  in 
the  country — and  here  I  may  mention  that 
on  such  occasions  he  has  begun  his  speeches 
less  frequently  than  any  other  prominent 
politician  with  a  statement  that  others  could 
be  got  to  discharge  the  duty  better  ;  in  other 
words,  he  has  several  times  omitted  this 
introduction.  On  his  return  to  London  he 
was  told  that  his  colleagues  in  the  Adminis- 
tration had  been  seeing  how  his  scheme  would 
work  out.  "  We  found  that  if  your  rule  were 
enforced,  the  Cabinet  would  consist  of  your- 
self and  Childers."  "  This  would  be  an  ideal 
Cabinet,"  Lord  Rosebery  subsequently  re- 
marked in  Edinburgh,  "  for  it  would  be 
entirely  Scottish"  ;  Mr.  Childers  being  member 
for  a  Scottish  constituency. 

The  present  unhappy  division  of  the 
Liberal  party  has  made  enemies  of  friends 
for  no  leading  man  so  little  as  for  Lord  Rose- 
bery. There  are  forces  working  against  him, 
no  doubt,  in  comparatively  high  places,  but 
the  Unionists  have  kept  their  respect  for  him. 
His  views  may  be  wrong,  but  he  is  about  the 
only  Liberal  leader,  with  the  noble  exception 


LORD   ROSEBERY.  1 5 

of  Lord  Hartlngton,  of  whom  troublous  times 
have  not  rasped  the  temper.  Though  a  great 
reader,  he  is  not  a  Hterary  man  Hke  Mr. 
Morley,  who  would,  however,  be  making 
phrases  where  Lord  Rosebery  would  make 
laws.  Sir  William  Harcourt  has  been  spoken 
of  as  a  possible  Prime  Minister,  but  surely  it 
will  never  come  to  that.  If  Mr.  Gladstone's 
successor  is  chosen  from  those  who  have  fol- 
lowed him  on  the  Home  Rule  question,  he 
probably  was  not  rash  in  himself  naming 
Lord  Rosebery. 

Lord  Rosebery  could  not  now  step  up 
without  stepping  into  the  Premiership.  His 
humour,  which  is  his  most  obvious  faculty, 
has  been  a  prop  to  him  many  a  time  ere  now, 
but,  if  I  was  his  adviser,  I  should  tell  him  that 
it  has  served  its  purpose.  There  are  a  great 
many  excellent  people  who  shake  their  heads 
over  it  in  a  man  who  has  become  a  power  in 
the  land.  "  Let  us  be  grave,"  said  Dr.  John- 
son once  to  a  merry  companion,  "  for  here 
comes  a  fool."  In  an  unknown  novel  there  is 
a  character  who  says  of  himself  that  "  he  is 
not  stupid  enough  ever  to  be   a  great  man." 


l6  AN   EDINBURGH   ELEVEN. 

I  happen  to  know  "that  this  reflection  was 
evolved  by  the  author  out  of  thinking  over 
Lord  Rosebery.  It  is  not  easy  for  a  bright  man 
to  be  heavy,  and  Lord  Rosebery's  humour  is 
so  spontaneous  that  if  a  joke  is  made  in  theii 
company  he  has  always  finished  laughing  be- 
fore Lord  Hartington  begins.  Perhaps  when 
Lord  Rosebery  is  on  the  point  of  letting  his, 
humour  run  off  with  him  in  a  public  speech 
he  could  recover  his  solemnity  by  thinking  of. 
the  Exa7niner. 


II. 

PROFESSOR  MASSON. 

n^HOUGH  a  man  might,  to  my  mind,  be 
-'■  better  employed  than  in  going  to  college, 
it  is  his  own  fault  if  he  does  not  strike  on 
someone  there  who  sends  his  life  off  at  anew 
angle.  If,  as  I  take  it,  the  glory  of  a  pro- 
fessor is  to  give  elastic  minds  their  proper 
bent,  Masson  is  a  name  his  country  will  retain 
a  grip  of  There  are  men  who  are  good  to 
think  of,  and  as  a  rule  we  only  know  them 
from  their  books.  Something  of  our  pride  in 
life  would  go  with  their  fall.  To  have  one 
such  professor  at  a  time  is  the  most  a  univer- 
sity can  hope  of  human  nature,  so  Edinburgh 
need  not  expect  another  just  yet.  These,  of 
course,  are  only  to  be  taken  as  the  reminis- 
cences of  a  student.  I  seem  to  remember 
everything  Masson  said,  and  the  way  he 
said  it. 

Having  immediately  before  taken  lodgings 

2 


1 8  AN    EDINBURGH    ELEVEN. 

in  a  crow's  nest,  my  first  sight  of  Masson  was 
specially  impressive.  It  was  the  opening  of 
the  session,  when  fees  were  paid,  and  a  whisper 
ran  round  the  quadrangle  that  Masson  had  set 
off  home  with  three  hundred  one-pound  notes 
stuffed  into  his  trouser  pockets.  There  was 
a  solemn  swell  of  awestruck  students  to  the 
gates,  and  some  of  us  could  not  help  following 
him.  He  took  his  pockets  coolly.  When  he 
stopped  it  was  at  a  second-hand  bookstall, 
where  he  rummaged  for  a  long  time.  Even- 
tually he  pounced  upon  a  dusty,  draggled  little 
volume,  and  went  off  proudly  with  it  beneath 
his  arm.  He  seemed  to  look  suspiciously  at 
strangers  now,  but  it  was  not  the  money  but 
the  book  he  was  keeping  guard  over.  His 
pockets,  however,  were  unmistakably  bulging 
out.     I  resolved  to  go  in  for  literature. 

Masson,  however,  always  comes  to  my 
memory  first  knocking  nails  into  his  desk  or 
trying  to  tear  the  gas-bracket  from  its  socket. 
He  said  that  the  Danes  scattered  over  Eng- 
land, taking  such  a  hold  as  a  nail  takes  when  it 
is  driven  into  wood.  For  the  moment  he  saw 
his  desk  turned  into  England  ;  he  whirled  an 


PROFESSOR    MASSON.  I9 

invisible  hammer  in  the  air,  and  down  it 
came  on  the  desk  with  a  crash.  No  one  w4io 
has  sat  under  Masson  can  forget  how  the 
Danes  nailed  themselves  upon  England.  His 
desk  is  thick  with  their  tombstones.  It  was 
when  his  mind  groped  for  an  image  that  he 
clutched  the  bracket.  He  seemed  to  tear  his 
good  things  out  of  it.  Silence  overcame  the 
class.  Some  were  fascinated  by  the  man  ; 
others  trembled  for  the  bracket.  It  shook, 
groaned,  and  yielded.  Masson  said  another 
of  the  things  that  made  his  lectures  literature  ; 
the  crisis  was  passed  ;  and  everybody  breathed 
again. 

He  masters  a  subject  by  letting  it  master 
him  ;  for  though  his  critical  reputation  is  built 
on  honesty,  it  is  his  enthusiasm  that  makes 
his  work  warm  with  life.  Sometimes  he 
entered  the  classroom  so  full  of  what  he  had 
to  say  that  he  began  before  he  reached  his 
desk.  If  he  was  in  the  middle  of  a  perora- 
tion  when  the  bell  rang,  even  the  back-benches 
forgot  to  empty.  There  were  the  inevitable 
students  to  whom  literature  is  a  trial,  and 
sometimes  they  call  attention  to  their  suffer- 


20  AN    EDINBURGH   ELEVEN. 

ings  by  a  scraping  of  the  feet.  Then  the  pro- 
fessor tried  to  fix  his  eyeglass  on  them,  and 
when  it  worked  properly  they  were  transfixed. 
As  a  rule,  however,  it  required  so  many  ad- 
justments that  by  the  time  his  eye  took  hold  of 
it  he  had  remembered  that  students  were  made 
so,  and  his  indignation  went.  Then,  with  the 
light  ill  his  eye  that  some  photographer  ought 
to  catch,  he  would  hope  that  his  lecture  was 
not  disturbing  their  conversation.  It  was 
characteristic  of  his  passion  for  being  just 
that  when  he  had  criticised  some  writer 
severely  he  would  remember  that  the  back- 
benches could  not  understand  that  criticism 
and  admiration  might  go  together,  unless  they 
were  told  so  again. 

The  test  of  a  sensitive  man  is  that  he  is 
careful  of  wounding  the  feelings  of  others. 
Once,  I  remember,  a  student  was  reading  a 
passage  aloud,  assuming  at  the  same  time 
such  an  attitude  that  the  Professor  could  not 
help  remarking  that  he  looked  like  a  teapot. 
It  was  exactly  what  he  did  look  like,  and  the 
class  applauded.  But  next  moment  Masson 
had    apologized    for   being    personal.     Such 


PROFESSOR   MASSON.  21 

reminiscences  are  what  make  the  old  litera- 
ture classroom  to  thousands  of  graduates  a 
delight  to  think  of. 

When  the  news  of  Carlylc's  death  reached 
the  room,  Masson  could  not  go  on  with  his 
lecture.  Every  one  knows  what  Carlyle  has 
said  of  him  ;  and  no  one  who  has  heard  it 
will  ever  forget  what  he  has  said  of  Carlyle. 
Here  were  two  men  who  understood  each 
other.  One  of  the  Carlylean  pictures  one 
loves  to  dwell  on  shows  them  smoking  to- 
gether, with  nothing  breaking  the  pauses  but 
Mrs.  Carlyle's  needles.  Carlyle  told  Masson 
how  he  gave  up  smoking  and  then  took  to  it 
again.  He  had  walked  from  Dumfriesshire 
to  Edinburgh  to  consult  a  doctor  about  his 
health,  and  was  advised  to  lose  his  pipe.  He 
smoked  no  more,  but  his  health  did  not  im- 
prove, and  then  one  day  he  walked  in  a  wood. 
At  the  foot  of  a  tree  lay  a  pipe,  a  tobacco 
pouch,  a  match-box.  He  saw  clearly  that 
this  was  a  case  of  Providential  interference, 
and  from  that  moment  he  smoked  again. 
There  the  Professor's  story  stops.  I  have  no 
doubt,  though,  that  he  nodded  his  head  when 


22  AN    EDINBURGH   ELEVEN. 

Carlyle  explained  what  the  pipe  and  tobacco 
were  doing  there.  Masson's  "  Milton  "  is,  of 
course,  his  great  work,  but  for  sympathetic 
analysis  I  know  nothing  to  surpass  his 
"  Chatterton."  Lecturing  on  Chatterton  one 
day,  he  remarked,  with  a  slight  hesitation, 
that  had  the  poet  mixed  a  little  more  in  com- 
pany and  — and  smoked,  his  morbidness  would 
not  have  poisoned  him.  That  turned  my 
thoughts  to  smoking,  because  I  meant  to  be 
a  Chatterton,  but  greater.  Since  then  the 
professor  has  warned  me  against  smoking  too 
much.     He  was  smoking  at  the  time. 

This  is  no  place  to  follow  Masson's  career, 
nor  to  discuss  his  work.  To  reach  his  position 
one  ought  to  know  his  definition  of  a  man-of- 
letters.  It  is  curious.,  and,  like  most  of  his 
departures  from  the  generally  accepted,  sticks 
to  the  memory.  By  a  man-of-letters  he  does 
not  mean  the  poet,  for  instance,  who  is  all 
soul,  so  much  as  the  strong-brained  writer 
whose  guardian  angel  is  a  fine  sanity.  He 
used  to  mention  John  Skclton,  the  Wolsey 
satirist,  and  Sir  David  Lindsay,  as  typical 
men-of-letters  fiom   this  point  of   view,  and 


PROFESSOR   MASSON.  23 

it  is  as  a  man-of-letters  of  that  class  that 
Masson  is  best  considered.  In  an  age  of  many 
whipper-snappers  in  criticism  he  is  something 
of  a  Gulliver. 

The  students  in  that  class  liked  to  see  then 
professor  as  well  as  hear  him.  I  let  my  hair 
grow  long  because  it  only  annoyed  other 
people,  and  one  day  there  was  dropped  into 
my  hand  a  note  containing  sixpence  and  the 
words :  "  The  students  sitting  behind  you 
present  their  compliments,  and  beg  that  you 
will  get  your  hair  cut  with  the  enclosed,  as  it 
interferes  with  their  view  of  the  professor." 

Masson,  when  he  edited  "  Macmillan's," 
had  all  the  best  men  round  him.  His  talk 
of  Thackeray  is  specially  interesting,  but  he 
always  holds  that  in  conversation  Douglas 
Jerrold  was  unapproachable.  Jerrold  told 
him  a  good  story  of  his  sea-faring  days.  His 
ship  was  lying  off  Gibraltar,  and  for  some 
hours  Jerrold,  though  only  a  midshipman,  was 
left  in  charge.  Some  of  the  sailors  begged 
to  get  ashore,  and  he  let  them,  on  the  promise 
that  they  would  bring  him  back  some  oranges. 
One  of  them   disappeared,  and   the   midship- 


24  AN   EDINBURGH   ELEVEN. 

man  suffered  for  it.  More  than  twenty  years 
afterwards  Jerrold  was  looking  in  at  a  window 
in  the  Strand  when  he  seemed  to  know  the 
face  of  a  weather-beaten  man  who  was  doing 
the  same  thing.  Suddenly  he  remembered, 
and  put  his  hand  on  the  other's  shoulder- 
"My  man,"  he  said,  "  you  have  been  a  long 
time  with  those  oranges  ! "  The  sailor  recog- 
nized him,  turned  white,  and  took  to  his  heels. 
There  is,  too,  the  story  of  how  Dickens  and 
Jerrold  made  up  their  quarrel  at  the  Garrick 
Club.  It  was  the  occasion  on  which  Masson 
first  met  the  author  of  "  Pickwick."  Dickens 
and  Jerrold  had  not  spoken  for  a  year,  and 
they  both  happened  to  have  friends  at  dinner 
in  the  strangers'  room,  Masson  being  Jerrold's 
guest.  The  two  hosts  sat  back  to  back,  but 
did  not  address  each  other,  though  the  con- 
versation was  general.  At  last  Jerrold  could 
stand  it  no  longer.  Turning,  he  exclaimed, 
"  Charley,  my  boy,  how  are  you  ?  "  Dickens 
wheeled  round  and  grasped  his  hand. 

Many  persons  must  have  noticed  that,  in 
appearance,  Masson  is  becoming  more  and 
more  like   Carlyle  every  jear.     Plow   would 


PROFESSOR   MASSON.  2$ 

you  account  for  it  ?  It  is  a  thing-  his  old 
students  often  discuss  when  they  meet,  espe- 
cially those  of  them  who,  when  at  college, 
made  up  their  minds  to  dedicate  their  first 
book  to  him.  The  reason  they  seldom  do  it 
is  because  the  book  does  not  seem  good 
enough. 


III. 

PROFESSOR  JOHN  STUART  BLACKIE. 

LATELY  I  was  told  that  Blackie— one 
does  not  say  Mr.  Cromwell  — is  no  longer 
Professor  of  Greek  in  Edinburgh  University. 
What  nonsense  some  people  talk.  As  if 
Blackie  were  not  part  of  the  building.  In 
his  class  one  day  he  spoke  touchingly  of  the 
time  when  he  would  have  to  join  Socrates  in 
the  Elysian  fields.  A  student  cheered — no 
one  knows  why.  "  It  w^on't  be  for  some  time 
yet,"  added  John  Stuart. 

Blackie  takes  his  ease  at  home  in  a 
dressing-gown  and  straw  hat.  This  shows 
that  his  plaid  really  does  come  off.  "  My 
occupation  nowadays,"  he  said  to  me  recently, 
"is  business,  blethers,  bothers,  beggars,  and 
backgammon."  He  has  also  started  a  pro- 
fession of  going  to  public  meetings,  and 
hurrying  home  to  w^rite  letters  to  the  news- 
papers about  them.     When  the  editor  shakes 


28  AN   EDINP.UKGH   ELEVEN. 

the  manuscript  a  sonnet  falls  out.  I  think  I 
remember  the  Professor's  saying  that  he  had 
never  made  five  shillings  by  his  verses.  To 
my  mind  they  are  worth  more  than  that. 

Though  he  has  explained  them  frequently, 
there  is  still  confusion  about  Blackie's  politics. 
At  Manchester  they  thought  he  was  a  Tory, 
and  invited  him  to  address  them  on  that 
understanding.  "  I  fancy  I  astonished  them," 
the  Professor  said  to  me.  This  is  quite  pos- 
sible.    Then  he  was  mistaken  for  a  Liberal. 

The  fact  is  that  Blackie  is  a  philosopher 
who  follows  the  golden  mean.  He  sees  this 
himself.  A  philosopher  who  follows  the 
golden  mean  is  thus  a  man  who  runs  zig-zag 
between  two  extremes.  You  will  observe 
that  he  who  does  this  is  some  time  before  he 
arrives  anywhere. 

