JOHN STUART BLACKIE
The wind was from the east, the Scotch "mist" from everywhere, but
Professor Blackie had a sunny heart that made one forget the raw
weather. I thought the sun was shining and the skies blue when I went
to lunch at Number 9 Douglas Crescent, Edinburgh, one November day in
the early nineties.
Almost any day in half a century you might have seen Professor Blackie
striding through Edinburgh as strong as an athlete, hearty as a young
hunter. One morning I encountered him as he was beating eastward
against half a gale, his cape flying, his cloud of white hair tossing
against his big-brimmed, soft black hat, his cheeks rosy with the
winter wind, and his kind eyes dancing with the delight he felt in
exercise. He was eighty-five!
I told him of reading somewhere that he loved to play the peripatetic
philosopher. How he laughed! "Do they say that of me? Ho, ho, ho!"
And then he trolled a "Hi-ti-rumty-tum", snatching an air, as his habit
was, from a half-forgotten song, and ending with an exclamatory line of
Greek. He looked like a prophet apostrophising the gods.
"And they say I speak 'a confusion of tongues.' {80} Don't mind that,"
said he. "Greek, Latin, Gaelic, German, English--all are one to me. I
borrow the words that come readiest for the thought. But Greek is the
great language." And he strode down the hill.
He was the most picturesque figure then living in Edinburgh, and many
thought him the greatest man in the Scotland of those times. He was
the "Grand Old Man" of that northern kingdom, and in vitality and
spirits and capacity for work he was at eighty-five the youngest man I
knew. He was packed with wisdom and overflowing with music and
merriment. If he had not been so musical and so merry you might have
called him Scotland incarnate. Doubtless he was that, with the music
and merriment added. As for character, even Scotland never produced a
nobler one, nor set it in a more imposing figure, or in a grander head.
Scholar, poet, philosopher, teacher, learner, political writer, lover
of the classics, strenuous believer in modern progress, he was sure
that the world was never better than in his day, the Victorian day, and
that it was growing better steadily. They were all optimists then.
Lord Salisbury, when prime minister, added that they were all
socialists. Professor Blackie drew the line at that. Perhaps
Salisbury was quoting Harcourt.
Visiting in Glasgow, I received one morning a note from him inviting me
to lunch at his house in Edinburgh. On the lower, left-hand corner of
the envelope he had written a line of Greek, as his custom was. This
time it was an adjuration: {81} "Speak the truth in love." But who
could speak of him in other words than those of love? In his note he
had written "Come and talk." But he did all the talking. What an
inspiring flood it was!
No sooner was I in his hall than I heard, to my disappointment, the
sound of what seemed lively conversation from an adjoining room. I had
hoped to find him alone. The prospect of a luncheon party dampened my
ardour. But when the maid conducted me to the presence, there sat the
Scottish sage alone, declaiming a Gaelic poem. At least he told me it
was Gaelic!
"Laugh," cried he, "laugh. 'T will do ye good. Ah, y' are one o' the
laughin' men! I like them. Try a man; will he no' laugh, or smile,
don't tie to him. There 's too much gloom in the world."
What a picture he was in that hour. Yes, and hours after, when I left
him. The tall old man with strong, smooth-shaven face, like one of the
traditional gods of his favourite lore, but in no other respect
resembling a mythological being. His head was crowned, not with
laurel, but with a wide-brimmed Panama or leghorn hat, beneath which
streamed his long white hair. And his body was lost in the embraces of
a blue dressing-gown which came to his heels; and around his waist were
yards of red silk sash, the ends of which trailed behind him.
"Punctual," said he. "You are sharp to the minute. Came by the eleven
train, eh? An hour and five minutes on the rail. Wonderful how we
live now! Glasgow to Edinburgh and return, {82} ninety-six miles for
seven shillings and sixpence, first class. The quickest travelling in
the world, and the cheapest. That's one thing the auld Greeks could
na' do. Fol-de-rol-de-rol-de-ri. Progress, progress; I believe in it.
I 'm a marching man. There's nae such thing as standin' still; you go
forward, or you fall back. Will ye ring the bell? I thank ye!
Bachelor's hall the day. My wife is in the country, but we will try to
be comfortable."
While we ate Professor Blackie talked, burst into snatches of melody,
rippled in Greek, or thundered in German, or gave the dear twist of
Scotland to his words, or, when he thought there had been enough of
that, drew from the "well of English, pure and undefiled." And all the
time he wore his hat!
