Severe Drought--The Drive by Coach from Fort-William to
Kingussie--Breakfast at Moy--Where did Scott find Dominie Sampson's
"Pro-di-gi-ous!"?--Professor Blackie's Poem on Glencoe.
That the people of Lochaber and the Western Isles should be rejoicing
in the advent of heavy rains [August 1869], and seriously glad at the
reappearance of clouds in the heavens and mists upon the mountain
tops, may seem odd enough to those who know anything of our usual
meteorological characteristics; yet true it is, and of a verity that
so it is, for here, as elsewhere, the heat was for many consecutive
weeks intense, and the parching drought and fierce glare of a summer's
sun from a constantly unclouded sky well nigh unbearable by man or
beast, whether in the sheltered valley, where for days and days no
breath of air shook the tiniest leaflet or ruffled the surface of the
sullen tarn, or on the upland moor, where, if breath of air there was,
it was hot and stifling as the breath of a furnace. Were it not for
the occasional sea breezes, that sometimes of an evening swept over
the almost pulseless deep, and copious falls of blessed night-dews,
we should have been badly off indeed. But, as matters have turned out,
we have much reason to be thankful, for if our crops are not quite so
heavy as in average years, they are at least of excellent quality,
and being ripe sooner than usual, we have a chance of getting them
secured in a condition that will add immensely to their value. So
thorough and persistent was the drought even with us, that springs
failed that never before were known to refuse their waters to the
thirsty; and water-courses that heretofore, even in the driest years,
still presented shady pools connected by purling rivulets, were for
weeks together arid and waterless as the course of an ancient lava
stream. As you wandered among the hills you could set your fusee
alight on a stone in a torrent bed over which in ordinary summers
rolls a volume of foaming waters. The demand for beer wherever you
went was in these circumstances something wonderful; and at times,
on the arrival of coach or steamer with its load of panting tourists,
the bawling from husky throats for a supply--an instant and copious
supply--of the delicious liquid was sufficiently amusing. One of
the happiest illustrations of the proverbial close treading of the
ridiculous on the heels of the sublime, and the wafer-like thinness
of the partition that divides the sentimental from the absurd, was
Dr. Johnson's celebrated parody on the quasi-sentimental style of
poetry so much in vogue in his latter years--and sooth to say too much
in vogue in our day as well--a style as unlike the school of Pope as
you can well imagine, and the very antipodes of the sturdily masculine
and didactic strains which Johnson, an intellectual giant--for there
were giants in these days--alone accounted true poetry:--
"Hermit hoar, in solemn cell,
Wearing out life's evening grey,
Smite thy bosom, sage, and tell
What is bliss? and which the way?
"Thus I spoke; and speaking sighed;
Scarce repressed the starting tear;
When the smiling sage replied,--
'Come, my lad, and drink some beer!'"
And very well hit off, you will confess; an arrow shot from an Ulysses'
bow at the puling whimperers of a namby-pamby sentimentalism that they
miscalled poetry; but if we dared for the nonce to take these lines in
a more serious and literal sense than their author intended, we should
say that in such hot and parching weather as we have recently had, and
are still having, there is more "bliss" in a good draught of "Allsopp"
or "Bass" than is dreamt of in the philosophy of the sentimentalists,
and thousands upon thousands of this season's tourists are ready,
we'll be bound, to homologate this statement.
It was Dr. Johnson, too, if we remember well, who spoke loudly and
dogmatically, as was his wont, of the delightful feeling that one
has in being rapidly whirled along a good road in a post-chaise;
and remembering the unsteadiness of the "Rambler" on his pins, and
his unwieldy corporation, one can readily understand that he found
the means of locomotion referred to the easiest and most enjoyable
possible. Our own experience of post-chaises has, sooth to say, been
somewhat of the slightest, but in lieu thereof we would recommend
a well-appointed public coach, with sound, well-cared-for horses,
a steady and obliging driver and guard, good roads under foot, and a
bright sky above all; and such a conveyance we on a recent occasion
found the mail-coach between Fort-William and Kingussie to be; and
such a driver and guard, the two in one, is the renowned "Davie Jack,"
who knows his work, and does it too, in a style that reminds one of the
old "Defiance" in its palmiest days; while the weather, if anything,
was too fine, too bright and cloudless--the best fault it could have,
however, since it is impossible that the weather on any particular
day should be faultless, any more than that any human being should be
perfect. Nothing, indeed, can be finer than the drive through Lochaber
and Badenoch to Kingussie, except perhaps the drive back again. With
mountain scenery on all hands, unsurpassed even in the Highlands for
wild, and savage, and solitary grandeur; with foaming torrents dashing
down the steeps, torrents that at a distance and at this season look
like so many threads of purest silver constantly being absorbed and
inwefted with the river, that, with a voice more hushed, and a quieter,
kindlier step, still gladdens and fertilises the valley as it seeks
the sea; with loch and river scenery the most attractive and lovely;
and all, in short, that you can reasonably look for of the grand or
beautiful from the sea coast to the central Highlands. With all this,