The  Professor  has  said  that  he  has  the 
strongest  lungs  in  Scotland.  Of  the  many 
compliments  that  might  well  be  paid  him, 
not  the  least  worthy  would  be  this,  that  he  is  as 
healthy  mentally  as  physically.  Mrs.  Norton 
begins  a  novel  with  the  remark  that  one  of 
the    finest   sights    conceivable    is   a  wcll-pre- 


PROFESSOR   JOHN    STUART   BLACKIE.       29 

served  gentleman  of  middle-age.  It  will  be 
some  time  yet  before  Blackie  reaches  middle- 
age,  but  there  must  be  something  wrong  with 
you  if  you  can  look  at  him  without  feeling 
refreshed.  Did  you  ever  watch  him  marching 
along  Princes  Street  on  a  warm  day,  when 
every  other  person  was  broiling  in  the  sun  ? 
His  head  is  well  thrown  back,  the  staff. 
grasped  in  the  middle,  jerks  back  and  for- 
ward like  a  weaver's  shuttle,  and  the  plaid 
flies  in  the  breeze.  Other  people's  clothes 
are  hanging  limp.  Blackie  carries  his  breeze 
with  him. 

A  year  or  two  ago  Mr.  Gladstone,  when 
at  Dalmeny,  pointed  out  that  he  had  the 
advantage  over  Blackie  in  being  of  both 
Hie^hland  and  Lowland  extraction.  The 
Professor,  however,  is  as  Scotch  as  the 
thistle  or  his  native  hills,  and  Mr.  Gladstone, 
quite  justifiably,  considers  him  the  most  out- 
standing of  living  Scotsmen.  Blackie  is  not 
quite  sure  himself.  Not  long  ago  I  heard 
him  read  a  preface  to  a  life  of  Mr.  Gladstone 
that  was  being  printed  at  Smyrna  in  modern 
Greek.     He   told   his   readers   to    remember 


30  AN    EDINBURGH   ELEVEN. 

that  Mr.  Gladstone  was  a  great  scholar  and 
an  upright  statesman.  They  would  find  it 
easy  to  do  this  if  they  first  remembered  that 
he  was  Scottish. 

The  World  included  Blackie  in  its  list  of 
"  Celebrities  at  Home."  It  said  that  the  door 
was  opened  by  a  red-headed  lassie.  That 
was  probably  meant  for  local  colour,  and  it 
amused  every  one  who  knew  Mrs.  Blackie. 
The  Professor  is  one  of  the  most  genial  of 
men,  and  will  show  you  to  your  room 
himself,  talking  six  languages.  This  tends 
to  make  the  conversation  one-sided,  but  he 
does  not  mind  that.  He  still  writes  a  good 
deal,  spending  several  hours  in  his  library 
daily,  and  his  talk  is  as  brilliant  as  ever. 
His  writing  nowadays  is  less  sustained  than 
it  was,  and  he  prefers  flitting  from  one  sub- 
ject to  another  to  evolving  a  great  work. 
When  he  dips  his  pen  into  an  ink-pot  it  at 
once  writes  a  sonnet — so  strong  is  the  force 
of  habit.  Recently  he  wrote  a  page  about 
Carlyle  in  a  little  book  issued  by  the  Edin- 
burgh students'  bazaar  committee.  In  this 
he    reproved    Carlyle     for     having     "  bias." 


PROFESSOR   JOHN    STUART   BLACKIE.      3 1 

Blackie  wonders  why  people  should  have 
bias. 

Some  readers  of  this  may  in  their  student 
days  have  been  invited  to  the  Greek  profes- 
sor's house  to  breakfast  without  knowing 
why  they  were  selected  from  among  so  many. 
It  was  not,  as  they  are  probably  aware,  be- 
cause of  their  classical  attainments,  for  they 
were  too  thoughtful  to  be  in  the  prize-list ; 
nor  was  it  because  of  the  charm  of  their 
manners  or  the  fascination  of  their  conver- 
sation. When  the  Professor  noticed  any 
physical  peculiarity  about  a  student,  such  as 
a  lisp,  or  a  glass  eye,  or  one  leg  longer  than 
the  other,  or  a  broken  nose,  he  was  at  once 
struck  by  it,  and  asked  him  to  breakfast. 
They  were  very  lively  breakfasts,  the  eggs 
being  served  in  tureens ;  but  sometimes  it 
was  a  collection  of  the  maimed  and  crooked, 
and  one  person  at  the  table — not  the  host 
himself— used  to  tremble  lest,  making  mirrors 
of  each  other,  the  guests  should  see  why  they 
were  invited. 

Sometimes,  instead  of  asking  a  student 
to  breakfast,  Blackie  would   instruct  another 


32  AN    EDINBURGH    ELEVEN. 

student  to  request  his  company  to  tea.  Then 
the  two  students  were  told  to  talk  about 
paulo-post  futures  in  the  cool  of  the  evening, 
and  to  read  their  Greek  Testament  and  to  go 
to  the  pantomime.  The  Professor  never  tired 
of  giving  his  students  advice  about  the  pre- 
servation of  their  bodily  health.  He  strongly 
recommended  a  cold  bath  at  six  o'clock  every 
morning.  In  winter,  he  remarked  genially, 
you  can  break  the  ice  with  a  hammer.  Ac- 
cording to  himself,  only  one  enthusiast  seem? 
to  have  followed  his  advice,  and  he  died. 

In  Blackie's  classroom  there  used  to  be  ?> 
demonstration  every  time  he  mentioned  the 
name  of  a  distinguished  politician.  Whether 
the  demonstration  took  the  Professor  by  sur- 
prise, or  whether  he  waited  for  it,  will  never, 
perhaps,  be  known.  But  Blackie  at  least  put 
out  the  gleam  in  his  eye,  and  looked  as  if  he 
were  angry.  "  I  will  say  Beaconsfield,"  he 
would  exclaim  (cheers  and  hisses).  "  Beacons- 
field  "  (uproar).  Then  he  would  stride  for- 
ward, and,  seizing  the  railing,  announce  his 
intention  of  saying  Beaconsfield  until  every 
goose   in   the    room   was   tired    of  cackling. 


PROFESSOR  JOHN   STUART   BLACKIE.     33 

("  Question.")      "  Beaconsfield."     ("  No   no.") 
"  Beaconsfield."     ("  Hear,   hear,"   and    shouts 
of  "Gladstone.")     "Beaconsfield."     ("Three 
cheers    for     Dizzy.")       Eventually   the   class 
would  be  dismissed  as — (i)  idiots,  (2)  a  bear 
garden,  (3)  a  flock   of  sheep,  (4)  a    pack  of 
numskulls,   (5)    hissing   serpents.     The   pro- 
fessor would  retire,  apparently  fuming,  to  his 
anteroom,    and    five    minutes    afterwards    he 
would    be  playing  himself  down  the  North 
Bridge  on  imaginary  bagpipes.     This  sort  of 
thing  added  a  sauce  to  all  academic  sessions. 
There  was  a  notebook  also,  which  appeared 
year  after  year.     It  contained  the  Professor's 
jokes  of  a  former  session,  carefully  classified 
by   an    admiring    student.      It    was   handed 
down  from  one  year's  men  to  the  next,  and 
thus  if  Blackie  began  to  make  a  joke  about 
haggis,  the   possessor  of  the  book   had  only 
swiftly  to  turn  to  the  H's,  find  what  the  joke 
was,  and  send  it  along  the  class  quicker  than 
the  professor  could  speak  it. 

In  the  old  days  the  Greek  professor  recited 
a  poem  in  honour  of  the  end  of  the  session. 
He  composed  it  liimsclf,and,  as  known  to  me,  it 
3 


34  AN    EDINBURGH   ELEVEN. 

took  the  form  of  a  graduate's  farewell  to  his 
Alma  Mater.  Sometimes  he  would  knock  a 
map  down  as  if  overcome  with  emotion,  and 
at  critical  moments  a  student  in  the  back- 
benches would  accompany  him  on  a  penny- 
trumpet.  Now,  I  believe,  the  Hellenic  Club 
takes  the  place  of  the  classroom.  All  the 
eminent  persons  in  Edinburgh  attends  its 
meetings,  and  Blackie,  the  Athenian,  is  in 
the  chair.  The  policeman  in  Douglas 
Crescent  looks  skeered  when  you  ask  him 
what  takes  place  on  these  occasions.  It  is 
generally  understood  that  toward  the  end 
of  the  meeting  they  agree  to  read  Greek  next 
time. 


IV. 

PROFESSOR  CALUERWOOD. 

TTERE  is  a  true  story  that  the  general 
•■■  ^  reader  may  jump,  as  it  is  intended  for 
Professor  Calderwood  himself.  Some  years 
ago  an  English  daily  paper  reviewed  a  book 
entitled  "  A  Handbook  of  Moral  Philosophy." 
The  Professor  knows  the  work.  The 
"notice"  was  done  by  the  junior  reporter, 
to  whom  philosophical  treatises  are  generally 
entrusted.  He  dealt  leniently,  on  the  whole, 
with  Professor  Calderwood,  even  giving  him 
a  word  of  encouragement  here  and  there. 
Still  the  criticism  was  severe.  The  reviewer 
subsequently  went  to  Edinburgh  University, 
and  came  out  144th  in  the  class  of  Moral 
Philosophy. 

That  student  is  now,  I  believe,  on  friendly 
terms  with  Professor  Calderwood,  but  has 
never  told  him  this  story.  I  fancy  the  Pro- 
lessor  would  like  to  know  his  name.     It  may 


30  AN   EDINBURGH   ELEVEN. 

perhaps,  be  reached  in  this  way.  He  was  the 
young  gentleman  who  went  to  his  classes  the 
first  day  in  a  black  coat  and  silk  hat,  and 
was  cheered  round  the  quadrangle  by  a  body 
of  admiring  fellow-students,  who  took  him 
for  a  professor. 

Calderwood  contrives  to  get  himself  more 
in  touch  with  the  mass  of  his  students  than 
some  of  his  fellow-professors,  partly  because 
he  puts  a  high  ideal  before  himself,  and  to 
some  extent  because  his  subject  is  one  that 
Scottish  students  revel  in.  Long  before 
they  join  his  class  they  know  that  they  are 
moral  philosophers  ;  indeed,  they  are  some- 
times surer  of  it  before  they  enrol  than 
afterwards.  Their  essays  begin  in  some  such 
fashion  as  this — "  In  joining  issue  with  Reid, 
I  wish  to  take  no  unfair  advantage  of  my 
antagonist" ;  or  *'  Kant  is  sadly  at  fault  when 
he  says  that "  ;  or  "  It  is  strange  that  a  man 
of  Locke's  attainments  should  have  been 
blind  to  the  fact."  When  the  Professor  reads 
out  these  tit-bits  to  the  class  his  eyes  twinkle. 
Some  students,  of  course,  arc  not  such  keen 
philosophers     as     others.       Does     Professor 


PROFESSOR   CALDKRWOOD. 


J/ 


Calderwood  remember  the  one  who  was 
never  struck  by  anything  in  moral  philo- 
sophy until  he  learned  by  accident  that 
Descartes  lay  in  bed  till  about  twelve  o'clock 
every  morning?  Then  it  dawned  on  him 
that  he,  too,  must  have  been  a  philosopher 
all  his  life  without  knowing  it.  One  year  a 
father  and  son  were  in  the  class.  The 
father  got  so  excited  over  volition  and  the 
line  that  divides  right  from  wrong,  that  he 
wrenched  the  desk  before  him  from  its 
sockets  and  hit  it  triumphantly,  meaning  that 
he  and  the  Professor  were  at  one.  He  was 
generally  admired  by  his  fellow-students, 
because  he  was  the  only  one  in  the  class 
who  could  cry  out  "  Hear,  hear,"  and  even 
"question,"  without  blushing.  The  son,  on 
the  other  hand,  was  blase,  and  would  have 
been  an  agnostic,  only  he  could  never  re- 
member the  name.  Once  a  week  Calderwood 
turns  his  class  into  a  debating  society,  and 
argues  things  out  with  his  students.  This 
field-day  is  a  joy  to  them.  Some  of  them 
spend  the  six  days  previous  in  preparing 
posers.      The  worst  of  the  Professor  is  that 


$S  AN    EDINBURGH    ELEVEN. 

he  never  sees  that  they  are  posers.  What 
is  the  use  of  getting  up  a  question  of  the 
most  subtle  kind,  when  he  answers  it  right 
away  ?  It  makes  you  sit  down  quite  sud- 
denly. There  is  an  occasional  student  who 
tries  to  convert  liberty  of  speech  on  the 
discussion  day  into  license,  and  of  him  the 
Professor  makes  short  work.  The  student 
means  to  turn  the  laugh  on  Calderwood,  and 
then  Calderwood  takes  advantage  of  him,  and 
the  other  students  laugh  at  the  wrong  person. 
It  is  the  older  students,  as  a  rule,  who  are 
most  violently  agitated  over  these  philo- 
sophical debates.  One  with  a  beard  cracks 
his  fingers,  after  the  manner  of  a  child  in 
a  village  school  that  knows  who  won  the 
battle  of  Bannockburn,  and  feels  that  he 
must  burst  if  he  does  not  let  it  out  at  once. 
A  bald-headed  man  rises  every  minute  to 
put  a  question,  and  then  sits  down,  looking 
stupid.  He  has  been  trying  so  hard  to  re- 
member what  it  is,  that  he  has  forgotten. 
There  is  a  legend  of  two  who  quarrelled  over 
the  Will  and  fought  it  out  on  Arthur's  Seat. 
One  year,  however,  a  boy  of  sixteen  or  so, 


PROFESSOR   CALDERWOOD.  39 

with  a  squeaky  voice  and  a  stammer,  was 
Calderwood's  severest  critic.  He  sat  on  the 
back  bench,  and  what  he  wanted  to  know 
was  something  about  the  infinite.  Every 
discussion  day  he  took  advantage  of  a  kill 
in  the  debate  to  squeak  out,  "  With  regard  to 
the  infinite,"  and  then  could  never  get  any 
further.  No  one  ever  discovered  what  he 
wanted  enlightenment  on  about  the  infinite. 
He  grew  despondent  as  the  session  wore  on, 
but  courageously  stuck  to  his  point.  Pro- 
bably he  is  a  soured  man  now.  For  purposes 
of  exposition  Calderwood  has  a  black  board 
in  his  lecture-room,  on  which  he  chalks  circles 
that  represent  the  feelings  and  the  will,  with 
arrows  shooting  between  them.  In  my  class 
there  was  a  boy,  a  very  little  boy,  who  had 
been  a  dux  at  school  and  was  a  dunce  at 
college.  He  could  not  make  moral  philo- 
sophy out  at  all,  but  did  his  best.  Here  were 
his  complete  notes  for  one  day  : — "  Edinburgh 
University,  class  of  Moral  Philosophy,  Pro- 
fessor Calderwood,  Lecture  64,  Jan.  11,  18 — . 
You  rub  out  the  arrow,  and  there  is  only  the 
circle  left." 


40  AN    EDINBURGH    ELEVEN. 

Professor  Calderwood  is  passionately  fond 
of  music,  as  those  who  visit  at  his  house 
know.  He  is  of  opinion  that  there  is  a  great 
deal  of  moral  philosophy  in  "  The  Dead 
March  in  Saul."  Once  he  said  something  to 
that  effect  in  his  class,  adding  enthusiastically 
that  he  could  excuse  the  absence  of  a  student 
who  had  been  away  hearing  "  The  Dead 
March  in  Saul."  After  that  he  received  a 
good  many  letters  from  students,  worded  in 
this  way  :  "  Mr.  McNaughton  (bench  7) 
presents  his  compliments  to  Professor  Calder- 
wood, and  begs  to  state  that  his  absence  from 
the  class  yesterday  was  owing  to  his  being 
elsewhere,  hearing  *  The  Dead  March  in 
Saul.'"  "Dear  Professor  Calderwood  —  I 
regret  my  absence  from  the  lecture  to-day, 
but  hope  you  will  overlook  it,  as  I  was  un- 
avoidably detained  at  home,  practising  '  The 
Dead  March  in  Saul.'— Yours  truly,  Peter 
Webster."  "  Professor  Calderwood, — Dear 
Sir, — As  I  was  coming  to  the  lecture  to-day, 
I  heard  '  The  Dead  March  in  Saul '  being 
played  in  the  street.  You  will,  I  am  sure, 
make    allowance  for    my  non-attendance   at 


PROFESSOR   CALDKRWOOD.  4T 

the  class,  as  I  was  too  much  affected  to 
come.  It  is  indeed  a  grand  march. — Yours 
faithfully,  JOIIN  ROBBIE."  "The  students 
whose  names  are  subjoined  thank  the  Pro- 
fessor of  Moral  Philosophy  most  cordially 
for  his  remarks  on  the  elevating  power  of 
music.  They  have  been  encouraged  thereby 
to  start  a  class  for  the  proper  study  of  the 
impressive  and  solemn  march  to  which  he 
called  special  attention,  and  hope  he  will 
excuse  them,  should  their  practisings  occa- 
sionally prevent  their  attendance  at  the 
Friday  lectures."  Professor  Calderwood  does 
not  lecture  on  "  The  Dead  March  in  Saul " 
now. 