"You won't mind, I know," he said. "Eighty-five and no glasses to my
eyes. There 's protection in the shade of a hat's brim. Eighty-five
and no glasses! The only proof I 'm eighty-five is the almanac. There
's no proof in my body. I 'm as young as ever there." And then he
turned the Greek tap so that Aristotle larded the lunch.
He had been in love with Greek for more than sixty years; he taught it
for thirty or forty years; he knew it as well as he knew English; he
read modern Greek newspapers; he had the best Greek library in the
kingdom; I daresay he dreamed in Greek. I said: "You talk as if, in
spirit, you were more a Greek than a Scotsman."
"Not that"--he half sang the words--"Oh, {83} bonny Scotland for me. A
man should stick to the land where God put him!"
He drew the knife along the breast of a chicken. "My wife won't let me
carve when she 's at home," he said. He looked threateningly at a
joint. "Never mind, never mind," said he, and then in a chant, "hey
nonny, hi nonny." Pause. Then "Come off, old boy," and a wing and a
leg clattered to the platter. "The nearer the bone the sweeter the
meat," said he. "But statesmen have carved empires more easily."
"Mr. Gladstone, for example," said I, referring to the Home Rule Bill.
"Ho, there; but he has n't performed the amputation!"
"You don't agree with your old friend about that policy?"
"No, nor about Greek. But we are friends still. As for discussion, we
began that when we first met. How many tens of years ago was that? We
have been discussing ever since. Yes, forty years! We met at Dean
Ramsey's house. Gladstone was a splendid man to disagree with even
then."
As Professor Blackie talked of his friends, the names of nearly all his
contemporaries in England, Scotland, and Germany came hurrying forth.
But he would n't tell anecdotes about them for two reasons; first, he
never remembered good stories; second, "I don't live in the past," he
said. He was not a good talker, if good talk means keeping up your end
in conversation. He kept up more than his end. He was always ready
for a monologue. {84} He did n't converse, he exploded. His
utterances were volcanic. There would come an eruption of short
sentences blazing with philosophy; then a kindly glow over it all, and
the discharge would subside quickly with a gentle rumty-tum, or a
snatch from some old Scotch ballad. We had been talking of education.
Suddenly the table shook under a smiting hand, and these words were
shot at me:
"Teaching! We are teaching our young men everything except this: to
teach themselves, and to look the Lord Jesus Christ in the face! You
are doing it in America, too. You are as bad as we are in Britain."
And then immediately, and with a seraph's smile, "May I pass you a
wing?"
He quoted from one of his books, a recent one: "Of all the chances that
can befall a young man at his first start in the race of life, the
greatest unquestionably is to be brought into contact, and, if
possible, to enter into familiar relations with a truly great man. For
this is to know what manhood means, and a manly life, not by grave
precept, or wise proverb, or ideal picture; but to see the ideal in
complete equipment and compact in reality before you, as undeniably and
as efficiently as the sun that sheds light from the sky, or the
mountain that sheds waters into the glen."
Strong influences were about Blackie's life in his youth, and he
became, in his turn, a great influence in other lives. He was the son
of a Scotch banker, and was born in Glasgow. He had his first
schooling in Aberdeen, and he entered college at twelve and the
University of Edinburgh at fifteen. At {85} the latter place he
studied under John Wilson ("Christopher North"). At Aberdeen he had
the best Latin instruction of his time. There they were famous
Latinists. At the University of Edinburgh it was mainly religion with
him, and the Bible his favourite reading. At twenty he went to
Germany, the Germany that is dead. His strong grave face would light
up when he spoke of the men he had known there.
"Niebuhr was the biggest man Germany has produced, but Bunsen was the
greatest all round. Bunsen looked like Goethe. I told him so, and
found that others thought so. But Bunsen had a sweeter mouth than
Goethe. My father's teaching, the nature that God gave me, and
Bunsen's influence, have been the shaping forces of my life.
"I returned to Scotland, was called to the bar at twenty-five, and ran
away from it at thirty. I was not meant for a lawyer. Aberdeen
University made me its Professor of Latin Literature, and I kept at
that till 1852, when Edinburgh appointed me Professor of Greek. I was
thirty years at that time. A few years ago I retired. There is the
story of my life."
No. Only the story of the shell of his life. It said nothing of what
he had done.
"Done!" exclaimed the old man. "If you live to be as old as John
Blackie, you 'll find it less important to know what a man has done
than to know what he is. Done? I 've taught Greek, written a little,
preached a good deal!"