and the redoubted "Davie" to handle the ribbons, as only "Davie" can
handle them--said "Davie" the while as full of anecdote, and joke,
and local tradition as an egg is full of meat--with all this we say,
and much more that might be mentioned, the man who cannot enjoy
such a journey at this season is little to be envied; for, be his
other qualities and qualifications what they may, his non-enjoyment
of such a drive clearly proves one of two things,--either he is
physically unwell, and out of sorts, and had better stay at home; or,
æsthetically, he has no eye for, and no appreciation of, some of the
most splendid scenery in the Highlands, and in that case is less to
be blamed than pitied. Even in winter we should say that this was the
readiest, as well as the most pleasant, line of intercommunication
between the north-western Highlands and the south. It were, finally,
unpardonable in us, who enjoyed it so much, not to mention the very
excellent breakfast on the up-journey, and the equally excellent and
substantial "tea," or tea-dinner rather, on returning, to be had in
the shepherd's house at Moy. It may seem unromantic and prosaic to
say so, but it is a fact nevertheless, that one's appreciation of the
sublime and beautiful--let Mr. Edmund Burke say what he likes--is not
a little enhanced by a due supply of creature comforts pari passû. If
one cannot carry the comforts of home about with him, any more than
honest Bailie Nicol Jarvie could carry about with him the comforts
of the "Sautmarket," it is no small matter to meet with good cheer
off a snow-white cloth, with the attentions of a smart, intelligent
serving girl, in odd and out-of-the-way places, where you least expect
it. Altogether, a trip by the Fort-William and Kingussie mail-coach
during the present fine weather is very enjoyable indeed--superior,
upon the whole, we should say, to the "Rambler's" post-chaise, not
forgetting that the latter is a solitary and somewhat surly sort of
business, whereas in the former you have the chance of pleasant and
agreeable companionship, in addition to its other attractions.
For one to make a discovery, and to think that oneself has made a
discovery, are two widely different things. We readily acknowledge
the distinction. That we have made a discovery we shall not venture
to affirm, but we think we have. Our discovery, if discovery it be,
is this, that Sir Walter Scott is indebted for Dominie Sampson's
"prodigious!" to Boswell's Life of Johnson. Who can think of the
worthy, kind-hearted, most unsophisticated, and withal most learned,
albeit life-long kirkless parson, without instantly recalling his
favourite exclamation of "Pro-di-gi-ous?" We stumbled on our discovery
in this wise:--A few evenings ago we were reading the third volume of a
very fine edition of Boswell's "Johnson," kindly placed at our disposal
by Lady Riddell of Strontian--and a good edition of a good book is no
small matter to one so far removed from libraries as we are--when we
came to a page that described Johnson's meeting with a gentleman who
had been his companion at Pembroke College, Oxford, some fifty years
previously. Mr. Edwards, for that was the gentleman's name, and Boswell
accompanied Johnson home, where, in course of conversation, Mr. Edwards
said, addressing Johnson, "Sir, I remember you would not let us say
prodigious at college. For even then, sir (turning to Boswell), he was
delicate in language, and we all feared him." Now, can any one doubt
that it was having his attention particularly called to the word in
this passage that made Scott first ponder the absurdity of using a word
of such volume and import on every trifling occasion, and caused him,
possibly at a long subsequent date (for Scott's memory, as we know,
was prodigiously retentive--there the word, you will observe, is pat
and appropriate enough--prodigiously retentive, we say, of words,
phrases, and odd turns of expression)--to put it so frequently as
an exclamation of unspeakable, indescribable import into the mouth
of honest Sampson, whom you can no more help laughing at, at times,
than you can loving him with all your heart always? The matter, after
all, may seem a trifle, and it is a trifle, but such trifles are dear
to the lovers of literature. Were Boswell in the flesh subsequent to
the publication of Guy Mannering, and had his attention drawn to such
a matter, slight as it seems, what a delightful chapter of gossip
he could write about it, with fresh reminiscences of his long and
intimate intercourse with his "illustrious friend," for whom till his
dying day he cherished so much veneration and awe, ever-more mingled
with most pardonable pride that he knew him as no one else knew him,
and loved him as no one else loved him, or perhaps could love him.
We have just been reading our friend Professor Blackie's poem on
"Glencoe." The manner in which he "goes at" his subject, to use a
sporting phrase, the life, and vigour, and swing, and fervour of
the whole, is most refreshing in these days of poetical (save the
mark!) namby-pambyisms, and eminently characteristic of the learned
Professor when at his best. Here you have him, like a knight of the
Middle Ages, high in his stirrups, with lance in rest, "Dh'aindeoin
co theireadh e!" blazing on his shield, and who shall dare to stop
his fierce career against the perpetrators of the foulest deed
on record? Less polished and less artistic than Aytoun's "Widow of
Glencoe," it is, nevertheless, the better poem, on such a subject, of
the two. Its very ruggedness and stern headlong force are its chief
charm, they best befit the theme. Blackie is terribly in earnest;
with Aytoun you cannot help feeling it was a mere matter of sentiment
and no more.