The  class  of  Moral  Philosophy  is  not  for 
the  few,  but  the  many.  Some  professors  do 
not  mind  what  becomes  of  the  nine  students, 
so  long  as  they  can  force  on  every  tenth. 
Calderwood,  however,  considers  it  his  duty  to 
carry  the  whole  class  along  with  him,  and  it 
is,  as  a  consequence,  almost  impossible  to  fall 
behind.  The  lectures  are  not  delivered,  in 
the  ordinary  sense,  but  dictated.  Having 
explained    the    subject  of  the  day  with  the 


42  AN   EDINBURGH    ELEVEN. 

lucidity  that  is  this  professor's  pecuh'ar  gift, 
he  condenses  his  remarks  into  a  proposition. 
It  is  as  if  a  minister  ended  his  sermon  with 
the  text.  Thus  : — "  Proposition  34.  Man  is 
born  into  the  world — (You  have  got  that  ? 
See  that  you  have  all  got  it.)  Man  is  born 
into  the  world  with  a  capacity — with  a 
capacity — "  (Anxious  student  :  "  If  you 
please,  Professor,  where  did  you  say  man  was 
born  into  ? ")  "  Into  the  world,  with  a 
capacity  to  distinguish  " — ("  With  a  what, 
sir  ?  ") — "  with  a  capacity  to  distinguish  " — 
(Student :  "  Who  is  born  into  the  world  ?  ") 
"  Perhaps  I  have  been  reading  too  quickly. 
Man  is  born  into  the  world,  with  a  capacity 
to  distinguish  between — distinguish  between 
(student  shuts  his  book,  thinking  that  com- 
pletes the  proposition) — distinguish  between 
right  and  wrong — right — and  wrong.  You 
have  all  got  Proposition  34,  gentlemen  ?  " 

Once  Calderwood  was  questioning  a  student 
about  a  proposition  to  see  that  he  thoroughly 
understood  it.  "  Give  an  illustration,"  sug- 
gested the  Professor.  The  student  took  the 
case  of  a  murderer.     "  Very  good,"  said  the 


PROFESSOR   CALDERWOOD.  43 

Professor.  "  Now  give  me  another  illustra- 
tion." The  student  pondered  for  a  little. 
"  Well,"  he  said  at  length,  "  take  the  case  of 
another  murderer." 

Professor  Calderwood  has  such  an  excep- 
tional interest  in  his  students  that  he  asks 
every  one  of  them  to  his  house.  This  is 
but  one  of  many  things  that  makes  him 
generally  popular  ;  he  also  invites  his  ladies' 
class  to  meet  them.  The  lady  whom  you 
take  down  to  supper  suggests  Proposition  41 
as  a  nice  thing  to  talk  about,  and  asks  what 
you  think  of  the  metaphysics  of  ethics. 
Professor  Calderwood  sees  the  ladies  into  the 
cabs  himself.  It  is  the  only  thing  I  ever 
heard  as^ainst  him. 


PROFESSOR  TAIT. 

JUST  as  I  opened  my  desk  to  write  enthu- 
siastically of  Tait,  I  remembered  having 
recently  deciphered  a  pencil  note  about  him, 
in  my  own  handwriting,  on  the  cover  of 
Masson's  "  Chronological  List,"  which  I  still 
keep  by  me.  I  turned  to  the  note  to  see  if 
there  was  life  in  it  yet.  *'  Walls,"  it  says, 
'*  got  2s.  for  T.  and  T.  at  Brown's,  i6,  Walker- 
street."  I  don't  recall  Walls,  but  T.  and  T. 
was  short  for  "  Thomson  and  Tait's  Elements 
of  Natural  Philosophy"  (Elements!),  better 
known  in  my  year  as  the  "  Student's  First 
Glimpse  of  Hades."  Evidently  Walls  sold 
his  copy,  but  why  did  I  take  such  note  of  the 
address?  I  fear  T.  and  T.  is  one  of  the 
Books  Which  Have  Helped  Me.  This  some- 
what damps  my  ardour. 

When  Tait  was  at  Cambridge  it  was  flung 


46  AN    EDINBURGH   ELEVEN. 

in  the  face  of  the  mathematicians  that  they 
never  stood  high  in  Scriptural  knowledge. 
Tait  and  another  were  the  two  of  whom 
one  must  be  first  wrangler,  and  they  agreed 
privately  to  wipe  this  stigma  from  mathe- 
matics. They  did  it  by  taking  year  about 
the  prize  which  was  said  to  hang  out  of  their 
reach.  It  is  always  interesting  to  know  of 
professors  who  have  done  well  in  Biblical 
knowledge.  All  Scottish  students  at  the 
English  Universities  are  not  so  successful.  I 
knew  a  Snell  man  who  was  sent  back  from 
the  Oxford  entrance  exam.,  and  he  always 
held  himself  that  the  Biblical  questions  had 
done  it. 

Turner  is  said  by  medicals  to  be  the  finest 
lecturer  in  the  University.  He  will  never 
be  that  so  long  as  Tait  is  in  the  Natural 
Philosophy  chair.  Never,  I  think,  can  there 
have  been  a  more  superb  demonstrator.  I 
have  his  burly  figure  before  me.  The  small 
twinkling  eyes  had  a  fascinating  gleam  in 
them  ;  he  could  concentrate  them  until  they 
held  the  object  looked  at  ;  when  they  flashed 
round  the  room  he  seemed   to  have  drawn  a 


PROFESSOR   TAIT.  47 

rapier.  I  have  seen  a  man  fall  back  in  alarm 
under  Tait's  eyes,  though  there  were  a  dozen 
benches  between  them.  These  eyes  could  be 
merry  as  a  boy's,  though,  as  when  he  turned  a 
tube  of  water  on  students  who  would  insist  on 
crowding  too  near  an  experiment,  for  Tait's 
was  the  humour  of  high  spirits.  I  could 
conceive  him  at  marbles  still,  and  feeling 
annoyed  at  defeat.  He  could  not  fancy 
anything  much  funnier  than  a  man  missing 
his  chair.  Outside  his  own  subject  he  is  not, 
one  feels,  a  six-footer.  When  Mr.  R.  L. 
Stevenson's  memoir  of  the  late  Mr.  Fleeming 
Jenkin  was  published,  Tait  said  at  great 
length  that  he  did  not  like  it  ;  he  would 
have  had  the  sketch  by  a  scientific  man. 
But  though  scientists  may  be  the  only  men 
nowadays  who  have  anything  to  say,  they  are 
also  the  only  men  who  can't  say  it.  Scientific 
men  out  of  their  sphere  know  for  a  fact  that 
novels  are  not  true.  So  they  draw  back 
from  novelists  who  write  biography,  Pro- 
fessor Tait  and  Mr.  Stevenson  are  both  men 
of  note,  who  walk  different  ways,  and  when 
they  meet  neither  likes  to  take  the  curbstone. 


48  AN   EDINBURGH   ELEVEN. 

If  they  were  tied  together  for  life  in  a  three- 
legged  race,  which  would  suffer  the  more  ? 

But  if  Tait's  science  weighs  him  to  the 
earth,  he  has  a  genius  for  sticking  to  his 
subject,  and  I  am  lost  in  admiration  every 
time  I  bring  back  his  lectures.  It  comes  as 
natural  to  his  old  students  to  say  when  they 
meet,  "  What  a  lecturer  Tait  was ! "  as  to 
Englishmen  to  joke  about  the  bagpipes.  It 
is  not  possible  to  draw  a  perfect  circle, 
Chrystal  used  to  say,  after  drawing  a  very  fine 
one.  To  the  same  extent  it  was  not  possible 
for  Tait  never  to  fail  in  his  experiments. 
The  atmosphere  would  be  too  much  for  him 
once  in  a  session,  or  there  were  other  hostile 
influences  at  work.  Tait  warned  us  of  these 
before  proceeding  to  experiment,  but  we 
merely  smiled.  We  believed  in  him  as 
though  he  were  a  Bradshaw  announcing  that 
he  would  not  be  held  responsible  for  possible 
errors. 

I  had  forgotten  Lindsay ;  "  the  mother  may 
forget  her  child."  As  I  write  he  has  slipped 
back  into  his  chair  on  the  Professor's  right, 
and    I    could    photograph    him    now   in    his 


PROFESSOR   TAir.  49 

brown  suit.  Lindsay  was  the  imperturbable 
man  who  assisted  Tait  in  his  experiments, 
and  his  father  held  the  post  before  him. 
When  there  were  many  of  us  together,  we 
could  applaud  Lindsay  with  burlesque  exag- 
geration, and  he  treated  us  good-humouredly, 
as  making  something  considerable  between 
us.  But  I  once  had  to  face  Lindsay  alone, 
in  quest  of  my  certificate ;  and  suddenly  he 
towered  above  me,  as  a  waiter  may  grow  tall 
when  you  find  that  you  have  not  money  enough 
to  pay  the  bill.  He  treated  me  most  kindly  ; 
did  not  reply,  of  course,  but  got  the  certifi- 
cate, and  handed  it  to  me  as  a  cashier  con- 
temptuously shovels  you  your  pile  of  gold. 
Long  ago  I  pasted  up  a  crack  in  my  window 
with  the  certificate,  but  it  said,  I  remember, 
that  I  had  behaved  respectably — so  far  as  I 
had  come  under  the  eyes  of  the  Professor. 
Tait  was  always  an  enthusiast. 

We  have  been  keeping  Lindsay  waiting. 
When  he  had  nothing  special  to  do  he  sat 
indifferently  in  his  chair,  with  the  face  of  a 
precentor  after  the  sermon  has  begun.  But 
though  it  was  not  very  likely  that  Lindsay 
4 


30  AN   EDINBURGH   ELEVEN. 

would  pay  much  attention  to  talk  about  such 
playthings  as  the  laws  of  Nature,  his  fingers 
went  out  in  the  direction  of  the  Professor 
when  the  experiments  began.  Then  he  was 
not  the  precentor  ;  he  was  a  minister  in  one 
of  the  pews.  Lindsay  was  an  inscrutable 
man,  and  I  shall  not  dare  to  say  that  he  even 
half-wished  to  see  Tait  fail.  He  only  looked 
on,  ready  for  any  em.ergency  ;  but  if  the 
experiment  would  not  come  off,  he  was  as 
quick  to  go  to  the  Professor's  assistance  as 
a  member  of  Parliament  is  to  begin  when 
he  has  caught  the  Speaker's  eye.  Perhaps 
Tait  would  have  none  of  his  aid,  or  pushed 
the  mechanism  for  the  experiment  from  him 
—  an  intimation  to  Lindsay  to  carry  it 
quickly  to  the  ante-room.  Do  you  think 
Lindsay  read  the  instructions  so  ?  Let  me 
tell  you  that  }our  mind  fails  to  seize  hold 
of  Lindsay.  He  marched  the  machine  out 
of  Tait's  vicinity  as  a  mother  may  push  her 
erring  boy  away  from  his  father's  arms,  to 
take  him  to  her  heart  as  soon  as  the  door 
is  closed.  Lindsay  took  the  machine  to  his 
seat,  and  laid  it  before  him  on  the  desk  with 


PROFESSOR   TAIT.  5 1 

well-concealed  apathy.  Tait  would  flash  his 
eye  to  the  right  to  see  what  Lindsay  was 
after,  and  there  was  Lindsay  sitting  with  his 
arms  folded.  The  Professor's  lecture  resumed 
its  way,  and  then  out  went  Lindsay's  hands 
to  the  machine.  Here  he  tried  a  wheel ; 
again  he  turned  a  screw  ;  in  time  he  had 
the  machine  ready  for  another  trial.  No 
one  was  looking  his  way,  when  suddenly 
there  was  a  whizz  —  bang,  bang.  All  eyes 
were  turned  upon  Lindsay,  the  Professor's 
among  them.  A  cheer  broke  out  as  we 
realized  that  Lindsay  had  done  the  experi- 
ment. Was  he  flushed  with  triumph  ?  Not 
a  bit  of  it ;  he  was  again  sitting  with  his 
arms  folded.  A  Glasgow  merchant  of  modest 
manners,  when  cross-examined  in  a  law  court, 
stated  that  he  had  a  considerable  monetary 
interest  in  a  certain  concern.  "  How  much 
do  you  mean  by  a  'considerable  monetary 
interest '  ? "  demanded  the  contemptuous  bar- 
rister who  was  cross-exam.ining  him.  "  Oh,' 
said  the  witness,  humbly,  "  a  maiter  o'  a 
million  an'  a  half — or,  say,  twa  million.' 
That  Glasgow  man  in  the  witness-box  is  the 


52  AN   EDINBURGH   ELEVEN. 

only  person  I  can  think  of  when  looking 
about  me  for  a  parallel  to  Lindsay.  While 
the  Professor  eyed  him  and  the  students 
deliriously  beat  the  floor,  Lindsay  quietly 
gathered  the  mechanism  together  and  carried 
it  to  the  ante-room.  His  head  was  not  flung 
back  nor  his  chest  forward,  like  one  who 
walked  to  music.  In  his  hour  of  triumph  he 
was  still  imperturbable.  I  lie  back  in  my 
chair  to-day,  after  the  lapse  of  years,  and  ask 
myself  again,  How  did  Lindsay  behave  after 
he  entered  the  ante-room,  shutting  the  door 
behind  him  .?  Did  he  give  way  ?  There  is 
no  one  to  say.  When  he  returned  to  the 
classroom  he  wore  his  familiar  face  ;  a  man 
to  ponder  over. 

There  is  a  legend  about  the  Natural  Philo- 
sophy classroom — the  period  long  antecedent 
to  Tait.  The  Professor,  annoyed  by  a  habit 
students  had  got  into  of  leaving  their  hats  on 
his  desk,  announced  that  the  next  hat  placed 
there  would  be  cut  in  pieces  by  him  in  pre- 
sence of  the  class.  The  warning  had  its 
effect,  until  one  day  when  the  Professor  was 
called  for  a  few  minutes  from  the  room.     An 


PROFESSOR   TAIT.  53 

undergraduate,  to  whom  the  natural  sciences, 
unrelieved,  were  a  monotonous  study,  slipped 
into  the  ante-room,  from  which  he  emerged 
with  the  Professor's  hat.  This  he  placed  on 
the  desk,  and  then  stole  in  a  panic  to  his  seat. 
An  awe  fell  upon  the  class.  The  Professor 
returned,  but  when  he  saw  the  hat  he 
stopped.  He  showed  no  anger.  "  Gentle- 
men," he  said,  "  I  told  you  what  would 
happen  if  you  again  disobeyed  my  orders." 
Quite  blandly  he  took  a  pen-knife  from  his 
pocket,  slit  the  hat  into  several  pieces,  and 
flung  them  into  the  sink.  While  the  hat  was 
under  the  knife  the  students  forgot  to  demon- 
strate, but  as  it  splashed  into  the  sink  they 
gave  forth  a  true  British  cheer.     The  end. 

Close  to  the  door  of  the  Natural  Philo- 
sophy room  is  a  window  that  in  my  memory 
will  ever  be  sacred  to  a  janitor.  The  janitors 
of  the  University  were  of  varied  interest, 
from  the  merry  one  who  treated  us  as  if 
we  were  his  equals,  and  the  soldier  who 
sometimes  looked  as  if  he  would  like  to 
mow  us  down,  to  the  Head  Man  of  All, 
whose  name  I   dare  not  write,  though  I  can 


54  AN   EDINBURGH  ELEVEN. 

whisper  it.  The  janitor  at  the  window,  how- 
ever, sat  there  through  the  long  evenings 
while  the  Debating  Society  (of  which  I  was 
a  member)  looked  after  affairs  of  State  in 
an  adjoining  room.  We  were  the  smallest 
society  in  the  University  and  the  longest- 
winded,  and  I  was  once  nearly  expelled  for 
not  paying  my  subscription.  Our  grand 
debate  was,  ''  Is  the  policy  of  the  Govern- 
ment worthy  the  confidence  of  this  Society?  " 
and  we  also  read  about  six  essays  yearly 
on  "  The  Genius  of  Robert  Burns "  ;  but  it 
was  on  private  business  that  we  came  out 
strongest.  The  question  that  agitated  us 
most  was  whether  the  meetings  should  be 
opened  with  prayer,  and  the  men  who 
thought  they  should  would  not  so  much  as 
look  at  the  men  who  thought  they  should  not. 
When  the  janitor  was  told  that  we  had  begun 
our  private  business  he  returned  to  his  win- 
dow and  slept.  His  great  day  was  when  we 
could  not  form  a  quorum,  which  happened 
now  and  then. 

Gregory  was  a   member    of   that    society: 
what  has  become  of  Gregory  ?    He  was  one  of 


PROFESSOR  TAIT.  55 

those  men  who  professors  say  have  a  briHiant 
future  before  them,  and  who  have  not  since 
been  heard  of.  Morton,  another  member, 
was  of  a  different  stamp.  He  led  in  the 
debate  on  "  Beauty  of  the  Mind  v.  Beauty  of 
the  Body."  His  writhing  contempt  for  the 
beauty  that  is  only  skin  deep  is  not  to  be 
forgotten.  How  noble  were  his  rhapsodies 
on  the  beauty  of  the  mind  !  And  when  he 
went  to  Calder wood's  to  supper,  how  quick 
he  was  to  pick  out  the  prettiest  girl,  who  took 
ten  per  cent,  in  Moral  Philosophy,  and  to  sit 
beside  her  all  the  evening.  Morton  had  a 
way  of  calling  on  his  friends  the  night  before 
a  degree  examination  to  ask  them  to  put  him 
up  to  as  much  as  would  pull  him  through. 

Tait  used  to  get  greatly  excited  over  the 
rectorial  elections,  and  if  he  could  have  dis- 
guised himself,  would  have  liked,  I  think,  tc 
join  in  the  fight  round  the  Brewster  statue. 
He  would  have  bled  for  the  Conservative 
cause,  as  his  utterances  on  University  reform 
have  shown.  The  reformers  have  some  cause 
for  thinking  that  Tait  is  a  greater  man  in 
his    classroom    than  when    he  addresses    the 


56  AN   EDINBURGH   ELEVEN. 

graduates.  He  has  said  that  the  less  his 
students  know  of  his  subject  when  they  join 
his  class,  the  less,  probably,  they  will  have  to 
unlearn.  Such  views  are  behind  the  times 
that  feed  their  children  on  geographical 
biscuits  in  educational  nurseries  with  astro- 
nomical ceilings  and  historical  wall-papers. 


