[Sidenote: ST. ANDREWS.]
Coming as they did through the darkness to St. Andrews, they saw
nothing of that “august appearance” which the seat of the most ancient
of the Scotch universities presented from afar. “It appears,” said
an early traveller, “much like Bruges in Flanders at a distance; its
colleges and fine steeples making a goodly appearance.”[449] They
arrived late, after a dreary drive, but “found a good supper at Glass’s
Inn, and Dr. Johnson revived agreeably.” Who was Glass and which was
his inn I could not ascertain. The old Scotch custom of calling a house
not after its sign but its landlord, renders identification difficult.
Wherever it was they found it full; but “by the interposition of some
invisible friend,” to use Johnson’s words, “lodgings were provided
at the house of one of the professors.” The invisible friend was a
relation of that “most universal genius,” Dr. Arbuthnot, whom Johnson
once ranked first among the writers in Queen Anne’s reign. Their host
was Dr. Robert Watson, the author of the _History of Philip II. and
Philip III. of Spain_, “an interesting, clear, well-arranged, and
rather feeble-minded work,” as Carlyle described it.[450] [Sidenote:
ST. LEONARD’S COLLEGE.] His house had formerly been part of St.
Leonard’s College, but had been purchased by him at the time when
that ancient institution, by being merged in St. Salvator’s, lost its
separate existence. A traveller who had visited St. Andrews about
the year 1723 saw the old cells of the monks, two storeys high, on
the southern side of the college. “On the west was a goodly pile of
buildings, but all out of repair.”[451] Wesley, who came to the town
three years after Johnson, does not seem to have known how large a part
of the old buildings had been converted into a private house, for he
wrote that “what was left of St. Leonard’s College was only a heap of
ruins.”[452] Of the inside of the ancient chapel Johnson could not get
a sight:
“I was always, by some civil excuse, hindered from entering
it. A decent attempt, as I was since told, has been made to
convert it into a kind of green-house, by planting its area
with shrubs. This new method of gardening is unsuccessful; the
plants do not hitherto prosper. To what use it will next be
put, I have no pleasure in conjecturing. It is something, that
its present state is at least not ostentatiously displayed.
Where there is yet shame, there may in time be virtue.”
[Illustration: ST. LEONARD’S COLLEGE.]
The virtue was somewhat slow in coming. Saint-Fond, who got a peep into
the chapel, inferred that it was used for a winter store-house for the
carrots and turnips which grew in the kitchen-garden that surrounded
it. It has of late years been cleared of rubbish and restored to
decency, which, perhaps, is all the restoration that is desirable. Some
shrubs and overhanging trees have been allowed to throw a graceful
veil over man’s neglect. One strange sight the old monkish cells had
witnessed earlier in the century. A man of liberal views had been
elected Rector of the University. In his honour “the students made
a bonfire at St. Leonard’s Gate, into which they threw some of the
Calvinistic systems which they were enjoined to read.”[453] Not very
many years before this innocent and even meritorious sacrifice was
made, the terrible flames of religious persecution had blazed up in
this city dedicated to piety and learning. It is possible that Johnson
passed in the streets some aged man who in his childhood had seen a
miserable woman burnt to death for witchcraft on the Witch Hill. So
late as the seventh year of the present century a gentleman was living
who had known a person who had witnessed this dreadful sight.[454]
In Dr. Watson’s house the two travellers “found very comfortable
and genteel accommodation.” The host “wondered at Johnson’s total
inattention to established manners;” but he does not seem to have let
his wonder be discovered by his guest. “I take great delight in him,”
said Johnson. How much delight Watson took in him we are not told.
“He allowed him a very strong understanding;” and as well he might,
for he heard some “good talk.” It was at his breakfast-table that
Johnson proudly pointed out how authors had at length shaken themselves
free of patrons. “Learning,” he said, “is a trade. We have done with
patronage. If learning cannot support a man, if he must sit with his
hands across till somebody feeds him, it is as to him a bad thing.” It
was here, moreover, that he gave that amusing account of the change of
manners in his lifetime. “I remember (said he) when all the _decent_
people in Lichfield got drunk every night, and were not the worse
thought of.” That smoking had gone out seemed to him strange, for it
was “a thing which requires so little exertion, and yet preserves the
mind from total vacuity.”
[Sidenote: BUCHANAN’S HOUSE.]