But many men teach Greek, and everybody writes {86} nowadays, and the
globe is a vast pulpit from which all who are not dumb try to preach,
while only the deaf long to listen. John Stuart Blackie's achievements
are not to be measured by phrases. He was one of the strong teachers
of men. Many men now celebrated have told me that they studied under
him and learned little Greek but more wisdom than an entire faculty
could teach them, or any number of books. "The art of the teacher is
to teach the student to teach himself", the old man was fond of saying.
Blackie was a marching man, you will remember. For years he marched
across Scotland, and up and down, lecturing the people. If Scotland
had a hall in which he did not lecture on Burns, on Goethe, on Scottish
Song, Education, Government--to his list of themes there was no end--it
must have been built since his death. No wonder they called him a
"peripatetic philosopher."
He said to me: "I think I can do more good by speaking to people than
by writing to them. I have written thirty or forty volumes, if you
count the little ones, but I don't know how to write books to please
the public."
"How can that be?" I asked. "A bookseller told me that your
'Self-Culture' has already run to thirty editions."
"Oh, that was not written for the public, but for my students; and the
public happened to like it."
"A distinction without much difference then." And I thought of his
"Essays on Social Subjects", "Four Phases of Morals", "Homer and the
Iliad", {87} and the book "On Beauty"; of his "Songs of Religion and
Life", "The Language and Literature of the Scottish Highlands", "Musa
Burschicosa", "Songs and Legends of Ancient Greece", "Scottish Song",
"Poetical Tracts", and so on. The public had seemed to like them. And
the public of Edinburgh must have found some attraction in his novel
"Altavona", for, he said, "They made a great row over it here, thought
they had identified one of the characters, and went buzzing about over
their discovery. But I 'm not a novelist. I was trying to effect
reform in the Scottish Land Laws. I believe in Home Rule for
Scotland," he added.
"Why not, then, for Ireland?" This was putting one's head into the
lion's mouth. But he purred gently: "I don't know Ireland! I've been
there only once!" That was a fair hit at Gladstone. "Scotland I do
know!" The last words came like a blast from the mountains.
Once on a time Professor Blackie printed a list of one hundred and
twelve Scottish songs, and he declared that every Scotsman should know
them all. I suppose it was patriotism even more than a love of
learning that impelled him to raise L10,000 by four years' labour, and
endow with it, at Edinburgh, a Professorship of Celtic Literature.
He lived on an edge of Edinburgh, and his house overflowed with books
and pictures. It commanded a northerly outlook, and the country rolled
up almost to the windows. "Look there," said he, pointing to the big
window of the dining room, "the sun's out, and you can see the Fife
Hills. I see them about {88} three times a month when our mists lift.
The Forth Bridge is yonder"--pointing. "Wonderful thing that Forth
Bridge. You whiz through towards Perth in five minutes!"
Above the fireplace was a large portrait of himself, painted years
before by James Archer, of the Royal Scottish Academy. It represented
its subject gazing, with head uncovered, at a mountainous landscape.
"That's the poetic Blackie," said the original, "the Blackie who loves
to roam hills and glens. Yon is Blackie militant," pointing to a
severer portrait on the opposite wall. "A very different person, as
you see. A painter can show only one aspect of a character in a single
portrait, and the public, seeing but one portrait, will see but one
side of the character. That's why there are several Blackies on these
walls. Come and see my friends as they hang."
He led the way to the entrance hall whose walls were hung with
paintings, engravings, photographs, old prints. A bust of "Christopher
North" occupied a pedestal at the foot of the stairs. "And there's
Nolly," sang the Professor, pointing to an oil likeness of Cromwell.
We would take a step or two, and then pause to look at a portrait,
while my energetic host threw out an explanatory phrase whimsically
abbreviating the names of the men he liked best. "Tom," said he, "Tom
Carlyle, a tyrannical genius who did a lot of good in a hard way.
Bobbie," and he stopped before a portrait of Burns, "Bobbie was a
ploughman, but the artist here made him a dandy, and he never was
that." {89} We must have stopped twenty times on the first flight of
stairs, and at each pause the old man would shoot a remark. At the
drawing-room door he paused again, exclaiming: "Aristotle, Shakespeare,
Goethe, and the Apostle Paul--these are my heroes!"