VI. 

PROFESSOR  CAMPBELL  ERASER. 

ATOT  long  ago  I  was  back  in  the  Old 
-"-^  University  —  how  well  I  remember 
pointing  it  out  as  the  gaol  to  a  stranger  who 
had  asked  me  to  show  him  round.  I  was  in 
one  of  the  library  ante-rooms,  when  some  one 
knocked,  and  I  looked  up,  to  see  Campbell 
Fraser  framed  in  the  doorway.  I  had  not 
looked  on  that  venerable  figure  for  half  a 
dozen  years.  I  had  forgotten  all  my  meta- 
physics. Yet  it  all  came  back  with  a  rush. 
I  was  on  my  feet,  wondering  if  I  existed 
strictly  so-called. 

Calderwood  and  Fraser  had  both  their  fol- 
lowings.  The  moral  philosophers  wore  an 
air  of  certainty,  for  they  knew  that  if  they 
stuck  to  Calderwood  he  would  pull  them 
through.  You  cannot  lose  yourself  in  the 
back-garden.  But  the  metaphysicians  had 
their  doubts.     Fraser  led  them  into  strange 


58  AN   EDINBURGH   ELEVEN. 

places,  and  said  he  would  meet  them  there 
again  next  day.  They  wandered  to  their 
lodgings,  and  got  into  difficulties  with  their 
landlady  for  saying  that  she  was  only  an 
aggregate  of  sense  phenomena.  Fraser  was 
rather  a  hazardous  cure  for  weak  intellects. 
Young  men  whose  anchor  had  been  certainty 
of  themselves  went  into  that  class  floating 
buoyantly  on  the  sea  of  facts,  and  came  out 
all  adrift — on  the  sea  of  theory — in  an  open 
boat — rudderless — one  oar — the  boat  scuttled. 
How  could  they  think  there  was  any  chance 
for  them,  when  the  Professor  was  not  even 
sure  of  himself?  I  see  him  rising  in  a  daze 
from  his  chair  and  putting  his  hands  through 
his  hair.  "  Do  I  exist,"  he  said,  thoughtfully, 
"  strictly  so-called  ? "  The  students  (if  it  was 
the  beginning  of  the  session)  looked  a  little 
startled.  This  was  a  matter  that  had  not 
previously  disturbed  them.  Still,  if  the  Pro- 
fessor was  in  doubt,  there  must  be  something 
in  it.  He  began  to  argue  it  out,  and  an 
uncomfortable  silence  held  the  room  in  awe. 
If  he  did  not  exist,  the  chances  were  that  they 
did  not  exist  either.     It  was  thus  a  personal 


PROFESSOR   CAMPBELL  ERASER.  59 

question.  The  Professor  glanced  round  slowly 
for  an  illustration.  "Am  I  a  table.?"  A 
pained  look  travelled  over  the  class.  Was  it 
just  possible  that  they  were  all  tables  ?  It  is 
no  wonder  that  the  students  who  do  not  go  to 
the  bottom  during  their  first  month  of  meta- 
physics begin  to  give  themselves  airs  strictly 
so-called.  In  the  privacy  of  their  room  at 
the  top  of  the  house  they  pinch  themselves  to 
see  if  they  are  still  there. 

He  would,  I  think,  be  a  sorry  creature  who 
did  not  find  something  to  admire  in  Campbell 
Fraser.  Metaphysics  may  not  trouble  you,  as 
it  troubles  him,  but  you  do  npt  sit  under  the 
man  without  seeing  his  transparent  honesty 
and  feeling  that  he  is  genuine.  In  appear- 
ance and  in  habit  of  thought  he  is  an  ideal 
philosopher,  and  his  communings  with  himself 
have  lifted  him  to  a  level  of  serenity  that  is 
worth  struggling  for.  Of  all  the  arts  profes- 
sors in  Edinburgh  he  is  probably  the  most 
difficult  to  understand,  and  students  in  a  hurry 
have  called  his  lectures  childish.  If  so,  it  may 
be  all  the  better  for  them.  For  the  first  half 
of  the  hour,  they  say,  he  tells  you  what  he  is 


60  AN   EDINBURGH   ELEVEN. 

going  to  do,  and  for  the  second  half  he  revises. 
Certainly  he  is  vastly  explanatory,  but  then 
he  is  not  so  young  as  they  are,  and  so  he  has 
his  doubts.  They  are  so  cock-sure  that  they 
wonder  to  see  him  hesitate.  Often  there  is  a 
mist  on  the  mountain  when  it  is  all  clear  in 
the  valley. 

Eraser's  great  work  in  his  edition  of 
Berkeley,  a  labour  of  love  that  should  live 
after  him.  He  has  two  Berkeleys,  the  large 
one  and  the  little  one,  and,  to  do  him  justice, 
it  was  the  little  one  he  advised  us  to  consult. 
I  never  read  the  large  one  myself,  which  is  in 
a  number  of  monster  tomes,  but  I  often  had  a 
look  at  it  in  the  library,  and  I  was  proud  to 
think  that  an  Edinburgh  professor  was  the 
editor.  When  Glasgow  men  came  through  to 
talk  of  their  professors  we  showed  them  the 
big  Berkeley,  and  after  that  they  were  reason- 
able. There  was  one  man  in  my  year  who 
really  began  the  large  Berkeley,  but  after  a 
time  he  was  missing,  and  it  is  believed  that 
some  day  he  will  be  found  flattened  between 
the  pages  of  the  first  volume. 

The  "Selections"  was  the  text -book   we 


PROFESSOR   CAMPBELL   ERASER.  6 1 

used  in  the  class.  It  is  sufficient  to  prove  that 
Berkeley  wrote  beautiful  English.  I  am  not 
sure  that  any  one  has  written  such  English 
since.  We  have  our  own  "  stylists,"  but  how 
self-conscious  they  are  after  Berkeley.  It  is 
seven  years  since  I  opened  my  "  Selections," 
but  I  see  that  I  was  once  more  of  a  metaphy- 
sician than  I  have  been  giving  myself  credit 
for.  The  book  is  scribbled  over  with  posers  in 
my  handwriting  about  dualism  and  primary 
realities.  Some  of  the  comments  are  in  short- 
hand, which  I  must  at  one  time  have  been 
able  to  read,  but  all  are  equally  unintelligible 
now.  Here  is  one  of  my  puzzlers  : — "  Does 
B  here  mean  impercipient  and  unperceived 
subject  or  conscious  and  percipient  subject  ?  " 
Observe  the  friendly  B.  I  daresay  farther  on 
I  shall  find  myself  referring  to  the  Professor 
as  F.  I  wonder  if  I  ever  discovered  what  B 
meant.  I  could  not  now  tell  what  I  meant 
myself. 

As  many  persons  are  aware,  the  "  Selections" 
consist  of  Berkeley's  text  with  the  Pro- 
fessor's notes  thereon.  The  notes  are  expla- 
natory of  the  text,  and  the  student  must  find 


62  AN   EDINBURGH    ELEVEN. 

them  an  immense  help.     Here,  for  instance, 
is  a  note  : — ■"  Phenomenal  or  sense  dependent 
existence  can    be   substantiated   and  caused 
only  by  a  self-conscious  spirit,  for  otherwise 
there  could  be  no  propositions  about  it  expres- 
sive of  what  is    conceivable  ;  on  the   other! 
hand,  to   affirm   that   phenomenal    or   sense  j 
dependent  existence,  which  alone  we  know,j 
and  which  alone  is  conceivable,  is,  or  even! 
represents,  an  inconceivable  non-phenomenal 
or   abstract   existence,  would  be  to  affirm  a 
contradiction  in  terms."     There  we  have  it. 

As  a  metaphysician  I  was  something  of  a 
disappointment.  I  began  well,  standing,  if  I 
recollect  aright,  in  the  three  examinations, 
first,  seventeenth,  and  seventy-seventh.  A 
man  who  sat  beside  me — man  was  the  word 
we  used — gazed  at  me  reverently  when  I 
came  out  first,  and  I  could  see  by  his  eye 
that  he  was  not  sure  whether  I  existed' 
properly  so-called.  By  the  second  exam,  his 
doubts  had  gone,  and  by  the  third  he  was 
surer  of  me  than  of  himself.  He  came  out 
fifty-seventh,  this  being  the  grand  triumph  of 
his  college  course.     He  was  the  same  whose 


PROFESSOR   CAMPJ3ELL   FRASER.  62> 

key  translated  eras  donaberis  haedo  "To- 
morrow you  will  be  presented  with  a  kid," 
but  who,  thinkingr  that  a  little  vulgar,  refined 
It  down  to  "  To-morrow  you  will  be  presented 
with  a  small  child." 

In  the  metaphysics  class  I    was  like   the 
fountains  in  the  quadrangle,  which  ran  dry 
toward    the    middle   of  the   session.     While 
things  were  still  looking  hopeful  for  me,  I  had 
an  invitation  to  breakfast  with  the  Professor. 
If  the  fates  had  been  so  propitious  as  to  for- 
ward me  that  invitation,  it  is  possible  that  I 
might  be  a  metaphysician  to  this  day,  but  I 
[lad  changed  my  lodgings,  and  when  I  heard 
3f  the   affair,  all    was    over.     The  Professor 
isked  me  to  stay  behind  one  day  after  the  lee 
iure,and  told  me  that  he  had  got  his  note  back 
v^ith  "  Left :  no  address,"  on  it.     "  However," 
ie  said,  "you  may  keep  this,"  presenting  m'e 
/ith  the  invitation  for  the  Saturdaypreviously. 
mention  this  to  show  that  even  professors 
ave   hearts.     That  letter  is  preserved   with 
le   autographs    of    three    editors,    none    of 
hich  anybody  can  read. 
There  was   once    a    medical    student   who 


64  AN   EDINBURGH   ELEVEN. 

came  up  to  my  rooms  early  in  the  session, 
and  I  proved  to  him  in  half  an  hour  that  he 
did  not  exist.  He  got  quite  frightened,  and  I 
can  still  see  his  white  face  as  he  sat  staring  at 
me  in  the  gloaming.  This  shows  what  meta- 
physics can  do.  He  has  recovered,  however, 
and  is  sheep-farmingnow,  his  examiners  never 
having  asked  him  the  right  questions. 

The  last  time  Fraser  ever  addressed  me 
was  when  I  was  capped.  He  said,  "  I  con- 
gratulate you,  Mr.  Smith  "  :  and  one  of  the 
other  professors  said,  "  I  congratulate  you^ 
Mr.  Fisher."  My  name  is  neither  Smith  no| 
Fisher,  but  no  doubt  the  thing  was  kindl; 
meant.  It  was  then,  however,  that  the  pro- 
fessor of  metaphysics  had  his  revenge  on  me. 
I  had  once  spelt  Fraser  with  a  "  z  " 


vir. 

PROFESSOR  CHRYSTAL. 

117 HEN  Chiystal  came  to  Edinburgh  he 
*  *  rooted  up  the  humours  of  the  classroom 
as  a  dentist  draws  teeth.  Souls  were  sold  for 
keys  that  could  be  carried  in  the  waistcoat 
pocket.  Ambition  fell  from  heights,  and  lay 
with  its  eye  on  a  certificate.  By  night  was  a 
rush  of  ghosts,  shrieking  for  passes.  Horse 
play  fled  before  the  Differential  Calculus  in 
spectacles. 

I  had  Chrystal's  first  year,  and  recall  the 
gloomy  student  sitting  before  me  who  hacked 
"  All  hope  abandon  ye  who  enter  here  "  into 
a  desk  that  may  have  confined  Carlyle.  It 
took  him  a  session,  and  he  was  digging  his 
own  grave,  for  he  never  got  through  ;  but  it 
was  something  to  hold  by,  something  he  felt 
sure  of.     All  else  was  spiders'  webs  in  chalk. 

Chrystal  was  a  fine  hare  for  the  hounds  who 
could  keep  up  with  him.     He  started  off  the 


66  AN   EDINBURGH   ELEVEN. 

first  day  with  such  a  spurt  that  most  of  us 
were  left  behind  mopping  our  faces,  and  say- 
ing, "  Here's  a  fellow,"  which  is  what  Mr. 
Stevenson  says  Shakespeare  would  have  re- 
marked about  Mr.  George  Meredith.  We 
never  saw  him  again.  The  men  who  were 
on  speaking  acquaintance  with  his  symbols 
revelled  in  him  as  students  love  an  enthusiast 
who  is  eager  to  lead  them  into  a  world  toward 
which  they  would  journey.  He  was  a  rare 
guide  for  them.  The  bulk,  however,  lost  him 
in  labyrinths.  They  could  not  but  admire 
their  brilliant  professor  ;  but  while  their  friend 
the  medalist  and  he  kept  the  conversation 
to  themselves,  they  felt  like  eavesdroppers 
hearkening  to  a  pair  of  lovers.  "  It  is  beauti- 
ful," they  cried,  "  but  this  is  no  place  for  us  ; 
let  us  away." 

A  good  many  went,  but  their  truancy  stuck 
in  their  throats  like  Otway's  last  roll.  The 
M.A.  was  before  them.  They  had  fancied  it 
in  their  hands,  but  it  became  shy  as  a  maiden 
from  the  day  they  learned  Chrystal's  heresy 
that  Euclid  is  not  mathematics  but  only  some 
riders  in  it.     This  snapped  the  cord  that  had 


PROFESSOR  CHRYSTAL.  67 


tied  the  blind  man  to  his  dog,  and  the  M.A. 
shot  down  the  horizon.  When  Rutherford 
deHvered  his  first  lecture  in  the  chair  of  Insti- 
tutes of  Medicine,  boisterous  students  drowned 
his  voice,  and  he  flung  out  of  the  room.  At 
the  door  he  paused  to  say,  "  Gentlemen,  we 
shall  meet  again  at  Philippi."  A  dire  bomb 
was  this  in  the  midst  of  them,  warranted  to 
go  off,  none  able  to  cast  it  overboard.  We, 
too,  had  our  Philippi  before  us.  Chrystal  could 
not  be  left  to  his  own  devices. 

I  had  never  a  passion  for  knowing  that 
when  circles  or  triangles  attempt  impossi- 
bilities it  is  absurd  ;  and  x  was  an  unknown 
quantity  I  was  ever  content  to  walk  round 
about.  To  admit  to  Chrystal  that  we  under- 
stood ,r  was  only  a  way  he  had  of  leading  you 
on  to  y  and  z.  I  gave  him  his  chance,  how- 
ever, by  contributing  a  paper  of  answers  to 
his  first  weekly  set  of  exercises.  When  the 
hour  for  returning  the  slips  came  round,  I  was 
there  to  accept  fame — if  so  it  was  to  be — with 
modesty  ;  and  if  it  was  to  be  humiliation,  still 
jto  smile.  The  Professor  said  there  was  one 
jpaper,  with  an  owner's  name  on  it,  which  he 


68  AN   EDINBURGH   ELEVEN. 

could  not  read,  and  it  was  handed  along  the 
class  to  be  deciphered.  My  presentiment 
that  it  was  mine  became  a  certainty  when 
it  reached  my  hand  ;  but  I  passed  it  on 
pleasantly,  and  it  returned  to  Chrystal,  a 
Japhet  that  never  found  its  father.  Feeling 
that  the  powers  were  against  me,  I  then  re- 
tired from  the  conflict,  sanguine  that  the 
teaching  of  my  mathematical  schoolmaster, 
the  best  that  could  be,  would  pull  me  through. 
The  Disowned  may  be  going  the  round  of  the 
classroom  still. 

The  men  who  did  not  know  when  they  were 
beaten  returned  to  their  seats,  and  doggedly 
took  notes,  their  faces  lengthening  daily. 
Their  note-books  reproduced  exactly  the 
hieroglyphics  of  the  blackboard,  and,  ex- 
amined at  night,  were  as  suggestive  as  the 
photographs  of  persons  one  has  never  seen. 
To  overtake  Chrystal  after  giving  him  a  start 
was  the  presumption  that  is  an  offshoot  from 
despair.  There  was  once  an  elderly  gentle- 
man who  for  years  read  the  Times  every  day 
from  the  first  page  to  the  last.  For  a  fort- 
night he  was  ill  of  a  fever  ;  but,  on  recovering, 


PROFESSOR   CIIRYSTAL.  69 

he  began  at  the  copy  of  the  Times  where  he 
had  left  off.  He  struggled  magnificently  to 
make  up  on  the  Times,  but  it  was  in  vain. 
This  is  an  allegory  for  the  way  these  students 
panted  after  Chrystal. 