The exact spot where he was so comfortably lodged is doubtful. In the
Hebrides some of the chambers in which he slept are still known. In
a University, where the traditions of a scholar should surely linger
long, the very house has been forgotten. It is believed, however, that
Dr. Watson occupied that part of the ancient building which had once
been Buchanan’s residence. Some portion of that great scholar’s study
still remains, having outlived both time and change. Yet that Johnson
should not have been informed of a fact which to him would have been
so interesting, or that being informed he should not have mentioned
it, is indeed surprising. His admiration for Buchanan’s genius seems
almost unbounded. If the city attracted him because it had once been
archiepiscopal, so did the University, because in it Buchanan had
once taught philosophy. “His name,” he adds, “has as fair a claim to
immortality as can be conferred by modern latinity, and perhaps a
fairer than the instability of vernacular languages admits.” Sir Walter
Scott loved him almost as much as Johnson. “He was his favourite Latin
poet as well as historian.”[455]
Our travellers rose “much refreshed” from their fatigue, and to the
enjoyment of a very fine day. They went forth to view the ruins not
only of a cathedral, but almost of a city and a University. That
it had once flourished as a city was shown by history: its ancient
magnificence as the seat of a great archbishopric was witnessed by “the
mournful memorials” which had escaped the hands of the devastator. Of
its three Colleges only two were standing. It was “the skeleton of a
venerable city,” said Smollett.[456] Many years earlier a traveller,
applying to it Lord Rochester’s words, had described it as being “in
its full perfection of decay.” Pennant, who visited it only the year
before Johnson, on entering the West Port, saw a well-built street,
straight, and of a vast length and breadth, lying before him; but it
was so grass-grown, and so dreary a solitude, that it seemed as if it
had been laid waste by pestilence.[457] Another traveller, who came a
little later, praised “the noble wide street,” but lamented that most
of the houses were “disfigured by what is termed a _fore-stair_—that
is, an open staircase on the outside, carried in a zigzag manner across
the front of the house.” Before most of them was heaped up a huge
dunghill.[458] A young English student fresh from Eton, the grandson
of Bishop Berkeley, who entered the University about the year 1778,
on seeing “this dreary deserted city, wept to think that he was to
remain there three long years.” So fond nevertheless did he become of
the place that “he shed more tears at leaving than at entering.”[459]
Saint-Fond saw grass growing in all the streets: “Tout y est triste,
silencieux; le peuple, y vivant dans l’ignorance des arts et du
commerce, offre l’image de l’insouciance et de la langueur.”[460]
[Sidenote: GRASS-GROWN STREETS.] I was told by an old inhabitant that
not a single new house was built till after the year 1851, and that not
long before that time sheep might be seen feeding in the grass-grown
streets. Our travellers were touched by the general gloom. “It was,”
said Boswell, “somewhat dispiriting to see this ancient archiepiscopal
city now sadly deserted.” “One of its streets,” wrote Johnson, “is
now lost; and in those that remain there is the silence and solitude
of inactive indigence and gloomy depopulation.” This loss of a street
seems to have been imaginary. He was speaking, no doubt, of the road
known under the name of _The Scores_, which runs in front of the
Castle, and follows the line of the coast. But along its course neither
pavements nor foundations have ever been discovered.[461] Nevertheless
the desolation was very great. [Sidenote: THE CASTLE.] Over one ruin,
however, a good man might have justly exulted. In the archbishops’
castle on the edge of the sea is shown the dreadful pit in which the
unhappy prisoner, far below the level of the ground, spent his weary
days in wretchedness and darkness, listening to the beating of the
waves. Here ofttimes he waited for the hour to come when he should be
raised by a rope to the surface, as if he were a bucket of water, and
not a man, and dragged off to die before the people. Sometimes those
poor eyes, grown weak by a darkness which was never broken, of a sudden
had to face, not only the light of day, but the blaze of the torch
which was to kindle the martyr’s pile. Thinking on all this—on Patrick
Hamilton, on Henry Forrest, on George Wishart, and on Walter Milne, who
for their faith suffered death by fire at St. Andrews—who does not
rejoice that this dismal den was shattered to pieces, and that where
once “an atheous priest” made the good tremble by his frown, now on the
pleasant sward innocent children play about, and strangers from afar
idly dream an hour away?
[Illustration: ST. ANDREWS CASTLE.