The drawing-room was a national, or rather an international portrait
gallery in little. We began with a line of faces at one end of which
was Goethe, at the other end Bunsen. There were portraits everywhere,
on the walls, in the chairs, on the tables; some of them rested on the
floor. Sir Henry Irving as Becket had a chair. Blackie stopped in
front of him. "That's a man who has done a great work," said he. "The
people require amusement, and Irving has amused them nobly. Ah, you
see Mary Anderson over there. A marvellous sweet woman. Scott's next
to her on that wall, now. Ah, no, I never saw him. I wish I had known
him. 'Green grow the rushes, O!' Here are some preachers--Chalmers,
John Knox, Guthrie, Norman Macleod, Cardinal Manning. Ye 'll think it
a queer assortment, maybe, John Knox and Manning. Well, the five o'
them were men, man, men!"
"Dear, dear, who has done this thing?" he cried, as if startled. We
stood before an easel which held a portrait of himself. An engraving
of Gladstone stood beneath, on the floor. "Wrong! It's the wrong
order," said he. "We must change it. Down goes Blackie; up goes
Gladdy. He belongs above me." He suited the action to the word and
shifted the portraits.
{90}
Presently we marched up another flight of stairs to his study, which
consisted of three connecting rooms lined with books. "This is where I
live," he said. "Seven thousand volumes hereabout. See the Greek
here, here, everywhere. Man, man, Greek is the only living bridge
between the present and the past!"
Then, snatching up a handful of newspapers from Athens, he continued,
"Some folks call Greek a dead language. Poor souls! They don't know
any better. These things should interest you. They are fresh from
Athens; not a week old." And then he read aloud from them, a bit of
politics, an advertisement, lines from the bargain counter, as if to
show that one touch of shopping makes the whole world kin. "But no
heroes, man, no heroes! There's no Aristotle now, no Shakespeare, no
Goethe, no Apostle Paul!"
We sat awhile in the study, and Blackie "surveyed mankind from China to
Peru" in lightning flashes. He always left one panting behind,
breathless, trying to keep pace with his rushing thoughts. He had done
that sort of thing all his teaching life, and that was why men said
they learned but little Greek from him, but absorbed streams of wisdom.
They would say that when teaching, he never stuck to his text. The
best you could do was quietly to watch and listen, remember and apply.
After all, that was what he wanted men to do--to learn to teach
themselves.
There are men, very distinguished men, who are much more easily
described than John Stuart Blackie. {91} What he said of the portrait
painter is equally true of the portrait writer. I might borrow his own
phrase and say that there was the preacher, there was the teacher, the
patriot, the man of merry soul; and there was the Blackie of odd
moments who was all these in one, as I saw him, with straw hat, blue
dressing-robe, and trailing red sash. If I picture him as I saw him
then, going about the house in his queer gear and genially nicknaming
great folk in the intervals of snatches of song, you are not to think
of him as merely an eccentric and entertaining old gentleman. He was
very much at his ease, and he made me feel happily so. He was natural
man without a pose, without an affectation. He never posed. He did
not care what others thought or said about him, what he cared for was
what they thought and said about his subject, whatever that might
be--country, or religion, or song--and it all led to manliness. "Be a
man! Be God's man!" That was the burden of his teaching, preaching,
writing, scholarship, philosophy, religion. He wrought great things
for the manhood of Scotland.
I remember his coming to Glasgow one night while I visited there. He
lectured for some society of young men. His theme was Love. When he
had finished, a minister jumped up and shouted this invitation:
"Put that into a sermon, sir, and come and preach it to us next
Sabbath. A guinea and a bed!"
"What?" roared Blackie. "D'ye think I'd preach the Gospel for money?
I 'll preach it for nothing if ye 'll come and listen!"
{92}
Sometimes they said he was a droll person who went about Scotland
cracking jokes. And I have heard them say that he "played too much to
the gallery." But the men who said those things liked their sermons
delivered by long-faced folk, and wanted their lectures peppered with
piety. They had their suspicions of laughter. Blackie bubbled over
with good spirits. Others might make the public sigh and weep; he knew
that it is better to make them laugh; that if you make them "feel good"
they will like you well enough to listen to what you have to say and
think about it. As for "playing to the gallery" one has only to recall
Blackie's life-long admonitions to Democracy in order to see the error
of that assumption.
The best word-picture of John Stuart Blackie was unknown to the public
at the time of which I write. It was unknown even to Blackie himself
at that time. It was written by one of his pupils, Robert W. Barbour,
a brilliant and scholarly man. His "Letters, Poems, and Pensees"
appeared subsequently in a volume edited by Professor Drummond, a
memorial volume circulated privately. It was with Professor Drummond's
permission that I published, years ago, an extract from one of
Barbour's letters. Barbour, when it was written, was in charge of a
school somewhere in the Highlands. One day his old master, Blackie,
came up from Edinburgh for a blow of the mountain air and a visit to
Barbour, who thus described the occasion:
"Then follow minutes of Elysium, were life only the Academy, and the
world made for students and {93} Professors! I hear Professor Blackie
talk of foreign travel, of the pictures it gives to hang forever in
one's after-study; and as the brave old snowy head falls back against
the claret of the sofa, he brings me out, one by one, the
pictures--Rome, Florence, Milan, Gottingen--latest hung therein.
"After dinner the Professor and I have an hour and a half's stroll to
the school, while I drink in the delightful desultoriness of his talk,
and try to stop just when he does--which is not always easy; for you
cannot tell why this crystus should seize his fancy, or that
'potentilla' interrupt his thought. But it only breaks to flower forth
again more beautiful, as he talks first of Italy, its grace we lack so
in Scotland, its lack of sternness we could so well supply; its few
great hearts alive and active, its multitudes asleep and slow; then of
its new literature; then the political parties; then what poets should
do now, not to be so sundered from their time as Browning (who walked
these roads), nor so bound to the mere accident of rhyme. Let poets
write short, sympathetic lives of men; let them write history, not
stories.
"And so we come to the school where the Professor has half an hour of
cross-questioning the best scholar, to the advantage of the whole
school; and such happy definitions, and such funny 'pokes' with the
mind and the walking-stick, and such instructive similes and amusing
information. They are rather annoyed when I tell them how great a man
my master is. Then they sing to him in good Scotch to his heart's
desire....
{94}
"At last he rises, and asking them something in a Gaelic too good, or
bad, or both (or rather book-born), to be understanded of them, he
breaks into a beautiful Gaelic lament, while the whole little audience
stands open-mouthed, eyed, and eared, and hardly recovers to whisper
'Good-bye, sir', ere he and I are out into the air again.
"I apologise for having given him such little work for so long, and he
hums out something in German, which he breaks half sternly to say:
'There are four things a man must love--children, flowers, woman,' and,
must I say it? 'wine.' He went on to tell me how hateful and horrible
a nature Napoleon's always had seemed to him. Napoleon said: 'I love
nothing, I love not woman, I love not dice, I love not wine, I love not
politics.'
"Then the hill came, and with the hill our thoughts could not help
climbing. Was I licensed? No, not ordained yet, of course. Would I
preach the splendid possibilities in man, to sink to the beasts which
perish, or to rise to heaven itself? He did not deny that the heart
was deceitful and desperately wicked, but should we not call on men to
realise for what they were made.... No man understands others, he
said, who does not leave himself more behind, and go and sit by others,
wherever they may be.
"He could not say what Greek one should read who had few books and less
time. 'No, read only where the heart runs; read nothing except that
about which you are passionate...' So I got no lists of authors or
works. 'Read where you are {95} thinking; don't read where you are not
feeling.' This and much more on war, churches, architecture, youth and
new opinions in theology, and materialism (he had read some of the
latter; he could n't for the life of him remember it) and philosophy.
"He talked," continues Barbour, "and I treasured up. But most on the
three tongues, and what was work for poets. Then came afternoon tea
and raillery between him and my mother. Then they packed into the pony
phaeton--my professor a perfect picture, his broad leghorn bright with
a flower, scarlet of seedum, fringed by golden yew, and the ladies a
good background."
So you see, it was the same John Stuart Blackie years and years before.
"Do stay to tea, man!" he urged, when I said I must be going, that
there would be just time to catch such-and-such a train for Glasgow
where an appointment was to be kept.
"Ah, then punctuality's the word. Be late and be nothing." He came
down to the front door with me, his leghorn flapping, his sash-ends
trailing on the stairs. There were volcanic salutations to portraits
which we had missed when going up. I said good-bye to the Grand Old
Man of Scotland.
"Good-bye," said he, "and dinna forget--Aristotle, Shakespeare, Goethe,
and the Apostle Paul--my heroes!"
In the gathering dusk I descended the steps, as he stood in the open
doorway, singing, and gazing towards the Corstorphine Hill.
{96}