Some  succumbed  and  joined  the  majority — 
literally  ;  for  to  mathematics  they  were  dead. 
I  never  hear  of  the  old  University  now,  nor 
pass  under  the  shadow  of  the  walls  one  loves 
when  he  is  done  with  them,  without  seeing 
myself  as  I  was  the  day  I  matriculated,  an 
awestruck  boy,  passing  and  repassing  the 
gates,  frightened  to  venture  inside,  breathing 
heavily  at  sight  of  janitors,  Scott  and  Carlyle 
in  the  air.  After  that  I  see  nothing  fuller  of 
colour  than  the  meetings  that  were  held  out- 
side Chrystal's  door.  Adjoining  it  is  a  class- 
room so  little  sought  for,  that  legend  tells  of 
its  door  once  showing  the  notice  :  ''  There 
will  be  no  class  to-day  as  the  student  is  un- 
well." The  crowd  round  Chrystal's  could 
have  filled  that  room.  It  was  composed  of 
students  hearkening  at  the  door  to  see 
whether  he  was  to  call  their  part  of  the  roll 
to-day.     If  he  did,  they  slunk  in  ;  if  not,  the 


70  AN   EDINBURGH   ELEVEN. 

crowd  melted  into  the  streets,  this  refrain  in 
their  ears  — 

"  I'm  plucked,  I  do  admit, 

I'm  spun,  my  mother  dear, 
Yet  do  not  grieve  for  that 

Which  happens  every  year. 
I've  waited  very  patiently, 

I  may  have  long  to  wait, 
But  you've  another  son,  mother,    • 

And  he  will  graduate." 

A  professor  of  mathematics  once  brought 
a  rowdy  student  from  the  back  benches  to  a 
seat  beside  him,  because — "First,  you'll  be  near 
the  board  ;  second,  you'll  be  near  me  ;  and, 
third,  you'll  be  near  the  door."  Chrystal  soon 
discovered  that  students  could  be  too  near  the 
door,  and  he  took  to  calling  the  roll  in  the 
middle  of  the  hour,  which  insured  an  increased 
attendance.  It  was  a  silent  class,  nothing" 
heard  but  the  patter  of  pencils,  rats  scraping 
for  grain,  of  which  there  was  abundance,  but 
not  one  digestion  in  a  bench.  To  smuggle 
in  a  novel  up  one's  waistcoat  was  perilous, 
Chrystal's  spectacles  doing  their  work.  At 
a  corner  of  the  platform  sat  the  assistant, 
with  a  constable's  authority,  but  not  formed 


PROFESSOR   CHRYSTAL.  7I 

for  swooping,  uneasy  because  he  had  legs, 
and  where  to  put  them  he  knew  not.  He  got 
through  the  hour  by  shifting  his  position  every 
five  minutes  ;  and,  sitting  there  waiting,  he 
reminded  one  of  the  boy  who,  on  being  told 
to  remain  so  quietly  where  he  was  that  he 
could  hear  a  pin  drop,  held  his  breath  a 
moment,  then  shouted,  "  Let  it  drop  ! "  An 
excellent  fellow  was  this  assistant,  who  told 
us  that  one  of  his  predecessors  had  got  three 
months. 

A  jest  went  as  far  in  that  class  as  a  plum  in 
the  midshipmen's  pudding,  and,  you  remem- 
ber, when  the  middies  came  on  a  plum  they 
gave  three  cheers.  In  the  middle  of  some 
brilliant  reasoning  Chrystal  would  stop  to  add 
4,  7,  and  1 1.  Addition  of  this  kind  was  the 
only  thing  he  could  not  do,  and  he  looked  to 
the  class  for  help — "  20,"  they  shouted,  "  24," 
"  17,"  while  he  thought  it  over.  These  appeals 
to  their  intelligence  made  them  beam.  They 
woke  up  as  a  sleepy  congregation  shakes  itself 
into  life  when  the  minister  says,  "  I  remember 
when  I  was  a  little  boy.  .  .  ." 

The  daring  spirits — say,  those  who    were 


^2  AN   EDINBURGH   ELEVEN. 

going  into  their  father's  office,  and  so  did  not 
look  upon  Chrystal  as  a  door  locked  to  their 
advancement — sought  to  bring  sunshine  into 
the  room.  Chrystal  soon  had  the  blind  down 
on  that.  I  hear  they  have  been  at  it  recently 
with  the  usual  result.  To  relieve  the  mono- 
tony,a  student  at  the  end  of  bench  ten  dropped 
a  marble,  which  toppled  slowly  downward 
toward  the  Professor.  At  every  step  it  took 
there  was  a  smothered  guffaw  ;  but  Chrystal, 
who  was  working  at  the  board,  did  not  turn 
his  head.  When  the  marble  reached  the 
floor,  he  said,  still  with  his  back  to  the  class, 
"  Will  the  student  at  the  end  of  bench  ten, 
who  dropped  that  marble,  stand  up  ?  "  All 
eyes  dilated.  He  had  counted  the  falls  of  the 
marble  from  step  to  step.  Mathematics  do 
not  obscure  the  intellect. 

Twenty  per  cent,  was  a  good  percentage  in 
Chrystal's  examinations  ;  thirty  sent  you  away 
whistling.  As  the  M. A.  drew  nigh,  students 
on  their  prospects  might  have  been  farmers 
discussing  the  weather.  Some  put  their  faith 
in  the  Professor's  goodness  of  heart,  of  which 
symptoms   had     been    showing.     He    would 


PROFESSOR   CIIRYSTAL.  -J I 

not,  all  at  once,  "  raise  the  standard  "—hated 
phrase  until  you  arc  through,  when  you  write 
to  the  papers  advocating  it.  Courage  !  was  it 
not  told  of  the  Glasgow  Snell  competition 
that  one  of  the  competitors,  as  soon  as  he  saw 
the  first  paper,  looked  for  his  hat  and  the  door, 
that  he  was  forbidden  to  withdraw  until  an 
hour  had  elapsed,  and  that  he  then  tackled 
the  paper  and  ultimately  carried  off  the  Snell  ? 
Of  more  immediate  interest,  perhaps,  was  the 
story  of  the  quaking  student,  whose  neighbour 
handed  him  in  pencil,  beneath  the  desk,  the 
answer  to  several  questions.  It  was  in  an 
M.A.  exam.,  and  the  affrighted  student  found 
that  he  could  not  read  his  neighbour's  notes. 
Trustingtofortune,  he  enclosed  them  with  his 
own  answers,  writing  at  the  top,  "  No  time  to 
write  these  out  in  ink,  so  enclose  them  in 
pencil."     He  got  through  :  no  moral. 

A  condemned  criminal  wondering  if  he  is 
to  get  a  reprieve  will  not  feel  the  position 
novel,  if  he  has  loitered  in  a  University  quad- 
rangle waiting  for  the  janitor  to  nail  up  the 
results  of  a  degree  exam.  A  queer  gathering 
we  were,  awaiting   the  verdict  of  Chrystal. 


74  AN   EDINBURGH    ELEVEN. 

Some  compressed  their  lips,  others  were  lively 
as  fireworks  dipped  in  water  ;  there  were  those 
who  rushed  round  and  round  the  quadrangle  ; 
only  one  went  the  length  of  saying  that  he 
did  not  want  to  pass.  H.  I  shall  call  him.  I 
met  him  the  other  day  in  Fleet  Street,  and  he 
annoyed  me  by  asking  at  once  if  I  remem- 
bered the  landlady  I  quarrelled  with  because 
she  wore  my  socks  to  church  of  a  Sunday : 
we  found  her  out  one  wet  forenoon.  H. 
waited  the  issue  with  a  cigar  in  his  mouth. 
He  had  purposely,  he  explained,  given  in  a 
bad  paper.  He  could  not  understand  why 
men  were  so  anxious  to  get  through.  He  had 
ten  reasons  for  wishing  to  be  plucked.  We 
let  him  talk.  The  janitor  appeared  with  the 
fateful  paper,  and  we  lashed  about  him  like 
waves  round  a  lighthouse,  all  but  H.,  who 
strolled  languidly  to  the  board  to  which  the 
paper  was  being  fastened.  A  moment  after- 
wards I  heard  a  shriek,  "  I'm  through !  I'm 
through  !  "  It  was  H.  His  cigar  was  dashed 
aside,  and  he  sped  like  an  arrow  from  the  bow 
to  the  nearest  telegraph  office,  shouting  "  I'm 
through  !  "  as  he  ran. 


PROFESSOR   CIIRYSTAL.  75 

Those  of  us  who  had  H.'s  fortune  now  con- 
sider Chrystal  made  to  order  for  his  chair,  but 
he  has  never,  perhaps,  had  a  proper  apprecia- 
tion of  the  charming  fellows  who  get  ten  per 
cent. 


VIII. 

PROFESSOR   SELLAR. 

11  THEN  one  of  the  distinguished  hunting 
''  •  ladies  who  chase  celebrities  captured 
Mr.  Mark  Pattison,  he  gave  anxious  con- 
sideration to  the  quotation  which  he  was 
asked  to  write  above  his  name.  "  Fancy," 
he  said  with  a  shudder,  "  going  down  to 
posterity  arm  in  arm  with  carpe  diem ! " 
Remembering  this,  I  forbear  tying  Sellar  to 
odi  profamnn  vtilgus.  Yet  the  name  opens 
the  door  to  the  quotation. 

Sellar  is  a  Roman  senator.  He  stood 
very  high  at  Oxford,  and  took  a  prize  for 
boxing.  If  you  watch  him  in  the  class,  you 
will  sometimes  see  his  mind  murmuring  that 
Edinburgh  students  do  not  take  their  play 
like  Oxford  men.  The  difference  is  in  man- 
ner. A  courteous  fellow-student  of  Sellar 
once  showed  his  relatives  over  Balliol.  "  You 
have    now,  I   think,"  he  said    at   last,  "seen 


78  AN   EDINBURGH    ELEVEN. 

everything  of  interest  except  the  Master." 
He  flung  a  stone  at  a  window,  at  which  the 
Master's  head  appeared  immediately,  menac- 
ing, wrathful.  "  And  now,"  concluded  the 
polite  youth,  "  you  have  seen  him  also." 

Mr.  James  Payn,  who  never  forgave  the 
Scottish  people  for  pulling  down  their  blinds 
on  Sundays,  was  annoyed  by  the  halo  they 
have  woven  around  the  name  "  Professor." 
He  knew  an  Edinburgh  lady  who  was  scan- 
dalized because  that  mere  poet,  Alexander 
Smith,  coolly  addressed  professors  by  their 
surnames.  Mr.  Payn  might  have  known 
what  it  is  to  walk  in  the  shadow  of  a  Senatus 
Academicus,  could  he  have  met  such  speci- 
mens as  Sellar,  Fraser,  Tait,  and  Sir  Alexan- 
der Grant  marching  down  the  Bridges  abreast. 
I  have  seen  them  :  an  inspiriting  sight.  The 
pavement  only  held  three.  You  could  have 
shaken  hands  with  them  from  an  upper  win- 
dow. 

Sellar's  treatment  of  his  students  was 
always  that  of  a  fine  gentleman.  Few  got 
near  him  ;  all  respected  him.  At  times  he 
was  addressed  in  an  unknown  tongue,  but  he 


PROFESSOR   SELLAR.  79 

kept  his  countenance.  He  was  particular 
about  students  keeping  to  their  proper 
benches,  and  once  thought  he  had  caught 
a  swarthy  north  countryman  straying.  "  You 
are  in  your  wrong  seat,  Mr.  Orr."  "  Na,  am 
richt  eneuch."  "  You  should  be  in  the  seat 
in  front.  That  is  bench  12,  and  you  are 
entered  on  bench  10."  "Eh?  This  is  no 
bench  twal,  (counting)  twa,  fower,  sax,  aucht, 
ten."  "  There  is  something  wrong."  "  Oh-h-h 
(with  sudden  enlightenment)  ye've  been  coon- 
tin'  the  first  dask  ;  we  dinna  coont  the  first 
dask."  The  Professor  knew  the  men  he  had 
to  deal  with  too  well  to  scorn  this  one,  who 
turned  out  to  be  a  fine  fellow.  He  was  the 
only  man  I  ever  knew  who  ran  his  medical 
and  arts  classes  together,  and  so  many  lectures 
had  he  to  attend  daily  that  he  mixed  them  up. 
He  graduated,  however,  in  both  faculties  in 
five  years,  and  the  last  I  heard  of  him  was 
that,  when  applying  for  a  medical  assistant- 
ship,  he  sent  his  father's  photograph  because 
he  did  not  have  one  of  himself  He  was  a 
man  of  brains  as  well  as  sinew,  and  dined 
briskly  on  a  shilling  a  week. 


8o  AN   EDINBURGH   ELEVEN. 

There  was  a  little  fellow  in  the  class  who 
was  a  puzzle  to  Sellar,  because  he  was  higher 
sitting  than  standing :  when  the  Professor 
asked  him  to  stand  up,  he  stood  down.  "  Is 
Mr.  Blank  not  present  ?  "  Sellar  would  ask. 
"  Here,  sir,"  cried  Blank.  "  Then,  will  you 
stand  up,  Mr.  Blank  ? "  (Agony  of  Blank, 
and  a  demonstration  of  many  feet.)  "Are 
you  not  prepared,  Mr.  Blank  ?  "  "  Yes,  sir  ; 
Pastor  qiium  traJiaret — "  "  I  insist  on  your 
standing  up,  Mr.  Blank."  (Several  students 
rise  to  their  feet  to  explain,  but  subside.) 
"  Yes,  sir  ;  Pastor  quum  traharet  per — "  "  I 
shall  mark  you  '  not  prepared,'  Mr.  Blank." 
(Further  demonstration,  and  then  an  indig- 
nant squeak  from  Blank.)  "  If  you  please, 
sir,  I  am  standing."  "  But,  in  that  case,  how 
is  it — }  Ah,  oh,  ah,  yes  ;  proceed,  Mr. 
Blank."  As  one  man  was  only  called  upon 
for  exhibition  five  or  six  times  in  a  year,  the 
Professor  had  always  forgotten  the  circum- 
stances when  he  asked  Blank  to  stand  up 
again.  Blank  was  looked  upon  by  his  fellow- 
students  as  a  practical  jest,  and  his  name  was 
always  received  with  the  prolonged  applause 


PROFESSOR  SELLAR.  8 1 

which   greets    the    end    of    an    after-dinner 
speech, 

Sellar  never  showed  resentment  to  the 
students  who  addressed  him  as  Professor 
Sellars. 

One  day  the  Professor  was  giving  out  some 
English  to  be  translated  into  Latin  prose. 
He  read  on — "  and  fiercely  Hfting  the  axe  with 
both  hands — "  when  a  cheer  from  the  top 
bench  made  him  pause.  The  cheer  spread 
over  the  room  like  an  uncorked  gas. 
Sellar  frowned,  but  proceeded — "  lifting  the 
axe — ,"  when  again  the  class  became  de- 
mented. "What  does  this  mean?"  he 
demanded,  looking  as  if  he,  too,  could  lift 
the  axe.  "Axe!"  shouted  a  student  in  ex- 
planation. Still  Sellar  could  not  solve  the 
riddle.  Another  student  rose  to  his  assist- 
ance. "  Axe — Gladstone  !  "  he  cried.  Sellar 
sat  back  in  his  chair.  "  Really,  gentle- 
men," he  said,  "  I  take  the  most  elaborate 
precautions  against  touching  upon  politics 
in  this  class,  but  sometimes  you  are  beyond 
me.  Let  us  continue — *  and  fiercely  lifting 
his  weapon  with  both  hands — .'  " 
6 


82  AN   EDINBURGH   ELEVEN. 

The  duxes  from  the  schools  suffered  a  Httle 
during  their  first  year,  from  a  feeh'ng  that 
they  and  Sellar  understood  each  other.  He 
Hked  to  undeceive  them.  We  had  one,  all 
head,  who  went  about  wondering  at  himself. 
He  lost  his  bursary  on  the  way  home  with  it, 
and  still  he  strutted.  Sellar  asked  if  we  saw 
anything  peculiar  in  a  certain  line  from 
Horace.  We  did  not.  We  were  accustomed 
to  trust  to  Horace's  reputation,  all  but  the 
dandy.  "  Eh — ah  !  Professor,"  he  lisped  ; 
"  it  ought  to  have  been  so  and  so."  Sellar 
looked  at  this  promising  plant  from  .the 
schools,  and  watered  him  without  a  rose  on 
the  pan.  "  Depend  upon  it,  Mr. — ;  ah,  I  did 
not  catch  your  name,  if  it  ought  to  have  been 
so  and  so,  Horace  would  have  made  it  so  and 
so." 

Sellar's  face  was  proof  against  sudden  wit. 
It  did  not  relax  till  he  gave  it  liberty.  You 
could  never  tell  from  it  what  was  going  on  in- 
side. He  read  without  a  twitch  a  notice  on 
his  door  :  "  Found  in  this  class  a  gold-headed 
pencil  case ;  if  not  claimed  within  three  days 
will  be  sold  to  defr^  expenses."     He  even 


PROFESSOR   SELLAR.  83 

withstood  the  battering  ram  on  the  day  of  the 
publication  of  his  "  Augustan  Poets."  The 
students  could  not  let  this  opportunity  pass. 
They  assailed  him  with  frantic  applause, 
every  bench  was  a  drum  to  thump  upon.  His 
countenance  said  nothing.  The  drums  had 
it  in  the  end,  though,  and  he  dismissed  the 
class  with  what  is  believed  to  have  verged 
on  a  smile.  Like  the  lover  who  has  got  his 
lady's  glance,  they  at  once  tried  for  more,  but 
no. 

Most  of  us  had  Humanity  our  first  year, 
which  is  the  year  for  experimenting.  Then 
is  the  time  to  join  the  University  library. 
The  pound,  which  makes  you  a  member,  has 
never  had  its  poet.  You  can  withdraw  your 
pound  when  you  please.  There  are  far-see- 
ing men  who  work  the  whole  thing  out  by 
mathematics.  Put  simply,  this  is  the  notion. 
In  the  beginning  of  the  session  you  join  the 
library,  and  soon  you  forget  about  your 
pound  ;  you  reckon  without  it.  As  the  winter 
closes  in,  and  the  coal-bunk  empties  ;  or  you 
find  that  five  shillings  a  week  for  lodgings  is  a 
dream  that  cannot  be  kept  up;  or  your  coat 


84  AN   EDINBURGH    ELEVEN. 

assumes  more  and  more  the  colour  identified 
with  spring ;  or  you  would  feast  your  friends 
for  once  right  gloriously  ;  or  next  Wednesday 
is  your  little  sister's  birthday ;  you  cower, 
despairing,  over  a  sulky  fire.  Suddenly  you 
are  on  your  feet,  all  aglow  once  more.  What 
is  this  thought  that  sends  the  blood  to 
your  head  ?  That  library  pound  !  You  had 
forgotten  that  you  had  a  bank.  Next  morn- 
ing you  are  at  the  university  in  time  to  help 
the  library  door  to  open.  You  ask  for  your 
pound  ;  you  get  it.  Your  hand  mounts  guard 
over  the  pocket  in  which  it  rustles.  So  they 
say.  I  took  their  advice  and  paid  in  my 
money  ;  then  waited  exultingly  to  forget 
about  it.  In  vain.  I  always  allowed  for  that 
pound  in  my  thoughts.  I  saw  it  as  plainly,  I 
knew  its  every  feature  as  a  schoolboy  re- 
members his  first  trout.  Not  to  be  hasty,  I 
gave  my  pound  two  months,  and  then  brought 
it  home  again.  I  had  a  fellow-student  who 
lived  across  the  way  from  me.  We  railed  at 
the  library  pound  theory  at  open  windows 
over  the  life  of  the  street ;  a  beautiful  dream, 
but  mad,  mad. 


PROFESSOR   SELLAR.  85 

He  was  an  enthusiast,  and  therefore  happy, 
whom  I  have  seen  in  the  Humanity  class- 
room on  an  examination  day,  his  pen  racing 
with  time,  himself  seated  in  the  contents  of 
an  ink-bottle.  Some  stories  of  exams,  have 
even  a  blacker  ending.  I  write  in  tears  of 
him  who,  estimating  his  memory  as  a  leaky 
vessel,  did  with  care  and  forethought  draw 
up  a  crib  that  was  more  condensed  than  a 
pocket  cyclopaedia,  a  very  Liebig's  essence  of 
the  classics,  tinned  meat  for  students  in  the 
eleventh  hour.  Bridegrooms  have  been 
known  to  forget  the  ring  ;  this  student  for- 
got his  crib.  In  the  middle  of  the  examina- 
tion came  a  nervous  knocking  at  the  door. 
A  lady  wanted  to  see  the  Professor  at  once. 
The  student  looked  up,  to  see  his  mother 
handing  the  Professor  his  crib.  Her  son  had 
forgotten  it ;  she  was  sure  that  it  was  im- 
portant, so  she  had  brought  it  herself. 

Jump  the  body  of  this  poor  victim.  There 
was  no  M.A.  for  him  that  year  ;  but  in  our 
gowns  and  sashes  we  could  not  mourn  for  a 
might-have-been.  Soldiers  talk  of  the  Vic- 
toria Cross,  statesmen  of  the  Cabinet,  ladies 


S6  AN    EDINBURGH   ELEVEN. 

of  a  pearl  set  in  diamonds.  These  are  pretty 
baubles,  but  who  has  thrilled  as  the  student 
that  with  bumping  heart  strolls  into  Middle- 
mass's  to  order  his  graduate's  gown.  He 
hires  it — five  shillings — but  the  photograph 
to  follow  makes  it  as  good  as  his  for  life. 
Look  at  him,  young  ladies,  as  he  struts  to 
the  Synod  Hall  to  have  M.A.  tacked  to  his 
name.  Dogs  do  not  dare  bark  at  him.  His 
gait  is  springy ;  in  Princes  Street  he  is  as  one 
who  walks  upstairs.  Gone  to  me  are  those 
student  days  for  ever,  but  I  can  still  put  a 
photograph  before  me  of  a  ghost  in  gown  and 
cape,  the  hair  straggling  under  the  cap  as 
tobacco  may  straggle  over  the  side  of  a  tin 
when  there  is  difficulty  in  squeezing  down  the 
lid.  How  well  the  little  black  jacket  looks, 
how  vividly  the  wearer  remembers  putting  it 
on.  He  should  have  worn  a  dress-coat,  but 
he  had  none.  The  little  jacket  resembled 
one  with  the  tails  off,  and,  as  he  artfully 
donned  his  gown,  he  backed  against  the  wall 
so  that  no  one  might  know. 

To  turn  up  the  light  on  old  college  days  is 
not  always  the  signal  for  the  dance.     You  are 


PROFESSOR   SELLAR.  87 

back  in  the  dusty  little  lodgiiif^,  with  its 
battered  sofa,  its  slippery  tablecloth,  the 
prim  array  of  books,  the  picture  of  the  death 
of  Nelson,  the  peeling  walls,  the  broken  clock ; 
you  are  again  in  the  quadrangle  with  him  who 
has  been  dead  this  many  a  year.  There  are 
tragedies  in  a  college  course.  Dr.  Walter 
Smith  has  told  in  a  poem  mentioned  elsewhere 
of  the  brilliant  scholar  who  forgot  his  dominie ; 
some,  alas  !  forget  their  mother.  There  are 
men — I  know  it — who  go  mad  from  loneliness ; 
and  medalists  ere  now  have  crept  home  to 
die.  The  capping-day  was  the  end  of  our 
spring-tide,  and  for  some  of  us  the  summer 
was  to  be  brief.  Sir  Alexander,  gone  into 
the  night  since  then,  flung  "  I  mekemae  "  at 
us  as  we  trooped  past  him,  all  in  bud,  some 
small  flower  to  blossom  in  time,  let  us  hope, 
here  and  there. 


IX. 

MR.  JOSEPH  THOMSON. 

n^WO  years  hence  Joseph  Thomson's  repu- 
-'■  tation  will  be  a  decade  old,  though  he 
is  at  present  only  thirty  years  of  age.  When 
you  meet  him  for  the  first  time  you  con- 
clude that  he  must  be  the  explorer's  son. 
His  identity,  however,  can  always  be  proved 
by  simply  mentioning  Africa  in  his  presence. 
Then  he  draws  himself  up,  and  his  eyes 
glisten,  and  he  is  thinking  how  glorious  it 
would  be  to  be  in  the  Masai  country  again, 
living  on  meat  so  diseased  that  it  crumbled 
in  the  hand  like  short-bread. 

Gatelaw-bridge  Quarry,  in  Dumfriesshire,  is 
famous  for  Old  Mortality  and  Thomson,  the 
latter  (when  he  is  at  the  head  of  a  caravan) 
being  as  hardheaded  as  if  he  had  been  cut 
out  of  it.  He  went  to  school  at  Thornhil), 
where  he  spent  great  part  of  his  time  in 
reading  novels,  and  then  he  matriculated  at 


90  AN    EDINBURGH   ELEVEN. 

Edinburgh  University,  where  he  began  to 
accumulate  medals.  Geology  and  kindred 
studies  were  his  favourites  there.  One  day 
he  heard  that  Keith  Johnston,  then  on  the 
point  of  starting  for  Africa,  wanted  a  lieu- 
tenant. Thomson  was  at  that  time  equally 
in  need  of  a  Keith  Johnston,  and  everybody 
who  knew  him  saw  that  the  opening  and  he 
were  made  for  each  other.  Keith  Johnston 
and  Thomson  went  out  together,  and  Johnston 
died  in  the  jungle.  This  made  a  man  in  an 
hour  of  a  stripling.  Most  youths  in  Thom- 
son's position  at  that  turning  point  of  his 
career  would  have  thought  it  judicious  to  turn 
back,  and  in  geographical  circles  it  would 
have  been  considered  highly  creditable  had 
be  brought  his  caravan  to  the  coast  intact. 
Thomson,  however,  pushed  on,  and  did  every- 
thing that  his  dead  leader  had  hoped  to  do. 
From  that  time  his  career  has  been  followed 
by  every  one  interested  in  African  explora- 
tion, and  by  his  countrymen  with  some  pride 
in  addition.  When  an  expedition  was  or- 
ganized for  the  relief  of  Emin  Pasha,  there 
was  for  a  time  some  probability  of  Thomson's 


MR.  JOSEPH  THOMSON.  91 

having  the  command.  He  and  Stanley 
differed  as  to  the  routes  that  should  be  taken, 
and  subsequent  events  have  proved  that 
Thomson's  was  the  proper  one. 

Thomson  came  over  from  Paris  at  that 
time  to  consult  with  the  authorities,  and 
took  up  his  residence  in  the  most  over-grown 
hotel  in  London.  His  friends  here  organized 
an  expedition  for  his  relief.  They  wandered 
up  and  down  the  endless  stairs  looking  for 
him,  till,  had  they  not  wanted  to  make 
themselves  a  name,  they  would  have  beaten 
a  retreat.  He  also  wandered  about  looking 
for  them,  and  at  last  they  met.  The  leader 
of  the  party,  restraining  his  emotion,  lifted 
his  hat,  and  said,  "  Mr.  Thomson,  I  pre- 
sume ?  "     This  is  how  I  found  Thomson. 

The  explorer  had  been  for  some  months  in 
Paris  at  that  time,  and  France  did  him  the 
honour  of  translating  his  "  Through  Masai- 
land  "  into  French.  In  this  book  there  is  a 
picture  of  a  buffalo  tossing  Thomson  in  the 
air.  This  was  after  he  had  put  several 
bullets  into  it,  and  in  the  sketch  he  is  repre- 
sented some  ten  feet  from  the  ground,  with 


92  AN    EDINBURGH   ELEVEN. 

his  gun  flying  one  way  and  his  cap  another. 
"  It  was  just  as  if  I  were  distributing  largess 
to  the  natives,"  the  traveller  says  now,  though 
this  idea  does  not  seem  to  have  struck  him 
at  the  time.  He  showed  the  sketch  to  a 
Parisian  lady,  who  looked  at  it  long  and 
earnestly.  "  Ah,  M.  Thomson,"  she  said  at 
length,  "  but  how  could  you  pose  like  that  ?  " 

Like  a  good  many  other  travellers,  inclu- 
ding Mr.  Du  Chaillu,  who  says  he  is  a  dear 
boy,  Thomson  does  not  smoke.  Stanley, 
however,  smokes  very  strong  cigars,  as  those 
who  have  been  in  his  sumptuous  chambers  in 
Bond  Street  can  testify.  All  the  three  hap- 
pen to  be  bachelors,  though  ;  because,  one 
of  them  says,  after  returning  from  years  of 
lonely  travel,  a  man  has  such  a  delight  in 
female  society  that  to  pick  and  choose  would 
be  invidious.  Yet  they  have  had  their 
chance.  An  African  race  once  tried  to  bribe 
Mr.  Du  Chaillu  with  a  kingdom  and  over 
eight  hundred  wives, — "  the  biggest  offer,"  he 
admits,  "  I  ever  had  in  one  day." 

Among  the  lesser  annoyances  to  which 
Thomson    was    subjected    in  Africa  was    the 


MR.   JOSEPH   THOMSON.  93 

presence  of  rats  in  the  night-time,  which  he 
had  to  brush  away  Hke  flies.  Until  he  was 
asked  whether  there  was  not  danger  in  this, 
it  never  seems  to  have  struck  him  that  it 
was  more  than  annoying.  Yet  though  he 
and  the  two  other  travellers  mentioned 
(doubtless  they  are  not  alone  in  this)  have 
put  up  cheerfully  with  almost  every  hardship 
known  to  man,  this  does  not  make  them 
indifferent  to  the  comforts  of  civiHzation 
when  they  return  home.  Du  Chaillu  was 
looking  very  comfortable  in  a  house-boat  the 
other  day,  where  his  hosts  thought  they  were 
"  roughing  it  " — with  a  male  attendant  ;  and 
in  Stanley's  easy  chairs  you  sink  to-  dream. 
The  last  time  I  saw  Thomson  in  his  rooms  in 
London  he  was  on  his  knees,  gazing  in  silent 
rapture  at  a  china  saucer  with  a  valuable 
crack   in  it. 

If  you  ask  Thomson  what  was  the  most 
dangerous  expedition  he  ever  embarked  on, 
he  will  probably  reply,  "  Crossing  Piccadilly." 
The  finest  thing  that  can  be  said  of  him  is 
that  during  these  four  expeditions  he  never 
once    fired    a    shot    at  a  native.     Other   ex- 


94  AN    EDINBURGH   ELEVEN. 

plorers  have  had  to  do  so  to  save  their 
lives.  There  were  often  occasions  when 
Thomson  could  have  done  it,  to  save  his  life 
to  all  appearance,  too.  The  result  of  his 
method  of  progressing  is  that  where  he  has 
gone— and  he  has  been  in  parts  of  Africa 
never  before  trod  by  the  white  man — he 
really  has  "  opened  up  the  country  "  for  those 
who  care  to  follow  him.  Civilization  b}' 
bullet  has  only  closed  it  elsewhere.  Yet 
though  there  is  an  abundance  of  Scotch 
caution  about  him,  he  is  naturally  an  impul- 
sive man,  more  inclined  personally  to  march 
straight  on  than  to  reach  his  destination  by  a 
safer  if  more  circuitous  route.  Where  only 
his  own  life  is  concerned  he  gives  you  the 
impression  of  one  who  might  be  rash,  but  his 
prudence  at  the  head  of  a  caravan  is  at  the 
bottom  of  the  faith  that  is  placed  in  him. 
According  to  a  story  that  got  into  the  papers 
years  ago,  M.  de  Brazza  once  quarrelled  with 
Thomson  in  Africa,  and  all  but  struck  him. 
Thomson  was  praised  for  keeping  his  temper. 
The  story  was  a  fabrication,  but  I  fear  that 
if    M.   de    Brazza    had    behaved    like     this, 


MR.   JOSEPH   THOMSON.  95 

Thomson  would  not  have  remembered  to  be 
diplomatic  till  some  time  afterwards.  A 
truer  tale  might  be  told  of  an  umbrella, 
gorgeous  and  wonderful  to  behold,  that  De 
Braza  took  to  Africa  to  impress  the  natives 
with,  and  which  Thomson  subsequently  pre- 
sented to  a  dusky  monarch. 

The  explorer  has  never  shot  a  lion,  though 
he  has  tracked  a  good  many  of  them.  Once 
he  thought  he  had  one.  It  was  reclining  in 
a  little  grove,  and  Thomson  felt  that  it  was 
his  at  last.  With  a  trusty  native  he  crept 
forward  till  he  could  obtain  a  good  shot, 
and  then  fired.  In  breathless  suspense  he 
waited  for  its  spring,  and  then  when  it  did 
not  spring  he  saw  that  hehad  shot  it  through 
the  heart.  However,  it  turned  out  only  to  be 
a  large  stone. 

The  young  Scotchman  sometimes  thinks 
of  the  tremendous  effect  it  would  have  had 
on  the  natives  had  he  been  the  possessor  of 
a  complete  set  of  artificial  teeth.  This  is 
because  he  has  one  artificial  tooth.  Hap- 
pening to  take  it  out  one  day,  an  awe  filled 
all    who   saw    him,    and    from  that    hour  he 


96  AN   EDINBURGH   ELEVEN. 

was  esteemed  a  medicine  man.  Another 
excellent  way  of  impressing  Africa  with  the 
grandeur  of  Britain  was  to  take  a  photograph. 
When  the  natives  saw  the  camera  aimed  at 
them  they  fell  to  the  ground  vanquished. 

When  Thomson  was  recently  in  this 
country,  he  occasionally  took  a  walk  of 
twenty  or  thirty  miles  to  give  him  an  appe- 
tite for  dinner.  This  he  calls  a  stroll.  One 
day  he  strolled  from  Thornhill  to  Edinburgh, 
had  dinner,  and  then  went  to  the  Exhibition. 
In  appearance  he  is  tall  and  strongly  knit, 
rather  than  heavily  built,  and  if  you  see  him 
more  than  once  in  the  same  week,  you  dis- 
cover that  he  has  still  an  interest  in  neck- 
ties. Perhaps  his  most  remarkable  feat 
consisted  in  taking  a  bottle  of  brandy  into 
the  heart  of  Africa,  and  bringing  it  back 
intact. 


X. 

ROBERT    LOUIS    STEVENSON. 

OOME  men  of  letters,  not  necessarily  the 
^  greatest,  have  an  indescribable  charm  to 
which  we  give  our  hearts.  Thackeray  is  the 
young  man's  first  love.  Of  living  authors 
none  perhaps  bewitches  the  reader  more 
than  Mr.  Stevenson,  who  plays  upon  words 
as  if  they  were  a  musical  instrument.  To 
follow  the  music  is  less  difficult  than  to 
place  the  musician.  A  friend  of  mine,  who, 
like  Mr.  Grant  Allen,  reviews  365  books  a 
year,  and  366  in  leap  years,  recently  arranged 
the  novelists  of  to-day  in  order  of  merit. 
Meredith,  of  course,  he  wrote  first,  and  then 
there  was  a  fall  to  Hardy.  "  Haggard,"  he 
explained,  "I  dropped  from  the  Eiffel  Tower; 
but  what  can  I  do  with  Stevenson  ?  I  can't 
put  him  before  *  Lorna  Doone.'  "  So  Mr. 
Stevenson  puzzles  the  critics,  fascinating 
them  until  they  are  willing  to  judge  him  by 
7 


98  AN   EDINBURGH    ELEVEN. 

the  great  work  he  is  to  write  by  and  by 
when  the  little  books  are  finished.  Over 
"  Treasure  Island "  I  let  my  fire  die  in 
winter  without  knowing  that  I  was  freezing. 
But  the  creator  of  Alan  Breck  has  now 
published  nearly  twenty  volumes.  It  is  so 
much  easier  to  finish  the  little  works  than  to 
begin  the  great  one,  for  which  we  are  all 
taking  notes. 

Mr.  Stevenson  is  not  to  be  labelled  nove- 
list. He  wanders  the  byways  of  literature 
without  any  fixed  address.  Too  much  of  a 
truant  to  be  classified  with  the  other  boys, 
he  is  only  a  writer  of  fiction  in  the  sense  that 
he  was  once  an  Edinburgh  University  stu- 
dent because  now  and  again  he  looked  in  at 
his  classes  when  he  happened  to  be  that  way. 
A  literary  man  without  a  fixed  occupation 
amazes  Mr.  Henry  James,  a  master  in  the 
school  of  fiction  which  tells,  in  three  volumes, 
how  Hiram  K.  Wilding  trod  on  the  skirt  of 
Alice  M.  Sparkins  without  anything's  coming 
of  it.  Mr.  James  analyzes  Mr.  Stevenson 
with  immense  cleverness,  but  without  sum- 
ming up.     That  "Dr.  Jekyll  and  Mr.  Hyde" 


ROBERT   LOUIS   STEVENSON.  99 

should  be  by  the  author  of  "Treasure  Is- 
land," "  Virglnibus  Puerisque  "  by  the  author 
of  "  The  New  Arabian  Nights,"  "A  Child's 
Garden  of  Verses  "  by  the  author  of  "  Prince 
Otto,"  are  to  him  the  three  degrees  of  com- 
parison of  wonder,  though  for  my  own  part 
I  marvel  more  that  the  author  of  *'  Daisy 
Miller"  should  be  Mr.  Stevenson's  eulogist. 
One  conceives  Mr.  James  a  boy  in  velveteens 
looking  fearfully  at  Stevenson  playing  at 
pirates. 

There  is  nothing  In  Mr.  Stevenson's  some- 
times writing  essays,  sometimes  romances, 
and  anon  poems  to  mark  him  versatile  be- 
yond other  authors.  One  dreads  his  continuing 
to  do  so,  with  so  many  books  at  his  back,  lest 
it  means  weakness  rather  than  strength.  He 
experiments  too  long ;  he  is  still  a  boy 
wondering  what  he  is  going  to  be.  With 
Cowley's  candour  he  tells  us  that  he  wants  to 
write  something  by  which  he  may  be  for  ever 
known.  His  attempts  in  this  direction  have 
been  in  the  nature  of  trying  different  ways, 
and  he  always  starts  off  whistling.  Having 
gone  so  far  without  losing  himself,  he  turns 


lOO  AN    EDINBURGH    ELEVEN. 

back  to  try  another  road.  Does  his  heart 
fail  him,  despite  his  jaunty  bearing,  or  is  it 
because  there  is  no  hurry  ?  Though  all  his 
books  are  obviously  by  the  same  hand,  no  living 
writer  has  come  so  near  fame  from  so  many 
different  sides.  Where  is  the  man  among 
us  who  could  write  another  "  Virgin ibus 
Puerisque,"  the  most  delightful  volume  for 
the  hammock  ever  sung  in  prose?  The 
poems  are  as  exquisite  as  they  are  artificial. 
"  Jekyll  and  Hyde  "  is  the  greatest  triumph 
extant  in  Christmas  literature  of  the  morbid 
kind.  The  donkey  on  the  Cevennes  (how 
Mr.  Stevenson  belaboured  him !)  only  stands 
second  to  the  "  Inland  Voyage."  "  Kid- 
napped "  is  the  outstanding  boy's  book  of  its 
generation.  "The  Black  Arrow"  alone,  to 
my  thinking,  is  second-class.  We  shall  all 
be  doleful  if  a  marksman  who  can  pepper  his 
target  with  inners  does  not  reach  the  bull's- 
eye.  But  it  is  quite  time  the  great  work  was 
begun.  The  sun  sinks  while  the  climber 
walks  round  his  mountain,  looking  for  the 
best  way  up. 

Hard     necessity    has     kept     some     great 


ROBERT  LOUIS  STEVENSON.  101 

writers  from  doing  their  best  work,  but  Mr. 
Stevenson  is  at  last  so  firmly  established  that 
if  he  continues  to  be  versatile  it  will  only 
be  from  choice.  He  has  attained  a  popu- 
larity such  as  is,  as  a  rule,  only  accorded  to 
classic  authors  or  to  charlatans.  For  this  he 
has  America  to  thank  rather  that  Britain, 
for  the  Americans  buy  his  books,  the  only 
honour  a  writer's  admirers  are  slow  to  pay 
him.  Mr.  Stevenson's  reputation  in  the 
United  States  is  creditable  to  that  country, 
which  has  given  him  a  position  here  in  which 
only  a  few  saw  him  when  he  left.  Unfor- 
tunately, with  popularity  has  come  publicity. 
All  day  the  reporters  sit  on  his  garden  wall. 

No  man  has  written  in  a  finer  spirit  of  the 
profession  of  letters  than  Mr.  Stevenson,  but 
this  gossip  vulgarizes  it.  The  adulation  oi" 
the  American  public  and  of  a  little  band  of 
clever  literary  dandies  in  London,  great  in 
criticism,  of  whom  he  has  become  the  darling, 
has  made  Mr.  Stevenson  complacent,  and  he 
always  tended  perhaps  to  be  a  thought  too 
fond  of  his  velvet  coat.  There  is  danger  in 
the  delight  with  which  his  every  scrap  is  now 


102  AN   EDINBURGH   ELEVEN. 

received.  A  few  years  ago,  when  he  was 
his  own  severest  and  sanest  critic,  he  stopped 
the  publication  of  a  book  after  it  was  in  proof 
— a  brave  act.  He  has  lost  this  courage,  or 
or  he  would  have  re-written  "  The  Black 
Arrow."  There  is  deterioration  in  the  essays 
he  has  been  contributing  to  an  American 
magazine,  graceful  and  suggestive  though 
they  are.  The  most  charming  of  living 
stylists,  Mr.  Stevenson  is  self-conscious  in  all 
his  books  now  and  again,  but  hitherto  it  has 
been  the  self-consciousness  of  an  artist  with 
severe  critics  at  his  shoulder.  It  has  become 
self-satisfaction.  The  critics  have  put  a 
giant's  robe  on  him,  and  he  has  not  flung 
it  off.  He  dismisses  "  Tom  Jones "  with  a 
simper.  Personally  Thackeray  *'  scarce  ap- 
peals to  us  as  the  ideal  gentleman  ;  if  there 
were  nothing  else  [what  else  is  there?],  per- 
petual nosing  after  snobbery  at  least  suggests 
the  snob."  From  Mr.  Stevenson  one  would 
not  have  expected  the  revival  of  this  silly 
charge,  which  makes  a  cabbage  of  every  man 
who  writes  about  cabbages.  I  shall  say  no 
more  of  these  ill-considered   papers,  though 


ROBERT  LOUIS   STEVENSON.  I03 

the  sneers  at  Fielding  call  for  indignant 
remonstrance,  beyond  expressing  a  hope 
that  they  lie  buried  between  magazine  covers. 
Mr.  Stevenson  has  reached  the  critical  point 
in  his  career,  and  one  would  like  to  see  him 
back  at  Bournemouth,  writing  within  high 
walls.  We  want  that  big  book  ;  we  think 
he  is  capable  of  it,  and  so  we  cannot  afford 
to  let  him  drift  into  the  seaweed.  About  the 
writer  with  whom  his  name  is  so  often 
absurdly  linked  we  feel  differently.  It  is 
as  foolish  to  rail  at  Mr.  Rider  Haggard's 
complacency  as  it  would  be  to  blame  Chris- 
topher Sly  for  so  quickly  believing  that  he 
was  born  a  lord. 

The  key  -  note  of  all  Mr.  Stevenson's 
writings  is  his  indifference,  so  far  as  his 
books  are  concerned,  to  the  affairs  of  life 
and  death  on  which  other  minds  are  chiefly 
set.  Whether  man  has  an  immortal  soul 
interests  him  as  an  artist  not  a  whit :  what 
is  to  come  of  man  troubles  him  as  little 
as  where  man  came  from.  He  is  a  warm, 
genial  writer,  yet  this  is  so  strange  as  to 
seem   inhuman.     His  philosophy  is  that  we 


I04  AN   EDINBURGH   ELEVEN. 

are  but  as  the  light-hearted  birds.  This  is 
our  moment  of  being ;  let  lis  play  the  in- 
toxicating game  ot  life  beautifully,  artisti- 
cally, before  we  fall  dead  from  the  tree. 
We  all  know  it  is  only  in  his  books  that  Mr. 
Stevenson  can  live  this  life.  The  cry  is  to 
arms  ;  spears  glisten  in  the  sun ;  see  the 
brave  bark  riding  joyously  on  the  waves,  the 
black  flag,  the  dash  of  red  colour  twisting 
round  a  mountainside.  Alas  !  the  drummer 
lies  on  a  couch  beating  his  drum.  It  is  a 
pathetic  picture,  less  true  to  fact  now,  one 
rejoices  to  know,  that  it  was  recently.  A 
common  theory  is  that  Mr.  Stevenson  dreams 
an  ideal  life  to  escape  from  his  own  suffer- 
ings. This  sentimental  plea  suits  very  well. 
The  noticeable  thing,  however,  is  that  the 
grotesque,  the  uncanny,  holds  his  soul  ;  his 
brain  will  only  follow  a  coloured  clue.  The 
result  is  that  he  is  chiefly  picturesque,  and,  to 
those  who  want  more  than  art  for  art's  sake, 
never  satisfying.  Fascinating  as  his  verses 
are,  artless  in  the  perfection  of  art,  they  take 
no  reader  a  step  forward.  The  children  of 
whom  he  sings  so  sweetly  are  cherubs  without 


ROBERT   LOUIS   STEVENSON.  IO5 

souls.     It  is  not  in  poetry  that  Mr.   Steven- 
son  will  give   the  great  book   to  the  world, 
nor  will  it,  I  think,  be  in  the  form  of  essays. 
Of  late  he  has  done  nothing  quite  so  fine  as 
"  Virginibus   Puerisque,"  though  most  of  his 
essays  are  gardens  in  which  grow  (e\v  weeds. 
Quaint  in  matter  as  in  treatment,  they  are 
the  best  strictly   literary  essays  of  the  day, 
and  their  mixture  of  tenderness  with  humour 
suggests   Charles  Lamb.       Some  think    Mr. 
Stevenson's    essays     equal    to     Lamb's,     or 
greater.     To  that  I  say  No.     The  name  of 
Lamb  will  for  many  a  year  bring  proud  tears 
to  English  eyes.     Here  was  a  man,  weak  like 
the  rest  of  us,  who  kept  his  sorrows  to  him- 
self.    Life  to  him  was  not  among  the  trees. 
He  had  loved  and  lost.     Grief  laid  a  heavy 
hand  on   his  brave   brow.      Dark   were   his 
nights  ;  horrid  shadows  in  the  house  ;  sudden 
terrors  ;  the  heart   stops  beating  waiting  for 
a   footstep.     At   that   door    comes    Tragedy, 
knocking    at    all    hours.     Was    Lamb    dis- 
mayed ?      The   tragedy    of  his   life    was   not 
drear  to   him.     It  was    wound    round    those 
who  were  dearest  to  him  ;  it  let  him  know 


I06  AN  EDINBURGH  ELEVEN. 

that  life  has  a  glory  even  at  its  saddest, 
that  humour  and  pathos  clasp  hands,  that 
loved  ones  are  drawn  nearer,  and  the  soul 
strengthened  in  the  presence  of  anguish,  pain, 
and  death.  When  Lamb  sat  down  to  write 
he  did  not  pull  down  his  blind  on  all  that  is 
greatest,  if  most  awful,  in  human  life.  He 
was  gentle,  kindly  ;  but  he  did  not  play  at 
pretending  that  there  is  no  cemetery  round 
the  corner.  In  Mr.  Stevenson's  exquisite 
essays  one  looks  in  vain  for  the  great  heart 
that  palpitates  through  the  pages  of  Charles 
Lamb. 

The  great  work,  if  we  are  not  to  be  disap- 
pointed, will  be  fiction.  Mr.  Stevenson  is 
said  to  feel  this  himself,  and,  as  I  understand, 
"  Harry  Shovel "  will  be  his  biggest  bid  for 
fame.  It  is  to  be,  broadly  speaking,  a  nine- 
teenth-century "  Peregrine  Pickle,"  dashed 
with  Meredith,  and  this  in  the  teeth  of 
many  admirers  who  maintain  that  the  best 
of  the  author  is  Scottish.  Mr.  Stevenson, 
however,  knows  what  he  is  about.  Critics 
have  said  enthusiastically — for  it  is  difficult 
to  write  of  Mr.  Stevenson  without  enthusiasm 


ROBERT   LOUIS   STEVENSON.  IO7 

— that  Alan  Breck  is  as  good  as  anything  in 
Scott.  Alan  Breck  is  certainly  a  masterpiece, 
quite  worthy  of  the  greatest  of  all  storytellers, 
who,  nevertheless,  it  should  be  remembered, 
created  these  rich  side  characters  by  the 
score,  another  before  dinner-time.  English 
critics  have  taken  Alan  to  their  hearts,  and 
appreciate  him  thoroughly  ;  the  reason,  no 
doubt,  being  that  he  is  the  character  whom 
England  acknowledges  as  the  Scottish  type. 
The  Highlands,  which  are  Scotland  to  the 
same  extent  as  Northumberland  is  England, 
present  such  a  character  to  this  day,  but  no 
deep  knowledge  of  Mr.  Stevenson's  native 
country  was  required  to  reproduce  him.  An 
artistic  Englishman  or  American  could  have 
done  it.  Scottish  religion,  I  think,  Mr. 
Stevenson  has  never  understood,  except  as 
the  outsider  misunderstands  it.  He  thinks 
it  hard  because  there  are  no  coloured  win- 
dows. "  The  colour  of  Scotland  has  entered 
into  him  altogether,''  says  Mr.  James,  who, 
we  gather,  conceives  in  Edinburgh  Castle  a 
a  place  where  tartans  glisten  in  the  sun,  while 
rocks  re-echo  bagpipes.     Mr.  James  is  right 


I08  AN   EDINBURGH   ELEVEN. 

in  a  way.  It  is  the  tartan,  the  claymore,  the 
cry  that  the  heather  is  on  fire,  that  are  Scot- 
land to  Mr.  Stevenson.  But  the  Scotland 
of  our  day  is  not  a  country  rich  in  colour  ;  a 
sombre  grey  prevails.  Thus,  though  Mr. 
Stevenson's  best  romance  is  Scottish,  that  is 
only,  I  think,  because  of  his  extraordinary 
aptitude  for  the  picturesque.  Give  him  any 
period  in  any  country  that  is  romantic,  and 
he  will  soon  steep  himself  in  the  kind  of 
knowledge  he  can  best  turn  to  account. 
Adventures  suit  him  best,  the  ladies  being 
left  behind  ;  and  so  long  as  he  is  in  fettle 
it  matters  little  whether  the  scene  be  Scot- 
land or  Spain.  The  great  thing  is  that 
he  should  now  give  to  one  ambitious  book 
the  time  in  which  he  has  hitherto  written 
half  a  dozen  small  ones.  He  will  have  to 
take  existence  a  little  more  seriously — to 
weave  broadcloth  instead  of  lace. 


XI. 

REV.    WALTER   C.    SMITH,    D.D. 

DURING  the  four  winters  another  and  I 
were  in  Edinburgh  we  never  entered  any 
but  Free  churches.  This  seems  to  have  been 
less  on  account  of  a  scorn  for  other  denomi- 
nations than  because  we  never  thought  of 
them.  We  felt  sorry  for  the  "  men  "  who 
knew  no  better  than  to  claim  to  be  on  the 
side  of  Dr.  Macgregor.  Even  our  Free 
kirks  were  limited  to  two,  St.  George's  and 
the  Free  High.  After  all,  we  must  have 
been  liberally  minded  beyond  most  of  our 
fellows,  for,  as  a  rule,  those  who  frequented 
one  of  these  churches  shook  their  heads  at 
the  other.  It  is  said  that  Dr.  Whyte  and 
Dr.  Smith  have  a  great  appreciation  of  each 
other.     They,  too,  are  liberally  minded. 

To  contrast  the  two  leading  Free  Church 
ministers  in  Edinburgh  as  they  struck  a 
student    would    be  to  become   a    boy  again. 


no  AN   EDINBURGH   ELEVEN 

The  one  is  always  ready  to  go  on  fire,  and 
the  other  is  sometimes  at  hand  with  a  jug 
of  cold  water.  Dr.  Smith  counts  a  hundred 
before  he  starts,  whilst  the  minister  of  Free 
St.  George's  is  off  at  once  at  a  gallop,  and 
would  always  arrive  first  at  his  destination  if 
he  had  not  sometimes  to  turn  back.  He  is 
not  only  a  Gladstonian,  but  Gladstonian  ;  his 
enthusiasm  carries  him  on  as  steam  drives 
the  engine.  Dr.  Smith  being  a  critic,  with  a 
faculty  of  satire,  what  would  rouse  the  one 
man  makes  the  other  smile.  Dr.  Whyte 
judges  you  as  you  are  at  the  moment ;  Dr. 
Smith  sees  what  you  will  be  like  to-morrow. 
Some  years  ago  the  defeated  side  in  a  great 
Assembly  fight  met  at  a  breakfast  to  reason 
itself  into  a  belief  that  it  had  gained  a 
remarkable  moral  victory.  Dr.  Whyte  and 
Dr.  Smith  were  both  present,  and  the  former 
was  so  inspiriting  that  the  breakfast  became 
a  scene  of  enthusiasm.  Then  Dr.  Smith 
arose  and  made  a  remark  about  a  company 
of  Mark  Tapleys — after  which  the  meeting 
broke  up. 

I    have    a    curious    reminiscence    of    the 


REV.   WALTER   C.    SMITH,   D.D.  Ill 

student  who  most  frequently  accompanied 
me  to  church  in  Edinburgh.  One  Sunday 
when  we  were  on  our  way  up  slushy  Bath 
Street  to  Free  St.  George's  he  discovered  that 
he  had  not  a  penny  for  the  plate.  I  sug- 
gested to  him  to  give  twopence  next  time; 
but  no,  he  turned  back  to  our  lodgings  for 
the  penny.  Sometime  afterwards  he  found 
himself  in  the  same  position  when  we  were 
nearing  the  Free  High.  "  I'll  give  twopence 
next  time,"  he  said,  cheerfully.  I  have 
thought  this  over  since  then,  and  wondered  if 
there  was  anything  in  it. 

The  most  glorious  privilege  of  the  old  is 
to  assist  the  young.  The  two  ministers  who 
are  among  the  chief  pillars  of  the  Free 
Church  in  Edinburgh  are  not  old  yet,  but 
they  have  had  a  long  experience,  and  the 
strength  and  encouragement  they  have  been 
to  the  young  is  the  grand  outstanding  fact  of 
their  ministries.  Their  influence  is,  of  course, 
chiefly  noticeable  in  the  divinity  men,  who 
make  their  Bible  classes  so  remarkable. 
There  is  a  sort  of  Freemasonry  among  the 
men  who  have  come  under  the  influence  of 


112  AN    EDINBURGH    ELEVEN. 

Dr.  Smith.  It  seems  to  have  steadie  them 
— to  have  given  them  wise  rules  of  Hfe  that 
have  taken  the  noise  out  of  them,  and  left 
them  undemonstrative,  quiet,  determined. 
You  will  have  little  difficulty,  as  a  rule,  in 
picking  out  Dr.  Smith's  men,  whether  in  the 
pulpit  or  in  private.  They  have  his  mark, 
as  the  Rugby  boys  were  marked  by  Dr. 
Arnold.  Even  in  speaking  of  him,  they 
seldom  talk  in  superlatives :  only  a  light 
comes  into  their  eye,  and  you  realize  what  a 
well-founded  reverence  is.  I  met  lately  in 
London  an  Irishman  who,  when  the  conver- 
sation turned  to  Scotland,  asked  what  Edin- 
burgh was  doing  without  Dr.  Smith  (who 
was  in  America  at  the  time).  He  talked 
with  such  obvious  knowledge  of  Dr.  Smith's 
teaching,  and  with  such  affection  for  the  man, 
that  by  and  by  we  were  surprised  to  hear 
that  he  had  never  heard  him  preach  nor  read 
a  line  of  his  works.  He  explained  that  he 
knew  intimately  two  men  who  looked  upon 
their  Sundays  in  the  Free  High,  and  still 
more  upon  their  private  talks  with  the  min- 
ister,   as   the    turning    point    in    their    lives. 


REV.   WALTER   C.   SMriTI,    D.D.  II3 

They  were  such  fine  fellows,  and  they  were 
so  sure  that  they  owed  their  development  to 
Dr.  Smith,  that  to  know  the  followers  was  to 
know  something  of  the  master.  This  it  is  to 
be  a  touchstone  to  young  men. 

There  are  those  who  think  Dr.  Smith  the 
poet  of  higher  account  than  Dr.  Smith  the 
preacher.  I  do  not  agree  with  them,  though 
there  can  be  no  question  that  the  author  of 
"  Olrig  Grange"  and  Mr.  Alexander  Ander- 
son are  the  two  men  now  in  Edinburgh  who 
have  (at  times)  the  divine  afflatus.  "Surface- 
man "  is  a  true  son  of  Burns.  Of  him  it  may 
be  said,  as  it  never  can  be  said  of  Dr.  Smith, 
that  he  sings  because  he  must.  His  thoughts 
run  in  harmonious  numbers.  The  author  of 
"Olrig  Grange"  is  the  stronger  mind,  how- 
ever, and  his  lines  are  always  pregnant  of 
meaning.  He  is  of  the  school  of  Mr.  Lewis 
Morris,  but  an  immeasurably  higher  intellect 
if  not  so  fine  an  artist  :  indeed,  though  there 
are  hundreds  of  his  pages  that  are  not  poetry, 
there  are  almost  none  that  could  not  be  re- 
written into  weighty  prose.  Sound  is  never 
his  sole  object.     Good  novels  in  verse  are  a 


114  AN    EDINBURGH   ELEVEN. 

mistake,  for  it  is  quite  certain  they  would  be 
better  in  prose.  The  novelist  has  a  great 
deal  to  say  that  cannot  be  said  naturally  in 
rhythm,  and  much  of  Dr.  Smith's  blank  verse 
is  good  prose  in  frills.  It  is  driven  into  an 
undeserved  confinement. 

The  privilege  of  critics  is  to  get  twelve  or 
twenty  minor  poets  in  a  row,  and  then  blow 
them  all  over  at  once.  I  remember  one  who 
dispatched  Dr.  Smith  with  a  verse  from  the 
book  under  treatment.  Dr.  Smith  writes  of 
a  poet's  verses  :  "  There  is  no  sacred  fire  in 
them.  Nor  much  of  homely  sense  and 
shrewd,"  and  when  the  critic  came  to  these 
lines,  he  stopped  reading  :  he  declared  that 
Dr.  Smith  had  passed  judgment  on  himself. 
This  is  a  familiar  form  of  criticism,  but  in 
the  present  case  it  had  at  least  the  demerit  of 
being  false.  There  is  so  much  sacred  fire 
about  Dr.  Smith's  best  poetry,  that  it  is  what 
makes  him  a  poet  ;  and  as  for  "  homely  sense 
and  shrewd,"  he  has  simply  more  of  it  than 
any  contemporary  writer  of  verse.  It  is 
what  gives  heart  to  his  satire,  and  keeps  him 
from    wounding    merely  for    the    pleasure  of 


REV.    WALTER   C.   SMI'm,    D.I).  II5 

drawing  blood.  In  conjunction  with  the 
sacred  fire,  the  noble  indignation  that  mean 
things  should  be,  the  insight  into  the  tragic, 
it  is  what  makes  ''  Hilda"  his  greatest  poem. 
Without  it  there  could  not  be  pathos,  which 
is  concerned  with  little  things  ;  nor  humour, 
nor,  indeed,  the  flash  into  men  and  things 
that  makes  such  a  poem  as  "  Dr.  Linkletter's 
Scholar  "  as  true  as  life,  as  sad  as  death.  If 
only  for  the  sake  of  that  noble  piece  of 
writing,  every  Scottish  student  should  have 
"North-Country  Folk"  in  his  possession. 
The  poem  is  probably  the  most  noteworthy 
thing  that  has  been  said  of  Northern  Uni- 
versity life. 


UXWIX   UROTHERS,   THE  GRESHAM   PRESS,   WOKIXG  AND  LONDON". 


BY   THE   SAME   AUTHOR. 
I. 

A  WINDOW  IN  THRUMS. 

Fonrt:cnth  Edition.     Crown  ?7'o,  hnckrnni.  i^ilt  iop,  6s. 

"  In  (lull  clays  of  sensational  horrors,   and  wild,   would-be 

humorous  hums, 
What  delight  to  fly  darkness,  and  watch  the  '  Auld  Licht,' 

Irom  a  '  Window  in  Thrums  !  ' 
Let  pessimists  potter  and  pule,  and  let  savages  slaughter 

and  harry  ; 
Give  me  Hendry  and  Tanimas  ■^Xi(S.  Jess,  and  a  smile  and  a 

tear  born  ol  Barrie." — Ftinch. 

Times. — "  Some  of  these  chapters  are  gems  of  their  kind, 
and  we  doubt  whether  to  award  the  palm  to  the  humorous  or 
the  pathetic.  .  .  .  However  genuine,  unstrained  pathos  is  a 
rarer  product  of  the^e  days  than  humour,  and  we  hardly 
desire  to  read  anything  better  in  that  line  than  the  chapter 
called  '  The  Lnsl  Night.'  " 

Academy. — "In  'A  Window  in  Thrums'  the  true  pathos 
and  sublime  of  human  life,  unsung,  scarcely  wept,  but  silently 
honoured,  stands  first.  .  .  .  Mr.  liarrie  can  hardly  improve 
on  this  book." 

Athcnctum. — "Few  chapters  are  more  evenly  humorous 
than  the  third,  '  Preparing  to  receive  Company'  ;  but  apart 
from  the  real  pathos  of  Joey's  death  and  Janve's  return,  there 
are  few  things  in  the  book  more  life-like  and  more  suggestive 
than  the  good  old  woman's  final  words." 

ATr.  A.  T.  Qiiiller- Conch  in  "  The  Speakcj'"  says: — 
*'  What  is  the  tale  about  ?  A  little  cottage,  not  specially 
picturesque;  an  invalid  mother;  the  commonplace  death  of 
her  first-born  son,  and  the  commonplace  ruin  of  her  second- 
born.  No  rhiracter  is  extraordinary,  of  plot  there  is  nothing 
at  all  ;  the  latastrophe  might  befall  any  young  man,  what- 
ever his  nationaluy  or  station  of  life.  .  .  .  But  search  about 
in  English  literature,  and  where  will  you  find  a  story  of  like 
quality  of  pathos  written  by  an  Anglo-Saxon?" 


London  :  HODDER   AND   S  TOUGHTON. 


BY   THE   SAME   AUTHOR. 
11. 

MY  LADY   NICOTINE. 

Sixth   Edition.     Buckram,  gilt   top,    crown   8vo,   6s. 

Speaker. — *'A  very  delightful  book.  'Jimmy's  Dream' 
was  the  chapter  which  made  us  laugh  out  loud  the  most.  As 
a  general  rule  Mr.  Barrie's  humour  leads  us  to  a  rather  low, 
almost  inaudible  chuckle.  The  letters  of  Primus  to  his 
uncle  seem  as  if  they  must  really  have  been  written  by  a 
schoolboy.  But  it  is  almost  impossible  to  select  chapters. 
The  book  should  be  read  straight  through,  and  then  picked 
up  at  intervals  and  opened  anywh^-e.  Wherever  it  is 
opened  it  will  please." 

Pall  Mall  Gazette. —  "What  an  odd  strain  of  humour  is 
Mr.  J.  M,  Barrie's !  '  Dry '  is  not  the  word  for  it  ;  it  is  as 
torrid  and  almost  as  unsubstantial  as  his  own  cigar-ash.  Mr. 
Barrie's  mirth  is  of  the  kind  his  countrymen  call  '  pawky.' 
There  is  never  a  smile  on  his  face,  never  the  smallest  sign  of 
enjoyment  of  his  own  fantasy.  He  talks  on  and  on,  copiously, 
whimsically,  crisjily,  with  a  sedate,  almost  melancholy  air, 
air,  in  which  lies  half  his  art." 

Academy. — "  Take  '  My  Lady  Nicotine '  as  it  stands,  and 
it  is  not  too  much  to  say  of  it  that  it  is  the  funniest  book 
of  its  kind  that  has  been  published  for  a  quarter  of  a 
century." 

Times. — "  In  '  A  Window  in  Thrums  '  Mr.  Barrie  gave  an 
admirably  pathetic  description  of  the  cares  and  sorrcnvs  of 
the  hard-working  poor  in  a  Scottish  manufacturing  town. 
In  '  My  Lady  Nicotine '  he  is  in  the  opposite  vein,  and 
shows  that  he  has  no  inconsiderable  power  as  a  hurnorisi. 
^Written  generally  in  serio-comic  vein,  brightened  with 
flashes  of  droll  irony  and  quaint  suggestion." 


London:  IIODDER   AND   STOUCHITON. 


aV   THE   SAME   AUTHOR. 
III. 

WHEN  A  MAN'S   SINGLE. 

A  Tale  of  Literary  Life. 

Tenth  Edition.     Bound  in  buckram,  gilt  top^  cro7vn  Zvo,  ds. 

Saturday  Review. — "  Mr.  Barrie  is  a  man  with  a  style. 
From  one  end  to  the  other  the  story  is  bright,  cheerful, 
amusing — barring  the  idyllic  prologue,  which  is  pathetic  as 
well  as  humorous.  Original  men  and  men  with  styles  are  so 
xmcommon  as  to  make  Mr.  Barrie's  appearance  as  a  novelist 
a  matter  for  general  congratulation." 

Spectator. —  "  Full  of  drolleries  and  surprises,  alike  in 
dialogue  and  in  action." 

Daily  Chronicle. — "  It  is  not  too  much  to  say  that  the 
pictures  of  homely  Scotch  life  are  unsurpassed  in  the  whole 
range  of  fiction." 

Scottish  Leader. — "  We  can  revel  in  the  many  felicitous 
touches  of  satire,  description,  and  characterisation — a  very 
clever  book  which  few  people  could  have  written." 

Daily  News. — "  The  best  one-volume  novel  of  the  year." 

St.  Jameses  Gazette. — "The  circumstances  under  which  the 
hero  falls  in  love  are  too  entertaining,  alike  in  conception 
and  relation,  to  be  told  by  anybody  but  Mr.  Barrie,  who  is 
both  a  humorist  and  a  wit." 

Times. — "  The  young  ladies  are  charming,  but  the  person 
who  really  gives  distinction  to  the  book  is  Noble  Simms. 
This  wayward,  indolent  Bohemian,  as  good  as  any  creation 
of  Henri  Murger,  is  so  amusing  a  type  of  the  '  casual  '  genius 
that  he  deserves  not  to  perish." 


London:  HODDER  AND   STOUGIITON. 


BY   THE   SAME    AUTHOR. 
IV. 

AULD   LIGHT   IDYLLS. 

Tenth  Edition.     Boztnd  in  buckram,  gilt  top,  croivn  2>vo,  6s. 

Spectator. — "  At  once  the  most  succes-ful,  the  most  truly 
h'lerary,  ami  the  most  realistic  attempt  that  has  been  made 
for  years — if  not  for  generations — to  reproduce  humble  Scotch 
life.  .  .  .  We  have  thought  it  positively  our  duty  to  call 
attention  at  some  length  to  this  book,  because  in  its  fidelity 
to  truth,  its  liumour,  and  its  \ivid  interest,  it  is  a  complete 
and  a  welcome  contrast  to  the  paltry  '  duds '  which  are 
nowadays  printed  by  the  dozen  as  pictures  of  humble  and 
religious  life  in  Scotland." 

Academy. — "Not  only  the  best  book  dealing  exclusively 
vviih  Scotch  humble  life,  but  the  only  book  of  the  kind, 
deserving  to  be  classed  as  literature,  that  has  been  published 
for  at  least  a  quarter  of  a  century." 

AtJicnceum.  — "  Very  graphic  is  tlie  description  of  the 
storm-beaten,  snow-laden  clachan  of  grey  stones,  and  bright 
is  the  observant  insight  displayed  by  the  solitary  and  philo- 
sophic village  dominie  who  tells  the  tale." 

Saturday  Revieiv. — "Not  merely  readable,  but  amusing 
and  suggestive  in  no  mean  degree." 

Truth. — "It  is  some  time  since  I  read  anything  so  racy, 
humorous,  and  altogether  delightful.  I  defy  any  one  to 
read  'The  Courting  of  T'nowhiad's  Bell,'  for  instance,  or 
'The  Auld  Licht  Kirk,'  without  a  smile  or  a  laugh  at  every 
(jther  sentence." 

Times. — "  A  really  remarkable  book." 

Graphic. — "  A  book  of  real  humour,  touching  the  surface 
of  things  and  persons  with  a  light  and  lively  hand,  with 
occasional  subtle  suggestions  of  tlie  tlepths  of  human  miture 
below  them  .  .  .  admirable  in  their  humorous  simplicity.'' 

World. — "  Drawn  in  a  number  of  light  but  singularly 
careful  and  vivid  touches.  Of  its  cleverness  there  can  be  no 
question." 

London  :  IIODDER   AND   STOUGIITOK. 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRAR 
This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  belc 

m 


Fim 


NOV     11    ^9^ 


REC'O  ^^^ 

DEC  4  - 1359 


LD  21-100m-12,'46(A2012sl6)4120 


^  '^^  y<j 


2a3it72 


//- 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY