PART I.—1809–1818

EDINBURGH

SKETCHES & MEMORIES

BY

DAVID MASSON

PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH

LONDON AND EDINBURGH

ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK

1892

PREFATORY NOTE

The following Papers, though in their collected state they have a

certain continuity of general subject, were written at different times

and for different purposes. One is a modified reprint of an article

which appeared in the _Westminster Review_ as long ago as 1856. Seven of

the others were contributed, at intervals within the last twelve years,

to _Macmillan’s Magazine_, _The Scotsman_, or _The Scots Observer_, and

are reprinted now with courteous permission. The remaining five are from

manuscript of various dates since 1867, and are now published for the

first time. An occasional small recurrence of fact or of phrase in the

series may be excused in consideration that the Papers, thus written

separately, may still be read separately.

EDINBURGH: _March 1892_.

CONTENTS

PAGE

I. QUEEN MARY’S EDINBURGH:—

1. Queen Mary’s Return to Scotland, August 1561 1

2. Plan and Fabric of Edinburgh in 1561 9

3. The Edinburgh Population in 1561 20

II. ROBERT ROLLOCK AND THE BEGINNINGS OF EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY 35

III. KING JAMES’S FAREWELL TO HOLYROOD 61

IV. PROPOSED MEMORIAL TO DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN 76

V. ALLAN RAMSAY 88

VI. LADY WARDLAW AND THE BARONESS NAIRNE 110

VII. EDINBURGH THROUGH THE DUNDAS DESPOTISM 141

VIII. THE LAST YEARS OF SIR WALTER SCOTT 204

IX. CARLYLE’S EDINBURGH LIFE:—

Part I.—1809–1818 226

Part II.—1818–1822 262

Part III.—1822–1828 302

X. CHARLES KIRKPATRICK SHARPE 359

XI. JOHN HILL BURTON 372

XII. DR. JOHN BROWN OF EDINBURGH 384

XIII. LITERARY HISTORY OF EDINBURGH: A GENERAL REVIEW 417

QUEEN MARY’S EDINBURGH[1]

I.—QUEEN MARY’S RETURN TO SCOTLAND, AUGUST 1561

On a clear day the inhabitants of Edinburgh, by merely ascending the

Calton Hill or any other of the familiar heights in or around their

city, can have a view of nearly the whole length of their noble estuary,

the Firth of Forth. To the right or east, its entrance from the open

sea, between the two shires of Fife and Haddington, is marked most

conspicuously on the Haddingtonshire side by a distant conical mound,

called Berwick Law, rising with peculiar distinctness from the northward

curve of land which there bounds the horizon. It is thither that the eye

is directed if it would watch the first appearance of steamers and ships

from any part of the world that may be bound up the Firth for Edinburgh

by its port of Leith. Moving thence westward, the eye can command easily

the twenty miles more of the Firth which these ships and steamers have

to traverse. The outlines of both shores, though the breadth between

them averages twelve miles, may be traced with wonderful sharpness,

pleasingly defined as they are by their little bays and promontories,

and by the succession of towns and fishing villages with which they are

studded. Of these, Musselburgh on the near side marks the transition

from the shire of Haddington to that of Edinburgh; after which point the

Firth begins to narrow. Just below Edinburgh itself, where its port of

Leith confronts the Fifeshire towns of Kinghorn and Burntisland, with

the island of Inchkeith a little to the right between, the breadth is

about six miles. There the main maritime interest of the Firth ceases,

few ships going farther up; but, for any eye that can appreciate scenic

beauty, there remains the delight of observing the continued course of

the Firth westward to Queensferry and beyond, a riband of flashing water

between the two coasts which are known prosaically as those of

Linlithgowshire and West Fifeshire, but which, in their quiet and mystic

remoteness, look like a tract of some Arthurian dreamland.

While something of all this is to be seen on almost any day from any of

the eminences in or near Edinburgh, it is only on rare occasions that it

can be all seen to perfection. Frequently, even in sunny weather, when

the sky is blue above, a haze overspreads the Firth, concealing the

Fifeshire shore, or blurring it into a vague cloud-like bank. Sometimes,

on the other hand, when there is little sunshine, and the day seems

rather sombre in the Edinburgh streets, the view of the Firth and of the

other surroundings of the city from any of the higher spots is amazingly

distinct to the utmost possible distance, though with the distinctness

of a drawing in pen and ink. Worst of all the atmospheric conditions for

a survey of the Firth, or of the scenery generally, from Edinburgh, is

that of the thick, dull, drizzling, chilling, and piercing fog or mist,

called locally a _haar_, which the easterly wind brings up at certain

seasons from the sea. Up the Firth this _haar_ will creep or roll,

converting the whole aerial gap between the opposed shores into a mere

continuous trough of seething and impenetrable mist, or of rain and mist

commingled, drenching the Fifeshire hills on the one side, enveloping

all Edinburgh on the other, and pushing itself still westward and inland

over the higher and narrower reaches of the estuary, till the aforesaid

tract of gleaming Arthurian scenery is absorbed into the long foggy

gloom, and even Alloa and Stirling feel the discomfort. No chance then,

from any height near Edinburgh, of seeing the ships and steamers in any

part of their course from the mouth of the Firth to the port of Leith.

If any there be, they are down in the vast abysm of mist, at anchor for

safety, or piloting their Leithward course slowly and cautiously through

the opaque element, with bells ringing, horns blowing, and now and then

a boom from the cannon on the deck to warn off other vessels or

ascertain their own whereabouts. So even during the day; but, when the

_haar_ lasts through the night, and the opaque gray of the air is

deepened into an equally opaque black or umber, the confusion is still

greater. The sounds of fog-signals from the bewildered vessels are

incessant; the shore-lights from the piers and landing-places can throw

their yellow glare but a little way into the turbid consistency; and, if

any adventurous vessel does manage to warp herself into port in such

circumstances, it is with excited vociferation and stamping among those

on board, and no less hurry-skurry among the men ashore who assist in

the feat. Happily, an Edinburgh _haar_ at once of such dense quality and

of long duration is a rare occurrence. April and May are the likeliest

months for the phenomenon, and it passes usually within twenty-four

hours. It may come later in the year, however, and may last longer.

Just after the middle of August 1561, as we learn from contemporary

records, there was a _haar_ of unusual intensity and continuance over

Edinburgh and all the vicinity. It began on Sunday the 17th, and it

lasted, with slight intermissions, till Thursday the 21st. “Besides the

surfett weat and corruptioun of the air,” writes Knox, then living in

Edinburgh, “the myst was so thick and dark that skairse mycht any man

espy ane other the lenth of two pair of butts.” It was the more

unfortunate because it was precisely in those days of miserable fog and

drizzle that Mary, Queen of Scots, on her return to Scotland after her

thirteen years of residence and education in France, had to form her

first real acquaintance with her native shores and the capital of her

realm.

She had left Calais for the homeward voyage on Thursday the 14th August,

with a retinue of about 120 persons, French and Scottish, embarked in

two French state galleys, attended by several transports. They were a

goodly company, with rich and splendid baggage. The Queen’s two most

important uncles, indeed,—the great Francis de Lorraine, Duke of Guise,

and his brother, Charles de Lorraine, the Cardinal,—were not on board.

They, with the Duchess of Guise and other senior lords and ladies of the

French Court, had bidden Mary farewell at Calais, after having

accompanied her thither from Paris, and after the Cardinal had in vain

tried to persuade her not to take her costly collection of pearls and

other jewels with her, but to leave them in his keeping till it should

be seen how she might fare among her Scottish subjects. But on board the

Queen’s own galley were three others of her Guise or Lorraine

uncles,—the Duke d’Aumale, the Grand Prior, and the Marquis

d’Elbeuf,—with M. Damville, son of the Constable of France, and a number

of French gentlemen of lower rank, among whom one notes especially young

Pierre de Bourdeilles, better known afterwards in literary history as

Sieur de Brantôme, and a sprightly and poetic youth from Dauphiné, named

Chastelard, one of the attendants of M. Damville. With these were mixed

the Scottish contingent of the Queen’s train, her four famous “Marys”

included,—Mary Fleming, Mary Livingstone, Mary Seton, and Mary Beaton.

They had been her playfellows and little maids of honour long ago in her

Scottish childhood; they had accompanied her when she went abroad, and

had lived with her ever since in France; and they were now returning

with her, Scoto-Frenchwomen like herself, and all of about her own age,

to share her new fortunes.

It is to Brantôme that we owe what account we have of the voyage from

Calais. He tells us how the Queen could hardly tear herself away from

her beloved France, but kept gazing at the French coast hour after hour

so long as it was in sight, shedding tears with every look, and

exclaiming again and again, “_Adieu, ma chère France! je ne vous verray

jamais plus!_” He tells us how, when at length they did lose sight of

France, and were on the open sea northward with a fair wind, there was

some anxiety lest they should be intercepted, and the Queen taken

prisoner by an English fleet. In the peculiar state of the relations

between England and Scotland at the time, this was not an impossibility,

and would hardly have been against the law of nations. There had been

some angry correspondence between Elizabeth and Mary respecting the

non-ratification by Mary of a certain “Treaty of Edinburgh” of the

previous year, stipulating that she would desist from her claim to

Elizabeth’s throne of England. Elizabeth had consequently refused Mary’s

application for a safeguard for her homeward journey; and there was

actually an English squadron in the North Sea available for the capture

of Mary if Elizabeth had chosen to give the word. But, though the

English squadron does seem to have waylaid the French galleys, and one

of the transports following the galleys was taken and detained for some

reason or other, the galleys themselves, by rapid sailing or by English

sufferance, threw that danger behind, and approached the Scottish coast

in perfect safety. What then astonished Brantôme, and what he seems to

have remembered all his life with a kind of horror in association with

his first introduction to Queen Mary’s native climate and kingdom, was

the extraordinary fog, the _si grand brouillard_, in which they suddenly

found themselves. “On a Sunday morning, the day before we came to

Scotland,” he says, “there rose so great a fog that we could not see

from the stern to the prow, much to the discomfiture of the pilots and

crews, so that we were obliged to let go the anchor in the open sea, and

take soundings to know where we were.” Brantôme’s measure of time

becomes a little incoherent at this point; and we hardly know from his

language whether it was outside the Firth of Forth altogether, or inside

of the Firth about Berwick Law, that the fog caught them, if indeed he

remembered that there was such a thing as an estuary at all between the

open sea and Leith. He distinctly says, however, that they were a whole

day and night in the fog, and that he and the other Frenchmen were

blaspheming Scotland a good deal on account of it before they did reach

Leith. That, as other authorities inform us, was about ten o’clock in

the morning of Tuesday the 19th.

The Leith people and the Edinburgh people were quite unprepared, the

last intimation from France having pointed to the end of the month as

the probable time of the Queen’s arrival, if she were to be expected at

all. But the cannon-shots from the galleys, as they contrived to near

Leith harbour, were, doubtless, a sufficient advertisement. Soon, so far

as the fog would permit, all Leith was in proper bustle, and all the

political and civic dignitaries that chanced to be in Edinburgh were

streaming to Leith. Not till the evening, according to one account, not

till next morning, according to another, did the Queen leave her galley

and set foot on shore. Then, to allow a few hours more for getting her

Palace of Holyrood, and her escort thither, into tolerable readiness,

she took some rest in the house in Leith deemed most suitable for her

reception, the owner being Andrew Lamb, a wealthy Leith merchant. It was

in the afternoon of Wednesday, the 20th of August, that there was the

procession on horseback of the Queen, her French retinue, and the

gathered Scottish lords and councillors, through the two miles of road

which led from Leith to Holyrood. On the way the Queen was met by a

deputation of the Edinburgh craftsmen and their apprentices, craving her

royal pardon for the ringleaders in a recent riot, in which the Tolbooth

had been broken open and the Magistrates insulted and defied. This act

of grace accorded as a matter of course, the Queen was that evening in

her hall of Holyrood, the most popular of sovereigns for the moment, her

uncles and other chiefs of her escort with her, and the rest dispersed

throughout the apartments, while outside, in spite of the fog, there

were bonfires of joy in the streets and up the slopes of Arthur Seat,

and a crowd of cheering loiterers moved about in the space between the

palace-gate and the foot of the Canongate. Imparting some regulation to

the proceedings of this crowd, for a while at least, was a special

company of the most “honest” of the townsmen, “with instruments of

musick and with musicians,” admitted within the gate, and tendering the

Queen their salutations, instrumental and vocal, under her

chamber-window. “The melody, as she alledged, lyked her weill, and she

willed the same to be continewed some nightis after.” This is Knox’s

account; but Brantôme tells a different story. After noting the

wretchedness of the hackneys provided for the procession from Leith to

Holyrood, and the poorness of their harnessings and trappings, the sight

of which, he says, made the Queen weep, he goes on to mention the

evening serenade under the windows of Holyrood as the very completion of

the day’s disagreeables. The Abbey itself, he admits, was a fine enough

building; but, just as the Queen had supped and wanted to go to sleep,

“there came under her window five or six hundred rascals of the town to

serenade her with vile fiddles and rebecks, such as they do not lack in

that country, setting themselves to sing psalms, and singing so ill and

in such bad accord that there could be nothing worse. Ah! what music,

and what a lullaby for the night!” Whether Knox’s account of the Queen’s

impressions of the serenade or Brantôme’s is to be accepted, there can

be no doubt that the matter and intention of the performance were

religious. Our authentic picture, therefore, of Queen Mary’s first night

in Holyrood after her return from France is that of the Palace lit up

within, the dreary fog still persistent outside, the bonfires on Arthur

Seat and other vantage-grounds flickering through the fog, and the

portion of the wet crowd nearest the Palace singing Protestant psalms

for the Queen’s delectation to an accompaniment of violins.

Next day, Thursday the 21st, this memorable Edinburgh _haar_ of August

1561 came to an end. Arthur Seat and the other heights and ranges of the

park round Holyrood wore, we may suppose, their freshest verdure; and

Edinburgh, dripping no longer, shone forth, we may hope, in her sunniest

beauty. The Queen could then become more particularly acquainted with

the Palace in which she had come to reside, and with the nearer aspects

of the town to which the Palace was attached, and into which she had yet

to make her formal entry.

II.—PLAN AND FABRIC OF THE TOWN IN 1561

Then, as now, the buildings that went by the general name of Holyrood

were distinguishable into two portions. There was the Abbey, now

represented only by one beautiful and spacious fragment of ruin, called

the Royal Chapel, but then, despite the spoliations to which it had been

subjected by recent English invasions, still tolerably preserved in its

integrity as the famous edifice, in Early Norman style, which had been

founded in the twelfth century by David I., and had been enlarged in the

fifteenth by additions in the later and more florid Gothic. Close by

this was Holyrood House, or the Palace proper, built in the earlier part

of the sixteenth century, and chiefly by James IV., to form a distinct

royal dwelling, and so supersede that occasional accommodation in the

Abbey itself which had sufficed for Scottish sovereigns before Edinburgh

was their habitual or capital residence. One block of this original

Holyrood House still remains in the two-turreted projection of the

present Holyrood which adjoins the ruined relic of the Abbey, and which

contains the rooms now specially shown as “Queen Mary’s Apartments.” But

the present Holyrood, as a whole, is a construction of the reign of

Charles II., and gives little idea of the Palace in which Mary took up

her abode in 1561. The two-turreted projection on the left was not

balanced then, as now, by a similar two-turreted projection on the

right, with a façade of less height between, but was flanked on the

right by a continued chateau-like frontage, of about the same height as

the turreted projection, and at a uniform depth of recess from it, but

independently garnished with towers and pinnacles. The main entrance

into the Palace from the great outer courtyard was through this

chateau-like flank, just about the spot where there is the entrance

through the present middle façade; and this entrance led, like the

present, into an inner court or quadrangle, built round on all the four

sides. That quadrangle of chateau, touching the Abbey to the back from

its north-eastern corner, and with the two-turreted projection to its

front from its north-western corner, constituted, indeed, the main bulk

of the Palace. There were, however, extensive appurtenances of other

buildings at the back or at the side farthest from the Abbey, forming

minor inner courts, while part of that side of the great outer courtyard

which faced the entrance was occupied by offices belonging to the

Palace, and separating the courtyard from the adjacent purlieus of the

town. For the grounds of both Palace and Abbey were encompassed by a

wall, having gates at various points of its circuit, the principal and

most strongly guarded of which was the Gothic porch admitting from the

foot of the Canongate into the front courtyard. The grounds so enclosed

were ample enough to contain gardens and spaces of plantation, besides

the buildings and their courts. Altogether, what with the buildings

themselves, what with the courts and gardens, and what with the natural

grandeur of the site,—a level of deep and wooded park, between the

Calton heights and crags on the one hand and the towering shoulders of

Arthur Seat and precipitous escarpment of Salisbury Crags on the

other,—Holyrood in 1561 must have seemed, even to an eye the most

satiated with palatial splendours abroad, a sufficiently impressive

dwelling-place to be the metropolitan home of Scottish royalty.

The town itself, of which Holyrood was but the eastward terminus,

corresponded singularly well. Edinburgh even now is, more than almost

any other city in Europe, a city of heights and hollows, and owes its

characteristic and indestructible beauty to that fact. But the

peculiarity of Old Edinburgh was that it consisted mainly of that one

continuous ridge of street which rises, by gradual ascent for a whole

mile, from the deeply-ensconced Holyrood at one end to the high Castle

Rock at the other, sending off on both sides a multiplicity of narrow

foot-passages, called closes, with a few wider and more street-like

cuttings, called wynds, all of which slope downward from the main ridge

in some degree, while many descend from it with the steepness of

mountain gullies into the parallel ravines. Whoever walks now from

Holyrood to the Castle, up the Canongate, the High Street, and the

Lawnmarket, walks through that portion of the present “Old Town” which

figures to us the main Edinburgh of Queen Mary’s time, and is in fact

its residue. But imagination and some study of old maps and records are

necessary to divest this residue of its acquired irrelevancies, and so

to reconvert it into the actual Edinburgh of three hundred years ago.

The divisions of the great ridge of street from Holyrood to the Castle

were the same as now, with the same names; but objects once conspicuous

in each have disappeared, and the features of each have been otherwise

altered.

The first part of the long ascent from Holyrood was the Canongate.

Though occupying nearly half of the whole, and in complete junction with

the Edinburgh proper up to which it led, it was a separate “burgh of

regality,” which had formed itself, as its name implies, under the

protection of the abbots and canons of Holyrood. By virtue of that

original, it was not yet included in the municipal jurisdiction of the

Edinburgh Magistrates and Town Council, but held out under a magistracy

of its own. Hence some characteristics distinguishing this lower part of

the ascent from the rest. The old Canongate was by no means the dense

exhibition of dingy picturesqueness now known as the Canongate of

Edinburgh, with repulsive entries and closes on both sides, leading to

cages of crammed humanity of the poorer sort, or to inner recesses of

bone-yards, pipe-clay yards, and the like. It had the sparseness and

airiness of a suburb of the Court. The houses, whether of stone or

partly of wood, were pretty thickly put together, indeed, along the

immediate street-margins, with the inevitable access to many of them by

entries and closes, but did not go so deeply back on either side as not

to leave room for pleasant gardens and tracts of vacant ground behind. A

paved and causewayed street, ascending continuously between two rows of

houses, of irregular forms and varying heights, but few of them of more

than three storeys; other houses at the backs of these to some little

depth all the way, reached by closes from the street, and generally set

gablewise to those in front; and, behind these again, garden grounds and

grassy slopes and hollows: such was the ancient Canongate. In token of

its claims to be a separate burgh, it had its own market cross, and,

near this, its own Tolbooth or prison and council-house. The present

Canongate Tolbooth, though an antique object, is only the successor of

the older Canongate Tolbooth of Queen Mary’s time.

The ending of the Canongate and beginning of the High Street of

Edinburgh proper was at a cross street, the left arm of which,

descending from the ridge into the ravine on that side, was called St.

Mary’s Wynd, while the arm to the right was called Leith Wynd. Here, to

mark more emphatically the transition from the smaller burgh into the

greater, one encountered the separating barrier of the Nether Bow Port.

It has left no trace of itself now, but was a battlemented stone

structure, spanning the entire breadth of the thoroughfare, with an

arched gateway in the middle and gates for admission or exclusion. That

passed, one was in the lower portion of the High Street, called

specifically the Nether Bow. Here, it was not merely the increasing

breadth of the thoroughfare and the increasing height of the houses that

showed one had come within the boundaries of the real civic and

commercial Edinburgh. No such sparseness of building now as in the

Canongate; no mere double fringe of houses to a short depth, with

entries and closes ending in gardens and vacant ground; but a sense of

being between two masses of densely-peopled habitations, clothing the

declivities from the ridge to their lowest depths on both sides, and

penetrable only by those courts and wynds of which one saw the mouths,

but the labyrinthine intricacy of which in the course of their descent

baffled conception.

The same sensation accompanied one on advancing still upwards into the

middle and broadest part of the High Street. Here the street had much

the same striking appearance as now. One saw a spacious incline of

oblong piazza, rather than a street, lined by buildings, some of solid

stone throughout and very tall, others lower and timber-fronted, all of

quaint architecture from their basements to their peaked roofs and

chimneys, and not a few with “fore-stairs,” or projecting flights of

steps from doors on the first floor down to the causeway. It was here,

too, that the lateral fringes of habitation down the steep alleys were

of greatest width. That on the right was stopped only at the bottom of

the ravine on that side by a lake called the North Loch, while that on

the left, after reaching the bottom of the other ravine, mingled itself

there with an independent and very aristocratic suburb that had grown up

in the ravine itself, under the name of the Cowgate, as a southern

parallel of relief to the main Edinburgh of the ridge above. This

low-lying, aristocratic suburb, though accessible from the piazza of the

High Street by the wynds and closes on the southern side, did not come

easily into the cognisance of a stranger that might be exploring the

piazza itself. He had enough to arrest his attention where he was. One

difference between the old High Street and the present, despite their

general resemblance, consisted in a huge obstruction, now removed, which

interrupted the old High Street at its very midmost point, immediately

above the Town Cross. Just above the spot now marked in the causeway as

the site of this Town Cross, and beginning exactly where the great

church of St. Giles protrudes its complex pile on the left and raises

into the sky its remarkable tower and open octagonal crown of stonework,

there stood in the old High Street a stack of lofty masonry, stretching

up the centre of the street for a considerable way, and leaving only a

gloomy and tortuous lane for pedestrians along the buttresses of the

church on one side, and a somewhat wider channel,—called the

Luckenbooths,—for shops and traffic, on the other. The lower portion of

this obstructive stack of masonry belonged to the Luckenbooths, and was

included in the name, the basement being let out in shops or stalls for

goods, while the upper floors were parcelled out as dwellings. The

higher and larger portion, separated from the lower by a narrow suture

called “The Kirk Stile,” was nothing less than the famous Heart of

Midlothian itself, or Old Tolbooth, which had served hitherto as the

_prætorium burgi_, at once the jail of Edinburgh, its Town Council

House, the seat of the Supreme Courts of Justice for Scotland, and the

occasional meeting-place of a Scottish Parliament. Little wonder if one

lingered round this core of the High Street and of the whole town. The

channel of the Luckenbooths on one side of the street, the lane between

the Tolbooth and St. Giles’s on the other, and the cross passage or Kirk

Stile, were worth more than one perambulation, if only on account of

their amusing interconnection; at the back of St. Giles’s Church,

overhanging the Cowgate, was St. Giles’s Churchyard, the chief cemetery

of the town; and the Tolbooth alone might well detain one by its look

and the interest of its associations. In 1561 they were voting it to be

too old and decayed, if not too unsightly, for the various and important

purposes which it had hitherto served; and within a few months from our

present date there was to be an order for its demolition, and for the

erection of another building more suitable for those purposes, and

especially for the accommodation of the Lords of Council and Session.

But, though they did then begin to take it down, and though a “New

Tolbooth” or “Council House” was built near it in the same part of the

High Street, the old or original Tolbooth escaped its doom, and was left

standing after all. A little re-edified, it was to survive its more

modern substitute, and to be known till 1817 as at least the Jail of

Edinburgh and real old Heart of Midlothian. Some persons still alive can

remember it.

The Tolbooth having been passed, one was again in an open piazza of tall

or tallish houses, nearly as broad as the former piazza, but farther up

the incline, and known indifferently as the High Street above the

Tolbooth or as the Lawnmarket. Here, also, one could not but note the

number of the closes and wynds on both sides, plunging down the

house-laden slopes with break-neck precipitancy from the vertebral

street. At the head of this piazza, however, where it began to narrow,

and where there was an obstruction across it in the form of a clumsy

building called the Butter Tron or Weigh-House, there was one offshoot

to the left of greater consequence than any mere wynd or close. This was

the West Bow, a steep zigzag or spiral kind of street of antique houses,

bringing one down to the deeply-sunk Grassmarket or Horsemarket, _i.e._

to a large square space opening out from the end of the Cowgate, and

convenient for the country people coming into the town with cattle.

Refraining from this descent by the West Bow, and keeping still to the

vertebral street, one reached the last portion of the long causewayed

and inhabited ridge. This was the Castle Hill, a narrowish continuation

of the High Street, so steep as to require climbing rather than walking,

but up which, nevertheless, there was still a plentiful straggling of

houses, perched anyhow, with closes and paved yards reticulating what

lateral depth of earth they could cling to, and with views of dizzying

profundity from their back windows.

All civic Edinburgh thus left behind, and a military portal having been

passed, one entered the precincts of the Castle itself,—the high, rocky

stronghold which was more ancient than anything recognisable as most

ancient in the Edinburgh beneath, which indeed had fostered that

Edinburgh into its first existence and growth, and in which there were

relics of days older than those of Malcolm Canmore and David I., older

than the infancy of Holyrood Abbey. After the long walk upwards between

the two lines of close-packed houses, with perpetual mouths of mere

wynds and closes for a whole mile, it was something to emerge into the

open air, even in the battlemented exterior esplanade or courtyard of

this Castle, slanting up the hillside to the moat and drawbridge. It was

more to be allowed to pass the drawbridge and the other defences, and so

to pursue the winding, rock-hewn track by which one mounted to the

fortified aggregate of guard-houses, store-rooms, and royal towers,

heaved together on the cliff-bound summit. What a platform then to stand

on, beside the cannon, in any of the ledges of the embrasured parapet!

The feeling for scenery, they say, had not been much developed in the

sixteenth century; but no more in that century than in this could any

human eye have gazed with indifference on the vast panorama of Scottish

land and water that burst into the vision from Edinburgh’s Castle Rock.

To the north there were villages and farmsteads dotting the range of

fields towards the Firth which is now covered with the streets of the

New Town, and beyond these always the unwearying loveliness of the face

of the Firth, with the boundary of the Fifeshire hills; to the west, the

near Corstorphines, and over these also a tract of varied country,

fading away up the course of the Firth into a purple suggestion of

Stirling and the first spurs of the Highlands; to the south, the Braids

and the Pentlands, hiding the pastoral territory of the Esks and the

Upper Tweed, with its sleepy stretch towards the Borders and England.

Scores of castles and keeps, each the residence of some nobleman or

laird of distinction, could be counted within this sweep of the eye,

north, west, and south, over the immediate vicinity of Edinburgh. But,

if one’s interest were still rather in the town itself, it was the

eastward glance that would help most to complete and define the previous

impressions. The whole sea-approach to Edinburgh by the Firth was now

splendidly visible, with the already described curve of the hither coast

from Berwick Law to Leith; the road from Leith to Holyrood was plainly

discernible; and the Canongate and Edinburgh could be looked down upon

together, and seen in connected shape and ground-plan.

However slight the defences of the Canongate and Holyrood, Edinburgh

proper, it could now be seen, was carefully enclosed and bastioned. On

the north side, the North Loch, washing the base of the Castle Rock and

filling the valley through which the railway now runs, was sufficient

protection; but all the rest of the town was bounded in by a wall,

called the Flodden Wall. It had been constructed mainly in the panic

after the battle of Flodden in 1513 to supersede an older and less

perfect circumvallation, but had been much repaired and modified since.

It started from the east end of the North Loch and ran thence along

Leith Wynd and St. Mary’s Wynd, crossing the High Street at the Nether

Bow Port, and so shutting out the Canongate; it then went so far south

as to include the whole of the Cowgate and some space of the heights

beyond the ravine of the Cowgate; and the west bend of its irregular

rectangle, after recrossing this ravine a little beyond the Grassmarket,

riveted itself to the Castle Rock, on its most precipitous side, at the

head of the High Street. There were several gates in the circuit of the

wall besides the Nether Bow Port, the chief being the Cowgate Port,

which was also to the east, the Kirk of Field Port (afterwards Potter

Row Port) and Greyfriars Port (afterwards Bristo Port), both to the

south, and the West Port, just beyond the Grassmarket and the sole inlet

from the west. When these gates were closed, Edinburgh could rest within

herself, tolerably secure from external attack, and conscious of a

reserve of strength in the cannon and garrison of the dominating Castle.

Even if the town itself should yield to a siege, the Castle could hold

out as a separate affair, impregnable, or almost impregnable, within her

own fortifications. Successful assaults on Edinburgh Castle were among

the rarest and most memorable accidents of Scottish history.

III.—THE EDINBURGH POPULATION IN 1561

Such having been the fabric or shell of Edinburgh in 1561, what was the

contained life?

The entire population, the Canongate included, was probably less than

30,000; but, confined as this population was within such strait limits,

obliged to accommodate itself to one such ridgy backbone of principal

street, with off-going wynds and closes and but one considerable and

low-lying parallel, and having to make up, therefore, by the vertical

height of the houses for the impossibility of spreading them out, its

compression of itself within the houses must have been exceedingly

dense. As the political capital of the nation, the seat of Government

and of the Central Law Courts, Edinburgh not only counted a number of

families of rank among its habitual residents, but drew into it, for

part of every year at least, representatives of the Scottish nobility,

and of the lairds of mark and substance, from all the Lowland shires.

Only a few of the greatest of these, however, had town mansions of their

own, with any semblance of sequestered approaches and adjuncts, whether

in the Canongate or the Cowgate. The majority of the nobles and lairds

from the country, as well as of the habitual residents of highest rank

and means, such as the Senators of the College of Justice, had to be

content with the better portions of those several-flatted or

many-flatted tenements,—_insulæ_ they would have been called in ancient

Rome, but “lands” was and is the special Edinburgh word for them,—which

rose at the sides of the High Street or in the wynds and closes that ran

thence down the slopes. Distributed through the same “lands” were the

families of the “merchants” and the “craftsmen,” the two denominations

that composed between them the whole body of the burghers proper. There

was a chronic rivalry between these two denominations in the elections

to the Town Council and in the management of affairs generally. The

“merchants,” whose business was ship-owning, the export and import of

goods, and the sale of the imported goods at first hand, affected the

superiority on the whole. There were individuals among the “craftsmen,”

however, as opulent as any of the “merchants.” This was particularly the

case with the craft of the goldsmiths, always a prominent craft in

Edinburgh, and there, as in London, combining the trade of money-lending

with the more especial arts of gold-working, silver-working, and

jewellery, and so allying itself with the merchants and their

transactions. Among the other “crafts,” all regularly incorporated in

brotherhoods, and each with its annually elected head, called the

“deacon” of that craft, were the skinners or leather-dressers, the

furriers, the wobsters or weavers, the tailors, the bonnet-makers, the

hammermen or smiths and armourers, the waulkers or cloth-dressers, the

cordiners or shoemakers, the wrights, the masons, the coopers, the

fleshers or butchers, the baxters or bakers, the candle-makers, and the

barbers or barber-surgeons. Printing had been introduced into Edinburgh

in 1507; and there had been a lingering of the craft in the town ever

since by patents or permissions, but on the very smallest scale. To the

“merchants” and “craftsmen” and their families there have to be added,

of course, the numerous dependents of both these classes of the

burghers, called in the simple language of that time their “servandis.”

Under that name were included not only the domestic servants of the

wealthier merchants, but also their clerks and business assistants, and

the journeymen and apprentices of the master-craftsmen, the last a very

unruly portion of the community and known collectively as “the

crafts-childer.” Imagine all these domiciled, as was then the habit,

with their masters, and stowed away somehow, “up and down in hole and

bore,” as one old document phrases the fact, in the workshops and

“lands.” Even then there remains to be taken into account the miscellany

of small retail traders, in shops and stalls, which such a town

required, with the peripatetic hucksters of fish and other provisions,

and the rabble of nondescripts, living by erratic and hand-to-mouth

occupations, and hanging on about the hostelries. All these too were

“indwellers” in Edinburgh, and housed in the wynds and closes in some

inconceivable manner. Moreover, as we learn too abundantly from the old

burgh records, actual vagrants and beggars, whether of the able-bodied

and turbulent variety, or of the cripple, diseased, and blind,

soliciting alms by obstreperous whining and by the exhibition of their

deformities, swarmed in Old Edinburgh with a persistency which all the

police efforts of the authorities, with examples of scourgings and

hangings for several generations, had been unable to repress or

diminish. Where _they_ lived in overcrowded Edinburgh only St. Giles’s

steeple could now tell.

The overcrowding had its natural consequences. The sanitary condition of

most European towns in the sixteenth century, the best English towns

included, was incredibly bad; Scottish towns generally were behind most

English towns in this respect; but Old Edinburgh had a character all her

own for perfume and sluttishness. It could hardly be helped.

Impressively picturesque though the town was by site and architecture,

its populousness and its structural arrangement were hardly compatible

with each other on terms of cleanliness. Individual families, within

their own domiciles in the various “lands,” might be as tidy as their

cramped accommodations would permit; but the state of the common stair

in each “land,”—and in the taller lands it was a dark stone “turnpike”

ascending in corkscrew fashion from flat to flat,—depended on the united

tastes and habits of all the families using it, and therefore on the

habits and tastes of the least fastidious. It was worse in the wynds and

closes. Not only did all the refuse from the habitations on both sides

find its way into these, generally by the easy method of being flung

down from the windows overnight; but the occupations of some of the

ground-floor tenants, butchers, candle-makers, etc.,—added contributions

heterogeneously offensive. Hardly a close that had not its “midding” or

“middings” at its foot or in its angles. For generations the civic

authorities had been contending with this state of things and uttering

periodical rebukes and edicts for cleansing. There were two kinds of

occasions on which these cleansing-edicts were apt to be most stringent

and peremptory. One was the expected arrival of some illustrious

stranger, or company of strangers, from England or from abroad. Then the

inhabitants were reminded of the chief causes of offence among them, and

put on the alert for their removal, so as not to shame the town. More

strenuous still were the exertions made on any of those periodical

outbreaks of the Plague, or alarms of its approach, of which we hear so

frequently in the annals of Edinburgh, as of other towns, from the

fourteenth century to the seventeenth. Then the authorities did bestir

themselves, and the inhabitants too. But, after such occasions of

spasmodic sanitary effort, there always came the relapse; and, though

there was a standing order obliging each householder to see to the

tidiness of his own little bit of precinct, the general apathy and

obtuseness prevailed. It was providential when the heavens themselves

interfered, and some extraordinary deluge of rain sent torrents down the

closes.

Fortunately, the population did not need to remain within doors, or in

the obscurities of the wynds and closes, more than it liked. It could

pour itself out of doors into the main street; and it did so daily with

a profusion beyond all modern custom. Any morning or afternoon about the

year 1561 the High Street of Edinburgh, from the Castle to the

Canongate, must have been one of the liveliest and most bustling

thoroughfares in Europe. Need we cite, for witness, that chapter in _The

Abbot_ in which Scott takes occasion to describe it, just about this

date, when he brings young Roland Græme for the first time into

Edinburgh under the convoy of Adam Woodcock the falconer? Scott is so

excellent an authority in such matters that his account may pass as

hardly less authentic than that of a contemporary. We can see, with

Roland Græme, the populace “absolutely swarming like bees on the wide

and stately street”; we can see the “open booths projecting on the

street,” with commodities of all sorts for sale, and especially Flanders

cloths, tapestry, and cutlery; we can pick out in the crowd its most

representative figures, such as the “gay lady, in her muffler or silken

veil,” stepping daintily after her “gentleman usher,” or the group of

burghers standing together, “with their short Flemish cloaks, wide

trousers, and high-caped doublets.” Nor are we much surprised when there

come upon the scene the two parties of richly dressed aristocratic

gallants, with their armed retinues of serving-men, meeting each other

with frowns in the middle of the causeway, and immediately falling upon

each other in a desperate _tulzie_ or street fight, in vindication of

their right of way, and of the hereditary feud between their families.

Scott required such a _tulzie_ for his story, and therefore brought it

in where it suited him best. But, though Edinburgh was famous for its

_tulzies_ or causeway-fights between noblemen and lairds at feud, they

were hardly everyday occurrences. Once a week or once a month was about

the rate in real history. For greater authenticity, therefore, we may

seek glimpses of the High Street of Old Edinburgh in Scottish literature

of earlier date than the _Waverley Novels_.

The Scottish poet Dunbar has left us two pieces picturing very

distinctly the Edinburgh of 1500–1513, which he knew so well. He calls

it “our nobill toun,” as if patriotically proud of it all in all; but it

chances that in both the poems he is more sarcastic than complimentary.

One is an express address of objurgation to the merchants of Edinburgh

for their disgraceful neglect of the “nobill toun” and its capabilities.

Why, he asks, do they let its streets be overrun by beggars, so that

“nane may mak progress” through them; why do they let the fairest parts

be given up to “tailyouris, soutteris, and craftis vyle”; why do they

let the vendors “of haddocks and of scaittis,” and minstrels with but

two wearisome tunes, which they repeat eternally, go everywhere bawling

up and down? He complains more particularly of the High Street. He

speaks of the projecting fore-stairs there as making “the houssis mirk”;

he declares that at the Cross, where one should see “gold and silk,” one

sees nothing but “crudis and milk,” and that nothing is sold in all the

rest of that lower piazza but poor shellfish or common tripe and

pudding; and he is positively savage on the state of the blocked isthmus

between the two piazzas beside St. Giles’s Church and the Tolbooth.

There, where the merchants themselves most resort, and where the light

is held from their Parish Kirk by the stupid obstructions which they

permit, they are hampered in a malodorous honeycomb of lanes, which may

suit their tastes for exchange purposes, but is hardly to their credit!

To these particulars about the High Street from one of the poems we may

add, from the other, linen hung out to dry on poles from the windows,

cadgers of coals with wheeled carts, cadgers of other articles with

creels only slung over their horses, and dogs and boys in any number

running in and out among the carts and horses. All in all, Dunbar’s

descriptions of Edinburgh are satirical in mood, and sum themselves up

in this general rebuke to the Edinburgh merchants in the first of the

two poems—

Why will ye, merchants of renown,

Lat Edinburgh, your noble town,

For laik of reformatioun,

The common profit tine and fame?

Think ye nocht shame

That ony other regioun

Sall with dishonour hurt your name?

This is hardly the Edinburgh of subsequent romance, as we see it in

Scott’s _Abbot_; but that Scott had good warrant for what he wrote

there, other than his own imagination, appears from a supplement to

Dunbar furnished by Sir David Lindsay. The Edinburgh which Sir David

Lindsay knew was the Edinburgh of a later generation than Dunbar’s, say

from 1513 to 1555; and, whether from this lapse of time or from

difference in the tempers of the two poets, Sir David Lindsay’s

Edinburgh is liker Scott’s than Dunbar’s. Thus, in one poem of

Lindsay’s,—

Adieu, Edinburgh! thou heich triumphant town,

Within whose bounds richt blithefull have I been,

Of true merchánds the root of this regioun,

Most ready to receive Court, King, and Queen!

Thy policy and justice may be seen:

Were dévotioun, wisdom, and honesty

And credence tint, they micht be found in thee.

In another of his poems he describes Edinburgh on a gala day, when there

was a procession through its High Street, such as he himself, as Lyon

King of Arms, might have marshalled. The occasion was the entry into

Edinburgh in May 1537 of Magdalene, daughter of Francis I. of France,

the young bride of James V.; and the dirge-like form of the

description,—that of an indignant address to Death,—is accounted for by

the fact that the poet is looking back on the splendours of her welcome

into the Scottish capital when the too swift close of her fair young

life, only a few weeks afterwards, had turned them into matter of

mournful recollection,—

Thief! Saw thou nocht the great preparatives

Of Edinburgh, the noble famous town?

Thou saw the people labouring for their lives

To mak triumph with trump and clarioun:

Sic pleasour never was in this regioun

As suld have been the day of her entrace,

With great propinis given to her Grace.

Thou saw makand richt costly scaffolding,

Depaintit weell with gold and silver fine,

Ready preparit for the upsetting;

With fountains flowing water clear and wine;

Disguisit folks, like creatures divine,

On ilk scaffold, to play ane sindry story:

But all in greeting turnit thou that glory.

Thou saw there mony ane lusty fresh galland,

Weell orderit for ressaving of their Queen;

Ilk craftisman, with bent bow in his hand,

Full galyartly in short clothing of green;

The honest burgess cled thou suld have seen,

Some in scarlot, and some in claith of grain,

For till have met their Lady Soverane;

Provost, Bailies, and Lordis of the town,

The Senatours, in order consequent,

Cled into silk of purpur, black, and brown;

Syne the great Lordis of the Parliament,

With mony knichtly Baron and Banrent,

In silk and gold, in colours comfortable:

But thou, alas! all turnit into sable.

Syne all the Lordis of Religioun,

And Princes of the Priestis venerable,

Full pleasandly in their processioun,

With all the cunning Clerkis honourable:

But, theftuously, thou tyrane treasonable,

All their great solace and solemnities

Thou turnit intill duleful dirigies.

Syne, next in order, passing through the town,

Thou suld have heard the din of instruments,

Of tabron, trumpet, shalm, and clarioun,

With reird redoundand through the elements;

The Heralds, with their aweful vestiments;

With Macers, upon either of their hands,

To rule the press with burnist silver wands.

This outgoes Scott himself for the possible pomp of Old Edinburgh, and

is poetically authentic. Later records, however, enable us to tone down

Lindsay’s description of the High Street on a great gala day by the

sight of it on any ordinary market day.

Since the reign of James III., it appears, there had been an authorised

distribution of the markets for different kinds of commodities through

prescribed parts of the town, with the general effect that, while live

stock and such bulkier commodities as wood and fodder were sold and

bought only in the Grassmarket and its low-lying purlieus, the markets

for all other commodities were divided mainly between the two piazzas of

the High Street, each having its own “tron” or weighing apparatus. Of

late years, however, there had been encroachments by each piazza on the

market rights of the other, with a good deal of mutual complaint and bad

feeling. We hear more particularly that, about 1559, in consequence of

temporary dilapidations in the lower piazza by recent English and French

ravagings of the town, the upper piazza, or High Street above the

Tolbooth, had drawn into it far more than its statutory share of the

market traffic. The complaints of this by the inhabitants of the lower

piazza had been such that the Provost, Bailies, and Council passed an

order on the subject, which may be read in Dr. Marwick’s admirable

Extracts from the Burgh Records. “Upoun consideratioun of the thraing of

mercattis abone the Over Tolbuth, and that the passage upon all mercat

dayis is sa stoppit be confluence of peple that nane may pas by are

uther, as alsua upoun consideratioun that the saidis landis and

fore-tenementis be-eist Nudryis Wynde [_i.e._ in the lower piazza] ar

almaist desolait and nocht inhabitit, beand the fairest and braidest

parts of the toun, for laik of merkattis and resort of peple thairto”:

it was decreed that in all time coming the markets for hides, wool, and

skins should be specifically in the lower piazza. For a while the order

took effect; but, by the “procurment of certane particular personis

having thair landis abone the Tolbuth,” the upper piazza had again

obtained the advantage. Things seem to have rectified themselves

eventually; but about 1561 there was still this war of the markets

between the two piazzas, with a continued overthronging of the upper.

Whether in one of the piazzas or in both, one has but to imagine the

litter that would be left on market days, and to add that to the litter

disgorged into the street upwards from the closes, or flung down into

the street from the fore-stairs, to see that a good deal of Dunbar’s

earlier description must be allowed to descend through Lindsay’s

intermediate and more gorgeous one, as still true of the ordinary

Edinburgh of the date of Queen Mary’s return.

No one really knows a city who does not know it by night as well as by

day. Night obscures much that day forces into notice, and invests what

remains with new visual fascinations, but still so that the

individuality of any city or town is preserved through its darkened

hours. Every town or city has its own nocturnal character. Modern

Edinburgh asserts herself, equally by night as by day, as the city of

heights and hollows. From any elevated point in her centre or on her

skirts, if you choose to place yourself there latish at night, you may

look down upon rows of lamps stretched out in glittering undulation over

the more level street spaces; or you may look down, in other directions,

upon a succession of tiers and banks of thickly edificed darkness,

punctured miscellaneously by twinkling window-lights, and descending

deeply into inscrutable chasms. More familiar, and indeed so inevitable

that every tourist carries it away with him as one of his most permanent

recollections of Edinburgh, is the nightly spectacle from Princes Street

of the northern face of the Old Town, starred irregularly with

window-lights from its base to the serrated sky-line. Perhaps this is

the present nocturnal aspect of Edinburgh which may most surely suggest

Old Edinburgh at night three hundred years ago. For, though we must be

careful, in imagining Old Edinburgh, to confine ourselves strictly and

exactly to as much of the present Edinburgh as stands on the ancient

site, and therefore to vote away Princes Street, the whole of the rest

of the New Town, and all the other accretions, this aspect of the Old

Town at night from the north cannot have changed very greatly. A belated

traveller passing through the hamlets that once straggled on the grounds

of the present New Town, and arriving at the edge of the North Loch, in

what is now the valley of Princes Street Gardens, must have looked up

across the Loch to much the same twinkling embankment of the High Street

and its closes, and to much the same serrated sky-line, lowering itself

eastward from the shadowy mass of the Castle Rock. If the traveller

desired admission into the town, he could not have it on this side at

all, but would have to go round to some of the ports in the town-wall

from its commencement at the east end of the North Loch. He might try

them all in succession,—Leith Wynd Port, the Nether Bow Port, the

Cowgate Port, the Kirk of Field Port, Greyfriars Port, and the West

Port,—with the chance of finding that he was too late for entrance at

any, and so of being brought back to his first station, and obliged to

seek lodging till morning in some hamlet there, or else in the

Canongate. He could perform the whole circuit of the walls, however, in

less than an hour, and might have the solace, at some points of his

walk, of night views down into the luminous hollows of the town, very

different from his first view upward from the North Loch.

While the belated traveller was thus shut out, the inhabitants within

might be passing their hours till bed-time comfortably enough, whether

in the privacy of their domiciles, or in more or less noisy loitering

and locomotion among the streets and wynds. If it were clear moonlight

or starlight, the wynds, and especially the stately length of the High

Street, would be radiantly distinct, and locomotion in them would be

easy. But even in the darkest nights the townsmen were not reduced to

actual groping through their town, if _ennui_, or whim, or business, or

neighbourly conviviality determined them to be out of doors. Not only

would they carry torches and lanterns with them for their own behoof,

especially if they had to find their way down narrow closes to their

homes; not only were there the gratuitous oil-lights or candlelights

from the windows of the fore-tenements in the streets and wynds, sending

down some glimmer into the streets and wynds themselves; but, by public

regulation, the tenants of the fore-stair houses in the principal

thoroughfares were bound to hang out, during certain hours of the

evening, lamps for the guidance of those that might be passing. One has

to remember, however, that people in those days kept very early hours.

By ten o’clock every night Auld Reekie was mostly asleep. By that hour,

accordingly, the house-lights, with some exceptions, had ceased to

twinkle; and from that hour, save for bands of late roysterers here and

there at close-mouths, and for the appointed night-watches on guard at

the different ports, or making an occasional round with drum and

whistle, silence and darkness reigned till dawn.

The Provost of Edinburgh in 1561 was Archibald Douglas of Kilspindie, a

well-known laird of the great kin of the Angus Douglases. He had held

the office continuously by annual election since 1553, with only two

years of break. The four Bailies under him, answering to the Aldermen of

an English town, were David Forster, Robert Ker, Alexander Home, and

Allan Dickson, all merchant-burgesses. It would be possible, I believe,

even at this distance of time, to give the names of as many as 1000 or

1500 other persons of the population, with particulars about not a few

of them. In a town of such a size all the principal inhabitants must

have been perfectly well acquainted with each other, and must have been

known, by figure and physiognomy at least, to the rest of the community.

We will name at present but one other inhabitant of the Edinburgh of

1561, who must have been about the best known of all. This was John

Knox, the chief minister of the town, and the stated preacher, always on

Sundays and often on week-days, in the great Church of St. Giles. His

house, or the house of which he occupied a portion, if not then that

very conspicuous projecting house of three storeys in the Nether Bow

which visitors to Edinburgh now go to see as having been his, was

certainly somewhere in that neighbourhood. From this point of what we

have called the lower piazza of the High Street there is a direct view

upwards to St. Giles’s Church, about 300 yards distant; and the walk in

the other direction, down the Canongate, to Holyrood Abbey and Palace,

is perhaps about twice as much. Divide a half-mile of sloping street

into three equal parts, and Knox’s residence in Edinburgh, the house in

which he sat on the day of young Queen Mary’s return among her Scottish

subjects in August 1561, is to be imagined as just one-third down such a

slope from the great Church of St. Giles, with the other two-thirds

descending thence continuously, houses on both sides, to the Palace in

which Mary had taken up her abode. Mary and Knox were to meet ere long.

ROBERT ROLLOCK AND THE BEGINNINGS OF EDINBURGH UNIVERSITY[2]

The University of Edinburgh dates its existence from the year 1582, when

James VI. was sixteen years of age and had been for fifteen years King

of Scotland. Till that time there had been but three universities in

Scotland,—that of St. Andrews (1413), that of Glasgow (1454), and that

of King’s College, Aberdeen (1494). The want of a university in the

metropolis had been long felt. Especially after the Reformation, people

residing in or near Edinburgh had begun to think it a hardship that they

had to send their sons over to St. Andrews, or away to Glasgow, or as

far off as Aberdeen, to complete their education. Why should not

Edinburgh have a university for itself? The Magistrates and Town Council

of Edinburgh were particularly zealous in the project; and, as far back

as the reign of Mary, they had, with the Queen’s sanction, taken some

steps towards carrying the project into effect. They had fixed on the

site of the intended new College. It was the site on which the

University now stands, but was then a kind of suburb of gardens and

straggling buildings, partly old church edifices, known by the name of

St. Mary in the Fields, or, more shortly, Kirk o’ Field. They had

purchased a certain right of property here; and here, accordingly, amid

the old tenements that have been long swept away, as well as in the

gardens and bits of green field which covered what is now the

thoroughfare of South Bridge Street, we are to fancy the Edinburgh

magistrates and ministers of Queen Mary’s reign, and perhaps John Knox

himself, pottering about sometimes in their afternoon walks, looking at

this and that, and anticipating the College that was to be established.

But years passed on, and there were difficulties in the way. Funds were

wanting, and there was strenuous opposition from the already existing

universities; and, before any college-building could arise on the site

of Kirk o’ Field, that site had been made unexpectedly memorable by one

of the ghastliest of deeds. It was close to what is now the south side

of the University quadrangle that there stood the fatal tenement in

which Darnley was lodged on his return from Glasgow when he was

recovering from the small-pox, and the explosion of which by gunpowder,

on the night between the 9th and 10th of February 1567, hurled his

corpse and that of his servant over the adjacent town-wall, and left

Mary a widow. With other thoughts, therefore, than of the intended seat

of learning, for the uses of which the ground had been partly purchased

when this tragedy blackened it, must the citizens of Edinburgh for many

a year afterwards have sauntered hereabouts in the evenings. But shocks

of the kind are transient; and, when, in the quieter though still

agitated days of King James, certain liberal citizens began to move anew

for the foundation of the much-needed university,—chief among whom were

Mr. James Lawson, Knox’s successor as minister of Edinburgh, Mr. William

Little, afterwards Lord Provost, and his brother, Mr. Clement Little, an

Edinburgh lawyer,—there was no dream of any other site for it than that

which had been already chosen. With creditable quickness the Town

Council proceeded to convert the long-cherished design into a reality.

Masons and carpenters were set to work; and, what with the patching-up

of old buildings already on the ground, what with the erection of frugal

additions, a kind of make-shift beginning of a College was at last

knocked together. A charter from King James, dated “Stirling, 14th April

1582,” made all right. It empowered the Lord Provost, Magistrates, and

Town Council of Edinburgh to found and gradually complete within the

city what should be to all intents and purposes a true University, or

_Studium Generale_. King James, as has been said, was then still in his

boyhood. His unhappy mother was in the fourteenth year of her captivity

in England.

A material fabric for lodging the University of Edinburgh having been

thus roughly provided, all that was further necessary was to procure

teachers. There are now between thirty and forty chairs in the

University of Edinburgh; but it is not to be imagined that the

Magistrates and Town Council of Edinburgh had to make that number of

appointments in 1582 in order that their new College might begin

operations. They were content with a much smaller equipment. They merely

looked about for one qualified man to begin with; and, when they had got

_him_, they could consider the institution fairly launched. This may

require a little explanation.

The Charter of the new College contained provisions for its being

eventually a university of complete dimensions, with not only a General

Faculty or Faculty of Arts (then usually called the Faculty of

Philosophy), but also the three special or professional Faculties of

Theology, Law, and Medicine. But, though the Magistrates and Town

Council looked forward, no doubt, to the attainment of this perfection

by the University at some time or other, they were not so ambitious at

first, and, indeed, had to accommodate their aims to the meagreness of

their means. They thought that, if they succeeded in founding the

general faculty, or Faculty of Arts, the most important part of their

work would be done, and the rest might gradually follow. They gave all

their attention at first, therefore, to the one Faculty of Arts. To set

up this Faculty alone would, according to recent ideas of what is

essential to its equipment, require at least seven appointments. Since

1858 the professorships of Latin, Greek, Mathematics, Natural

Philosophy, Logic and Metaphysics, Moral Philosophy, and Rhetoric and

English Literature have been, as it were, the Seven Golden Candlesticks

of the Arts Faculty in the University of Edinburgh,—the seven chairs in

that faculty privileged coequally above the rest in the curriculum for

graduation. In those old days, however, there was no notion that even as

many as seven separate candlesticks were needed. Latin was pre-eminent

as the _sine qua non_ for all the rest. It was the language in which all

the formal instruction within every university was then given, and with

which, so far as concerned the power of understanding it, speaking it,

and to some extent writing it, all students were supposed to be

acquainted before they commenced their university course. Further, in

the other subjects, which were all taught through this medium of Latin,

there was no such division of labour as at present. Mathematics and

Natural Philosophy had not then attained such dimensions in the world of

knowledge, nor were Moral Philosophy and Rhetoric so extricated from

Logic and Metaphysics, nor was proficiency in any or all of those

subjects deemed so incompatible with a competent knowledge of Greek, but

that one and the same professor could be expected to take students

through the whole series of studies by himself. _Now_ it would be but a

sad jumble of superficialities that would result from such a system of

individual professorships of everything; but in those days the _totum

scibile_ had not come to be so monstrous or heterogeneous an aggregate

but that it might be supposed capable of being carried with tolerable

compactness under one able man’s hat, and of being taught by such a man

more or less effectively by means of a series of established Latin

text-books. The supposition, though absurd enough even then, was the

less absurd because the subjects were made to follow each other in a

regular order through a university course of four years. The professor

began in his first year with the simpler subjects, and then carried the

same students, in their second, third, and fourth years, through the

more difficult subjects, until, at the end of the fourth year, he had

fitted them for their graduation, or, as it was called, their

“laureation,” in Arts. By this method, it will be seen, the number of

Arts professors in every university required to be but four at the

most,—each professor making his four years’ round with the same students

till he had seen them made Masters of Arts, and then returning to

receive a new class of freshmen or entrants with whom to repeat his

round. In fact, in each of the already established universities of

Scotland there _were_ four such principal Arts professors, or Philosophy

professors. In some universities, it is true, there were special

professors in addition, relieving the general professors of particular

kinds of work; but the four general or circulating professors were the

essential complement of the Arts Faculty. They were called “regents,” by

way of distinction.

It will be obvious now that, though the newly-founded University of

Edinburgh required at least four Philosophy professors or regents before

even its Arts Faculty could be considered fully equipped, yet one regent

was enough to start with. All that was necessary was that one fit

professor should be ready to receive the first set of students that

should present themselves. For the first year this single professor

could do the whole of the University work; and only when he had carried

his students through the first year of their course, and had to pass on

to the second year with them, would it be necessary to appoint a second

regent, to follow him with the new set of students who would then come

to the University doors. The third regent might be appointed the year

after that, and the fourth not till a year later.

All this the Magistrates and Town Council of Edinburgh, anxious for the

success of the new institution, but bound to be careful of expenses, had

calculated beforehand. It was, of course, a most serious question with

them who should be the first regent. No one could tell how much depended

on that. A bad appointment might wreck the University at the outset.

Fortunately, through the recommendation of that same Mr. James Lawson,

Knox’s successor in the ministry of Edinburgh, who had already had so

much to do with the founding of the University, the Magistrates and Town

Council selected a man whose appointment neither the City nor the

University had any cause afterwards to regret. This was Mr. Robert

Rollock,—the Rev. Robert Rollock would be now the designation,—then one

of the Philosophy professors in the University of St. Andrews. He was a

Stirlingshire man by birth, had been educated at St. Andrews, was

twenty-eight years of age, and had already won good opinions among those

who knew him. A deputation having been sent to St. Andrews to invite him

to the new post, he came to Edinburgh in September 1583 to offer himself

for inspection; and on the 14th of that month an agreement was signed

between him and the Lord Provost, Magistrates, and Town Council.

Rollock, on his part, agreed to “enter to the Colledge newly foundit

within the burgh,” and to “exerce the office of the Regent of the said

Colledge, in instructioun, governament, and correctioun of the youth and

persones whilk sall be committed to his chairge,” faithfully attending

always to the rules and injunctions to be given him by the Provost,

Bailies, and Council; “for the whilkis causis” they, on their part,

“binds and oblesis thame and their successoris thankfullie to content

and pay to the said Mr. Robert the soume of fortie pundis usual money of

this realme, at twa termis in the yeir, Candlemes and Lammes, be twa

equall portionis, and sall susteine him and are servand in their ordinar

expensis.... Attour [_i.e._ moreover] the said Mr. Robert sall repare

and have, for his labouris to be takin in instructing everie bairne

repairing to the said Colledge, yearly, as followis: to wit, fra the

bairnes inhabitants of the said burgh, fortie schillings, and fra the

bairnes of uthers, nocht inhabitants therein, three pundis, or mair as

the bairnes parentis please to bestow of their liberalitie.” Further

prospects of remuneration and promotion were held forth to Mr. Rollock,

and there was every disposition to make him comfortable.

An original portrait of Rollock now hangs in the Senate Hall of

Edinburgh University. It is but a poor specimen of the painter’s art,

and it does not suggest that Mr. Rollock can have been an Apollo. It

exhibits, however, a very distinct physiognomy,—a physiognomy so

distinct, so unlike anybody’s else, that, were Mr. Rollock to reappear

any afternoon now in the Canongate or in Princes Street, there would be

no difficulty in recognising him. The complexion, as the portrait tells

us, and as we learn from a contemporary biographic sketch of him, was

ruddy, or ruddy with a mixture of white (_colore rubido cui candor

quidam admistus_); and the hair and beard,—both cut short, so as to give

a character of round compactness to the head,—were of reddish hue (_comâ

subrufâ_). The biographic sketch, which is by one who knew him well,

adds that he was of middle stature and of rather weakly health, and

bears testimony to his piety, conscientiousness, peaceful disposition,

and pleasant sociability.

It was on the 1st of October 1583 that this round-headed, reddish-haired

man, of Stirlingshire birth, but of St. Andrews training, opened the

first session of the University of Edinburgh by an address delivered in

the public hall of the new premises in the presence of a crowded

audience of citizens and others. Next day, when he received the students

who came to enroll themselves in the first class in the new University,

their number, what with those supplied by Edinburgh itself, what with

those attracted from other parts of the country, was found to be far

greater than had been anticipated. Very soon, however, it appeared that

this was not altogether a cause for congratulation. The motley body of

the entrants had not been manipulated by Rollock for more than a week or

two when he had to marshal them into two divisions. A considerable

number had broken down in Latin,—were found to be so ill-grounded in

that indispensable preliminary that it was hopeless to go on with them

as members of the first University class proper, the teaching of which

had to be through the medium of Latin. To meet this exigency Rollock

proposed to the Town Council that they should at once appoint a second

regent, and that this regent should have committed to his charge all who

were backward in Latin, to be formed into a preparatory or Humanity

class, and drilled as such for a year, while he himself should go on

with the others in the first proper Arts or Philosophy class. Were that

done, then, next year, when he himself should be carrying on his

students into the second class, the other regent might form those that

had been kept back, and qualified newcomers with them, into a properly

sequent first class; and so the routine would be established. The advice

was adopted; and, on Rollock’s recommendation, the person chosen to be

Humanity teacher in the meantime, and second regent in regular course,

was a Mr. Duncan Nairne, a young man from Glasgow University. Thus all

was arranged; and the work of the first session of the University of

Edinburgh proceeded,—Rollock teaching his “Bajans,” and Nairne following

with the ragged troop whom he was working up in Latin to fit them for

the “Bajan” class of next year.

The “session” in each of the Scottish universities extended then over

ten, or even eleven, months of every year, _i.e._ from the beginning of

October to, or well into, August. The practice was for the students, or

a proportion of them, to reside within the University walls; and, though

this practice soon fell into disuse in Edinburgh, it held good at first

so far that at least some of the students were boarded and lodged in

some rough fashion within the College. The original regulation also was

that students should wear academic costume; but against this regulation

Edinburgh opinion seems from the first to have set its face most

determinedly. It was never really obeyed.

The infant years of the University were years of trial and rough usage.

In the jars between the different political factions round the young

King, and struggling for the possession of him, the infant institution

was much shaken and disturbed. The Magistrates and Town Council,

however, did their best; and Rollock was persevering and judicious. The

severest interruption to his labours came in his second session, or

1584–5. That session had been begun with good prospects, the property of

the College having been increased by a royal grant, and by a collection

of about 300 volumes bequeathed by Mr. Clement Little to form the

nucleus of a college library. Rollock was proceeding, accordingly, with

his second or semi class; and Nairne, having worked up the laggards by

this time, was teaching his first class of Bajans. But in the course of

the winter Edinburgh was visited by that scourge, “The Plague,” of the

frequency of the visits of which in those times, and their paralysing

effects on industry of all kinds, no one can be aware who is not versed

in the old annals of English and Scottish cities. In May 1585, most of

the students having already dispersed, it was necessary to stop the

session entirely. This would not have mattered so much, had not the

alarm of the Plague continued into the following session. That session,

the third in the history of the University, ought to have begun in

October 1585; at which time, as Rollock would then have been carrying

his students into their third or bachelor class, and Nairne would have

been carrying _his_ into their second or semi class, a third regent

would have had to be appointed, to undertake the new class of freshmen.

But it was not till February 1586, or four months after the proper

beginning of the session, that the College was reopened, and then it was

deemed best not to attempt a new Bajan class at all that year, but

simply to go on with the semies and bachelors. Even in this arrangement

there came a difficulty. Scarcely were the classes begun when the

promising young Mr. Duncan Nairne died, and, in order that the semi

class might be carried on at all, the Town Council had to elect a

professor in his room. They chose Mr. Charles Lumsden, a young man who

had been one of Rollock’s pupils at St. Andrews. The services of this,

the third regent or Professor of Philosophy in the University, did not,

however, outlast the remainder of the session in which he had been

appointed. A College professorship was not then a post of such

attraction that it could be thought strange that Mr. Lumsden should

resign it when, in the following October, he received a call to be

minister of Duddingston parish. By his resignation at that moment,

however, the College would have been left crippled, had not two new

regents been at once appointed. These new regents, chosen by competitive

trial out of six candidates, were Mr. Adam Colt and Mr. Alexander

Scrimgeour. The last of these, Scrimgeour, took charge of the new class

of entrants or Bajans; as there had been no class of Bajans in the

former year, the semi class was this year a blank; the former pupils of

Lumsden and Nairne, now in the third or bachelor class, were entrusted

to Mr. Colt; and Rollock himself, proceeding with the pupils who had

already been continuously in his charge for three years, carried them

through the last or magistrand class.

In August 1587, six months after the execution of Queen Mary at

Fotheringay, the fourth session of Edinburgh University was brought to a

close by the first act of laureation or graduation in its annals.

Forty-seven of Rollock’s pupils, who had remained with him steadily

through the entire four years, were then made masters of arts,—a larger

number than was to be seen at any subsequent graduation for more than

half a century. The signatures of the forty-seven are still to be seen

in the preserved graduation-book, appended to a copy of that Scottish

Confession of the Reformed Faith to which it was the rule that all

graduates should swear everlasting fidelity. Several of the names are

those of persons afterwards of some note in Scotland. To three of them

is affixed in the graduation-book, in later handwriting, the dreadful

word _Apostata_, signifying that those three disciples of Rollock

afterwards apostatised from the Protestant religion.

Having thus followed Rollock through one complete cycle of his regency

or professorship in Arts, one would like to know something as to the

nature and methods of his teaching. On this head the information is as

follows:—He began, as we have seen, by testing his students in the

indispensable Latin. But, though ability to read ordinary Latin authors,

to write in Latin, and also to speak Latin in some fashion and

understand spoken Latin, were prerequisites to his course, the business

of that course itself included necessarily much reading in particular

Latin classics, whether for their matter or for their style. Very soon

in his first class, however, he attacked Greek, teaching it from the

grammar upwards, until easy Greek authors could be read. Greek was

continued, for its own sake, into the second and third years of the

course; but the chief business of those years, and of the fourth, was

“Philosophy,” as divided into Logic, Ethics, and Physics. In each of

these departments the philosophical teaching consisted chiefly of

expositions of Aristotle. Whether in the original Greek, or, as is more

probable, in Latin versions, Rollock, we are expressly told, read

Aristotle daily with his pupils, beginning with the _Organon Logicum_,

and then going through the _Nicomachean Ethics_ and the _Physics_. The

_Physics_ came probably in the last year, and in this year also (for

mathematics and physical science were then usually delayed till the end)

certain additions to Aristotle: to wit, the principles of Arithmetic, a

sketch of the Anatomy of the human body, Astronomy as taught in the then

standard treatise of Joannes a Sacro Bosco _De Sphæra_, and finally

Geography. Conceive the routine so sketched; conceive the steady

plodding on day after day, for some hours every day, through four

sessions of ten or eleven months each; and conceive also the

disputations in Latin among the students themselves every Saturday, and

the express catechisings of them in religion on Sundays: and you will

have an idea of what it was to be under Rollock in the first years of

the University of Edinburgh.

A still more minute account of what constituted the curriculum of study

in the Faculty of Arts during the first age of the University is

furnished by an abstract of the “Order of Discipline” in the University,

drawn up in the year 1628. One cannot be sure that in every particular

this “Order of Discipline” accords with what had been the practice of

Rollock; but, as the abstract professes to be mainly a digest of rules

and customs that had been already in force, it probably describes

substantially the scheme of teaching introduced by Rollock and

bequeathed by him to his successors. The scheme may be tabulated thus:—

FIRST YEAR: _Latin, Greek, and the Elements of Logic_—(1) _Latin_:

Exercises in turning English into Latin and in translation from Latin;

with readings in Latin authors, chiefly Cicero. There seems also to

have been practice in Latin verse-making. (2) _Greek_: The Greek

Grammar of Clenardus; Readings in the New Testament, in the Orations

of Isocrates, and, for poetry, in Phocylides, Hesiod, and Homer; also

translation of Latin themes into Greek, and of Greek into Latin.

Passages of the Greek authors read were got by heart, and publicly

recited on Saturdays. (3) _Logic_: This was reserved till near the end

of the session, and Ramus was the author used.—There were disputations

on Saturdays, and catechisings on Sundays.

SECOND YEAR: _Recapitulation of previous studies, with Rhetoric,

Logic, and Arithmetic_—(1) _Recapitulation_: For the first month, with

a final examination in Greek. (2) _Rhetoric_: Talæus’s Rhetoric (a

short and very flimsy compend on the figures of speech, with

instructions in delivery), and portions of other manuals, such as

Cassander’s _Rhetoric_ and Aphthonius’s _Progymnasmata_ (a collection

of specimens of Greek composition to illustrate various styles); also

oratorical exercises by the students themselves. (3) _Logic_:

Perphyry’s Introduction to Aristotle’s _Organon_, and then, in the

_Organon_ itself, the Categories, the Prior Analytics, and portions of

the Topics and the Sophistics. (4) _Arithmetic_: towards the end of

the session.—Disputations and declamations on Saturdays, and

catechisings on Sundays.

THIRD YEAR: _Recapitulation of previous studies, with Hebrew Grammar,

Logic, Ethics, and Physical Science_—(1) _Recapitulation_: This went

back upon the Greek, and included examinations in Rhetoric and in

Logical Analysis. (2) _Hebrew Grammar_: taught apparently from the

beginning of the session. (3) _Logic_: The two Books of Aristotle’s

_Posterior Analytics_. (4) _Ethics_: The first, second, half of the

third, and the fourth and fifth Books of Aristotle’s _Ethics_. (5)

_Physical Science_: Aristotle’s _Acroamatics_, taught partly

textually, partly in compend, followed, at the close of the session,

by a descriptive sketch of Human Anatomy.—Disputations on prescribed

theses on Saturdays, and theological instruction on Sundays.

FOURTH YEAR: _Recapitulation of previous studies, with Astronomy,

Cosmography, and other portions of Physics, and Disputations and other

preparations for the Laureation_. Among the books used in this year

were the _Sphæra_ of Joannes a Sacro Bosco, the books of Aristotle _De

Cælo_, _De Ortu_, _De Meteoris_, and _De Anima_, and Hunter’s

_Cosmography_. Atlases and the celestial globe were also in

requisition, and the most notable constellations were pointed out in

the heavens themselves. But much of the work of this session consisted

in logical disputations in the evenings, whether among the

magistrands, or between them and the third year’s men.—On Sundays,

instruction in Dogmatic and Polemical Theology.

To return to Rollock personally:—We have spoken of him hitherto as only

the first regent or Arts professor of Edinburgh University. In reality,

however, since February 1586, when he was in his third session and had

Nairne as his single fellow-regent, he had borne, along with his

regency, the higher dignity of the PRINCIPALSHIP,—the Town Council

having concluded that the time had come for the institution of such an

office in the University, and for Rollock’s promotion to it.

Accordingly, when Rollock had the satisfaction of seeing the forty-seven

students who had gone through their full four years’ curriculum with him

made Masters of Arts, he was not only senior Regent, but also Principal

of the University, with a right of superintendence over Colt and

Scrimgeour, the other two regents. But no sooner had this first

Edinburgh graduation taken place than there was a further change.

Rollock, satisfied with having taken one class of students through the

full course of four years, resigned his regency or Arts professorship,

in order to become Professor of Divinity. As it was desirable that those

of the new graduates and others who might be going forward to the Church

should have the means of a theological education within Edinburgh, this

was a natural arrangement. It amounted to the institution, though on a

small scale, of a Theological Faculty in the University, in addition to

the general Faculty of Arts or Philosophy. The Theological Faculty was

represented solely by Rollock, who was also Principal of the University;

while the Arts or Philosophical Faculty was represented for the time in

Colt, Scrimgeour, and a third regent, Mr. Philip Hislop, one of

Rollock’s recent graduates, appointed to the place which Rollock had

just left vacant. In 1589, however, Mr. Charles Ferme, also one of

Rollock’s graduates, was added to the staff of regents, so as to

complete the number of four, necessary for the full conduct of the Arts

classes.

No need to narrate here the rest of Rollock’s life in detail. Enough if

we imagine him going on for ten years more in the exercise of the double

duties of his Professorship of Theology and his Principalship in the

infant University. As Professor of Theology, he may be said to have

founded the Divinity School of Edinburgh. He trained up assiduously, not

only by his lectures on Dogmatic and Polemical Theology, but also by his

personal influence, the first ecclesiastics whom the University of

Edinburgh gave to the Kirk of Scotland. Some of these attained

subsequent distinction, and, remembering Rollock with reverence, carried

his name into the next generation. Nor was his Principalship a sinecure.

He visited the Philosophy classes, gave special lectures to them on

Theology, and kept them and the regents to their work. Add to this much

exertion beyond the bounds of the University. For a time he delivered

Sunday evening sermons to crowded congregations in the East Kirk of St.

Giles, by way of volunteer assistance to the four city ministers; and,

latterly, when these four were increased to eight, and a division of the

city-pastorate was made into eight districts or parishes, the full

ministerial care of one of these city-charges was entrusted to Rollock.

It was an anxious time, too, in the politics of the Kirk. King James had

begun those efforts of his for the subversion of the Presbyterian

constitution of the Kirk, as it had been established by statute in 1592,

in which he was to persevere so unflinchingly through the remainder of

his resident reign in Scotland, though it was not till he removed to

England, and could act upon his native kingdom from the vantage-ground

of his acquired English sovereignty, that the results were fully seen in

the abolition of the Presbyterian constitution of the Kirk altogether

and the substitution of Episcopacy. Already in Rollock’s time all

Scotland was in anxious agitation in consequence of this

anti-presbyterian policy of the King and the vehement resistance to it

offered by the majority of the Scottish clergy and of the Scottish

people. Rollock himself, as a public man and leading Edinburgh minister,

had to take his part in the controversy. It was a mild part, it would

seem, and not entirely satisfactory to the more resolute Presbyterian

spirits, but truthful and characteristic. Without following him,

however, over this dangerous ground, farther than to say that he was

Moderator of the General Assembly held at Dundee in 1597, at which the

King was present in person and there were some not unimportant attempts

at a compromise, let us pass on to the year 1599, the last year but one

of the sixteenth century.

Rollock was then in his forty-fourth year. He could look back on his

services in connection with Edinburgh University as the most important

work of his life. He had seen fifteen sessions of that University begun

and ended, during four of which he had been senior regent or Arts

professor, and during the remaining eleven Principal and Professor of

Theology. He had seen eleven graduations and a total of 284 Edinburgh

Masters of Arts sent forth by these graduations into the world. The

University, it is true, remained still but a fragment of what a complete

university ought to have been. It contained as yet no Faculty of Law and

no Faculty of Medicine. For education in these professions Scottish

students had still to resort to foreign universities, as indeed they had

to do for more than a century yet to come. But it was something to have

established a Theological Faculty and a Faculty of Arts. The Theological

Faculty was still represented entire in Rollock’s own person; but in the

Arts Faculty, on which the University depended most, he had seen

thirteen regents after himself appointed. The tenure of office of most

of these had been vexatiously short, drawn off as they had been by the

more tempting emoluments of parish-charges and the like; but the four

who were now in office as regents,—Mr. Henry Charteris, Mr. Charles

Ferme, Mr. John Adamson, and Mr. William Craig,—were all graduates of

the University itself, and therefore all Rollock’s own men. Moreover,

the Arts Faculty had just been increased by the institution of a

separate Professorship of Humanity, distinct from the four rotating

regencies. To this professorship, the first holder of which was a

certain excellent Mr. John Ray, fell a part of the work that had

formerly been assigned to the regents of the first and second classes:

viz. instruction mainly in Latin, but also in elementary Greek and the

rudiments of rhetoric. Such was the staff of Edinburgh University as

Rollock left it. Though yet but in the prime of manhood, he had been

long in ill-health, and was now suffering from a painful and incurable

disease. There are affectionate details of his death-bed doings and

sayings: how he sent messages to the King, how the ministers and leading

citizens of Edinburgh visited him, what advices he gave them, what pious

ejaculations he uttered, and how, in especial, he spoke of the

University of his love, and recommended it to the care of those who had

the power to promote its interests. On the 9th of February 1599, the

sixteenth session of the University being then in progress, he breathed

his last. There was a great concourse of citizens of all ranks at his

funeral, and all over Scotland the rumour ran that the nation was poorer

by the loss of the eminent Rollock. Verses in Latin, Greek, and English,

by old pupils and others, were showered upon his grave. He left a widow,

whom the Magistrates and Town Council of Edinburgh pensioned; and a

daughter, posthumously born, was also provided for. In deference to his

dying injunctions, the Town Council appointed Mr. Henry Charteris, his

favourite pupil, and then one of the regents, to be his successor in the

principalship and in the professorship of Divinity.

Looked back upon now through the dense radiance of the subsequent

history of the University of Edinburgh, expanded as that University has

been in the course of centuries into its present four-facultied

completeness, each faculty of larger dimensions than Rollock could ever

have dreamt of, and each with its memories of scores or hundreds of more

or less shining celebrities that have belonged to it in past

generations, Rollock himself, it must be admitted, dwindles into a mere

telescopic star. That he is remembered at all now is due mainly to the

fact that he was the first president of one of the most important

institutions of the Scottish nation, and charged with the affairs of

that institution in its struggling commencement, its “day of small

things.” This in itself would be something. Many men have merited well

of society simply because they have performed diligently the routine

duties of the office they chanced to hold, and so have woven something

of their own personality, though it may be hardly distinguishable

afterwards, into the context of passing affairs and exigencies. Is this

all, however, that we can say of Rollock? Not quite. Though the best of

him is probably imbedded in the beginnings of the University of

Edinburgh, and much of that even in the unrecorded beginnings, he _has_

left some memorials of himself besides. His writings, all or nearly all

of a theological nature, some published during his life, and others

edited after his death by admiring friends, are so considerable in bulk

that even the selection of them reprinted by the Wodrow Society fills

two thick volumes. The more important and formal of them were dogmatic

treatises or analytical Latin commentaries on portions of Scripture,

some of which were of sufficient ability, after their kind, to have won

recognition from Beza and other foreign theologians. More interesting,

however, now are the specimens that remain of Rollock’s popular sermons

in the vernacular English, or rather the vernacular Scots, of his day.

Two extracts from one of these sermons will enable us to know Rollock

somewhat more intimately, and will give an idea at the same time of the

tastes of the Edinburgh folks of those days in the matter of pulpit

oratory.

Understand that the text of the discourse is _2 Cor. v. 1, 2_, running

thus in the old version then in use: “For we knaw that, gif our earthly

hous of this tabernacle be destroyit, we have a buylding given of God;

that is, a house nocht made with hands, bot eternall in the heavens. For

therefore we sigh, desiring to be clothed with our hous whilk is from

heaven.” The thoughts suggested by this text being those of the

evanescence of the present life and the aspiration after another life of

higher expansion, Rollock’s handling of them takes this form:—

“The Apostle having spoken this, that his eye was set on that hevinly

glory, it micht have been said, ‘Thou settis thine eye upon ane life

above; bot tak heid, Paul! Thou sall die in the mean time; is not life

and deith twa contrares? thou mon die, and that body of thine mon be

dissolvit. Luikis thou ever to rise again? thinkis thou any other

thing bot to be disappointed of life? Luikis thou that that body of

thine, being dissolvit in dust, sall rise again to glory?’ This is are

fair tentatioun, and sundry thinkis efter this maner.... Leirne ane

lesson here. Ye see, while ane man is luiking to hevin, he will not be

without tentatioun,—nay, not Paul himself, nor nae other man nor woman

that hes their conversatioun in hevin. And the special tentatioun of

him wha wald fain have life is deith, and the dreidful sicht of deith;

and deith is ever in his eye. He was never born bot deith will tempt

him, deith will be terrible to flesh and blude; and, when he is

luiking up to that licht and glory in hevin, it will come in betwixt

his eye and the sicht of hevin, as it were ane terrible black cloud,

and some time will twin [sunder] him and that licht of hevin. As, when

ane man is luiking up to the sun, ane cloud will come in on ane

suddenty and tak the sicht of the sun frae him, sae when ane man is

luiking up to the Sun of Richteousness, Christ Jesus, that cloud of

deith will come in and cleik [catch] the sicht of Christ frae him.

This is our estate here, and there is nane acquainted with hevinly

things bot he will find this in experience as Paul did. But what is

the remedy? In the first word of the text that we have read he says

‘we _knaw_,’ that is, ‘we are assured’; for the word imparts ane full

assurance, and faith, and are full persuasion. Then the remedy aganis

this tentatioun of deith is only faith, ane full persuasion and licht

in the mind of the knawledge of God in the face of Christ, with ane

gripping and apprehension thereof. This is the only remedy.”

“Thou mon have ane warrand of thy salvation in this life, or ellis I

assure thee in the name of God thou sall never get to hevin. It is ane

strait way to come to hevin, and it is wonder hard to get the

assurance of it: it is nae small matter to get ane assurance of life

everlasting efter death. Then luik what warrandis this man Paul had,

that thou may preis to have the like. The first ground of his

assurance is in this second verse. ‘For,’ says he, ‘this cause we

sigh, desiring to be clothed’ (to put on as it were ane garment).

Wherewith? ‘With our house whilk is frae hevin.’ Thir [these] are his

wordis. Then his first warrand and ground of his assurance is ane

_desire_ of that samin glory. What sort of desire? Ane _earnest_

desire, with siching and sobbing; not ane cauld desire, but day and

nicht crying and sobbing for life. Trowis thou sae easily to get hevin

that can never say earnestly in thy heart, ‘God give me that hevinly

life!’ Na, thou will be disappointed; it is the _violent_ that enters

in hevin (Matt. xi. 12), as ye will see ane man violently thring

[squeeze] in at are yett [gate]. Thou that wald gang to hevin, make

thee for thringing through while [until] all thy guttis be almaist

thrustit out. Paul, in the viii. chapter to the Romans, the 22 and 23

verses, usis thir argumentis againis those wickit men that cannot sich

for hevin. First he takis his argument frae the elementis, the

senseless and dumb creaturis, wha sobbis and groanis for the

revelation of the sonnis of God. O miserable man, the eirth sall

condemn thee; the flure thou sittis on is siching, and wald fain heave

that carcase of thine to hevin. The waters, the air, the hevinis, all

siching for that last deliverance, the glory apperteinis to _thee_;

and yet _thou_ is lauchand. What sall betide thee?”

There is evidence here that Rollock cannot have been merely a stiff

scholastic and pedagogue, but was a man of some real, if coarsish,

fervour of heart, of whom it might be expected that he would have the

power on occasion of putting his hand on the shoulders of any promising

youth among his pupils, and doing him good by some earnest words of

moral and spiritual stimulus. On the whole, however, the impression from

the sermons and the other writings is that he was by no means a man of

such extraordinary calibre intellectually as it was desirable, and

perhaps possible, that the University of Edinburgh should have had for

its first regent and principal, the shaper of its methods and its

tendencies from the outset. High forms of study and speculation were

then asserting themselves in the intellectual world of the British

Islands, the influence of which had never reached Rollock, or to which,

in his place and circumstances, he remained necessarily impervious. His

administration of the University could only be according to the lights

in which he had himself been educated, and which he brought with him

from St. Andrews. What if the Town Council of Edinburgh, instead of

sending to St. Andrews for Rollock to be the first head of the new

University, had invited their neighbour, Napier of Merchiston, to the

post? He was Rollock’s senior by five years, the one man in all Scotland

supremely fitted for the post; and, as he was to outlive Rollock

eighteen years, how different might have been the infancy of the

University had _he_ been in Rollock’s place! But Napier was a layman and

a laird; and the heavens would have fallen on the Edinburgh Town Council

of 1583, as indeed they would have fallen on any subsequent Edinburgh

Town Council till 1858, if they had thought of choosing any one but an

ecclesiastic for the University Principalship. Besides, it is possible

that the Laird of Merchiston, a man of many acres, and the owner and

inhabitant of one of the finest turreted mansions near Edinburgh, would

have regarded the offer as a joke.

It is in accordance with our estimate of Rollock all in all that,

though, among the students sent forth from the University of Edinburgh

during his Principalship, there were some who distinguished themselves

subsequently by their force and hard-headedness in the routine affairs

of the Scottish Kirk and State, we do not find any among them whom the

historian of the higher thought and literature of Britain cares to

remember now. Among the 284 Masters of Arts who left the University

before Rollock died, the most memorable are perhaps these: Henry

Charteris and Patrick Sands, pupils of Rollock’s own regency, and his

successors in the principalship; Alexander Gibson of Durie, afterwards a

judge of the Court of Session; James Sandilands, afterwards commissary

of Aberdeen; Thomas Hope, afterwards Sir Thomas Hope, and of celebrity

as a lawyer and as King’s Advocate; David Calderwood, the Presbyterian

historian of the Kirk; and Robert Boyd of Trochrig, sometime minister in

France, and afterwards Principal successively of the Universities of

Glasgow and Edinburgh. To these may be added, as memorable on another

ground, John Ruthven, Earl of Gowrie, and his brother Alexander Ruthven,

the two young chiefs or victims of the mysterious Gowrie conspiracy of

1600. The elder brother, a favourite of Rollock’s, was a graduate of

1593, and the younger graduated in 1598. Other names of some interest to

the Scottish literary antiquarian may be found in the list of the

Edinburgh graduates of Rollock’s time, but hardly one now interesting to

the general British muses. But, indeed, Scotland had then entered on a

period of her history during which the higher and more meditative muses

found themselves dismissed from her territory for a while. Precisely at

the time when the University of Edinburgh was founded, the age of

Scotland’s richest outburst in all forms of a thoroughly native

literature had come to an end,—closed, we may say, by the deaths of Knox

and Buchanan, save that in Napier of Merchiston there was one peculiar

survivor. From that date onwards through the whole of the seventeenth

century the energies of Scotland were to be locked up all but

continually and exclusively in one protracted business of political and

ecclesiastical controversy. From that date, accordingly, the successive

batches of graduates sent forth from the four Scottish Universities,—or

rather, we should now say, from the _five_ Scottish Universities, for

the University of Marischal College, Aberdeen, was added as a fifth in

1593,—were absorbed, as clerics, lawyers, soldiers, and what not, into

the service of a troubled social element requiring labours that left

little sap in them for literary delights or for purely speculative

exertions. Exceptions, of course, there are; and the two most notable of

these belong to the University of Edinburgh. Drummond of Hawthornden was

a graduate of that University in 1605, six years after Rollock’s death.

Robert Leighton, so dear to Coleridge as one of the finest Platonic

spirits among the British theologians of the seventeenth century, was an

Edinburgh graduate of 1631, and was Rollock’s sixth successor in the

Principalship of the University, and known for ten years in that

capacity before they induced him to become Bishop and Archbishop.

KING JAMES’S FAREWELL TO HOLYROOD[3]

It is a Saturday evening in Holyrood,—the evening of Saturday, the 26th

of March 1603. All is dull and sleepy within the Palace, the King and

Queen having retired after supper, and the lights in the apartments now

going out one by one. Suddenly, hark! what noise is that without? There

is first a battering at the gate, and then the sound of a horse’s hoofs

in the courtyard, and of a bustling of the palace servants round some

late arriver. It is the English Sir Robert Cary, brother of Lord

Hunsdon. He had left London between nine and ten o’clock in the forenoon

of the 24th; he had ridden as never man rode before, spur and gallop,

spur and gallop, all the way, through that day and the next and the

next, the two intervening nights hardly excepted; and here he is at

Holyrood on the evening of the third day,—an incredible ride! His horse,

the last he has been on, is taken from him all a-foam; and he himself,

his head bloody with a wound received by a fall and a kick from the

horse in the last portion of his journey, makes his way staggeringly,

under escort, into the aroused King’s presence. Throwing himself on his

knees before his half-dressed Majesty, he can but pant out, in his

fatigue and excitement, these words in explanation of the cause of his

being there so unceremoniously: “Queen Elizabeth is dead, and your

Majesty is King of England.”

It was the most superb moment of King James’s life. He was in the

thirty-seventh year of his age, and had been King of Scotland for nearly

thirty-six years; but through the last twenty of these,—or, at all

events, ever since February 1586–7, when the captivity of his mother

came to its tragical close at Fotheringay,—his constant thought had been

of the chance he had of being one day King also of England. Latterly the

chance had grown into a probability; but it had never become a

certainty. Although, according to all ordinary legal construction of the

case, his hereditary claim to the English succession was paramount,

there were impediments in the way. There were vehement objections to him

on the part of large sections of the English community; and that

especial and official recognition of his claims which might have gone

far to overcome these objections, or to neutralise them, had remained

wanting. Queen Elizabeth herself had, or was supposed to have, the right

of nominating her successor; but, though her relations to James through

the whole of his Scottish reign had been condescendingly kindly,—though

she had been in the habit of sending him letters of semi-parental

advice, and sometimes of rebuke, in his minority, and had then and since

shown her interest in him by allowing him a regular annual pension of

English money, of no great amount but very welcome to him as a

substantial supplement to his scanty Scottish revenues,—she had always

resisted his importunities in what was with him the all-important matter

of his succession to her crown. Her declaration on that subject had been

tantalisingly postponed; and James had been obliged to content himself

with secret negotiations with such of her English statesmen and

courtiers as might be able to persuade her to some distinct decision in

his favour while there was yet time, or, if that should not be

accomplished, might have influence themselves in bringing about the

event which she had left undetermined. Such negotiations round the

imperious old queen, clinging to life and sovereignty as she did, and

regarding as little better than treason all speculation as to what would

be after her death, were necessarily perilous; but they had been going

on for some time, with the result that a party had been formed in the

English Court favourable to the succession of King James, should

circumstances make it possible. At the centre of this party was

Secretary Sir Robert Cecil, Elizabeth’s chief minister since the death

of his father, the great Lord Burleigh, in 1598.

Elizabeth died in her palace at Richmond, in the seventieth year of her

age, about three o’clock in the morning of Thursday the 24th of March

1602 (so in the English reckoning, but in the Scottish it was 1603),

after an illness of some days, during the first four of which she lay in

great pain on cushions, and partly delirious, refusing to go to bed or

to take any food. Her Councillors, Secretary Cecil and Archbishop

Whitgift among them, had been in attendance from the first; and they had

contrived, on the day before her death, while she was lying speechless

in the bed into which they had at last forced her, to extract a sign

from her which intimated her consent that James should be her successor,

or which they found it convenient to construe to that effect. No sooner

was she dead than there was a meeting of the Council in an apartment

near that in which the corpse lay, to draft a proclamation of James as

the new sovereign, and to take other measures necessary in the crisis.

Secrecy was essential for a few hours; and, as the palace was full of

people, including the weeping court-ladies and others not of the

Council, there were orders that the gates should be shut, and that no

one should be permitted either to leave the palace or to enter it

without special warrant.

One person managed to evade the order and get in. This was the Sir

Robert Cary of whom we have just heard. He was then a man of about

forty-three years of age, and well known at Court, both from his high

family connections and on his own account. His father, the late Lord

Hunsdon, had been distinguished among Elizabeth’s councillors by being

related to her by cousinship; his brother, the present Lord Hunsdon, was

now of the Council; and a sister of his, Lady Scroope, was one of the

Queen’s ladies-in-waiting. His own services in the Queen’s employment

had been very various and had extended over many years. Among diplomatic

missions on which she had sent him in his youth had been several to King

James in Scotland; and latterly he had been in charge of one of the

English wardenships on the Scottish Borders, and conspicuous for his

vigour in the garrisoned defence of those northern parts of England

against the cattle-lifting raids of their rough Scottish neighbours.

While in this post, he had incurred the Queen’s disfavour by marrying,—a

fault which she always resented in any of her courtiers; and for a while

she had refused to see him or speak with him. He had contrived, however,

to pacify her in a skilfully obtained interview; and that cloud had

blown over. Hence, having come south on furlough from his wardenship

just about the time when the Queen was seized with her fatal illness,

and having taken lodgings in Richmond to await the issue, he had been

admitted easily enough into the dying Queen’s presence. “When I came to

Court,” he tells us, “I found the Queen ill-disposed, and she kept her

inner lodging; yet she, hearing of my arrival, sent for me. I found her

in one of her withdrawing chambers, sitting low upon her cushions. She

called me to her. I kissed her hand, and told her it was my chiefest

happiness to see her in safety, and in health, which I wished might long

continue. She took me by the hand, and wrung it hard, and said ‘No,

Robin, I am not well,’ and then discoursed with me of her indisposition,

and that her heart had been sad and heavy for ten or twelve days; and in

her discourse she fetched not so few as forty or fifty great sighs. I

was grieved at the first to see her in this plight; for in all my

lifetime before I never knew her fetch a sigh, but when the Queen of

Scots was beheaded.” This interview was on the night of Saturday, the

19th of March; and it was within the next day or two that, learning from

his sister that the Queen had become worse and worse, and that there was

no hope of her recovery, and remembering his friendly intercourse with

the Scottish King on former occasions, he despatched a letter to James

announcing the condition of affairs at Richmond, and resolved moreover

that, when the Queen was actually dead, he would be himself the first

man to carry the great news to Edinburgh. Once again he was in the

death-chamber. It was on the day before the Queen’s death,—that

Wednesday, the 23d of March, on which, lying speechless in bed, she gave

the sign which Cecil and the other councillors construed as they

desired. Among those who stood by her bedside on the evening of that

day, while Archbishop Whitgift prayed with her several times in

succession, was Sir Robert Cary. It was late, he tells us, when the

group broke up, and the Queen was left to die, with only her

waiting-women around her. Sir Robert had then gone to his lodgings in

the town, and had given instructions that he should be called at the

proper moment. Accordingly, about three o’clock on the following

morning, when he knew for certain that the Queen was dead, he was at the

palace gate. The porter had just received his orders not to admit any

one that was not privileged; and even the bribe with which Sir Robert

had already primed that official would not have been enough, had not one

of the councillors, who chanced to be at the gate at the time, taken the

responsibility of passing him in. He made his way through the chamber in

which the weeping ladies were to that in which the councillors were

assembled and were drafting their documents. His brother, Lord Hunsdon,

and his sister, Lady Scroope, being already in his confidence, and his

purpose having been guessed by Cecil and the rest, he found that they

were very angry with him, and were making arrangements of their own for

the necessary despatches to Edinburgh. In fact, they laid hold of him,

told him he must remain where he was till their pleasure should be

known, and, to show that they were in earnest, sent peremptory fresh

orders to the porter that no one was to be allowed to pass the gates

except the servants that were to be sent presently to get ready the

coaches and horses for the conveyance of the councillors themselves to

Westminster. For an hour or so, Sir Robert walked about in the palace

chagrined and disconcerted. He had got in with difficulty; but his exit

seemed impossible. Bethinking himself at last, he went to the private

chamber of his brother, Lord Hunsdon. His lordship, overpowered with the

fatigues of the preceding days, was asleep, but was soon roused, and

willing to assist. The two went together to the porter’s gate, where the

Council’s servants were just making their egress to bring the horses and

coaches. The porter could not prevent a great officer like Lord Hunsdon

from going out with them; but he stopped Sir Robert. It needed some

exertion and some angry words from Lord Hunsdon to cow the man; but this

was accomplished, and Sir Robert, to his great relief, found himself

outside the gate in the raw air of the dim March morning.

Not even yet were his difficulties over. Speeding from Richmond as fast

as he could, he was in Westminster by himself, and in a friend’s house

there, some time before the Lords of Council arrived in their coaches.

Learning, however, after they had arrived, that they were holding a

meeting in Whitehall Gardens to make final arrangements for the

proclamations of the new sovereign both in Westminster and in the City,

he thought it might be as well to try again whether they would employ

him for the service on which he had set his heart. He sent them word,

therefore, that he was in town, and was waiting their pleasure. It was

now past nine o’clock, and the proclamations were to be at ten. The

answer of the Council was a request to Sir Robert to come to them

immediately; and, as it was conveyed with a kind of intimation that he

would find them perfectly agreeable now to his proposal, he hastened to

attend them. He was actually between the outer and the inner gate of

Whitehall for this purpose, when a word sent out to him by a friendly

councillor made him aware that the Council were deceiving him, and that,

if he appeared among them, he would be laid fast. Then he hesitated no

longer. Giving the Council the slip, and not staying for the

proclamations or for anything else, he took horse at once, somewhere

near Charing Cross, and was off for his tremendous ride northwards. He

himself tells us the successive stages of his ride. He was at Doncaster

that night, a distance of 155 miles from London; next night he reached a

house of his own at Witherington in Northumberland, about 130 miles from

Doncaster; leaving Witherington on Saturday morning, he accomplished

some 50 miles more before noon that day, bringing him to Norham, close

to the Tweed; after which there were still about 65 miles of that

Scottish portion of his ride which lay between Norham and Edinburgh. He

had hoped to be at Holyrood House before supper-time; but his dizziness

and loss of blood from the fall from his horse in this last portion of

his journey delayed him, as we have seen, for an hour or two.

After his first abrupt salutation of King James in Holyrood that

Saturday night, there was naturally a longish colloquy between them. In

the course of this colloquy the King’s first excitement of joy was

damped for a moment by the reflection that the messenger had come of his

own motive merely, and without letters from the English Privy Council.

The production of a sapphire ring by Sir Robert removed, he tells us,

all doubts. The ring, it appears, had been thrown to him out of one of

the windows of Richmond Palace, just before he left, by his sister Lady

Scroope; and one account makes it out that it had been a gift by King

James himself to Queen Elizabeth, and that Lady Scroope took it off the

withered finger of the Queen after her death, to serve as a token that

could not be mistaken. Sir Robert’s own account does not quite imply

this, but _may_ be so interpreted. All the members of the Hunsdon

family, one gathers, were known to King James as having been for some

time active in his interest. It was late before the colloquy ended, and

Sir Robert was dismissed by the King for his much-needed rest of some

days, in or near Holyrood, in charge of the Master of the Household, and

under care of a surgeon.

Next day was Sunday; and, whatever whispers of the great event there may

have been round King James himself in Holyrood, it does not appear that

there was any hint of it that day among the congregations of the lieges

in the Edinburgh churches. It is hardly possible that on the following

day, when the proclamations of the new sovereign were palpitating

northwards through England, with huzzas from town to town, in the very

track of Sir Robert’s ride (he had himself ordered them in

Northumberland), the community of Edinburgh could still have remained

ignorant of what had happened. There could be no public recognition of

it, however, till the arrival of the authorised envoys from the English

Privy Council; and they did not arrive,—the laggards!—till the morning

of Tuesday, the 29th of March. They were Sir Charles Percy, brother of

the Earl of Northumberland, and Thomas Somerset, Esq., one of the sons

of the Earl of Worcester; and they brought with them two documents. One

was a copy of the Proclamation of King James that had been made in

London and Westminster on the 24th. It was certified by the signatures

of the Lord Mayor of London, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord

Chancellor Egerton, and twenty-seven more of the noblemen, prelates, and

knights of the English Council; and it opened thus—“Forasmuch as it hath

pleased Almighty God to call to his mercy out of this transitory life

our Sovereign Lady, the high and mighty princess, Elizabeth, late Queen

of England, France, and Ireland, by whose death and dissolution the

Imperial crowns of these realms foresaid are now absolutely, wholly, and

solely, come to the high and mighty prince, James the Sixth, King of

Scotland, who is lineally and lawfully descended from the body of

Margaret, daughter of the high and renowned prince, Henry the Seventh,

King of England, France, and Ireland, his great-great-grandfather,—the

said Lady Margaret being lawfully begotten of the body of Elizabeth,

daughter to King Edward the Fourth, by which happy conjunction both the

Houses of York and Lancaster were united, to the joy unspeakable of this

kingdom, formerly rent and torn by long dissension of bloody and civil

wars,—the same Lady Margaret being also the eldest sister of Henry the

Eighth, of famous memory, King of England as aforesaid: We therefore,

the Lords Spiritual and Temporal of this realm, being here assembled,

united and assisted with those of her late Majesty’s Privy Council, and

with great numbers of other principal gentlemen of quality in the

kingdom, with the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Citizens of London, and a

multitude of other good subjects and commons of this realm, thirsting

now after nothing so much as to make it known to all persons who it is

that, by law, by lineal succession, and undoubted right, is now become

the only Sovereign Lord and King of these imperial crowns, to the intent

that, by virtue of his power, wisdom, and godly courage, all things may

be provided for which may prevent or resist either foreign attempts or

popular disorder, tending to the breach of the present peace or to the

prejudice of his Majesty’s future quiet, do now hereby, with one full

voice, and consent of tongue and heart, publicly proclaim that the high

and mighty prince, James the Sixth, King of Scotland, is now, by the

death of our late Sovereign, Queen of England, of famous memory, become

also our only lawful and rightful liege lord, James the First, King of

England, France, and Ireland, Defender of the Faith.” The other document

was a missive letter to King James, signed by nearly the same persons,

and expressing their profound allegiance to him individually, and their

desire to see him in England as speedily as possible. It contained,

however, this paragraph:—“Further, we have thought meet and necessary to

advertise your Highness that Sir Robert Cary is this morning departed

from hence towards your Majesty, not only without the consent of any of

us who were present at Richmond at the time of our late Sovereign’s

decease, but also contrary to such commandment as we had power to lay

upon him, and to all decency, good manners, and respects which he owed

to so many persons of our degree; whereby it may be that your Highness,

hearing by a bare report of the death of our late Queen, and not of our

care and diligence in establishing of your Majesty’s right here in such

manner as is above specified, may either receive report or conceive

doubts of other matter than (God be thanked) there is cause you should:

which we would have clearly prevented if he had borne so much respect to

us as to have stayed for our common relation of our proceedings and not

thought it better to anticipate the same; for we would have been loth

that any person of quality should have gone from hence who should not,

with report of her death, have been able to relate the just effects of

our assured loyalties.” Both documents were read that day in the

Scottish Privy Council in Edinburgh; and their purport was published for

the general information.

What commotion in Edinburgh through the next few days! The King’s

leave-taking had to be hurried; and it was on Sunday the 3d of April

that, rising from his place in St. Giles’s Church after the sermon, he

made what had to pass as his farewell speech to all his Scottish

subjects. It was a speech intended to console them for their grievous

loss. “There is no more difference,” he said, “betwixt London and

Edinburgh, yea, not so much, as betwixt Inverness or Aberdeen and

Edinburgh; for all our marches are dry, and there be no ferries betwixt

them”; and, after dilating somewhat further on the undeniable fact of

the geographical continuity of his new kingdom with his old, he

mentioned one of its probable consequences. “Ye mister [need] not

doubt,” he said in conclusion, “but, as I have a body as able as any

king in Europe, whereby I am able to travel, so I sall visie you every

three year at the least, or ofter as I sall have occasion.” On Tuesday,

5th April, all being ready for his departure, there was the long

procession, amid thunders of cannon from the Castle, which conducted him

out of Edinburgh towards Berwick, there to begin the very leisurely tour

through the northern and midland counties of England by which he came to

London early in May. Many Scottish lords and gentlemen were in his

retinue, but none of the royal family. The Queen, Prince Henry, and the

Princess Elizabeth were to follow soon; and Prince Charles, afterwards

Charles I., then a rickety child in his third year, and unfit to travel,

was to remain in Scotland for about a year longer, under the charge of

Lord and Lady Fyvie, afterwards known as Earl and Countess of

Dunfermline.

From and after the 5th of April 1603 Holyrood, though not quite left to

the rats, was no longer the home of royalty. King James’s parting

promise that he would revisit his native kingdom at least once every

three years passed out of his mind; and not till 1617, fourteen years

after the ecstatic delight of his removal to the banks of the Thames,

did he find it worth while to recross the Tweed. Holyrood, with the

other royal palaces of Scotland, was then refurbished for his temporary

accommodation; but with that exception, and the further exception of two

subsequent visits of Charles I. to Edinburgh, there was to be no sight

of a sovereign face for many a day in the towered edifice under Arthur

Seat. For Scotland as a whole, indeed, the five-and-thirty years which

intervened between 1603 and 1638 may be described as that period of her

history during which, though still retaining a nominal apparatus of

independent autonomy, in the shape of a resident Scottish Privy Council

and an occasional meeting of a Scottish Parliament, she was governed

essentially and in the main from London through the post. “This I must

say for Scotland, and may truly vaunt it,” said King James in a speech

of rebuke to his somewhat troublesome English Parliament on the 31st of

March 1607: “here I sit and govern it with my pen; I write, and it is

done; and by a clerk of the council I govern Scotland now,—which my

ancestors could not do by the sword.” The words were perfectly true; and

they remained true for his son and successor, Charles I., till that

point in his reign when the soul of Scotland flashed out again in her

“National Covenant,” electrifying the dormant Puritanism of England, and

initiating the great Seventeenth Century Revolution in all the British

Islands.

It is so long ago now, and so much has happened between, that one almost

forgets to ask what became of Sir Robert Cary. Should there be any

interest in that subject, however, here are the facts in brief:—Though

appointed by King James, before he left Edinburgh, to be one of the

gentlemen of his bedchamber, and promised further promotion, he did not

at first benefit so much as he had expected from his signal piece of

service to that King. After accompanying the King to England, he lost

even his place in the bedchamber, and, probably from the grudge which

Secretary Cecil and the other English councillors still owed to him, was

kept otherwise in the background for some time. Gradually, however, he

recovered favour. His first considerable rise was when Lord and Lady

Dunfermline brought the sickly Prince Charles into England. Sir Robert

Cary’s wife was then selected as the fittest person to succeed Lady

Dunfermline in the charge of the delicate boy; and the honour to Sir

Robert and his wife was the less envied them because it was generally

expected that the boy would die in their hands. But he grew up under

their careful tending, with evident improvement of his health year after

year from his fifth year to his eleventh; and this ensured their future

fortunes. Queen Anne always stood their friend, and influenced the King

in their favour; Prince Henry, while he lived, treated them with

respect; and after Prince Henry’s death in 1612, when Prince Charles

became heir-apparent in his room, who but Sir Robert Cary could be the

chief man about the heir-apparent and the chamberlain of his household?

There were ups and downs still; but Sir Robert and his wife had gifts

and pensions, saw their sons and daughters suitably married, and found

themselves in the English peerage at last. In 1621 Sir Robert became

Baron Leppington. This was his last honour from King James; but in March

1626, at the coronation of Charles I., he was created Earl of Monmouth.

He was then about sixty-six years of age; and he lived in that dignity

till 1639, when he died at the age of about eighty. His _Memoirs_,

written by himself, were first published from the manuscript in 1759.

PROPOSED MEMORIAL TO DRUMMOND OF HAWTHORNDEN.[4]

It is two centuries and a half since Drummond of Hawthornden died; but

he is still one of the most interesting figures in Scottish history. “A

genius the most polite and verdant that ever the Scottish nation

produced” was the character given of him in 1656 by Milton’s nephew and

pupil, Edward Phillips, in the preface to a collective edition of

Drummond’s poems brought out in London that year under Phillips’s

editorial care. Very possibly the words are Milton’s own; for Phillips

derived his notions of poetry from Milton, and there is other evidence

of Milton’s familiarity with the poetry of Drummond. At all events the

words are singularly exact for their purpose. They imply, it is true, an

imperfect recollection, if not a total ignorance, of the previous wealth

of Scottish poetry, represented in such predecessors of Drummond as

Barbour, James I., Henryson, Dunbar, Gavin Douglas, and Sir David

Lindsay; but, even had Phillips’s recollection of these been clearer and

stronger than it was, his selection of the words “polite” and “verdant”

as descriptive of those characteristics of Drummond’s genius which were

surest to strike Englishmen would not have been so much amiss, while for

the range of Scottish time actually within Phillips’s retrospect at the

moment the wording of the eulogy was perfect.

The famous series of the older Scottish poets had come to an end on the

death of Lindsay just before the Reformation; and from that time it

seemed as if the Literary Muses had all but vanished from Scotland,

dispossessed and superseded by quite another order of Muses, if that

name can be stretched so as anyhow to include them,—the rougher and

angrier Muses of vexed national questions, and especially of the Kirk

Controversy. Call them Muses or what else you will, they were very

momentous powers, and he is but a feeble Scot who will speak of them

with contumely, or will ignore the great effects for Scotland and for

all Britain that came out of their turmoil. Not the less it is

depressing to Scottish patriotism nowadays to remember how long the

turmoil lasted, how all-engrossing it was, and how much of native

faculty and aspiration of the finer, deeper, and quieter sorts it must

have stifled and extinguished. For the first twenty years after the

Reformation there is the compensation, indeed, of the oratory and

pre-eminent prose energy of Knox, and of the great literary fame and

exquisite Latinity of Buchanan; but from the year 1580 onwards till

1725, or thereabouts, what a long tract of sterility in the literary

annals of Scotland! Through that century and a half England prodigiously

surpassed her former self, first astonishing the world by the outburst

of her Elizabethan splendours, and then continuing the astonishment by

the rich and varied literary activity of three succeeding ages, the

latest of which was that of the Queen Anne wits. Scotland, on the other

hand, had sunk incredibly below the promise of _her_ former self. The

Scottish pre-Reformation poets had been comparable, or more than

comparable, with the very best of their English coevals, Chaucer alone

deducted; but, when the literary historian, leaving the crowded series

of lustrous names, from those of Spenser, Bacon, and Shakespeare at one

end, to those of Dryden and Pope at the other, which represent the

literature of South Britain between 1580 and 1725, seeks in North

Britain for equivalents, what does he find? No equivalents in the

highest degree; but, at the utmost, if he mixes any strictness of

conscience with his kindliness, only such an exception here and there to

the general sterility that, if it is of the racy vernacular sort, it can

be noted apart with pleasure on that account, or, if it is cognate with

anything in the English series, it can be moved along that series till

the proper interstice is found into which it can be fitted.

One indubitable exception, the exception in chief, was Drummond of

Hawthornden. Born amid a people almost wholly absorbed in their Kirk

controversy, it had somehow happened that here was one Scot whose ideal

of life differed from the common. Of a meditative and philosophical

temperament from his boyhood, a lover of books, art, and music, and with

his tastes in such matters educated by foreign travel and by a

familiarity with the recent English Elizabethan literature which must

have been then excessively rare in North Britain, he had no sooner

become Laird of Hawthornden by his father’s death in 1610 than, abjuring

all other occupations, he schemed out for himself that life of studious

leisure which suited him best, and for which there could not, in all

Scotland, have been a more beautiful home than the leafy dell of his

lairdship and habitation:—

“Dear wood, and you, sweet solitary place,

Where from the vulgar I estranged live.”

Here, accordingly, it was that, between 1610, when he was in his

twenty-fifth year, and 1625, when he was in his fortieth, he wrote at

intervals, and uniformly in that southern English which he foresaw was

thenceforward to be the general literary tongue of the British Islands,

most of the poems by which he is now remembered. The quantity altogether

was not large, and the pieces were all short individually; but the

quality was genuine. No such poetry of artist-like delight in beauty of

scenery, the soft and luscious in colour, form, language, and sound,

pervaded at the same time by such a fine and high vein of pensive

reflectiveness, had appeared in Scotland for many a day. This was at

once recognised among his own countrymen; but the poems, or the rumour

of them, went beyond Scotland. Before the close of the reign of the

Scottish King James in England, Drummond was certainly the one man

living in Scotland who was thought of by the London men of letters round

the Court of that King as belonging, by right of real merit, to the

poetic brotherhood of the reign. A London Scot or two, it is true,

having the advantages of proximity and of Court connection, did divide

with Drummond the applauses of the London circle of critics for Scottish

merit in English verse-making; but, if the vote had been seriously

taken, it was to Drummond that the competent judges would have sent the

laurel. Hence, indeed, some of the most memorable incidents in

Drummond’s biography. Hence it was that the Elizabethan veteran Michael

Drayton entered into such loving correspondence with him, addressing him

“my dear, noble Drummond”; hence it was that, when any eminent Londoner

chanced to make a tour in Scotland, he was sure to seek an introduction

to Drummond; and hence that immortal visit of the great Ben Jonson

himself, when he was Drummond’s guest in Hawthornden for a whole week in

the winter of 1618–9, entertained Drummond with all the gossip of London

for thirty years back, stunned him with loud talk about everything, and

drank an immensity of his wine. Phillips’s encomium of 1656, when

Drummond had been seven years dead, only expressed, one can see, an

opinion already formed while Drummond was still alive, and in the prime

of his manhood.

The encomium included, or ought to have included, more than Drummond’s

performances in verse. His fine and verdant genius is no less

discernible in his prose writings. His little essay entitled “A Cypress

Grove” is a piece of prose so superlatively excellent that one wonders

how it should be so little known,—why, in fact, it should not have had a

prominent place in all professed collections of the flowers of English

seventeenth-century prose. For high-toned philosophic thoughtfulness,

ingenuity of artistic phantasy, musical beauty of style, and perfection

of literary taste and finish, there is nothing superior, of the same

length, if anything quite equal, in all Sir Thomas Browne, or in all

Jeremy Taylor. That essay was published in 1623, as an adjunct to one of

his volumes of poems; and, though there is a good deal of other and

later prose from Drummond, it is mainly of a character less readable

now, and less acceptable in some quarters where it may still receive

attention. For the _quæstiones vexatæ_ did at last coil themselves round

Drummond, and in his later years, in his own despite, he had to become a

polemical politician. King James had been succeeded by King Charles; on

the 23d of July 1637 Jenny Geddes hurled her stool in St. Giles’s; and

Scotland then passed into that trebly troubled period of her always

troubled history which, commencing with her own defiance to Charles and

Laud in her National Scottish Covenant, and proceeding thence to her

alliance with the English Parliamentarians in the Solemn League and

Covenant, includes Montrose’s brief year of Royalist outblaze and

anti-Covenanting triumph, and all the rest of the chequered sequel till

the English Republicans brought Charles to the block. No Scot through

that long agony was permitted to be neutral; if any one had tried, he

would have been torn from his retirement, and obliged to declare

himself. Drummond did declare himself, and it was on what was then, and

still is, among his countrymen, the unpopular side. In a series of prose

tracts, circulated surreptitiously, some of them of the nature of

satirical squibs, he advocated views of Scottish politics which were

very much those of Montrose and the Hamiltons. Even where this may be

remembered, in a general way, to his discredit now, there is much,

however, in the tracts themselves to arrest the unfavourable judgment

and turn it into respect. Their literary ability and clever wit may

count for little with those who resent their purport; but there are

passages of high-minded and eloquent earnestness that must startle any

reader in such a context. While inculcating upon his countrymen an

effete and impracticable political philosophy of passive obedience, and

while indicating a preference on Drummond’s own part for something of

that florid Anglican ecclesiasticism against which his countrymen were

fighting, he flings out to the right and to the left remonstrances much

needed on both sides, and especially a doctrine of religious toleration

far beyond the apprehension of either, or of the time generally. Laud he

virtually shoves aside as an interloper; and, on the whole, the

substance of the tracts, in one of the two directions to which they were

addressed, is like a message to Charles that he had been unfortunately

wrong in his Scottish policy from the first, inasmuch as Scotland always

had been Scotland, was Scotland still, and could not be drilled by any

mortal force against her own will into anything else. Here, in fact,

Drummond reveals his very heart. A disciple though he was of the English

Elizabethans in literature, deploring the low condition of Scottish

literature in comparison, and practising in his own writings the

accepted book-English of the south, he was yet thoroughly a Scot by his

strongest personal and private affections. No Scot of his generation

more fond of the antiquities and legends of his country, or more learned

in that kind of lore; his chief pastime all through his life was in

researches into Scottish records and family genealogies back to Malcolm

Canmore and beyond; and his special recreation amid the troublesome

party-pamphleteering of his later years was the composition of his

_History of the Five Jameses_. This was not published till some years

after his death, and, though of some interest as a specimen of the

silvering effect of his ornate English upon very savage matters, is the

poorest of all his writings in respect of real worth. But what of that

other relic of Drummond, if it be really his, which did not come to

light till thirty years after his decease, and then in the surprising

form of a piece of broad Fifeshire farce in dog-Latin hexameters,

entitled _Polemo-Middinia inter Vitarvam et Nebernam_,—_i.e._ “The

Midden-Fecht between Tarvet and Newbarns”? If that really _is_

Drummond’s (which is possible, or even probable, though not absolutely

certain), it is one excellent feather more in his cap. It would be proof

positive that the stately and pensive Laird of Hawthornden was a typical

Scot also, no less than Dunbar and Lindsay before him, or Burns after

him, in the Scottish faculty of uproarious fun, and could give and take,

when he chose, with any Newhaven fishwife, or any Gilmerton carter, in

their own roughest vocabulary.

The tradition of Drummond has come down pretty vividly from his own time

to the present. This, however, is perhaps less due to continued

acquaintance with his writings than to certain aiding circumstances. Few

names of literary celebrity, as Charles Lamb used to remark, are so

delightful to pronounce as “Drummond of Hawthornden”; and in England, so

far as Drummond has been kept in mind at all, it seems to have been

chiefly by this conserving efficacy of his gracefully-sounding name. In

Scotland, and especially in the vicinity of Edinburgh, the aids in

recollecting him have been of a stronger kind:—

“Who knows not Melville’s beechy grove,

And Roslin’s rocky glen,

Dalkeith, which all the virtues love,

And classic Hawthornden?”

When Scott wrote these lines, ninety-one years ago, the reputation of

the valley of the Esk for scenic beauty and picturesqueness, and the

fashion of holiday peregrinations to it, on that account and on account

of the attractions of its historical associations, by the citizens of

Edinburgh or by tourists visiting Edinburgh, had already been fully

formed. The reputation and the fashion have been kept up ever since, and

Drummond’s memory has had the benefit. Whatever the other attractions of

the valley of the Esk and its neighbourhood, the twin pre-eminence among

them has belonged to Roslin and Hawthornden; and hence it has happened

that hundreds and thousands who had never read a line of Drummond’s, and

knew but vaguely in what century he lived, have looked admiringly at the

cliff-socketed and quaintly gabled and turreted edifice, partly built by

himself and partly of more ruinous antiquity, where he had his dwelling,

have walked round it in the grounds where he once walked, have descended

as he used to descend into the leafy dell of the river beneath, and so

have taken into their minds some image of the man by the memory of whom

the place has been consecrated.

Hawthornden is in the parish of Lasswade; and it is in the churchyard of

Lasswade, two miles from the Hawthornden mansion, that one sees the bit

of old masonry, called the Drummond Aisle, and once a portion of the

church itself, within which is Drummond’s grave. Did he foresee that

this would be his resting-place, or was he only writing metaphorically,

when he penned the lines, now perhaps the most frequently quoted piece

of his verse, giving instructions for his epitaph? His most intimate

friend and correspondent through his life was Sir William Alexander of

Menstrie, eventually Earl of Stirling and Secretary of State for

Scotland,—one of those London Scots above mentioned who divided for a

while with Drummond in London literary circles the palm of the primacy

in Scoto-British poetry. There was no jealousy between them on that

account; on the contrary, Alexander, as a man of high Court influence,

regarded himself as standing in a relation of patronage to Drummond,

while Drummond, acknowledging this relation, and proud of it, looked up

to Alexander and admired him hugely. Their friendship, nevertheless, was

as close and affectionate as ever bound two men together, and in their

letters to each other they always, to signify this, called themselves,

in the fashion of the pastoralists, Alexis and Damon. Well, it was in

the year 1621, or thereabouts, that Drummond, then only about

thirty-five years of age, but hardly recovered from a severe illness

which had brought him to the doors of death and left him in a mood of

melancholy depression, sent a sonnet to Alexander, containing these

lines:—

“Amidst thy sacred cares and courtly toils,

Alexis, when thou shalt hear wandering fame

Tell death hath triumphed o’er my mortal spoils,

And that on earth I am but a sad name,

If thou e’er held me dear, by all our love,

By all that bliss, those joys, Heaven here us gave,

I conjure thee, and by the Maids of Jove,

To carve this short remembrance on my grave:—

‘Here Damon lies, whose songs did sometime grace

The murmuring Esk: may roses shade the place!’”

In the memorial to Drummond now proposed by the influential committee of

which Lord Melville is chairman it is intended that this instruction

shall be obeyed as faithfully as possible. The bushing of roses round

the grave was but a wish, and a bushing of roses round the Drummond

Aisle in Lasswade Churchyard is unfortunately not practicable in that

situation. But there may be some decoration of the little aisle

containing the grave; and on the wall, whether in the interior or

outside, there may be a medallion of Drummond or other commemorative

sculpture, with room for his own words of epitaph. That, most properly,

is to be the first object, the primary object, of the committee that has

been formed for the promotion of the memorial. Should the amount of the

subscriptions, however, permit something more, the precise form of the

addition may be matter for consideration. Should there be a bust or

other piece of monumental sculpture besides that which is to decorate

the sepulchre at Lasswade, surely Edinburgh is the place for that

supplement, and, within Edinburgh, perhaps St. Giles’s Cathedral. For

was not Drummond one of the earliest alumni of Edinburgh University; was

not his donation of books to the University, which is still kept apart

in the University Library under the name of The Drummond Collection, a

special testimony of his regard and affection for the University in its

infancy, and for the whole city; all through the years of his residence

at Hawthornden must not the seven miles of road between Hawthornden and

Edinburgh have been his most familiar ride or walk; every other week

must he not have been actually in Edinburgh for hours and days together,

visiting his Edinburgh relatives and friends, seen in colloquy with some

of them on the causey of the old High Street near St. Giles’s Church,

and known to have his favourite lounge in that street in the shop of

Andro Hart, bookseller and publisher, just opposite the Cross?

Although the increase among us of late of the practice of such

commemorative tributes to eminent personages of the past has provoked

cynical criticism in some quarters, it is really one of the creditable

signs of our time. The more numerous the objects of interest to any

nation in its own history, or in history generally, in times preceding

the bustle of the present, the richer the mind of that nation, and the

higher its capabilities. Even the range of time to which it will go back

for worthy objects of interest must count for something in the

reckoning. The recent is only the departing present, and has so left its

residues in the present, whether of admirations or of animosities, that

participation in testimonies of regard for public men remembered as

having recently moved amidst us signifies little more with many than

sensitiveness to the common duties of present social life, or sometimes

even of present political partisanship. To be susceptible of the

commemorative instinct with respect to objects and persons removed from

ourselves by a generation or two, or a century or two, is a rarer thing,

and implies a larger and finer endowment of historical knowledge and

feeling.

ALLAN RAMSAY[5]

In the reign of Queen Anne there were the stirrings of a literary

revival in Scotland. No name connects itself more distinctly with this

interesting phenomenon than that of Allan Ramsay.

Born in 1686, of humble parentage, in the village of Leadhills, in the

wild inland parish of Crawfordmuir in Lanarkshire, and educated in the

ordinary fashion at the parish school there, Ramsay was brought to

Edinburgh in 1701, when he was in his fifteenth year, and was

apprenticed to a periwig-maker. The statement sometimes made that he

began life as a barber is therefore incorrect. The crafts of the barber

and the wig-maker were then distinct. _Wig_ and _periwig_ are one and

the same thing, and both are derived, it seems, though one would hardly

suppose so, from the Latin _pilus_, hair. Thus,—Latin, _pilus_, hair;

old Italian, _pilucca_, a mass of hair or head of hair; this, still in

old Italian, corrupted into _perucca_; whence the French _perruque_;

that word adopted into English, but generally twirled into _periwig_ to

make it native; from which word _periwig_ if you lop off the _peri_, the

sole remnant of the original _pilus_, you have the mere twirl or

termination _wig_, standing as a substantive word and answering the

whole purpose. Now a wig-maker, periwig-maker, or _perruquier_, was no

mean tradesman in those old times, extending from the middle of the

seventeenth century to near the end of the eighteenth, when it was the

strange custom, in all civilised European countries, for people to wear

artificial heads of hair, not as mere substitutes for the natural

growths in cases of necessity (which had been a usage everywhere from

time immemorial), but as fashionable adornments of bulging volume and

fantastic device. An essay might be written on the fact that there was

such a wig-wearing age in Europe, nearly the same in range of time in

every country of that continent; in which essay it might be plausibly

argued that there was an inherent congruity between the strange

wig-wearing habit and the intellectual and spiritual characteristics,

and consequently the literary capabilities and products, of the age

distinguished by the habit. One can hardly conceive Addison or Dr.

Johnson, for example, without a wig, or Wordsworth, or Byron, or Sir

Walter Scott, with one.

Be that as it may,—and there are curious intricacies in the

speculation,—Allan Ramsay not only belonged to the wig-wearing age in

Scotland, but was brought up to the business of wig-making and

wig-dressing for the Edinburgh lieges. It was no bad employment in a

population of between 30,000 and 40,000 inhabitants, including resident

noblemen and lairds, and a good many professional men and merchants, all

of whom wore wigs, and liked them to be handsome. Accordingly, when, in

or about the year 1708, or just after the Union, young Ramsay, having

concluded his apprenticeship, started in business for himself, in some

shop in the High Street, or one of its offshoots, his prospects were

fair enough. Skipping four years, and coming to the year 1712, when he

was twenty-five years of age, we find him just married to the daughter

of a respectable Edinburgh lawyer, and in very comfortable circumstances

otherwise. It was then that he was beginning to be known in the cosy

society of old Edinburgh as not only an expert wig-maker but also

something besides.

“Whenever fame, with voice of thunder,

Sets up a chield a warld’s wonder,

Either for slashing folk to dead,

Or having wind-mills in his head,

Or poet, or an airy beau,

Or ony twa-legged rary-show,

They wha have never seen’t are busy

To speer what-like a carlie is he.”

The words are Ramsay’s own, by way of preface in one of his poems to an

account of his personal appearance and general character. The

description, though not written till 1719, will do very well for 1712:—

“_Imprimis_, then, for tallness, I

Am five feet and four inches high;

A black-a-viced, snod, dapper, fallow,

Nor lean nor overlaid with tallow;

With phiz of a Morocco cut,

Resembling a late man of wit,

Auld-gabbit Spec., wha was sae cunning

To be a dummie ten years running.

Then, for the fabric of my mind,

’Tis mair to mirth than grief inclined:

I rather choose to laugh at folly

Than show dislike by melancholy,

Well judging a sour heavy face

Is not the truest mark of grace.”

Elsewhere, more briefly, he describes himself as

“A little man that lo’es my ease,”

and again as one who much enjoyed, in good company,

“An evening and guffaw.”

This kind of pleasure he was in the habit of enjoying more particularly

in one of those many clubs into which the citizens of dense Auld Reekie

then distributed themselves for the purposes of conviviality. It

consisted of about a dozen kindred spirits calling themselves “The Easy

Club,” professing literary tastes, and making it a rule that each of

them should be known within the club by some adopted name of literary

associations. Ramsay’s first club-name was “Isaac Bickerstaff,” but he

changed it after a while for “Gavin Douglas.” There is a significance in

both names, and in the exchange of the one for the other.

Through Ramsay’s apprenticeship, and also after he had set up in

business for himself, he had been a diligent reader of all accessible

books. Recollecting what books _were_ then accessible to one in his

circumstances, we can see, however, that his readings had been mainly in

two directions. In the first place, there was the current English or

London literature of his own time, or as much of it as was wafted to

Edinburgh in the shape of the last or recent publications, in prose or

verse, by Defoe, Prior, Swift, Steele, Colley Cibber, Addison, Rowe,

Aaron Hill, Gay, and others of the Queen Anne wits; among whom is not to

be forgotten the youthful Pope, then rising to the place of poetic

supremacy that had been left vacant by Dryden. Of Ramsay’s cognisance of

this contemporary English literature of the south, his admiration of it,

and enjoyment of it, there is abundant evidence. He had become aware,

however, of another literature, indigenous to his own Scotland, though

lying far back, for the most part, in an obscure Scottish past. Through

Watson’s _Collection of Comic and Serious Scots Poems_, Ruddiman’s

edition of Gavin Douglas’s _Translation of Virgil_, and Sage’s edition

of Drummond of Hawthornden, he had been attracted to the old Scottish

poets, finding in them a richness of antique matter that came home to

his heart amid all his readings in Steele, Pope, and Addison:—

“The chiels of London, Cam., and Ox.,

Hae raised up great poetic stocks

Of _Rapes_, of _Buckets_, _Sarks_, and _Locks_,

While we neglect

To shaw their betters. This provokes

Me to reflect

On the learn’d days of Gawn Dunkell:

Our country then a tale could tell;

Europe had nane mair snack and snell

At verse or prose;

Our Kings were poets too themsell,

Bauld and jocose.”

In this double direction of Ramsay’s literary likings,—his respectful

obeisance to the literary merits of his London contemporaries, and his

fonder private affection for the old poets of his Scottish

vernacular,—we have the key to his own literary life.

Between 1712 and 1718, or between Ramsay’s twenty-sixth and his

thirty-third year, just when the reign of Queen Anne was passing into

that of George I., the Edinburgh public became more and more alive to

the fact that they had a poet among them in the guise of a wig-maker. A

number of little pieces of verse, with Ramsay’s name attached, came out

in succession in the form of humbly printed leaflets, some of them with

the sanction of “The Easy Club,” as having been originally written for

that convivial fraternity, but others independently, when that club had

ceased to exist. On examining these earliest pieces of Ramsay, one finds

that, while some of them are satires or moralisings in a rather crude

English, in imitation of the London poetry then in vogue, the best are

occasional poems in the colloquial Scotch of Ramsay’s own day, suggested

by local incidents, characters, and humours. In these he was evidently

connecting himself as well as he could with the broken chain of those

older vernacular poets to whom he looked back with so much interest. We

can even detect those predecessors of his in this broken chain whom he

took more immediately for his models. They were the two later Semples of

Beltrees,—Robert Semple (1595–1659), the author of “The Piper of

Kilbarchan,” and his son Francis Semple (died about 1685), author of

“Fye, let us a’ to the bridal,” “Maggie Lauder,” and other Scottish

songs. Not that these were poets of anything like the dimensions of the

older Dunbar, Gavin Douglas, and Lindsay, but that they had exhibited

the literary capabilities of the Scottish tongue in that more recent and

less archaic stage from which one might make a fresh start. That he had

still a hankering, however, after the greater and older Scots was shown

by the boldest, and in point of length most considerable, of his

attempts at authorship during the time now under notice. This was the

publication, in 1717, of a new edition of the old Scotch poem, in

complex rhyming stanzas, called _Christ’s Kirk on the Green_, attributed

by some to King James V., and by others, with utter improbability, to

the poet-king James I. To the original of this old poem of Scottish

humour, the language of which is so difficult that it had puzzled

previous editors, there was added a continuation by himself, in the form

of a second canto, carrying on the story; and, the demand having been

such that another edition was called for in the following year, he then

added a third canto. Ramsay was no philologist, and his edition of the

old poem was of no value for scholars; but his appreciation of the

poetic merit of the old piece must have been beyond the common, and his

two cantos of continuation were something of a feat. “Nothing so rich,”

says a modern critic, “had appeared since the strains of Dunbar or

Lindsay”; and of the opening of the third canto the same critic says

that it is “an inimitable sketch of rustic life,—coarse, but as true as

any by Teniers.” The judgment is perhaps too favourable; but this

venture of Ramsay’s in the archaic Scotch deservedly increased the

reputation he had won by his easier and shorter pieces in the ordinary

colloquial Scotch of his own day, and by some of their English

companions.

Before the year 1718, when _Christ’s Kirk on the Green_ appeared with

its completed continuation, Ramsay had begun to combine the business of

bookselling with that of wig-making. For this purpose he had transferred

himself and his family to a house in the High Street, just opposite

Niddry’s Wynd, for which he had adopted the sign of “The Mercury”; and

it was from this house that the completed edition of the old poem was

published. The house still stands, now numbered 153 in the street,

glass-fronted to a great extent in the two storeys above the basement,

and with the old stone stair of entrance to these storeys, but bereft of

an upper storey and attics which once belonged to it and gave it a more

imposing look. To understand, however, the dignity of the house and its

situation in Allan Ramsay’s days, one has to remember that the Edinburgh

of those days consisted all but entirely of that one long descending

ridge or backbone of edifices from the Castle to Holyrood of which the

High Street proper was the main portion. One must remember further that

the High Street was not then the continued clear oblong from the

Lawnmarket to the Netherbow which we now see, but that up a portion of

the middle of it, along the face of St. Giles’s Church, there ran an

obstructive block of buildings,—consisting of the Old Tolbooth or “Heart

of Midlothian” at the upper end, and a tall pile of dwelling-houses and

shops, called the Luckenbooths, at the lower end,—the effect of which

was to choke the traffic at that part, and divide it between a narrow

tortuous foot-passage along the buttresses of the church on the one side

and a somewhat wider causey for vehicles on the other. Now, as Ramsay’s

new house was a good way below this obstruction, and in that open space

of the High Street where there was plenty of room to breathe, it was in

an excellent position for bookselling or any similar business. There was

actually a temptation for a citizen lingering in this spot to ascend

Allan Ramsay’s stone stair to have a look at the books on sale,

especially if he could have his wig dressed at the same time. That this

was possible we have Ramsay’s own word. It is generally represented in

memoirs of him that he had given up wig-making when he entered his new

shop of the Mercury opposite to Niddry’s Wynd, and there took to

bookselling; but these lines, appended to the description of his

personal appearance and character in the poem already quoted, settle the

question—

“Say, wad ye ken my gate of fending,

My income, management, and spending?

Born to nae landship,—mair’s the pity,—

Yet denizen of this fair city,

I make what honest shift I can,

And in my ain house am good-man;

Which stands in Ed’nburgh’s street the sun-side.

I theek the out and line the inside

Of mony a douce and witty pash,

And baith ways gather in the cash.”

Ramsay remained in this house in the High Street about eight years. They

were busy and prosperous years. During the first three of them, or from

1718 to 1721, he continued to send forth miscellaneous little pieces,

some in English but most in Scotch, in sheets or half-sheets, to be

bought separately. There were songs, satirical sketches and squibs,

elegies, metrical epistles to friends or to public persons, odes on

Edinburgh events or on such national occurrences as the collapse of the

South Sea Bubble, and a few essays in a more general and serious vein,

chiefly in the English heroic couplet, such as _The Morning Interview_,

_Tartana or the Plaid_, and _Content_. The sheets or half-sheets were

bought eagerly. It was at this time, indeed, according to the tradition,

that the good-wives of Edinburgh were in the habit of sending out their

children, with a penny or twopence, to buy “Allan Ramsay’s last piece,”

whatever it might be. His popularity, however, did not rest on such

humble demonstrations of liking. He was now one of the most respected of

the citizens of Edinburgh, spoken of universally among them as their

poet, and on terms of personal intimacy with the most distinguished of

them. He had become a notability even beyond the bounds of

Edinburgh,—through the south of Scotland, if not yet in all Scotland.

His name had even been carried to London, with the effect of some vague

notion of him among the English wits there as a poet in the colloquial

Scotch possessing all the north part of the island by himself. This

recognition of him in the south seems to have begun about the year 1720,

and to have been occasioned by a little Scottish pastoral elegy,

entitled _Richy and Sandy_, which he had written on the death of Addison

in the previous year. The “Richy” of this piece is Sir Richard Steele,

and the “Sandy” is Mr. Alexander Pope; and they are represented as two

fellow-shepherds of the famous deceased bewailing his loss in a

colloquy. Steele and Pope could hardly avoid hearing of such a thing;

and, indeed, pirated copies reached London, and there was a reprint of

the elegy there from Lintot’s press, with the Scotch dreadfully mangled.

It seems to have been with a view to prevent such piracy and misprinting

of his productions in future, as well as to confirm his reputation by

putting all his writings before the public in permanent form, that

Ramsay, in the course of 1720, sent out subscription papers for a

collected edition of his works. The appeal was most successful; and in

July 1721 the collected edition did appear, in a handsome quarto volume,

of about 400 pages, with the title POEMS BY ALLAN RAMSAY, “printed by

Mr. Thomas Ruddiman for the Author.” The “Alphabetical List of

Subscribers” prefixed to the volume contains nearly 500 names, most of

them Scotch, but with a sprinkling of English. Among the Scottish names

are those of nearly all the Scottish nobility of the day, in the persons

of seven dukes, five marquises, twenty-one earls, one viscount, and

twenty-three lords, while the columns are crowded with the names of the

best-known baronets, knights, lairds, judges, lawyers, merchants, and

civic functionaries in and round about Edinburgh and in other parts of

Scotland. Among the few names from England one reads with special

interest, besides that of the literary Scoto-Londoner “John Arbuthnot,

M.D.,” these three,—“Mr. Alexander Pope,” “Sir Richard Steele” (for two

copies), and “Mr. Richard Savage.” The volume was dedicated to the

Ladies of Scotland in a few gallant and flowery sentences; and there was

a preface, addressed specially to the critics, full of shrewd sense, and

showing Ramsay’s command of an easy and light style of English prose.

Another distinction of the volume was a portrait of the author,

excellently engraved after a painting by an Edinburgh artist-friend. It

represents a youngish man, with a bright, knowing, clever face, a

smallish and sensitive nose, and fine and lively eyes. One observes that

there is no wig, or semblance of a wig, in the portrait, but only the

natural hair, closely cropped to the shape of the head, and surmounted

by a neat Scotch bonnet, cocked a little to one side. As it is

impossible to suppose that a man who lived by making wigs did not wear

one himself, the inference must be that, in a portrait which was to

represent him in his poetical capacity, the wig was rejected by artistic

instinct. In later portraits of Ramsay it is the same, save that the

small Scotch bonnet is superseded in these by a kind of cloth turban of

several folds. In proof that this deviation in the portraits from the

usual habit of real life was suggested by artistic instinct, one may

note that there is the same deviation in the portraits of most of the

other real British poets of the wig-wearing age. Pope, Prior, Gay, and

Thomson all appear in their portraits with something like Allan Ramsay’s

turban or night-cap for their head-dress; and it descended to the poet

Cowper.

Very likely, however, about the date at which we are now arrived, Allan

Ramsay, though he still continued to wear a wig when off poetic duty,

had ceased to make wigs for others. The collected edition of his poems

had brought him 400 guineas at once, worth then about 1000 guineas now;

and his bookselling,—including now a steady sale of that volume in a

cheaper edition for the general public, and also the sale of the new

pieces of an occasional kind which he continued to issue in separate

form as fast as before,—was becoming a sufficient trade in itself. By

the year 1724, at all events, when he had added a considerable number of

such stray occasional pieces to those bound up in the collected volume,

he seems to have been known in the little business world of Edinburgh no

longer as “wig-maker,” but simply as “bookseller,” or sometimes more

generally as “merchant.” Two enterprises of that year, both in the way

of editorship rather than authorship, must have occupied a good deal of

his time. These were THE TEA TABLE MISCELLANY: A COLLECTION OF CHOICE

SONGS, SCOTS AND ENGLISH, and THE EVERGREEN: A COLLECTION OF SCOTS POEMS

WROTE BY THE INGENIOUS BEFORE 1600. The first, originally in two

volumes, but subsequently extended to four, was a collection of what

might be called contemporary songs of all varieties, with the inclusion

of floating popular favourites from the seventeenth century, deemed

suitable, according to the somewhat lax standard of taste in those days,

for musical eveningparties in families, or for companies of gentlemen by

themselves. The purpose of the other, as the title indicates, was more

scholarly. It was to recall the attention of his countrymen to that

older Scottish poetry which he still thought too little regarded by

furnishing selected specimens of Henryson, Dunbar, Kennedy, Scott,

Montgomery, the Wedderburns, Sir Richard Maitland, and others certainly

or presumably of earlier centuries than the seventeenth. The intention

was creditable, and the book did good service, though the editing of the

old Scotch was inaccurate and meagre. In reality, Ramsay’s exertions for

the two publications were not merely editorial. The TEA TABLE

MISCELLANY, when completed, besides containing about thirty songs

contributed by “some ingenious young gentlemen” of Ramsay’s

acquaintance,—among whom we can identify now Hamilton of Bangour, young

David Malloch, a William Crawford, and a William Walkinshaw,—contained

about sixty songs of Ramsay’s own composition. Similarly, among several

mock-antiques by modern hands inserted into THE EVERGREEN, were two by

Ramsay himself, entitled _The Vision_ and _The Eagle and Robin

Redbreast_.

The time had come for Ramsay’s finest and most characteristic

performance. More than once, in his miscellanies hitherto, he had tried

the pastoral form in Scotch, whether from a natural tendency to that

form or induced by recent attempts in the English pastoral by Ambrose

Philips, Pope, and Gay. Besides his pastoral elegy on the death of

Addison, and another on the death of Prior, he had written a pastoral

dialogue of real Scottish life in 162 lines, entitled _Patie and Roger_,

introduced by this description:—

“Beneath the south side of a craigy bield,

Where a clear spring did halesome water yield,

Twa youthfu’ shepherds on the gowans lay,

Tending their flocks ae bonny morn of May:

Poor Roger graned till hollow echoes rang,

While merry Patie hummed himsel a sang.”

This piece, and two smaller pastoral pieces in the same vein, called

_Patie and Peggy_ and _Jenny and Meggie_, had been so much liked that

Ramsay had been urged by his friends to do something more extensive in

the shape of a pastoral story or drama. He had been meditating such a

thing through the year 1724, while busy with his two editorial

compilations; and in June 1725 the result was given to the public in THE

GENTLE SHEPHERD: A SCOTS PASTORAL COMEDY. Here the three pastoral

sketches already written were inwoven into a simply-constructed drama of

rustic Scottish life as it might be imagined among the Pentland Hills,

near Edinburgh, at that time, still within the recollection of very old

people then alive, when the Protectorates of Cromwell and his son had

come to an end and Monk had restored King Charles. The poem was received

with enthusiastic admiration. There had been nothing like it before in

Scottish literature, or in any other; nothing so good of any kind that

could be voted as even similar; and this was at once the critical

verdict. It is a long while ago, and there are many spots in Edinburgh

which compete with one another in the interest of their literary

associations; but one can stand now with particular pleasure for a few

minutes any afternoon opposite that decayed house in the High Street,

visible as one is crossing from the South Bridge to the North Bridge,

where Allan Ramsay once had his shop, and whence the first copies of THE

GENTLE SHEPHERD were handed out, some day in June 1725, to eager

Edinburgh purchasers.

The tenancy of this house by Ramsay lasted but a year longer. He had

resolved to add to his general business of bookselling and publishing

that of a circulating library, the first institution of the kind in

Edinburgh. For this purpose he had taken new premises, still in the High

Street, but in a position even more central and conspicuous than that of

“The Mercury” opposite Niddry’s Wynd. They were, in fact, in the

easternmost house of the Luckenbooths, or lower part of that obstructive

stack of buildings, already mentioned, which once ran up the High Street

alongside of St. Giles’s Church, dividing the traffic into two narrow

and overcrowded channels. It is many years since the Luckenbooths and

the whole obstruction of which they formed a part were swept away; but

from old prints we can see that the last house of the Luckenbooths to

the east was a tall tenement of five storeys, with its main face looking

straight down the lower slope of the High Street towards the Canongate.

The strange thing was that, though thus in the very heart of the bustle

of the town as congregated round the Cross, the house commanded from its

higher windows a view beyond the town altogether, away to Aberlady Bay

and the farther reaches of sea and land in that direction. It was into

this house that Ramsay removed in 1726, when he was exactly forty years

of age. The part occupied by him was the flat immediately above the

basement floor, but perhaps with that floor in addition. The sign he

adopted for the new premises was one exhibiting the heads or effigies of

Ben Jonson and Drummond of Hawthornden.

Having introduced Ramsay into this, the last of his Edinburgh shops, we

have reached the point where our present interest in him all but ends.

In 1728, when he had been two years in the new premises, he published a

second volume of his collected poems, under the title of POEMS BY ALLAN

RAMSAY, VOLUME II., in a handsome quarto matching the previous volume of

1721, and containing all the pieces he had written since the appearance

of that volume; and in 1730 he published _A Collection of Thirty

Fables_. These were his last substantive publications, and with them his

literary career may be said to have come to a close. Begun in the last

years of the reign of Queen Anne, and continued through the whole of the

reign of George I., it had just touched the beginning of that of George

II., when it suddenly ceased. Twice or thrice afterwards at long

intervals he did scribble a copy of verses; but, in the main, from his

forty-fifth year onwards, he rested on his laurels. Thenceforward he

contented himself with his bookselling, the management of his

circulating library, and the superintendence of the numerous editions of

his _Collected Poems_, his _Gentle Shepherd_, and his _Tea Table

Miscellany_ that were required by the public demand, and the proceeds of

which formed a good part of his income. It would be a great mistake,

however, to suppose that, when Allan Ramsay’s time of literary

production ended, the story of his life in Edinburgh also came to a

close, or ceased to be important. For eight-and-twenty years longer, or

almost till George II. gave place to George III., Ramsay continued to be

a living celebrity in the Scottish capital, known by figure and

physiognomy to all his fellow-citizens, and Ramsay’s bookshop at the end

of the Luckenbooths, just above the Cross, continued to be one of the

chief resorts of the well-to-do residents, and of chance visitors of

distinction. Now and then, indeed, through the twenty-eight years, there

are glimpses of him still in special connections with the literary, as

well as with the social, history of Edinburgh. When the English poet

Gay, a summer or two before his death in 1732, came to Edinburgh on a

visit, in the company of his noble patrons, the Duke and Duchess of

Queensberry, and resided with them in their mansion of Queensberry House

in the Canongate,—now the gloomiest and ugliest-looking house in that

quarter of the old town, but then reckoned of palatial grandeur,—whither

did he tend daily, in his saunterings up the Canongate, but to Allan

Ramsay’s shop? One hears of him as standing there with Allan at the

window to have the city notabilities and oddities pointed out to him in

the piazza below, or as taking lessons from Allan in the Scottish words

and idioms of the _Gentle Shepherd_, that he might explain them better

to Mr. Pope when he went back to London.

Some years later, when Ramsay had reached the age of fifty, and he and

his wife were enjoying the comforts of his ample success, and

rejoicing in the hopes and prospects of their children,—three

daughters, “no ae wally-draggle among them, all fine girls,” as Ramsay

informs us, and one son, a young man of three-and-twenty, completing

his education in Italy for the profession of a painter,—there came

upon the family what threatened to be a ruinous disaster. Never

formally an anti-Presbyterian, and indeed regularly to be seen on

Sundays in his pew in St. Giles’s High Kirk, but always and

systematically opposed to the unnecessary social rigours of the old

Presbyterian system, and of late under a good deal of censure from

clerical and other strict critics on account of the dangerous nature

of much of the literature put in circulation from his library, Ramsay

had ventured at last on a new commercial enterprise, which could not

but be offensive on similar grounds to many worthy people, though it

seems to have been acceptable enough to the Edinburgh community

generally. Edinburgh having been hitherto deficient in theatrical

accommodation, and but fitfully supplied with dramatic entertainments,

he had, in 1736, started a new theatre in Carrubber’s Close, near to

his former High Street shop. He was looking for great profits from the

proprietorship of this theatre and his partnership in its management.

Hardly had he begun operations, however, when there came the

extraordinary statute of 10 George II. (1737), regulating theatres for

the future all over Great Britain. As by this statute there could be

no performance of stage-plays out of London and Westminster, save when

the King chanced to be residing in some other town, Ramsay’s

speculation collapsed, and all the money he had invested in it was

lost. It was a heavy blow; and he was moved by it to some verses of

complaint to his friend Lord President Forbes and the other judges of

the Court of Session. While telling the story of his own hardship in

the case, he suggests that an indignity had been done by the new Act

to the capital of Scotland:—

“Shall London have its houses twa

And we doomed to have nane ava’?

Is our metropolis, ance the place

Where langsyne dwelt the royal race

Of Fergus, this gate dwindled down

To a level with ilk clachan town,

While thus she suffers the subversion

Of her maist rational diversion?”

However severe the loss to Ramsay at the time, it was soon tided over.

Within six years he is found again quite at ease in his worldly

fortunes. His son, for some years back from Italy, was in rapidly rising

repute as a portrait-painter, alternating between London and Edinburgh

in the practice of his profession, and a man of mark in Edinburgh

society on his own account; and, whether by a junction of the son’s

means with the father’s, or by the father’s means alone, it was now that

there reared itself in Edinburgh the edifice which at the present day

most distinctly preserves for the inhabitants the memory of the Ramsay

family in their Edinburgh connections. The probability is that, since

Allan had entered on his business premises at the end of the

Luckenbooths, his dwelling-house had been somewhere else in the town or

suburbs; but in 1743 he built himself a new dwelling-house on the very

choicest site that the venerable old town afforded. It was that quaint

octagon-shaped villa, with an attached slope of green and

pleasure-ground, on the north side of the Castle Hill, which, as well

from its form as from its situation, attracts the eye as one walks along

Princes Street, and which still retains the name of Ramsay Lodge. The

wags of the day, making fun of its quaint shape, likened the

construction to a goose-pie; and something of that fancied resemblance

may be traced even now in its extended and improved proportions. But

envy may have had a good deal to do with the comparison. It is still a

neat and comfortable dwelling internally, while it commands from its

elevation an extent of scenery unsurpassed anywhere in Europe. The view

from it ranges from the sea-mouth of the Firth of Forth on the east to

the first glimpses of the Stirlingshire Highlands on the west, and again

due north across the levels of the New Town, and the flashing waters of

the Firth below them, to the bounding outline of the Fifeshire hills.

When, in 1743, before there was as yet any New Town at all, Allan Ramsay

took up his abode in this villa, he must have been considered a

fortunate and happy man. His entry into it was saddened, indeed, by the

death of his wife, which occurred just about that time; but for fourteen

years of widowerhood, with two of his daughters for his companions, he

lived in it serenely and hospitably. During the first nine years of

those fourteen he still went daily to his shop in the Luckenbooths,

attending to his various occupations, and especially to his circulating

library, which is said to have contained by this time about 30,000

volumes; but for the last five or six years he had entirely relinquished

business. There are authentic accounts of his habits and demeanour in

his last days, and they concur in representing him as one of the most

charming old gentlemen possible, vivacious and sprightly in

conversation, full of benevolence and good humour, and especially fond

of children and kindly in his ways for their amusement. He died on the

7th of January 1758, in the seventy-second year of his age, and was

buried in Greyfriars Churchyard.

Ramsay had outlived nearly all the literary celebrities who had been his

contemporaries during his own career of active authorship, ended nearly

thirty years before. Swift and Pope were gone, after Gay, Steele,

Arbuthnot, and others of the London band, who had died earlier. Of

several Scotsmen, his juniors, who had stepped into the career of

literature after he had shown the way, and had attained to more or less

of poetic eminence under his own observation, three,—Robert Blair, James

Thomson, and Hamilton of Bangour,—had predeceased him. Their finished

lives, with all the great radiance of Thomson’s, are wholly included in

the life of Allan Ramsay. David Malloch, who had been an Edinburgh

_protégé_ of Ramsay’s, but had gone to London and Anglicised himself

into “Mallet,” was about the oldest of his literary survivors into

another generation; but in that generation, as Scotsmen of various ages,

from sixty downwards to one-and-twenty, living, within Scotland or out

of it, at the date of Ramsay’s death, we count Lord Kames, Armstrong,

Reid, Hume, Lord Monboddo, Hugh Blair, George Campbell, Smollett,

Wilkie, Blacklock, Robertson, John Home, Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson, Lord

Hailes, Falconer, Meikle, and Beattie. Such of these as were residents

in Edinburgh had known Allan Ramsay personally; others of them had felt

his influence indirectly; and all must have noted his death as an event

of some consequence.

The time is long past for any exaggeration of Allan Ramsay’s merits.

But, call him only a slipshod little Horace of Auld Reekie, who wrote

odes, epistles, satires, and other miscellanies in Scotch through twenty

years of the earlier part of the eighteenth century, and was also, by a

happy chance, the author of a unique and delightful Scottish pastoral,

it remains true that he was the most considerable personality in

Scottish literary history in order of time after Drummond of

Hawthornden, or, if we think only of the vernacular, after Sir David

Lindsay, and that he did more than any other man to stir afresh a

popular enthusiasm for literature in Scotland after the Union with

England. All in all, therefore, it is with no small interest that, in

one’s walks along the most classic thoroughfare of the present

Edinburgh, one gazes at the white stone statue of Allan Ramsay, from the

chisel of Sir John Steell, which stands in the Gardens just below the

famous “goose-pie villa.” It looks as if the poet had just stepped down

thence in his evening habiliments to see things thereabouts in their

strangely changed condition. By the tact of the sculptor, he wears, one

observes, not a wig, but the true poetic night-cap or turban.

LADY WARDLAW AND THE BARONESS NAIRNE[6]

In 1719 there was published in Edinburgh, in a tract of twelve folio

pages, a small poem, 27 stanzas or 216 lines long, entitled _Hardyknute,

a Fragment_. It was printed in old spelling, to look like a piece of old

Scottish poetry that had somehow been recovered; and it seems to have

been accepted as such by those into whose hands the copy had come, and

who were concerned in having it published. Among these were Duncan

Forbes of Culloden, afterwards Lord President of the Court of Session,

and Sir Gilbert Elliott of Minto, afterwards Lord Justice-Clerk; but

there is something like proof that it had come into their hands

indirectly from Sir John Hope Bruce of Kinross, baronet, who died as

late as 1766 at a great age, in the rank of lieutenant-general, and who,

some time before 1719, had sent a manuscript copy of it to Lord Binning,

with a fantastic story to the effect that the original, in a much

defaced vellum, had been found, a few weeks before, in a vault at

Dunfermline.

The little thing, having become popular in its first published form, was

reproduced in 1724 by Allan Ramsay in his _Evergreen_, which professed

to be “a collection of Scots Poems wrote by the ingenious before 1600”;

but it there appeared with corrections and some additional stanzas. In

1740 it had the honour of a new appearance in London, under anonymous

editorship, and with the title “Hardyknute, a Fragment; being the first

Canto of an Epick Poem: with general remarks and notes.” The anonymous

editor, still treating it as a genuine old poem, of not later than the

sixteenth century, praises it very highly. “There is a grandeur, a

majesty of sentiment,” he says, “diffused through the whole: a true

sublime, which nothing can surpass.” It was but natural that a piece of

which this could be said should be included by Percy in his _Reliques of

Ancient English Poetry_, published in 1765. It appeared, accordingly, in

the first edition of that famous book, still as an old poem and in

antique spelling; and it was reprinted in the subsequent editions issued

by Percy himself in 1767, 1775, and 1794, though then with some added

explanations and queries.

It was through Percy’s collection that the poem first became generally

known and popular. Even there, though in very rich company, it was

singled out by competent critics for special admiration. But, indeed,

good judges, who had known it in its earlier forms, had already made it

a favourite. The poet Gray admired it much; and Thomas Warton spoke of

it as “a noble poem,” and introduced an enthusiastic reference to it

into one of his odes. Above all, it is celebrated now as having fired

the boyish genius of Sir Walter Scott. “I was taught _Hardyknute_ by

heart before I could read the ballad myself,” he tells us, informing us

further that the book out of which he was taught the ballad was Allan

Ramsay’s _Evergreen_ of 1724, and adding, “It was the first poem I ever

learnt, the last I shall ever forget.” In another place he tells us more

particularly that it was taught him out of the book by one of his aunts

during that visit to his grandfather’s farmhouse of Sandyknowe in

Roxburghshire on which he had been sent when only in his third year for

country air and exercise on account of his delicate health and lameness,

and which he remembered always as the source of his earliest impressions

and the time of his first consciousness of existence. He was accustomed

to go about the farmhouse shouting out the verses of the ballad

incessantly, so that the Rev. Dr. Duncan, the minister of the parish, in

his calls for a sober chat with the elder inmates, would complain of the

interruption and say, “One may as well speak in the mouth of a cannon as

where that child is.” _Hardyknute_, we may then say, was the first thing

in literature that took hold of the soul and imagination of Scott; and

who knows how far it may have helped to determine the cast and direction

of his own genius through all the future? Afterwards, through his life

in Edinburgh, Ashestiel, and Abbotsford, he was never tired of repeating

snatches of the strong old thing he had learnt at Sandyknowe; and the

very year before his death (1831) we find him, when abroad at Malta in

the vain hope of recruiting his shattered frame, lamenting greatly, in a

conversation about ballad-poetry, that he had not been able to persuade

his friend Mr. John Hookham Frere to think so highly of the merits of

_Hardyknute_ as he did himself.

What _is_ the piece of verse so celebrated? It must be familiar to many;

but we may look at it again. We shall take it in its later or more

complete form, as consisting of 42 stanzas or 336 lines; in which form,

though it is still only a fragment, the conception or story is somewhat

more complex, more filled out, than in the first published form of 1719.

The fragment opens thus:—

“Stately stept he east the wa’,

And stately stept he west;

Full seventy years he now had seen,

With scarce seven years of rest.

He lived when Britons’ breach of faith

Wrocht Scotland mickle wae;

And aye his sword tauld, to their cost,

He was their deadly fae.

High on a hill his castle stood,

With halls and towers a-hicht,

And guidly chambers fair to see,

Whare he lodged mony a knicht.

His dame, sae peerless ance and fair,

For chaste and beauty deemed,

Nae marrow had in a’ the land,

Save Eleanour the Queen.

Full thirteen sons to him she bare,

All men of valour stout;

In bluidy fecht with sword in hand

Nine lost their lives bot doubt:

Four yet remain; lang may they live

To stand by liege and land!

High was their fame, high was their micht,

And high was their command.

Great love they bare to Fairly fair,

Their sister saft and dear:

Her girdle shawed her middle jimp,

And gowden glist her hair.

What waefu’ wae her beauty bred,

Waefu’ to young and auld;

Waefu’, I trow, to kith and kin,

As story ever tauld!”

Here we see the old hero Hardyknute in peace in the midst of his family,

his fighting days supposed to be over, and his high castle on the hill,

where he and his lady dwell, with their four surviving sons and their

one daughter, Fairly Fair, one of the lordly boasts of a smiling

country. But suddenly there is an invasion. The King of Norse, puffed up

with power and might, lands in fair Scotland; and the King of Scotland,

hearing the tidings as he sits with his chiefs, “drinking the blude-red

wine,” sends out summonses in haste for all his warriors to join him.

Hardyknute receives a special message.

“Then red, red grew his dark-brown cheeks;

Sae did his dark-brown brow;

His looks grew keen, as they were wont

In dangers great to do.”

Old as he is, he will set out at once, taking his three eldest sons with

him, Robin, Thomas, and Malcolm, and telling his lady in his farewell to

her:—

“My youngest son sall here remain

To guaird these stately towers,

And shoot the silver bolt that keeps

Sae fast your painted bowers.”

And so we take leave of the high castle on the hill, with the lady, her

youngest son, and Fairly fair, in it, and follow the old lord and his

other three sons over the moors and through the glens as they ride to

the rendezvous. On their way they encounter a wounded knight, lying on

the ground and making a heavy moan:—

“‘Here maun I lie, here maun I die,

By treachery’s false guiles;

Witless I was that e’er gave faith

To wicked woman’s smiles.’”

Hardyknute, stopping, comforts him; says that, if he can but mount his

steed and manage to get to his castle on the hill, he will be tended

there by his lady and Fairly fair herself; and offers to detach some of

his men with him for convoy.

“With smileless look and visage wan

The wounded knicht replied:

‘Kind chieftain, your intent pursue,

For here I maun abide.

‘To me nae after day nor nicht

Can e’er be sweet or fair;

But soon, beneath some drapping tree,

Cauld death sail end my care.’”

Farther pleading by Hardyknute avails nothing; and, as time presses, he

has to depart, leaving the wounded knight, so far as we can see, on the

ground as he had found him, still making his moan. Then, after farther

riding over a great region, called vaguely Lord Chattan’s land, we have

the arrival of Hardyknute and his three sons in the King of Scotland’s

camp, minstrels marching before them playing pibrochs. Hardly have they

been welcomed when the battle with the Norse King and his host is begun.

It is described at considerable length, and with much power, though

confusedly, so that one hardly knows who is speaking or who is wounded

amid the whirr of arrows, the shouting, and the clash of armour. One

sees, however, Hardyknute and two of his sons fighting grandly in the

pell-mell. At last it is all over, and we know that the Norse King and

his host have been routed, and that Scotland has been saved.

“In thraws of death, with wallert cheek,

All panting on the plain,

The fainting corps of warriors lay,

Ne’er to arise again:

Ne’er to return to native land;

Nae mair wi’ blythesome sounds

To boist the glories of the day

And shaw their shinand wounds.

On Norway’s coast the widowed dame

May wash the rock with tears,

May lang look ower the shipless seas,

Before her mate appears.

Cease, Emma, cease to hope in vain:

Thy lord lies in the clay;

The valiant Scats nae reivers thole

To carry life away.

There, on a lea where stands a cross

Set up for monument,

Thousands full fierce, that summer’s day,

Filled keen war’s black intent.

Let Scots, while Scots, praise Hardyknute;

Let Norse the name aye dread;

Aye how he foucht, aft how he spared,

Sall latest ages read.”

Here the story might seem to end, and here perhaps it was intended at

first that it should end; but in the completer copies there are three

more stanzas, taking us back to Hardyknute’s castle on the high hill. We

are to fancy Hardyknute and his sons returning joyfully thither after

the great victory:—

“Loud and chill blew the westlin wind,

Sair beat the heavy shower;

Mirk grew the nicht ere Hardyknute

Wan near his stately tower:

His tower, that used with torches’ bleeze

To shine sae far at nicht,

Seemed now as black as mourning weed:

Nae marvel sair he sich’d.

‘There’s nae licht in my lady’s bower;

There’s nae licht in my hall;

Nae blink shines round my Fairly fair,

Nor ward stands on my wall.

What bodes it? Robert, Thomas, say!’

Nae answer fits their dread.

‘Stand back, my sons! I’ll be your guide!’

But by they passed wi’ speed.

‘As fast I have sped ower Scotland’s faes.’

There ceased his brag of weir,

Sair shamed to mind oucht but his dame

And maiden Fairly fair.

Black fear he felt, but what to fear

He wist not yet with dread:

Sair shook his body, sair his limbs;

And all the warrior fled.”

And so the fragment really ends, making us aware of some dreadful

catastrophe, though what it is we know not. Something ghastly has

happened in the castle during Hardyknute’s absence, but it is left

untold. Only, by a kind of necessity of the imagination, we connect it

somehow with that wounded knight whom Hardyknute had met lying on the

ground as he was hurrying to the war, and whom he had left making his

moan. Was he a fiend, or what?

It is quite useless to call this a historical ballad. There was a

reference, perhaps, in the author’s mind, to the battle of Largs in

Ayrshire, fought by the Scots in 1263, in the reign of Alexander III.,

against the invading King Haco of Norway; and there is a Fairly Castle

on a hill near Largs which may have yielded a suggestion and a name.

But, in truth, any old Scottish reign, and any Norse invasion, will do

for time and basis, and the ballad is essentially of the romantic kind,

a story snatched from an ideal antique, and appealing to the pure poetic

imagination. A battle is flung in; but what rivets our interest is the

hero Hardyknute, a Scottish warrior with a Danish name, and that stately

castle of his, somewhere on the top of a hill, in which he dwelt so

splendidly with his lady, his four sons, and their sister Fairly fair,

till he was called once more to war, and in which there was some ghastly

desolation before his return. Such as it is, we shall all agree, I

think, with Gray, Warton, Scott, and the rest of the best critics, in

admiring the fragment. It has that something in it which we call

_genius_.

It seems strange now that any critic could ever have taken the ballad

for a really old one, to be dated from the sixteenth century or earlier.

Apart from the trick of old spelling, and affectation of the antique in

a word or two, the phraseology, the manner, the cadence, the style of

the Scotch employed, are all of about the date of the first publication

of the ballad, the first quarter of the eighteenth century. The phrase

“Let Scots, while Scots, praise Hardyknute,” and the phrase “And all the

warrior fled,” are decisive; and, while there might be room for the

supposition that some old legend suggested the subject to the author,

the general cast of the whole forbids the idea that it is merely a

version of some transmitted original.

Suspicions, indeed, of the modern authorship of _Hardyknute_ had arisen

in various quarters long before any one person in particular was

publicly named as the author. That was first done by Percy in 1767, in

the second edition of his _Reliques_, when he gave his reasons for

thinking, from information transmitted to him from Scotland by Sir David

Dalrymple, Lord Hailes, that the ballad was substantially the

composition of a Scottish lady, who had died in 1727, eight years after

it had first appeared in its less perfect form, and three years after it

had appeared with the improvements and the additional stanzas. That lady

was Elizabeth Halket, born in 1677, one of the daughters of Sir Charles

Halket of Pitfirran in Fifeshire, baronet, but who had changed her name

to Wardlaw in the year 1696, when she became the wife of Sir Henry

Wardlaw of Pitreavie, also a Fifeshire baronet. All subsequent evidence

has confirmed the belief that this Lady Wardlaw was the real author of

_Hardyknute_, though, to mystify people, it was first given out by her

relatives as an ancient fragment. This was the statement more especially

of the already-mentioned Sir John Hope Bruce of Kinross, who was one of

her brothers-in-law.

Of Lady Wardlaw herself we hear nothing more distinct than that she was

“a woman of elegant accomplishments, who wrote other poems, and

practised drawing and cutting paper with her scissors, and who had much

wit and humour, with great sweetness of temper.” So we must be content

to imagine her,—a bright-minded and graceful lady, living in Fifeshire,

or coming and going between Fifeshire and Edinburgh, nearly two

centuries ago, and who, while attending to her family duties and the

duties of her station, could cherish in secret a poetic vein peculiarly

her own, and produce at least one fine ballad of an ideal Scottish

antique. This in itself would be much. For that was the age of Queen

Anne and of the first of the Georges, when poetry of an ideal or

romantic kind was perhaps at its lowest ebb throughout the British

Islands, and the poetry most in repute was that of the modern school of

artificial wit and polish represented by Addison and Pope.

But this is not all. In the year 1859 the late Mr. Robert Chambers

published a very ingenious and interesting essay entitled “The Romantic

Scottish Ballads: their Epoch and Authorship.” The ballads to which he

invited critical attention were the particular group which includes _Sir

Patrick Spens_, _Gil Morrice_, _Edward Edward_, _The Jew’s Daughter_,

_Gilderoy_, _Young Waters_, _Edom o’ Gordon_, _Johnnie of Braidislee_,

_Mary Hamilton_, _The Gay Goss Hawk_, _Fause Foodrage_, _The Lass of

Lochryan_, _Young Huntin_, _The Douglas Tragedy_, _Clerk Saunders_,

_Sweet William’s Ghost_, and several others. With but one or two

exceptions, these were first given to the world either in Percy’s

_Reliques_ in 1765, or in the subsequent collections of Herd (1769),

Scott (1802), and Jamieson (1806); but, since they were published, they

have been favourites with all lovers of true poetry,—the “grand ballad”

of _Sir Patrick Spens_, as Coleridge called it, ranking perhaps highest,

on the whole, in general opinion. There is a certain common character in

all the ballads of the group, a character of genuine ideality, of

unconnectedness or but hazy connectedness with particular time or place,

of a tendency to the weirdly, and also of a high-bred elegance and

lightsome tact of expression, distinguishing them from the properly

historical Scottish Ballads, such as the _Battle of Otterbourne_, or the

Border Ballads proper, such as _Kinmont Willie_, or the homely rustic

ballads of local or family incident of which so many have been

collected. Hence the distinctive name of “romantic,” usually applied to

them.

Respecting these ballads the common theory was, and still is, that they

are very old indeed,—that they are the transmitted oral versions of

ballads that were in circulation among the Scottish people before the

Reformation. This theory Mr. Chambers challenged, and by a great variety

of arguments. Not only was it very suspicious, he said, that there were

no ancient manuscripts of them, and that, save in one or two cases, they

had never been heard of till the eighteenth century; but the internal

evidence, of conception, sentiment, costume, and phraseology,—not in

lines and passages merely, where change from an original might be

supposed, but through and through, and back to the very core of any

supposed original,—all pointed, he maintained, to a date of composition

not farther back than the beginning of the century in which they first

came into print. He maintained farther that they all reveal the hand of

some person of superior breeding and refinement, with a cultivated

literary expertness and sense of the exquisite, and that, just as the

difference of age would be seen if one of them were placed side by side

with an authentic piece of old Scottish poetry of the sixteenth century,

so would this other difference of refined or cultured execution be at

once seen if one of them were placed side by side with a genuine popular

ballad of lowly origin, such as used to please in sheets on

street-stalls and in pedlars’ chap-books. Farther still, in all or most

of the ballads concerned, there are, he argued, traces of feminine

perception and feeling. And so, still pressing the question, and noting

the recurrence of phrases and ideas from ballad to ballad of the group,

not to be found in other ballads, but looking like the acquired devices

of one and the same writer’s fancy,—some of the most remarkable of which

recurring ideas and phrases he chased up to the ballad of

_Hardyknute_,—he arrived at the conclusion that there was a “great

likelihood” that all or most of the ballads he was considering were

either absolutely the inventions of Lady Wardlaw of Pitreavie, or such

complete recasts by her of traditional fragments that she might be

called the real author. He would not advance the conclusion as more than

a “great likelihood,” and he allowed that it might be still

controverted; but he cited in its favour the fact that so high an

authority as Mr. David Laing had previously intimated his impression

that _Hardyknute_ and _Sir Patrick Spens_ were by the same hand.

Were Mr. Chambers’s conclusion to be verified, it would be a sore wrench

to the patriotic prejudices of many to have to abandon the

long-cherished fancy of the immemorial, or at least remote, antiquity of

so many fine Scottish favourites. But what a compensation! For then that

Lady Wardlaw whom we can already station, for her _Hardyknute_ alone, as

undoubtedly one woman of genius in the poverty-stricken Scotland of the

beginning of the eighteenth century, would shine out with greatly

increased radiance as the author of a whole cycle of the finest

ballad-pieces in our language, a figure of very high importance in

Scottish literary history, a precursor or sister of Burns and of Scott.

For my own part, I would willingly submit to the wrench for a

compensation so splendid. I am bound to report, however, that Mr.

Chambers’s speculation of 1859 was controverted strenuously at the time,

has been pronounced a heresy, and does not seem to have been anywhere

generally accepted. It was controverted especially, within a year from

its appearance, in a pamphlet of reply by Mr. Norval Clyne of Aberdeen,

entitled “The Scottish Romantic Ballads and the Lady Wardlaw Heresy”;

and I observe that Professor Child of America, in his great Collection

of English and Scottish Ballads, pays no respect to it, treats it as

exploded by Mr. Clyne’s reply, and expressly dissociates _Sir Patrick

Spens_ and other ballads of the class from _Hardyknute_. It may be

enough, in these circumstances, merely to intimate my opinion that the

controversy is by no means closed. There were shrewder and deeper

suggestions, I think, in Mr. Chambers’s paper of 1859 than Mr. Clyne was

able to obviate; and, having observed that most of the lore on the

subject used by Mr. Clyne in his reply, his adverse references and

quotations included, was derived from Mr. Chambers’s own Introduction

and Notes to his three-volume edition of Scottish Songs and Ballads in

1829, I cannot but presume that Mr. Chambers had all that lore

sufficiently in his mind thirty years afterwards, and found nothing in

it to impede or disconcert him then in his new speculation. Apart,

however, from the special question of Lady Wardlaw’s concern in the

matter, Mr. Chambers seems to me to have moved a very proper and

necessary inquiry when he started his theory of the comparatively recent

origin of all or most of the Scottish Romantic Ballads. In what

conception, what kind of language, does the opposite theory couch

itself? In the conception that, besides the series of those literary

products of past Scottish generations, the work of learned or

professional writers, from the time of Barbour onwards, that have come

down to us in books, or in old manuscript collections like that of

Bannatyne, there was always a distinct literature of more lowly origin,

consisting of ballads and songs recited or sung in Scottish households

in various districts, and orally transmitted from age to age with no

names attached to them, and indeed requiring none, inasmuch as they were

nobody’s property in particular, but had “sprung from the heart of the

people.” Now, this phrase, “sprung from the heart of the people,” I

submit, is, if not nonsensical, at least hazy and misleading. Nothing of

fine literary quality ever came into existence, in any time or place,

except as the product of some individual person of genius and of

somewhat more than average culture. Instead of saying that such things

“spring from the heart of the people,” one ought rather to say therefore

that they “spring _to_ the heart of the people.” They live after their

authors are forgotten, are repeated with local modifications, and so

become common property. It is, of course, not denied that this process

must have been at work in Scotland through many centuries before the

eighteenth. The proof exists in scraps of fine old Scottish song still

preserved, the earliest perhaps the famous verse on the death of

Alexander III., and in lists, such as that in _The Complaint of

Scotland_, of the titles of clusters of old Scottish songs and tales

that were popular throughout the country in the sixteenth century, but

have perished since. The very contention of Mr. Chambers respecting _Sir

Patrick Spens_ and the other ballads in question was that the fact that

there is no mention of them in those old lists is itself significant,

and that they have a set of special characteristics which came into

fashion only with themselves.

If Lady Wardlaw _was_ the author of those ballads, or of some of them,

we have lost much by her secretiveness. We have been put in a perplexity

where perplexity there ought to have been none. The cause, on her part,

was perhaps less a desire for mystification than an amiable shrinking

from publicity, dislike of being talked of as a literary lady. This was

a feeling which the ungenerous mankind of the last century,—husbands,

brothers, uncles, and brothers-in-law,—thought it proper to foster in

any feminine person of whose literary accomplishments they were

privately proud. It affected the careers of not a few later Scottish

women of genius in the same century, and even through part of our own.

Passing over several such, and among them Lady Anne Barnard, the

authoress of _Auld Robin Gray_, let me come to an instance so recent

that it can be touched by the memories of many that are still living.

In the year 1766, seven years after the birth of Burns, and five before

that of Scott, there was born, in the old house of Gask in Strathearn,

Perthshire, a certain Carolina Oliphant, the third child of Laurence

Oliphant the younger, who, by the death of his father the next year,

became the Laird of Gask and the representative of the old family of the

Oliphants.

They were a Jacobite family to the core. The Laird and his father had

been out in the Rebellion of 1745; they had suffered much in consequence

and been long in exile; and not till a year or two before the birth of

this little girl had they been permitted to return and settle on their

shattered estates. They were true to their Jacobitism even then,

acknowledging no King but the one “over the water,” praying for him,

corresponding with him, and keeping up the recollection of him in their

household as almost a religion. Carolina was named Carolina because, had

she been a boy, she was to have been named Charles, and she used to say

that her parents had never forgiven her for having been born a girl. But

two boys were born at last, and there were sisters both older and

younger; and so, among Oliphants, and Robertsons of Struan, and Murrays,

and other relatives, all Jacobite, and all of the Scottish Episcopal

persuasion, Carolina grew up in the old house of Gask, hearing Jacobite

stories and Highland legends from her infancy, and educated with some

care. The mother having died when this, her third, child was but eight

years of age, the Laird was left with six young ones. “A poor

valetudinary person,” as he describes himself, he seems, however, to

have been a man of fine character and accomplishments, and to have taken

great pains with his children. King George III., hearing somehow of his

unswerving Jacobitism and the whimsicalities in which it showed itself,

is said to have sent him this message by the member for Perthshire:

“Give my compliments, not the compliments of the King of England, but

those of the Elector of Hanover, to Mr. Oliphant, and tell him how much

I respect him for the steadiness of his principles.”

Somewhat stately and melancholic himself, and keeping up the ceremonious

distance between him and his children then thought proper, the Laird of

Gask had those liberal and anti-morose views of education which belonged

especially to Scottish nonjuring or Episcopalian families. A wide range

of reading was permitted to the boys and the girls; dancing, especially

reel-dancing, was incessant among them,—at home, in the houses of

neighbouring lairds, or at county-balls; in music, especially in

Scottish song, they were all expert, so that the rumour of a coming

visit of Neil Gow and his violin to Strathearn, with the prospect it

brought them of a week extraordinary of combined music and reel-dancing,

would set them all madly astir; but the most musical of the family by

far was Carolina. She lived in music, in mirth, legend, Highland

scenery, and the dance, a beautiful girl to boot, and called “the Flower

of Strathearn,” of tall and graceful mien, with fine eyes, and fine

sensitive features, slightly proud and aquiline. And so to 1792, when

her father, the valetudinary laird, died, some of his children already

out in the world, but this one, at the age of twenty-six, still

unmarried.

For fourteen years more we hear of her as still living in the old house

of Gask with her brother Laurence, the new Laird, and with the wife he

brought into it in 1795,—the even tenor of her existence broken only by

some such incident as a visit to the north of England. During this time

it is that we become aware also of the beginnings in her mind of a deep

new seriousness, a pious devoutness, which, without interfering with her

passionate fondness for song and music, or her liking for mirth and

humour and every form of art, continued to be thenceforth the dominant

feeling of her life, bringing her into closer and closer affinity with

the “fervid” or “evangelical” in religion in whatever denomination it

appeared. All this while, or for the greater part of it, there was an

engagement between her and a half-cousin of hers, Captain Nairne. He was

of Irish birth, but of the Scottish family of the Perthshire Nairnes,

and heir, after his elder brother’s death, to the Nairne peerage, should

that peerage, which had been attainted after the Jacobite Rebellion of

1715, be ever revived. Of that there seemed no hope, and Captain

Nairne’s fortunes and prospects were of the poorest. Not till the year

1806, therefore, when he was promoted to the brevet rank of Major, and

obtained the appointment of Assistant-Inspector-General of Barracks in

Scotland, were the betrothed cousins able to marry, she then in her

fortieth year, and he nine years older.

Their married life of four-and-twenty years was spent almost wholly in

Edinburgh. Residing first in a cottage in one of the suburbs of the

town, they were known for a good while there as a gentleman and lady of

slender means, but distinguished family connections, having an only son,

of delicate constitution, whom they were educating privately, and on

whose account they lived in a rather retired manner, cultivating a few

select friendships, but not going much into general society. Ravelston

House, at the foot of the Corstorphine Hills, of which Mrs. Nairne’s

younger sister became mistress in 1811 by her marriage with the then

Keith of Ravelston, was one of the few places in which Mrs. Nairne and

her husband were regularly to be seen at parties. Though this and

occasional meetings elsewhere must have brought her into talking

acquaintance with Scott,—in whose life Ravelston House was so dear and

familiar that it became the suggestion of his castle of Tullyveolan in

_Waverley_,—there is no evidence of any intimacy between the two; nor

does Mrs. Nairne’s name once occur, I think, in Lockhart’s _Life of

Scott_, full though that book is of allusions to persons and things

memorable in Edinburgh while the great wizard was its most illustrious

inhabitant. One of the many kindly acts of Scott’s life, however, had

some influence on the fortunes of Mrs. Nairne. During the visit of

George IV. to Edinburgh in 1822, Scott took occasion to suggest to him

that the restoration of the attainted Jacobite families to their titles

would be a graceful and popular act of his reign, and the consequence

was a Bill for the purpose which passed Parliament and received the

royal assent in 1824. Thus, at the age of sixty-seven, Major Nairne

became Baron Nairne of Nairne in Perthshire, and his wife, at the age of

eight-and-fifty, Baroness Nairne. It seems to have been about this date,

or shortly afterwards, though I am not quite sure, that they had a

temporary residence in Holyrood Palace. At all events, I have been

informed that at one time they had apartments there.

In 1830, six years after the recovery of his title, Lord Nairne died.

This broke Lady Nairne’s domiciliary tie to Edinburgh. She removed first

to the south of England, to be with some of her relatives; thence to

Ireland, where she lived a year or two; and thence in 1834 to the

Continent, on account of the ill-health of her son, the new Lord Nairne,

then a young man of six-and-twenty. For the next three years, she, her

son, and her widowed sister Mrs. Keith, moved about, through France,

Switzerland, Italy, and Germany, mainly for the recreation and

recruiting of the sickly young Lord, who, however, died at Brussels in

December 1837, in his thirtieth year, and was there buried.

The widowed Baroness, thus childless and lonely in the world, continued

to live abroad for a year or two longer, chiefly in Germany and in

Paris. Her consolations in her bereavement were in correspondence with

her nephews and nieces at home, in readings in religious and other good

books, in her interest in Christian missions and other movements of

Protestant Evangelism, and in secret acts of charity in aid of such

missions and movements, or in relief of private distresses. A foreign

waiting-maid, who was long in her service abroad, described her

afterwards in these words: “My lady was as near to an angel as human

weakness might permit.” But she was not to die abroad. In the year 1843,

just after the Disruption of the Scottish Church,—in which event, though

she remained a loyal Scottish Episcopalian as before, her interest was

remarkably deep,—she was persuaded to return to Scotland and take up her

residence once more at Gask: not now in the old house in which she had

been born, but in the new mansion that had been built by her nephew,

James Blair Oliphant, then Laird of Gask. Here she lived two years more,

in the serene piety of a beautiful old age, and in deeds, every week or

every day, of benevolence and mercy. She was able to visit Edinburgh

once or twice; and it was there, in the year 1844, that she consulted

Dr. Chalmers, whom she admired greatly and with whom she had already

been in correspondence, as to fit objects for such charitable donations

as her thrift enabled her to spare. She gave him, besides other smaller

sums, the £300 which enabled him to accomplish the object he had then

most at heart by acquiring a site for the schools and church he had

resolved to plant, and did plant, amid what he called the “heathenism”

of the West Port, in the very labyrinth of closes in that rank

neighbourhood which had been made hideous by the Burke and Hare murders

of 1828. Dr. Chalmers alone knew of the gift; no one else. A few months

more of invalid existence at Gask House, with failing memory, and

somewhat paralytic, and the saintly lady’s life was over. She died

October 27, 1845, in the house of Gask, at the age of seventy-nine. Her

remains rest in a chapel near that house, erected for Episcopal service

on the site of the old parish church, in the midst of the scenery of her

native Strathearn, which she loved in life so well.

That this woman had ever written a line of verse was a secret which she

all but carried to the grave with her. And yet for fifty years, no less,

people all round her had been singing her songs and talking about them

with admiration, and phrases from them had become household words

throughout Scotland, and some of them were universally spoken of as the

finest Scottish songs, the songs of keenest and deepest genius, since

those of Burns.

At how early a period in her life she, who could sing songs so well and

who knew so many, may have tried to write one, we cannot tell; but it

was in or about the year 1793, when Burns was in the full flush of his

fame, and his exertions for improving and reforming Scottish Song by

providing new words for old airs had kindled her enthusiasm, that she

penned her first known lyric. It was called _The Pleughman_, and was

written to be sung by her brother at a dinner of the Gask tenantry.

Having been successful in that form, it was afterwards circulated by

him, but with every precaution for keeping it anonymous. Had Burns lived

a year longer than he did, he might have heard not only of this

_Pleughman_, but also of another song from the same unknown hand that

would have touched him a thousand times more, as it has touched all the

world since,—_The Land o’ the Leal._ That song was written, it is

believed, by Carolina Oliphant in 1797, when she was in her

thirty-second year. Had the fact been known, how she would have been

honoured and pointed at everywhere, all her life after, wherever she

went! But the secret was kept; _The Land o’ the Leal_ came to be

attributed to Burns, and was printed at last in editions of Burns as

indubitably his; and the true authoress came into Edinburgh, to live in

that city, close to Scott, for four-and-twenty years; and through all

that time _he_, who would have limped across the room with beaming eyes

to single her out in chief had he been aware of the reality, remained

ignorant that the handsome, but no longer young, lady whom he sometimes

met at Ravelston had any other distinction than that of being the

sister-in-law of Sandy Keith, and the wife of Major Nairne,

Assistant-Inspector-General of Barracks. Yet this very time of her

residence in Edinburgh as Mrs. Nairne was the time also, it appears, of

the production of not a few additional songs of hers, some of them

nearly as popular, with all or most of which Scott must have been

familiar. Here particularly it was that in 1821, as we learn from the

slight memoirs of her now extant, she, in concert with a small committee

of other Edinburgh ladies, all sworn to secrecy, became a contributor,

under the name of “Mrs. Bogan of Bogan” or under other _aliases_, to a

collection of national airs, called _The Scottish Minstrel_, brought out

in parts by Mr. Robert Purdie, a music-publisher of the city. She

continued to contribute; and the work was completed in six volumes in

1824, the year in which she became Baroness Nairne. Mr. Purdie himself

never knew who this valuable contributor to his collection was, nor did

any one else out of the circle of her most intimate lady-friends. Her

own husband, Lord Nairne, I am credibly informed, remained ignorant to

his dying day that his wife had been guilty of song-writing or of any

other kind of literary performance. Nor was silence broken on the

subject through the subsequent fifteen years of Lady Nairne’s widowhood.

Away in England, Ireland, or abroad, through thirteen of those years,

she would still pen a little Scottish lilt occasionally, when some

feeling moved her; and so till, returning to Scotland in her old age,

with no one knows what memories of private sadness under her

semi-aristocratic reticence and her gentle Christian faith, she lingered

out her last year or two, and then died. Her secretiveness as to the

authorship of the songs that might have made her famous when living was

preserved to the last. Just before her death she _had_ consented that a

collective edition of them should be published, but without her name.

Two months after her death, when Dr. Chalmers thought himself absolved

from his promise of secrecy as to the name of the donor of the £300 for

his church and schools in the West Port, he announced at a public

meeting that the donor, then in her grave, had been “Lady Nairne, of

Perthshire.” Even he cannot have then known of any other title of hers

to regard; for, if he had, and if I know Dr. Chalmers, he would have

added, with all the emotion of his great heart, “authoress of _The Land

o’ the Leal_.” It occurs to me sometimes that in that very year 1844,

when this Scottishwoman of genius was on her last visit to Edinburgh,

and in occasional conferences with Dr. Chalmers in his house in

Morningside, I might myself have seen her in his company or

neighbourhood. But, with the rest of the world, I knew nothing then of

her literary claims; and, when I read or heard _The Land o’ the Leal_, I

thought the words were by Burns.

Only since 1846, the year after Lady Nairne’s death, can she be said to

have taken her place by name in the literature of her country. In that

year, her surviving sister Mrs. Keith thinking there could be nothing

wrong now in letting the truth be known, there appeared the projected

collective edition of the songs in the form of a thin folio, with this

title-page: “_Lays from Strathearn, by Caroline, Baroness Nairne, Author

of ‘The Land o’ the Leal,’ etc.: Arranged, with Symphonies and

Accompaniments, for the Pianoforte, by Finlay Dun._” In a subsequent

edition several pieces that had been omitted in this one were added; and

now perhaps the most complete collection of the songs is that edited by

Dr. Charles Rogers in 1869 in a small volume containing the words

without the music, and having a memoir prefixed. The number of pieces

there printed as Lady Nairne’s is ninety-eight in all.

What strikes one first on looking at the ninety-eight is the variety of

their moods and subjects, the versatility of mind they exhibit. There

are Jacobite songs; and, what is remarkable in one brought up in

Jacobite sentiments and traditions, there are songs of sympathy with

Knox, the Covenanters, and the old Scottish Presbyterians and Whigs, the

very contradictories of Scottish Jacobitism. Then there are lovesongs,

satirical songs, humorous songs and songs of Scottish character and

oddity, nonsense songs and songs of philosophic “pawkiness” and good

sense, songs of scenery and places, and songs of the most tearful

pathos. A few are of a distinctively religious character. Passing from

matter or subject to quality, one may say that there is a real _moral_

worth in them all, and that all have that genuine characteristic of a

song which consists of an inner _tune_ preceding and inspiring the

words, and coiling the words as it were out of the heart along with it.

Hence there is not perhaps one of them that, with the advantage they

have of being set to known and favourite airs, would not please

sufficiently if sung by a good singer. Apart from this general

melodiousness or suitability for being sung, the report for _all_ of

them might not be so favourable; but, tried by the standard of strict

poetic merit, about twenty or twenty-five of the whole number, I should

say, might rank as good, while eight or ten of these are of supreme

quality. Would not this, though written by a woman, serve for the

rallying of a thousand men for any cause, right or wrong?

“The news frae Moidart cam yestreen

Will soon gar mony ferly,

For ships o’ war hae just come in

And landit Royal Charlie.

Come through the heather, around him gather;

Ye’re a’ the welcomer early;

Around him cling wi’ a’ your kin;

For wha’ll be King but Charlie?

Come through the heather, around him gather,

Come Ronald, come Donald, come a’ thegither,

And crown your rightfu’, lawfu’ King!

For wha’ll be King but Charlie?”

And what a _birr_ and sense of the situation in the song on Charlie’s

entry into Carlisle preceded by a hundred pipers, though that, on the

whole, is not one of the best:—

“Dumfoundered, the English saw, they saw;

Dumfoundered, they heard the blaw, the blaw;

Dumfoundered, they a’ ran awa, awa,

From the hundred pipers an’ a’, an’ a’.

Wi’ a hundred pipers an’ a’, an’ a’,

Wi’ a hundred pipers an’ a’, an’ a’,

We’ll up and gie them a blaw, a blaw,

Wi’ a hundred pipers an’ a’, an’ a’.”

Then, in the way of humorous character-sketching, what can surpass the

_Laird o’ Cockpen_, or the immortal _John Tod_? So well known are these

throughout Scotland that it would be absurd to quote them if only

Scottish readers were concerned; but, for the convenience of other

readers, here they are, each entire:—

THE LAIRD O’ COCKPEN.

“The Laird o’ Cockpen, he’s proud and he’s great:

His mind is ta’en up wi’ the things o’ the state:

He wanted a wife his braw house to keep:

But favour wi’ wooin’ was fashious to seek.

Doun by the dyke-side a lady did dwell;

At his table-head he thocht she’d look well:

McClish’s ae dochter o’ Claverse-ha’ Lea,—

A pennyless lass wi’ a lang pedigree.

His wig was weel pouther’d, and as guid as new;

His waistcoat was white, and his coat it was blue;

He put on a ring, a sword, and cock’d hat:

And wha could refuse the Laird wi’ a’ that?

He took the gray mare and rade cannilie,

And rapp’d at the yett o’ Claverse-ha’ Lea:

‘Gae tell Mistress Jean to come speedily ben;

She’s wanted to speak wi’ the Laird o’ Cockpen.’

Mistress Jean she was makin’ the elder-flower wine:

‘And what brings the Laird at sic a like time?’

She put aff her apron, and on her silk goun,

Her mutch wi’ red ribbons, and gaed awa’ doun.

And, when she cam ben, he bowed fu’ low;

And what was his errand he soon let her know:

Amazed was the Laird when the lady said ‘Na,’

And wi’ a laich curtsey she turned awa’.

Dumfoundered he was, but nae sigh did he gie:

He mounted his mare, and he rade cannilie;

And aften he thocht, as he gaed through the glen,

‘She’s daft to refuse the Laird o’ Cockpen!’”

JOHN TOD.

“He’s a terrible man, John Tod, John Tod;

He’s a terrible man, John Tod.

He scolds in the house; he scolds at the door;

He scolds in the vera high road, John Tod;

He scolds in the vera high road.

The weans a’ fear John Tod, John Tod;

The weans a’ fear John Tod:

When he’s passing by, the mithers will cry:—

‘Here’s an ill wean, John Tod, John Tod;

Here’s an ill wean, John Tod.’

The callants a’ fear John Tod, John Tod;

The callants a’ fear John Tod:

If they steal but a neep, the laddie he’ll whip;

And it’s unco’ weel done o’ John Tod, John Tod;

And it’s unco’ weel done o’ John Tod.

And saw ye nae wee John Tod, John Tod?

O saw ye nae wee John Tod?

His bannet was blue, his shoon maistly new;

And weel does he keep the kirk road, John Tod;

And weel does he keep the kirk road.

How is he fendin’, John Tod, John Tod?

How is he fendin’, John Tod?

He’s scourin’ the land wi’ a rung in his hand,

And the French wadna frichten John Tod, John Tod;

And the French wadna frichten John Tod.

Ye’re sun-brint and battered, John Tod, John Tod;

Ye’re tautit and tattered, John Tod:

Wi’ your auld strippit coul, ye look maist like a fule,

But there’s nous i’ the lining, John Tod, John Tod;

But there’s nous i’ the lining, John Tod.

He’s weel respeckit, John Tod, John Tod;

He’s weel respeckit, John Tod:

He’s a terrible man; but we’d a’ gae wrang

If e’er he sud leave us, John Tod, John Tod;

If e’er he sud leave us, John Tod.”

Again, in another key, how would Edinburgh, how would Newhaven, how

would all the coasts of the Forth, like to lose that famous song of the

fisherwomen, written long ago for Neil Gow, and sent to him anonymously

for the purposes of his concerts?

“Wha’ll buy my caller herrin’?

They’re bonnie fish and halesome farin’.

Wha’ll buy my caller herrin’,

New drawn frae the Forth?

When ye were sleepin’ on your pillows,

Dreamed ye aught o’ our puir fellows,

Darkling as they faced the billows,

A’ to fill the woven willows?

Buy my caller herrin’,

New drawn frae the Forth.

Wha’ll buy my caller herrin’?

They’re no brocht here without brave darin’:

Buy my caller herrin’,

Hauled through wind and rain.

Wha’ll buy my caller herrin’?

Oh! ye may ca’ them vulgar farin’:

Wives and mithers, maist despairin’,

Ca’ them lives o’ men.”

Yet in another strain take this little advice of ethical wisdom, which,

simple though it is, might have been written by Goethe:—

“Saw ye ne’er a lanely lassie,

Thinkin’, gin she were a wife,

The sun o’ joy wad ne’er gae doun,

But warm and cheer her a’ her life?

Saw ye ne’er a weary wifie,

Thinkin’, gin she were a lass,

She wad aye be blithe and cheery,

Lightly as the day wad pass?

Wives and lasses, young and aged,

Think na on each other’s state:

Ilka ane it has its crosses;

Mortal joy was ne’er complete.

Ilka ane it has its blessings;

Peevish dinna pass them by;

But, like choicest berries, seek them,

Though amang the thorns they lie.”

Another and another still might be quoted, each with its peculiarity,

hardly any two alike; and I am not sure but some of those that would be

selected as of the highest quality were among the earliest. Certainly

among the very earliest was that with which Lady Nairne’s name will ever

be most fondly associated, though even that can hardly be called a song

of her youth. While there is death in the world, and the heart will

think of what may be beyond death, or the tears will come at the thought

of parting with loved ones, or at the memory of their vanished faces in

the mystic musings of the night, will not this song, wherever the

Scottish tongue is spoken, be the very music of resignation struggling

with heart-break?—

“I’m wearin’ awa’, Jean,

Like snaw-wreaths in thaw, Jean,

I’m wearin’ awa’

To the land o’ the leal.

There’s nae sorrow there, Jean;

There’s neither cauld nor care, Jean;

The day is aye fair

In the land o’ the leal.

Our bonnie bairn’s there, Jean;

She was baith gude and fair, Jean;

And oh! we grudged her sair

To the land o’ the leal.

But sorrow’s sel’ wears past, Jean;

And joy’s a-comin’ fast, Jean,

The joy that’s aye to last

In the land o’ the leal.

Then dry that tearfu’ e’e, Jean;

My soul langs to be free, Jean;

And angels wait on me

To the land o’ the leal.

Now, fare ye weel, my ain Jean!

This warld’s care is vain, Jean;

We’ll meet and aye be fain

In the land o’ the leal.”

In quoting this song I have given the words as it has been universally

voted, by men at least, that they should be accepted. Lady Nairne wrote

“I’m wearin’ awa’, _John_,” meaning the song to be the supposed address

of a dying wife to her husband; and so the words still stand, with other

differences of text, in the authentic original. I know not by what

warrant the change was introduced; though, for my own part, I join in

the vote for adopting it, and so making the song the address of a dying

husband to his wife. Had there been such a various reading in the text

of one of the odes of Horace, what comments there would have been upon

it, what dissertations! But, though the song of _The Land o’ the Leal_

is more touching than any in Horace, the modification of its original

form has passed hitherto without much comment. The most obvious comment

perhaps is that, whatever _Jean_ may produce, it will be appropriated by

_John_, if he likes it, to his own use.

EDINBURGH THROUGH THE DUNDAS DESPOTISM[7]

Will anybody give us a history of Scotland from the year 1745 onwards to

the present time? It is not likely that anybody will. For it is

precisely from the year 1745 that Scotland ceases to have that sort of

history which, according to our ordinary ideas of history, it is easy or

necessary to write.

Some forty years before that time, Scotland had parted with her

independent autonomy by the Treaty of Union. There was an end of “an

auld sang”; and the smaller country, though nominally only united to the

larger, was virtually, for purposes of general history, incorporated

with it. Scotsmen have recently been complaining that Literature has not

even paid Scotland the poor compliment of remembering the fact of her

union with England so far as to use the word “Britain,” then specially

provided by law as the designation of the composite kingdom, but has

gone on speaking of “England” and “English History,” as if the linking

of the smaller country to the larger had produced no change of fact

worth commemorating by a change of name. The practice is as unscholarly

as it is unconstitutional, and is a recent and violent departure from

the established usage of the best English writers of the eighteenth

century and the earlier part of the present. But the continuity of

English life _was_ too little disturbed perhaps by the mere admission

into the Parliament at Westminster of sixteen peers and forty-five

members for counties and burghs from the other side of the Tweed, to

make it reasonable to expect that all Englishmen would for ever

thenceforth keep to the correct and legal usage, employing the words

“England” and “English” only in their proper historical senses, but

saying “Britain,” “British,” “Britannic,” etc., whenever the aggregate

unity should be in view. It was actually proposed, in the first draft of

an inscription to be engraved on a public memorial to a famous statesman

recently deceased, to include among his mentioned distinctions that of

his having been “twice Prime Minister of England”; and the absurdity had

to be stopped by pointing out that for several ages there had been no

such office or entity anywhere in the world. Even patriotic Scottish

writers,—for example, Sir Archibald Alison,—have given way to the habit

of using the word “England” for the conjunct community oftener than the

legal word “Britain.” Apart, however, from all controversy in the matter

of names, it is plain that from the date of the Union Scotsmen

themselves have considered their national history, in all ordinary

senses, as then concluded. Our text-books of Scottish History close at

the year 1707. For about forty years after that date, indeed, Scotland

contrived by vigorous exertions to make her separate existence still

felt. The fierce flutter of the tartans in the two Rebellions of 1715

and 1745 drew the historians hurriedly back to her after they thought

they had done with her; and so it is not uncommon in books of Scottish

History to find the narrative continued, by way of appendix, as far as

to 1745. But then the historian takes his final leave. With the furious

Cumberland and the Government whom Cumberland served, he scatters the

tartans for the last time; he breaks up the Highlands by forts and

roads; he abolishes hereditary jurisdictions; he grubs up, so to speak,

all the roots and relics of the old Scottish autonomy which since the

Union had been left in the ground and had proved troublesome; and, when

he turns his back on Scotland again, it is with an assurance that he

will never be recalled, and that from that hour all on the north side of

the Border will be, like cleared land, left quiet and fallow. Scotland

_is_, then, thought of as but a part of Great Britain.

And yet, in another sense, what do we see? Why, that this very period of

the historical non-existence of Scotland is the period of her most

energetic, most peculiar, and most various life! What Scotland was in

the world before 1745 is as nothing compared with what, even purely as

Scotland, she has been in the world since 1745. Till 1745 she was cooped

up within herself, a narrow nation leading a life of intense internal

action; and the most thrilling facts of her history,—such as the Wars of

Independence against England, and the Presbyterian Reformation under

Knox,—were of a kind the contemporaneous interest of which was confined

within her own bounds. Even after the Union of the Crowns in 1603, it

was only indirectly and collaterally, as in the Scottish episodes of the

Great Civil War and its sequel, that the influence of Scotland in

general history became very notable. But since 1745 the Scottish element

has visibly acquired a proportion in the general mass of things which it

never had before. Not only since that period has Scotland still stood

where it did, inhabited by the same race of men, living on according to

their old habits, and the same in all respects, their lost autonomy

excepted; not only, therefore, has there been a distinct history of

Scottish society since that time, capable of being written by itself, if

any one chose to take up the subject: but the circumstance that at that

time Scotland burst its bounds has reacted on its history, so as vastly

to increase its dimensions, and in many ways also to vary its character.

Since 1745, Scotland has quadrupled her population. The commercial

prosperity of Scotland, with all that this involves, dates from the same

period. It is since that period that Scotland has sent forth most of

that series of eminent men who have left their names memorable in the

various walks of active and industrial life, at home and abroad. From

that period, with some allowance for those numerous Scottish thinkers

who taught philosophy in the European Universities in earlier centuries,

dates the rise and development of what is known as the Scottish

Philosophy. From that period, still more conspicuously, dates the

manifestation of Scottish intellect, in any degree compelling attention

beyond Scottish limits, in the departments of literature and art. Before

1745, if we except the poet Thomson (for only recently have English

literary historians reverted with any adequate interest to the older

poetry and other literature of the real Scottish vernacular), Scotland

had not given birth to a single poet or other man of letters able to

command distinct recognition by his English contemporaries. It was

precisely about this time, however, that such men as Hume and Smollett,

and Robertson and Adam Smith, and Blair and Kames,—all of them born

after the Union, and most of them between the two Rebellions,—began that

literary activity of the Scottish mind which, kept up by such of their

immediate successors as Burns, Henry Mackenzie, and Dugald Stewart, has

been continued, with ever-increasing effect, to our own time, by writers

whose name is legion. In short, however we look at the matter, it is a

remarkable fact that the most productive period of the History of

Scotland is that which has elapsed since Cumberland tore the last relics

of autonomy out of her soil, and left her, passive and Parliamentless,

to the mere winds and meteors.

One reason why, despite this interesting progress of Scottish society

since 1745, the Scottish history of the intervening period has not been

written is that, according to our common notions, only where there is

autonomy can there be proper history. It is over parliaments, monarchs,

and seats of government, with an occasional excursion after embassies or

in the route of armies to great battle-fields, that the Muse of History

hovers; where there is no parliament, monarch, or seat of government,

and no embassy or march of armies to make up for the want, she finds it

unnecessary to stay, and thinks it sufficient if she leaves other and

minor muses as her substitutes. Hence, as we have said, the Muse of

History left Scotland in 1707, and returned only hastily and on

compulsion to attend to the Highland Rebellions. Whatever claim on her

attention Scotland since that time has possessed she considers herself

to have amply satisfied by hovering over the Parliament of Westminster,

as the centre of British interests in general, or by following those

trains of military and international action, emanating from that centre,

in which Scotsmen have had part side by side with Englishmen and

Irishmen. The task of recording purely Scottish events in their sequence

during the last hundred and fifty years,—of taking note of all the

flitting social phenomena of which during that period the land north of

the Tweed has been the scene,—has accordingly devolved on the muse of

individual biography, aided by the muse of economical dissertation and

statistics; and it seems somewhat problematical, as has been said,

whether the materials which these subordinate muses have gathered, in

the shape of miscellaneous lives of remarkable Scotsmen since 1745, and

miscellaneous sketches of Scottish life and society since then, will

ever be organised into a regular History. To a writer capable of

combining the scattered elements of interest lying in such materials the

thing would certainly be possible.

Of the various recent works having anything of the character of

contributions to a history of Scottish society during the period in

question, the richest by far, both in fact and in suggestion, are the

two which bear the name of the late Lord Cockburn. Rich enough in this

respect was his _Life of Jeffrey_ published in 1852; but richer still

are the _Memorials of his Time_, now published posthumously.

Lord Cockburn was born in 1779, and died in 1854. Consequently, it is

not over the whole of the period under notice, but only over seventy

years of it, that his reminiscences could in any case have extended. In

fact, however, the period over which they do extend is still more

limited. The _Memorials_ begin about the year 1787, when the author was

a boy at school, and they do not come farther down than 1830. We think,

too, that all readers of the volume will agree with us in regarding the

earlier portion of it,—that which contains Lord Cockburn’s recollections

of the time of his boyhood and youth,—as by far the most interesting.

Nowhere else is there such a vivid and racy account of the state of

Scottish society from about 1790 to about 1806. Fixing on the latter

year, and remembering that Lord Cockburn’s recollections refer chiefly

to Scottish society as it was represented in Edinburgh, we have in these

“Memorials,” therefore, the best text possible for our present paper.

First of all, the _Memorials_, taken in connection with the _Life of

Jeffrey_, bring more distinctly before us than had ever been done

previously, or, at all events, since the time of the Reform Bill

agitation, the anomalous system of polity by which Scotland was governed

not so very long ago. Such a system of polity, maintained so quietly and

with such results, was probably never seen elsewhere under the sun.

Nominally, Scotland was under a free representative government; but

actually she was under the absolute rule of a single native. Ever since

the Union of 1707, when the Scottish autonomy ended and Westminster

became the seat of the one Imperial Government for England and Scotland

together, that Government, except in a few instances when attempts were

made to rule Scotland directly by English methods, and the attempts

raised storm and whirlwind, had found it convenient to entrust the sole

management of Scottish affairs to a single minister, who, by his

Scottish birth and connections on the one hand, and his connections with

the Cabinet and the Parliament at Westminster on the other, could act as

a kind of responsible middleman. Knowing the character and habits of his

countrymen, he could carry out the intentions of Government in Scotland

far better than Government could do for itself; and, by his command of

the Scottish votes in Parliament, he could serve the Cabinet in British

and Imperial questions so effectively as to be able to dictate to it in

all purely Scottish questions. This kind of depute-sovereignty, or rule

by contract, was long exercised in Scotland by the powerful Whig family

of Argyle. During the Whig and Tory alternations of the early part of

the reign of George III., however, the sovereignty was shifted from the

Argyle family to others, till at last, about the time of the formation

of the ministry of the younger Pitt in 1783, it settled permanently in

the Tory family of Dundas, whose patrimonial property as lairds, and

whose professional craft as lawyers, connected them more immediately

with Edinburgh.

For two centuries or more these “Dundases of Arniston,” as they were

called and are still called, had been an important family in the

politics and the jurisprudence of Scotland. Since the Restoration four

of them in succession had been on the Scottish Bench, two of these in

the supreme place on that Bench: viz. Robert Dundas, Lord President of

the Court of Session from 1748 to 1753, and his eldest son, Robert

Dundas, Lord President of the same from 1760 onwards. It was in a

younger brother of this last that the family was to start up into its

highest distinction. This was Henry Dundas, known afterwards as 1st

Viscount Melville. Born in 1741, and educated at the University of

Edinburgh, he had betaken himself, like so many of his ancestors, to the

profession of the Law, and had already become eminent at the Scottish

Bar, when, having been sent to the House of Commons as member for

Edinburghshire, he began in 1774 his career of Parliament-man and

party-politician. It was the time of the Tory administration of Lord

North; and, having gradually fallen into rank with the supporters of

that administration, he was appointed under it in 1775 to the office of

Lord Advocate of Scotland. He had held this office through the remainder

of Lord North’s administration, and also through the brief Rockingham

and Shelburne ministries of 1782–83, latterly with the Treasurership of

the Navy in addition, but had resigned office in April 1783 on the

formation of the Coalition Ministry of North and Fox. He had been

observing with admiration the steady conduct of the youthful Pitt

through so many shiftings of the political scenery; the youthful Pitt

had also been observing _him_; they had found an unusually strong bond

of attachment to each other in their common fondness for port wine and

their coequal powers of consuming it in large quantities; and so it

happened that, on the break-up of the Coalition Ministry in December

1783, and the formation of a new and more lasting ministry under Pitt

himself, it was to Dundas that Pitt looked chiefly for help and

comradeship. Pitt was then but four and twenty years of age, while

Dundas was in his forty-third year; but through all the future

Premiership of the younger man, and indeed through all the rest of his

life, Dundas was to be his most trusted colleague, his _alter ego_.

From 1783 to 1806 this Henry Dundas, the colleague of Pitt, was

virtually King of Scotland. When the history of Scotland during that

period shall come to be written, this will be recognised and he will be

the central figure. All in all, though within a narrower field, he was

as remarkable a man, as able a man, as either Pitt or Fox; and his life,

from the absoluteness with which it was identified with the career of

his native country during so long a period, possesses elements of

biographical interest which theirs want. Both Lord Brougham and Lord

Cockburn have sketched the character of this important man, of whom, in

their youth, Scotsmen were continually speaking as subjects speak of

their liege lord. In the House, says Lord Brougham, he could not be

called an orator; he was “a plain, business-like speaker,” and “an

admirable man of business.” Personally, Lord Brougham adds, he was of

“engaging qualities”; “a steady and determined friend”; “an agreeable

companion, from the joyous hilarity of his manners”; “void of all

affectation, all pride, all pretension”; “a kind and affectionate man in

the relations of private life”; “in his demeanour hearty and

good-humoured to all.” Lord Cockburn, as became a nephew speaking of an

uncle, is even more enthusiastic in his descriptions. “Handsome,

gentlemanlike, frank, cheerful, and social,” says Lord Cockburn, “he was

a favourite with most men, and with all women”; “too much a man of the

world not to live well with his opponents when they would let him, and

totally incapable of personal harshness or unkindness.” “He was,”

continues Lord Cockburn, “the very man for Scotland at that time, and is

a Scotchman of whom his country may be proud.” Such was the Henry Dundas

in whom, partly because of those personal qualifications, the entire

management of Scottish affairs was vested through the seventeen closing

years of last century and the first five or six years of the present.

This era of Scottish history may, in fact, be remembered by the name of

The Dundas Despotism.

What was the method of the despotism? It was very peculiar, and at the

same time very simple and natural. Mr. Dundas, sitting in the House of

Commons, first as member for the shire of Edinburgh, but from 1787

onwards as member for Edinburgh itself, was a leading power in the Pitt

Administration. On joining that administration he had not resumed his

old office of Lord Advocate (which was given to his friend Hay

Campbell), but had been content with resuming his former post of the

Treasurership of the Navy; to which were subsequently added in

succession the Presidency of the Board of Control for Indian Affairs

(_i.e._ the Ministry for India), the Home-Secretaryship, the

Secretaryship for War, and the First Lordship of the Admiralty. It was

perhaps as Minister for India that he most usefully distinguished

himself in his capacity as a British statesman. But it was in his other

capacity as sovereign minister for Scotland that he laboured most

characteristically. Continually going and coming, shuttle-wise, between

London and Edinburgh, he was known to carry all Scotland in his pocket.

His colleagues, on the one hand, made Scotland entirely over to him; and

he, on the other, contracted to keep Scotland quiet for them, and to

give them the full use of the united Scottish influence in Parliament.

His means, as regarded his countrymen, were very efficient. They

consisted, apart from the mere power of his own tact and talent, in the

uncontrolled use of patronage. The population of Scotland at that time

did not exceed a million and a half,—a population in which, according to

the ordinary calculation, there could not be more than about three

hundred and fifty thousand adult males. This was a nice little compact

body to keep in order, and not above one man’s strength, if he had

offices enough at his disposal. But it was not even necessary to deal

with all this little mass directly. There was no popular representation

in Scotland. Fifteen out of the five-and-forty Scottish members of the

House of Commons were members for burghs; and these were elected by the

town-councils, who were themselves self-elected, and nearly permanent.

Nay, the Edinburgh town-council alone returned a member directly; the

other burgh-members were for “districts of burghs,” and were elected by

delegates from the various town-councils included in the several

districts. The county constituencies, on the other hand, who elected the

thirty county members, did not exceed fifteen hundred or two thousand

persons for all Scotland. Accordingly, Government, through Dundas, had

only to deal directly with an upper two thousand or so, including the

town-councils,—a body not too large, as Lord Cockburn says, to be held

completely within Government’s hand. Gratitude for places conferred,

fear of removal from place, and hope of places to be obtained for

themselves and their relations or dependents, were the forces by which

they _were_ held. Nobody could get a place or could hold a place except

through Harry Dundas; and he had places enough at his disposal to give

all the necessary chance. There was, first, all the patronage of

Scotland itself, including judgeships, sheriffships, professorships,

clerical livings, offices of customs and excise, and a host of minor

appointments, all within the control of Dundas, to be distributed by him

according to his personal knowledge, or the representations of his

friends. Then there were commissions in the army and navy, appointments

in the India service, medical appointments, and posts in the various

departments of the public service in England,—all excellent as openings

for young Scotsmen who could not be provided for at home, and in the

patronage of which Dundas had his full share by official right or as a

member of the general Ministry. The political faith of Scotland was,

therefore, simply _Dundasism_; and it was in a great measure the result

of Dundas’s own political position that this _Dundasism_ was equivalent

to _Toryism_. As the colleague and friend of Pitt, the member of a

government whose main feeling was hatred to the French Revolution, and

to everything at home that savoured of sympathy with that Revolution,

Dundas willed that his subjects should be Tories; and they were. At last

Toryism became the ingrained national habit. Lord Cockburn describes

feelingly the utter political abjectness of Scotland during the Dundas

reign. As in England, so in Scotland, “everything rung and was connected

with the Revolution in France; everything, not this or that thing, but

literally everything, was soaked in this one event.” But in Scotland,

more than in England, horror of the French Revolution and of every

doctrine or practice that could be charged with the remotest suspicion

of connection with it, became the necessary creed of personal safety. To

resent every idea of innovation or of popular power,—nay, every

recognition of the existence of the people politically,—as blasphemy,

Jacobinism, and incipient treason, was the same thing as allegiance to

Dundas; and this, again, was the same thing as having any comfort in

life. Hence, three-fourths of the entire population, and almost all the

wealth and rank of the country, were of the Tory party; and no names of

abuse were hard enough, no persecution was harsh enough, for the daring

men, consisting perhaps of about a fourth of the middle and working

classes, with a sprinkling of persons of a higher grade, who formed the

small Opposition. Though the opinions of these were of the most moderate

shade of what would now be called “liberalism,” the slightest expression

of them was attended with positive risk. Spies were employed to watch

such of them as had any social position; in several cases there were

trials for sedition, with sentences of transportation; and only the

impossibility of finding grounds for indictment prevented more. The

negative punishment of exclusion from office, and from every favour of

Government and its supporters, was the least; and it was universally

applied. Burns nearly lost his excisemanship for too free speaking; and

a letter is extant, addressed by him to one of the commissioners of the

Scottish Board of Excise, in which, without denying his Liberalism, he

protests that it is within the bounds of devout attachment to the

Constitution, and implores the commissioner, as “a husband and a father”

himself, not to be instrumental in turning him, with his wife and his

little ones, “into the world, degraded and disgraced.” Part of the

poet’s crime seems to have been his having subscribed to an Edinburgh

Liberal paper which had been started by one Captain Johnstone. This

Johnstone was imprisoned after the publication of a few numbers; and the

very printer of the paper, though himself a Tory, was nearly ruined by

his connection with it. No subsequent attempt was made during the Dundas

reign to establish an Opposition newspaper. From 1795 to as late as

1820, according to Lord Cockburn, not a single public meeting on the

Opposition side of politics was, or could be, held in Edinburgh.

Elections of members of Parliament, whether for burghs or for counties,

in Scotland, were a farce: they were transacted quietly, by those whose

business it was, in town-halls or in the private rooms of hotels; and

the people knew of the matter only by the ringing of a bell, or by some

other casual method of announcement. Abject Toryism, or submission to

Dundas and the existing order of things, pervaded every department and

every corner of established or official life in Scotland,—the Church,

the Bench, the Bar, the Colleges and Schools; and so powerfully were any

elements of possible opposition that did exist kept down by the pressure

of organised self-interest, and by the fear of pains and penalties, that

the appearance at last from the Solway to Caithness was that of

imperturbable political stagnation.

Once, indeed, a crisis occurred which put the Scottish people nearly out

in their calculations. This was in March 1801, when Pitt resigned

office, and Dundas along with him, and a new ministry was formed under

Pitt’s temporary substitute, Mr. Addington, afterwards Lord Sidmouth.

Dundas out of power was a conception totally new to the Scottish

mind,—an association, or rather a dissociation, of ideas utterly

paralysing. “For a while,” says Lord Brougham, “all was uncertainty and

consternation; all were seen fluttering about like birds in an eclipse

or a thunderstorm; no man could tell whom he might trust; nay, worse

still, no man could tell of whom he might ask anything.” Dundasism,

which had hitherto meant participation in place and patronage, now

seemed in danger of losing that meaning; and the bulk of the Scottish

population feared that they might have to choose between the name and

the thing. They were faithful to Dundas, however; and they were

rewarded. The Addington ministry, which had come into power principally

to conclude peace with France by the Treaty of Amiens, came to an end

after that Treaty had been rendered nugatory by the recommencement of

the war; and in May 1804 Pitt returned to the helm. Dundas, who had in

the interim been raised to the peerage by the title of Viscount

Melville, then resumed his place in his friend’s cabinet, to yield his

Parliamentary service thenceforward in the Upper House, and official

service mainly in the First Lordship of the Admiralty. Scotland then

rolled herself up comfortably once more for her accustomed slumber,—the

only difference being that her bedside guardian had to be thought of no

longer as her Harry Dundas, but less familiarly now as her Lord

Melville. So for another year; but then what a reawakening! It was in

April 1805 that, in consequence of the report of a Committee of the

House of Commons that had been appointed for the investigation of

alleged abuses in the naval service, the Whigs, through Mr. Whitbread as

their spokesman, opened an attack on Lord Melville on charges of

malversation of office, and misappropriation of public moneys, during

his former Treasurership of the Navy, either directly, or by collusion

with his principal financial subordinate. The attack grew fiercer and

fiercer, as well as more extensive in its scope; and, although it was

evidently inspired mainly by the political vindictiveness of a party

made furious by long exclusion from office, it became more formidable

from the fact that some of Pitt’s own friends either abetted it fully or

thought that the irregularities in account-keeping which had been

disclosed ought not to pass without Parliamentary censure. Pitt reeled

under such a blow at once to his private feelings and his

administration; and, after doing his best to resist, he had to consent

that Lord Melville should quit office, and that Lord Melville’s name

should be struck off from the list of His Majesty’s Privy Council till

the charges against him were formally and publicly tried. The trial was

to be in the shape of an impeachment before the House of Lords. Before

it could come on Pitt was dead. He died on the 23d of January 1806; and

the longexcluded Whigs had then their turn of power for somewhat more

than a year in what is remembered as the Fox and Grenville ministry,—a

name accurate only till the 13th of September 1806, when Fox followed

his great rival to the grave, and Lord Grenville became Premier singly.

It was in April and May 1806, when this Fox and Grenville ministry was

new in office, that the great trial of Lord Melville in Westminster Hall

was begun and concluded. The charges against him had been formulated

into ten articles; and he was acquitted upon all the ten,—unanimously on

the only one which vitally impeached his personal integrity, by

overwhelming majorities on five of the others, and by smaller but still

decisive majorities on the remaining four. On the whole, it was a

triumphant acquittal; and it was received as such throughout

Scotland,—where, at one of the dinners held in honour of the event by

the jubilant Scottish Tories, there was sung a famous song beginning

with this stanza:—

“Since here we are set in array round the table,

Five hundred good fellows well met in a hall,

Come listen, brave boys, and I’ll sing as I’m able

How innocence triumphed and pride got a fall.

But push round the claret,—

Come, stewards, don’t spare it;

With rapture you’ll drink to the toast that I give:

Here, boys,

Off with it merrily:

‘Melville for ever, and long may he live!’”

Melville did live for some time longer, restored to his place in the

Privy Council, and rehabilitated in honour, but never again in office,

hardly caring to concern himself further with politics, and spending his

last years mainly in Scotland. He died on the 27th of May 1811, in the

seventieth year of his age.

That system of the government of Scotland by proconsulship of which he

had been so conspicuously the representative did not by any means die

with him. It was continued, with variations and modifications, through

those successive ministries of the later part of the reign of George

III. and the whole of the reign of George IV. which fill up the interval

between the death of Pitt and the eve of the Reform Bill; nay, not only

so continued, but continued with the accompanying phenomenon that it was

still a Dundas that exercised, occasionally at least, what did remain of

the proconsulship. Robert Dundas, 2d Viscount Melville, who died as late

as 1851, was a member of most of the successive administrations

mentioned, from Perceval’s of 1809–12, through Liverpool’s of 1812–27,

to Canning’s and the Duke of Wellington’s of 1827–30, holding one or

other of his father’s old posts in these administrations, and so or

otherwise maintaining the hereditary Dundas influence in Scottish

affairs while Toryism kept the field. But, while this prolongation of

the Dundas influence in the second Lord Melville is not to be forgotten,

it is the father, Henry Dundas, 1st Lord Melville, that has left the

name of Dundas most strikingly impressed upon the history of Scotland,

and it is the stretch of two-and-twenty years between 1783 and 1806,

during which this greatest of the Dundases exercised the proconsulship,

that has to be remembered especially and distinctively in Scottish

annals as the time of the Dundas Despotism.

* * * * *

“The Dundas Despotism!” O phrase of fear, unpleasing to a modern ear!

What a Scotland that must have been which this phrase describes! A

country without political life, without public meetings, without

newspapers, without a hustings: could any endurable existence be led in

such a set of conditions,—could any good come out of it?

Incredible as it may seem, there is evidence that the Scottish people

did contrive, in some way or other, to lead not only an endurable but a

very substantial and jolly existence through the Dundas Despotism, and

that not only a great deal of good, but much of what Scotland must now

regard as her best and most characteristic produce, had its genesis in

that time, though the exodus has been later. The various liberties of

the human subject may be classified and arranged according to their

degrees of importance; and a great many of them may exist where the

liberty of voting for members of parliament and of openly talking

politics is absent. So it was in Scotland through the reign of Henry

Dundas and his Toryism. The million and a half of human beings who then

composed Scotland, and were scattered over its surface, in their various

parishes, agricultural or pastoral, and in their towns and villages,

went through their daily life with a great deal of energy and enjoyment,

notwithstanding that Dundas, and the lairds and the provosts and bailies

as his agents, elected the members of parliament and transacted all the

political business of the country; nay, out of the lairds and the

bailies themselves, and all the business of electioneering, they

extracted a good deal of fun. What mattered it to them that now and then

some long-tongued fellow who had started a newspaper was stowed away in

jail, or that an Edinburgh lawyer like Muir was transported for being

incontinent in his politics? Could not people let well alone, obey the

authorities, earn their oatmeal, and drink their whisky in peace? Few of

Scott’s novels come down so far as to this period of Scottish life, and

it has not been much described in our other literature of fiction; but

till lately there were many alive who remembered it, and delighted in

recalling its savageries and its humours. O the old Scottish times of

the lairds, the “moderate” ministers, the provosts and the bailies!—the

lairds speaking broad Scotch, farming their own lands, carousing

together, seeing their daughters married, and writing to London for

appointments for their sons; the “moderate” ministers making interest

for _their_ sons, preaching “Blair and cauld morality” on Sundays, and

jogging to christenings or to Presbytery dinners through the week; the

provosts and bailies in their shops in the forenoon, or meeting in the

morning at their “deid-chack” after a man was hanged! Every considerable

town then had its hangman, who was frequently a well-to-do person that

sold fish or some such commodity. And then, all through society, the

flirtations, the friendships, and the long winter evenings at the

fireside, with the cracks between the “gudeman” and his neighbours, and

the alternative of a hand at cards or a well-thumbed book for the young

folks! What stalwart old fellows, both of the douce and of the humorous

type, oracular and respected in their day, and whose physiognomies and

maxims are still preserved in local memory, lived and died in those days

and made them serve their turn! Nay, of the Scotsmen who have been

eminent in the intellectual world, what a number belong by their birth

to the reign of Dundas, and were nurtured amid its torpid influences!

Burns closed his life in the midst of it; Dugald Stewart and James Watt

lived through it; Scott, Jeffrey, Chalmers, Wilson, Hamilton, and

Carlyle are all, more or less, specimens of what it could send forth.

_Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona_: there was pith in Scotland before there

was Parliamentary Reform.

Naturally it was in Edinburgh that the various elements of Scottish life

at this time were seen in their closest contact and their most intimate

union or antagonism. It was here that Dundas lived when he was in

Scotland; and here were the central threads of that official network by

which, through Dundas, Scotland was connected with the English

Government. Edinburgh was then still the chief city of Scotland, even in

population; for, though now Glasgow has far outstripped it in that

particular, then the two cities were happy in numbering little more than

80,000 each. At least, in the census of 1801 Edinburgh stands for

82,000, or almost exactly neck to neck with Glasgow, which stands for

83,000. Dundee, which came next, reckoned but 29,000; Aberdeen, 27,000;

and Leith and Paisley each about 20,000. Few other Scottish towns had a

population of more than 10,000.

Was there ever another such city to live in as Edinburgh?

“And I forgot the clouded Forth,

The gloom that saddens heaven and earth,

The bitter east, the misty summer,

And gray metropolis of the North.”

One regrets that this is all that our noble Laureate’s experience of

Edinburgh enabled him to say. The east winds do bite there fearfully now

and then, and blow a dust of unparalleled pungency in your eyes as you

cross the North Bridge; but, with that exception, what a city! Gray!

why, it is gray, or gray and gold, or gray and gold and blue, or gray

and gold and blue and green, or gray and gold and blue and green and

purple, according as the heaven pleases, and you choose your ground!

But, take it when it is most sombrely gray, where is another such gray

city? The irregular ridge of the Old Town, with its main street of lofty

antique houses rising gradually from Holyrood up to the craggy Castle;

the chasm between the Old Town and the New, showing grassy slopes by

day, and glittering supernaturally with lamps at night; the New Town

itself, like a second city spilt out of the Old, fairly built of stone,

and stretching downwards over new heights and hollows, with gardens

intermixed, till it reaches the flats of the Forth! Then Calton Hill in

the midst, confronted by the precipitous curve of the Salisbury Crags;

Arthur Seat looking over all like a lion grimly keeping guard; the

wooded Corstorphines lying soft away to the west, and the larger

Pentlands looming quiet in the southern distance! Let the sky be as gray

and heavy as the absence of the sun can make it, and where have natural

situation and the hand of man combined to exhibit such a mass of the

city picturesque? And only let the sun strike out, and lo! a burst of

new glories in and around. The sky is then blue as sapphire overhead;

the waters of the Forth are clear to the broad sea; the hills and the

fields of Fife are distinctly visible from every northern street and

window; still more distant peaks are discernible on either horizon; and,

as day goes down, the gables and pinnacles of the old houses blaze and

glance with the radiance of the sunset. It is such a city that no one,

however familiar with it, can walk out in its streets for but five

minutes at any hour of the day or of the night, or in any state of the

weather, without a new pleasure through the eye alone. Add to this the

historical associations. Remember that this is the city of ancient

Scottish royalty; that there is not a close or alley in the Old Town,

and hardly a street in the New, that has not memories of the great or

the quaint attached to it; that the many generations of old Scottish

life that have passed through it have left every stone of it, as it

were, rich with legend. To an English poet all this might be

indifferent; but hear the Scottish poets:—

“Edina! Scotia’s darling seat!

All hail thy palaces and towers!”

was the salutation of Burns, when first brought from his native Ayrshire

to behold the Scottish capital. “Mine own romantic town,” was the

outburst of Scott, in that famous passage where, after describing

Edinburgh as seen from the Braids, he makes even an English stranger

beside himself with rapture at the sight:—

“Fitz-Eustace’ heart felt closely pent;

As if to give his rapture vent,

The spur he to his charger lent,

And raised his bridle hand,

And, making demi-volte in air,

Cried, ‘Where’s the coward that would not dare

To fight for such a land?’”

Here, though it is an Englishman that is supposed to speak, it is a

Scotsman that supplies the words; but there can be no such objection in

the case of the following lines from a sonnet, entitled “Written in

Edinburgh,” by Tennyson’s friend, Arthur Hallam:—

“Even thus, methinks, a city reared should be,

Yea, an imperial city, that might hold

Five times a hundred noble towns in fee ...

Thus should her towers be raised; with vicinage

Of clear bold hills, that curve her very streets,

As if to indicate, ’mid choicest seats

Of Art, abiding Nature’s majesty,—

And the broad sea beyond, in calm or rage

Chainless alike, and teaching liberty.”

At the time with which we are concerned this city had the advantage of

containing, as has been said, only about eighty thousand people. For

comfortable social purposes, that is about the extreme size to which a

city should go. The size of London is overwhelming and paralysing. There

can be no intimacy, no unity of interest, in such a vast concourse.

Ezekiel might be preaching in Smithfield, Camberwell might be swallowed

up by an earthquake, and the people of St. John’s Wood would know

nothing of either fact till they saw it announced in the newspapers next

morning. Hardly since the days of the Gordon Riots has London ever been

all agitated simultaneously. In Ancient Athens, on the other hand, we

have an illustration of what a town of moderate size could be and

produce. That such a cluster of men as Pericles, Socrates, Æschylus,

Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Plato, Phidias, Alcibiades,

Xenophon, and others,—men of an order that we only expect to see now far

distributed through space and time, _nantes rari in gurgite

vasto_,—should have been swimming contemporaneously or nearly so in such

a small pond as Athens was, and that this affluence in greatness should

have been kept up by so small a population for several ages, seems

miraculous. The peculiar fineness of the Hellenic nerve may have had

something to do with the miracle; but the compactness of the place,—the

aggregation of so many finely and variously endowed human beings

precisely in such numbers as to keep up among them a daily sense of

mutual companionship,—must also have had its effect. In “Modern Athens”

the conditions of its ancient namesake are not _all_ reproduced. To say

nothing of any difference that there may be in respect of original

brain-and-nerve equipment between the modern and the ancient Athenian,

“Modern Athens” is, unfortunately, not a separate body-politic, with

separate interests and a separate power of legislation. There are no

walls now round the Edinburgh territory; nor have the Edinburgh people

the privilege of making wars and concluding treaties with even the

nearest portions of the rest of Great Britain. They cannot meet

periodically on the Castle Esplanade to pass laws for themselves in

popular assembly, and hear consummate speeches beginning “O men of

Edinburgh.” But, with many such differences, there are some

similarities. Everybody in Edinburgh knows, or may know, everybody else,

at least by sight; everybody meets everybody else in the street at least

once every day or two; the whole town is within such convenient compass

that, even to go from one extremity of it to the other extremity, there

is no need to take a cab unless it rains. It is a city capable of being

simultaneously and similarly affected in all its parts. An idea

administered to one knot of the citizens is as good as administered to

the whole community; a joke made on the Mound at noon will ripple

gradually to the suburbs, and into the surrounding country, before the

evening. If such is the case even now, when the population is over

260,000, must it not have been still better when the population was only

80,000, and that population was more shut in within itself by the

absence as yet of telegraphs and railroads?

Moreover, the eighty thousand people who were in Edinburgh when Henry

Dundas ruled Scotland were people of a rather peculiar, and yet rather

superior, mixture of sorts. There never has been any very large amount

of trade or of manufacture in Edinburgh, nor much of the wealth or

bustle that arises from trade and manufacture. For the roar of mills and

factories, and for a society ranging correspondingly from the great

millionaire uppermost to crowds of operatives below, all toiling in the

pursuit of wealth, one must go to Glasgow. In Edinburgh the standard of

the highest income is much lower, and the standard of the lowest is

perhaps higher, than in Glasgow; nor is wealth of so much relative

importance in the social estimate. Roughly classified, the society of

Edinburgh in the days to which we are now looking back consisted, as the

society of Edinburgh still consists, of an upper stratum of lawyers and

resident gentry, college officials, and clergy, reposing on, but by no

means separated from, a community of shopkeepers and artisans sufficient

for the wants of the place. Let us glance at these components of the

society of Old Edinburgh in succession:—

First, _The Lawyers and Resident Gentry_.—These two classes may be

taken together, as to a certain extent identical. From the time of the

Union, such of the old nobility of Scotland as had till then remained

in their native country, occupying for a part of the year the homely

but picturesque residences of their ancestors in the Old Town of

Edinburgh, had gradually migrated southwards, leaving but a few

families of their order to keep up their memory in the ancient capital

of Holyrood and St. Giles. In the room of this ancient nobility, and,

indeed, absorbing such families of the old nobility as had remained,

there had sprung up,—as might have been expected from the fact that

Edinburgh, though it had parted with its Court and Legislature, was

still the seat of the supreme Scottish law-courts,—a new aristocracy

of lawyers. The lawyers,—consisting, first, of the judges as the

topmost persons, with their incomes of several thousands a year, and

then of the barristers, older and younger, in practice or out of

practice, but including also the numerous body of the “Writers to the

Signet” and other law-agents,—are now, and for the last century or two

have been, the dominant class in the Edinburgh population. From the

expense attending education for the legal profession, the members of

it, till within a time comparatively recent, were generally scions of

Scottish families of some rank and substance; and, indeed, it was not

unusual for Scottish lairds or their sons to become nominally members

of the Scottish bar, even when they did not intend to practise. The

fact of the substitution of the legal profession for the old Scottish

aristocracy in the dominant place in Edinburgh society is typified by

the circumstance that the so-called “Parliament House,”—retaining that

name because it enshrines the hall where the Estates of the Scottish

Kingdom held their meetings during the last eighty years of the time

when Scotland had no Parliaments but her own,—is now the seat of the

supreme Scottish law-courts, and the daily resort of the interpreters

of the laws in these courts. Any day yet, while the courts are in

session, the Parliament House, with its long oaken ante-room, where

scores of barristers in their wigs and gowns, accompanied by writers

in plainer costume, are incessantly pacing up and down, and its

smaller inner chambers, where the judges on the bench, in their

crimson robes, are trying cases, is the most characteristic sight in

Edinburgh. Even now the general hour of breakfast in Edinburgh is

determined by the time when the courts open in the morning; and,

dispersed through their homes, or at dinner-parties, in the evening,

it is the members of the legal profession that lead the social talk.

In the old Dundas days it was the same, with the addition that then

the lawyers were perhaps more numerous in proportion to the rest of

the community than they are now, and were more closely inter-connected

by birth and marriage with the Scottish nobility and lairds.

Of hardly less importance socially was the _Academical Element_. As

Edinburgh possesses a University, as its University has long been in

high repute, and as, by reason of the comparative cheapness of board and

education in Edinburgh, many families, after a residence in England or

the Colonies, have been attracted thither for the sake of the education

of their sons, or, without going thither themselves, have sent their

sons thither, the business of education has always been prominent, if

not paramount, among the industries of the city. The teachers of the

public and of other schools have always formed a considerable class

numerically, as well as in rank; while to the University professors,

partly from the higher nature of their teaching-duties, partly from the

traditional dignity conferred on them by the great reputation of some of

their body in past times, and partly from some superiority in their

emoluments, there has alway been accorded a degree of social

consideration not attached to the same function anywhere out of

Scotland. The reputation of the Medical School of Edinburgh, in

particular, has always invested the professors in the Medical Faculty of

the University with special distinction; and, as these professors have

been generally also at the head of the medical practice of the city, the

Medical element, and with it the Scientific element, in Edinburgh

society have from times long past been, to a considerable extent, in

union with the professorial.

In all Scottish cities _The Clergy_ have, from time immemorial,

exercised an amount of social influence not willingly allowed to any

other class of persons. This arises partly from the same causes which

give the clergy influence in other parts of Britain, but partly from the

peculiar affection of the Scottish people for the national theology with

which they have been saturated through so many centuries of clerical

teaching. In Edinburgh, in consequence of the perpetuation there of

relics of that old Scottish aristocracy which never was completely

brought into subjection to Presbytery, and in consequence of the

presence in society of a distinct intellectual element in the lawyers,

the clergy have not perhaps had, relatively, the same weight as in other

towns. Still they were powerful even in the old Edinburgh of the Dundas

rule. At the very least, a negative respect was paid to them by the

preservation throughout the place of an external Presbyterian decorum

and strictness; and in all houses “the minister” was treated with

distinction. Add to this that there generally were among the Edinburgh

clergy men possessing claims to respect in addition to those belonging

to their profession. Some, even in that age of “Moderatism,” were

remarkable for their eloquence and zeal as preachers and as pastors;

others had literary pretensions; and others were professors in the

University as well as parish clergymen. More, indeed, than now, the

professorial and the clerical elements were then intermixed in

Edinburgh. Perhaps, however, that which gave the greatest dignity to the

clerical or ecclesiastical element in Edinburgh was the annual meeting

in that city, every May, of the General Assembly of the Church of

Scotland. In the history of Scottish society since the Union there is,

perhaps, no one fact of greater importance than the regular and

uninterrupted succession of those annual “General Assemblies” in

Edinburgh for the discussion of the affairs of the National Church. Let

an Englishman fancy that during the last two centuries there had been no

Parliament in England, no meetings of the House of Lords or of the House

of Commons, but that regularly during that period there had been annual

convocations of representatives of the whole body of the English Clergy,

together with such leading members of the laity as churchwardens or the

like from all the English parishes, and that these convocations had sat

ten days in every year, discussing all public matters in any way bearing

on the Church, and making laws affecting the entire ecclesiastical

organisation of England, and he will have an idea of the extent to which

the national history of Scotland since her union with England is bound

up in the records of her “General Assemblies.” The General Assembly, in

fact, from the year 1707 to the Disruption of the Scottish Church in

1843, was, to some extent, a veritable Parliament, in which, though the

secular Parliament had been abolished, the united people of Scotland

still saw their nationality preserved and represented. All through the

year the clergy individually, in the thousand parishes or so into which

Scotland was divided, managed their own parochial affairs with the

assistance of select laymen called elders; these clergymen, again, with

some of their elders, held frequent district meetings, called

“presbyteries,” in order to regulate by deliberation and voting the

church affairs of their districts; there were still larger meetings,

periodically held, called “provincial synods”; but the grand rendezvous

of all, the supreme court of appeal and ecclesiastical legislation, was

the annual General Assembly in Edinburgh. The time of its meeting was

one of bustle and excitement. Black coats swarmed in the streets; the

Assembly was opened with military pomp and circumstance by a Lord High

Commissioner representing the Crown; this Commissioner sat on a throne

during the meetings, and held levees and dinner-parties in Holyrood

Palace all through the ten days; the clergy, with lay representatives,

some of whom were usually noblemen or baronets, deliberated and debated

during those ten days, under a president of their own choosing called

the “Moderator”; the proceedings were in parliamentary form, and the

decisions by a majority of votes; and in many cases,—as in trials of

clergymen for moral or ecclesiastical misdemeanour,—barristers were

called in to plead professionally, as they did in the secular

law-courts. As was natural in a deliberative assembly almost all the

members of which were of the speaking class, the speaking was of a very

high order,—far higher, indeed, than has ever been heard in these later

days in the British Parliament; while at the same time there was ample

opportunity for the exercise of business talent and of all the tact and

skill of party-leadership. Much of the general politics of Scotland took

necessarily the form of church politics; and, indeed, the connections

between church politics and state politics were pretty close. The vast

majority of the clergy were adherents of Dundas in general politics, and

bent on swaying church polity in the same direction; while the small

minority of “Evangelicals” or “High-Fliers,” as they were called,

corresponded to the proscribed “Liberals” in secular politics. The

leading clergymen of both parties were to be found in or near Edinburgh.

Respecting the _Mercantile and Artisan classes_ it need only be repeated

that they were by no means separated by any social demarcation from the

fore-mentioned classes, but were intertwined with these by

family-relationships, and often also by the sympathies belonging to

superior natural intelligence and superior education. Booksellers and

printers were more numerous in Edinburgh proportionally than in any

other British town.

In a population of such dimensions, composed as has been described,

there was necessarily a good deal of leisure; and leisure leads to

sociability. Edinburgh in those days was one of the most sociable towns

in the world. By that time “society,” in the conventional sense, had,

with a few lingering exceptions, shifted itself out of the Old Town into

the New, or into the suburbs; and, with this change, there had been a

considerable change of manners. Much of the formality, and at the same

time much of the coarseness, of an older stage of Scottish life had been

civilised away,—the absurd etiquette of the old dancing assemblies, for

example, and the more monstrous excesses of hard drinking. But the

convivial spirit, and many of the old convivial forms, remained. Dinner

parties were frequent; and the old custom of “toasts” and “sentiments”

by the hosts and the guests over their wine was still in fashion. Lord

Cockburn’s description of those dinner parties of his youth is one of

the best passages in his book. But it is on the supper parties that he

dwells with most evident affection. There were various kinds of supper

parties: the oyster supper at taverns, the bachelor supper in lodgings,

and the real domestic supper, to which both sexes were invited; which

last Lord Cockburn vaunts as a delightful institution of Edinburgh,

which the advancing lateness of the dinner-hour had unhappily

superseded. In short, in every form and way, from the set dinner party,

with its immense consumption of claret, in the houses of the more

wealthy, to the homely tea parties of gentlewomen of moderate means,

living in the suburbs of the Old Town, or in _flats_ in the New Town,

and the roystering suppers of young men, where culinary deficiencies

were compensated by good humour and the whisky punch, people were in the

habit of incessantly meeting to spend the evenings together. Lord

Cockburn mentions, as illustrative of the continuance of those sociable

habits of the Edinburgh folks to a somewhat later period than that with

which we are immediately concerned, the fact that for a great many years

after his marriage, which was in 1811, he had not spent above one

evening in every month, on the average, in solitude, _i.e._ without

either being out as a guest, or having friends with him at home. Even

Sydney Smith, though not native and to the manner born, and, with his

English tastes, more fastidious in his ideas of conviviality, retained

to the last a pleasant recollection of those Edinburgh hospitalities, as

experienced by him during his stay in Edinburgh from 1797 to 1802. “When

shall I see Scotland again?” he says in one of his letters: “never shall

I forget the happy days passed there, amidst odious smells, barbarous

sounds, bad suppers, excellent hearts, and the most enlightened and

cultivated understandings.”

Sydney Smith’s allusion to “the enlightened and cultivated

understandings” he encountered amid such roughish surroundings, suggests

the mention of what was, all in all, the most characteristic feature of

Edinburgh society at the close of the eighteenth century and the

beginning of the nineteenth—its _intellectualism_. In a community

composed in so large a measure of practitioners of the learned

professions, it was inevitable that there should be more of interest in

matters intellectual than is common, more of a habit of reasoning and

discussion, more play and variety in the choice of topics for

conversation. What mattered it that many of the most intellectual men

and women gave expression to their ideas in broad Scotch? Ideas may be

expressed in broad Scotch, and yet be the ideas of cultivated minds; at

all events, it was so then in Edinburgh, where many excellent lawyers,

University professors, and medical men kept up the broad Scotch in their

ordinary conversation, though the majority had gone over to the English

in all save accent, and some were sedulous in trying to Anglicise

themselves even in that. But, whether the dialect was English or Scotch,

there was a great deal of very pleasant and very substantial talk. True,

in Sydney Smith’s recollection of the conversation of the Edinburgh

people at the time he moved among them, two great faults are specified.

It ran too much, he records, to that species of jocosity, perfectly

torturing to an Englishman, which the Scotch themselves called _wut_;

and it also ran too much, he records, into disputation and dialectics.

“Their only idea of wit,” he says, speaking of the Scotch generally, but

of the Edinburgh people in particular, “or rather of that inferior

variety of the electric talent which prevails occasionally in the North,

and which, under the name of _wut_, is so infinitely distressing to

people of good taste, is laughing immoderately at stated intervals.” And

again—“They are so imbued with metaphysics that they even make love

metaphysically: I overheard a young lady of my acquaintance, at a dance

in Edinburgh, exclaim, in a sudden pause of the music, ‘What you say, my

lord, is very true of love in the _abstract_, but——,’ here the fiddlers

began fiddling furiously, and the rest was lost.” This is somewhat

unfair. _Wut_, in its place, is as good as _wit_, and may be a great

deal heartier. As practised in the north, it corresponds more with what

is properly _humour_. It consists in a general openness to the ludicrous

view of things, a general disposition to call each other Tam and Sandy,

a general readiness to tell and to hear Scottish stories the fun of

which lies in the whole series of conceptions (often too local) that

they call up, rather than in any sudden flash or quip at the close. At

all events, the Scotch like their _wut_, and find it satisfying. As for

the dialectics, there _is_, perhaps, too much of that. The excess in

this direction is due, doubtless, in part to the omnipresence of the

lawyers. But _wut_ and _dialectics_ make a very good mixture; and,

dashed as this mixture is and always has been in Edinburgh with finer

and higher ingredients, there has been no town in Britain for the last

century and a half of greater deipnosophistic capabilities, all things

considered.

One element which Englishmen who do not know Edinburgh always imagine as

necessarily wanting in it never has been wanting. Whether from the

influence of the lawyers, and of the relics of the old Scottish baronage

and baronetage, acting conjointly as a counterpoise to the influence of

the clergy, or from other less obvious causes, there has always been in

Edinburgh a freer undercurrent of speculative opinion, a tougher

traditional scepticism, a greater latitude of jest at things clerical

and Presbyterian, than in other Scottish towns. From the early part of

the eighteenth century, when Allan Ramsay, Dr. Archibald Pitcairn, and

others, did battle with the clergy in behalf of theatrical

entertainments and other forms of the festive, there has never been

wanting a strong anti-clerical and even free-thinking clique in

Edinburgh society; and towards the end of the century, when David Hume

and Hugo Arnot were alive or remembered, no city in Britain sheltered

such a quantity of cosy infidelity. Of hundreds of stories illustrative

of this, take one of the mildest:—Pitcairn, going about the streets one

Sunday, was obliged by a sudden pelt of rain to take refuge in a place

he was not often in,—a church. The audience was scanty; and he sat down

in a pew where there was only another sitter besides,—a quiet,

grave-looking countryman, listening to the sermon with a face of the

utmost composure. The preacher was very pathetic; so much so that at one

passage he began to shed tears copiously, and to use his

pocket-handkerchief. Interested in this as a physiological phenomenon

for which the cause was not apparent, Pitcairn turned to the countryman,

and asked in a whisper, “What the deevil gars the man greet?” “Faith,”

said the man, slowly turning round, “ye wad maybe greet yoursel’ if ye

was up there and had as little to say.” Pitcairn was the type of the

avowed Edinburgh infidel; of which class there were not a few whose

esoteric talk when they met together was of an out-and-out kind; but the

countryman was the type of a still more numerous class, who kept up

exterior conformity, but tested all shrewdly enough by a pretty tough

interior instinct. Indeed, long after Pitcairn’s time, a kind of sturdy

scepticism, quite distinct from what would be called “infidelity,” was

common among the educated classes in Edinburgh. Old gentlemen who went

duly to church, who kept their families in great awe, and who preserved

much etiquette in their habits towards each other, were by no means

strait-laced in their beliefs; and it was not till a considerably later

period, when a more fervid religious spirit had taken possession of the

Scottish clergy themselves, and flamed forth in more zealous expositions

of peculiar Calvinistic doctrine from the pulpit than had been customary

in the days of Robertson and Blair, that evangelical orthodoxy obtained

in Edinburgh its visible and intimate alliance with social

respectability. Moreover, even those who were then indubitably orthodox

and devout by the older standard were devout after a freer fashion, and

with a far greater liberty both of conduct and of rhetoric, than would

now be allowable in consistency with the same reputation. There is no

point on which Lord Cockburn lays more stress than on this. “There is no

contrast,” he says, “between those old days and the present that strikes

me so strongly as that suggested by the differences in religious

observances, not so much by the world in general, as by deeply religious

people. I knew the habits of the religious very well, partly through the

piety of my mother and her friends, the strict religious education of

her children, and our connection with some of the most distinguished of

our devout clergymen. I could mention many practices of our old pious

which would horrify modern zealots. The principles and feelings of the

persons commonly called evangelical were the same then that they are

now; the external acts by which these principles and feelings were

formerly expressed were materially different.”

Among the differences, Lord Cockburn notes in particular the much laxer

style, as it would now be called, in which Sunday was observed by pious

people and even by the most pious among the clergy. There seems also to

have been more freedom of speech, in the direction of what would now be

called profane allusion, among the admittedly pious. One of the gems of

Lord Cockburn’s book is his portrait of one venerable old lady, a

clergyman’s widow, sitting neatly dressed in her high-backed leather

chair, with her grandchildren round her, the very model of silver-haired

serenity, till one of her granddaughters, in reading the newspaper to

her, stumbled on a paragraph which told how the reputation of a certain

fair one at the court of the Prince Regent had suffered from some

indiscreet talk of his about his own relations with her, but then

starting up, and exclaiming, with an indignant shake of her shrivelled

fist,—“The dawmed villain! does he kiss and tell?” There were not a few

old ladies of this stamp in Edinburgh in Lord Cockburn’s boyhood and

youth; some of whom survived far into the present century, too old to

part with their peculiarities, even to please the clergy. “Ye speak,

sir, as if the Bible had just come oot,” said one such old lady, who

lingered long in Edinburgh, to a young clergyman who was instructing her

on some point of Christian practice on which she was disposed to differ

from him. The continuation in the society of Edinburgh of a considerable

sprinkling of such free-speaking gentlewomen of the old Scottish school,

intermingled with as many of the other sex using a still rougher

rhetoric, imparted, we are told, a flavour of originality to the

convivial conversation of the place for which there is now no exact

equivalent.

Presided over by such seniors, the young educated men of the time did

not stint themselves in the choice or the range of _their_ convivial

topics. They discussed everything under the sun and down to the centre.

Who has not heard of the Speculative Society of Edinburgh, founded in

1764 in connection with the University, and kept up from that time to

this by successive generations of students; of which Lord Cockburn says

that it “has trained more young men to public spirit, talent, and

liberal thought, than all the other private institutions in Scotland”?

Between 1780 and 1800 this society was in all its glory, discussing,

week after week, as its minutes inform us, such topics as these:—“Ought

any permanent support to be provided for the poor?” “Ought there to be

an established religion?” “Was the execution of Charles I. justifiable?”

“Should the slave trade be abolished?” “Has the belief in a future state

been of advantage to mankind, or is it ever likely to be so?” “Is it for

the interest of Britain to maintain what is called the balance of

Europe?” Here surely was scepticism enough to keep thought alive; and

that such questions, discussed not only in the Speculative Society, but

also in minor associations of the same kind, and carried doubtless also,

with other more scientific topics, into private assemblages, should have

been ventilated in Edinburgh at that day, shows that, even under the

Dundas Despotism, there was no lack of _intellectual_ freedom.

It is but a continuation of what we have been saying to add that the old

Edinburgh of those defunct decades had already an established reputation

as a literary metropolis. The rise of the literary reputation of

Edinburgh may date, for all purposes except such as shallow present

scholarship would call merely antiquarian, from the time when Allan

Ramsay set up his circulating library in the High Street, and supplied

the lieges furtively with novels, plays, and song-books, including his

own poems. This was about the year 1725, when his countryman, Thomson,

was publishing in London the first portion of his _Seasons_. Thomson

himself, and his contemporaries or immediate successors, Mallet,

Smollett, Armstrong, Meikle, Macpherson, and Falconer, all rank in the

list of literary Scots; but they were _Scoti extra Scotiam agentes_, and

had, most of them, but an incidental connection with Edinburgh. The

poets Robert Blair and James Beattie, the philosopher Reid, and the

theologian and critic Dr. George Campbell, were not only literary Scots,

but literary Scots whose lives were spent on their own side of the

Tweed; but, with the exception of Blair, none of them were natives of

Edinburgh, and even Blair did not live there. After Ramsay, in short,

the early literary fame of Edinburgh is associated with the names of a

cluster of men who, born in different parts of Scotland, had, from

various chances, taken up their abode in Edinburgh, and who resided

there, more or less permanently, during the latter half of the

eighteenth century. The most prominent men of this cluster were

these:—David Hume (1711–1776), known as a philosophical writer since the

year 1738, and who, though he spent a good many years of his literary

life in England and in France, was for the last twenty years of it, and

these the most busy, a resident in Edinburgh; Hume’s senior and

survivor, Henry Home, Lord Kames (1696–1782), one of the judges of the

Court of Session, still remembered for the contrast between the coarse

Scottish facetiousness of his manners and the studied fineness of his

writings; the learned and eccentric Burnet, Lord Monboddo (1714–1799),

also a judge of Session, at whose Attic suppers in the Old Town all the

talent and beauty of Edinburgh were for many years regularly assembled;

the pompous but sensible Dr. Hugh Blair (1718–1799), Professor of Belles

Lettres in the University, and one of the clergymen of the city; his

more celebrated colleague, Dr. Robertson the historian (1722–1793),

Principal of the University, and likewise one of the city clergymen; the

minor historical writers and antiquarians, Tytler of Woodhouselee

(1711–1792), Dr. Henry (1718–1790), Lord Hailes (1726–1792), Dr. Adam

Ferguson (1724–1816), and Dr. Gilbert Stuart (1742–1786); the poet John

Home, author of the tragedy of _Douglas_ (1722–1808), once the Rev. Mr.

Home, but long bereft of that title, and known since 1779 as a retired

man of letters in Edinburgh; the illustrious Adam Smith (1723–1790),

settled in Edinburgh during the last twenty years of his life in the

post of commissioner of customs; the hardly less illustrious Dugald

Stewart (1753–1828), elected Professor of Mathematics in the University

as early as 1774, but thence transferred in 1785 to the chair of Moral

Philosophy, where he completed his fame; and, lastly, not to overburden

the list, the novelist and essayist Henry Mackenzie (1745–1831), an

acknowledged literary celebrity ever since 1771, when he had published

his _Man of Feeling_. In a class by himself, unless we choose to

associate him with the Creeches, Smellies, and other “wuts” of a lower

grade, whose acquaintance Burns made in his leisure hours during his

first visit to Edinburgh in 1786, we may mention Burns’s immediate

predecessor in the poetry of the Scottish vernacular, the unfortunate

Robert Fergusson (1751–1774). He was a native of Edinburgh, and his

brief life was squandered in its taverns.

It was by virtue of the residence in the Scottish capital through the

latter half of the eighteenth century of this cluster of men,—a

tolerably brilliant cluster, it will be admitted,—that the city first

assumed that position of literary rivalry with London which the names of

Scott, Jeffrey, and Wilson enabled it to maintain for thirty or forty

years longer. And here we may be permitted, parenthetically, a remark on

a subject of some interest to Scotsmen generally. A not unfrequent

question is whether Edinburgh will continue to maintain her former

activity as a literary capital, or whether in literature, as in other

things, the tendency is not to absolute centralisation in London. A

little fact involved in the list of names just given is of some

pertinence in relation to this inquiry. Let the list be examined, and it

will be found that hardly one of the men mentioned in it as having begun

the literary celebrity of Edinburgh was _professionally_ a man of

letters. They were all lawyers, or clergymen, or university professors,

or retired gentlemen who had posts and pensions. Even poor Fergusson the

poet owed his living to his industry as copying-clerk to a lawyer. In

this respect the literary society of Edinburgh at that date contrasts

with that of London. Johnson, Goldsmith, and most of their set were

writers by profession; and it was chiefly by such professional writers

that the literary reputation of London was then supported. Nay, whenever

a Scotsman of that time was led by circumstances to adopt literature as

an occupation, it will be observed that, almost of course, he migrated

into England, and attached himself to the skirts of the literary world

of London. There was there a literary _market_, whereas in Edinburgh

there were merely so many resident citizens who were at the same time

authors. Thomson, Mallet, Smollett, Macpherson, and many other Scots of

less note connected with the British literature of the last century as

writers by profession, betook themselves necessarily to London as their

proper field. Hence a difference between the literary society of

Edinburgh and that of London, not indicated in the mere fact that the

one city was the Scottish, and the other the English, capital. The

literary society of Edinburgh did consist chiefly of authors of Scottish

birth, but there might have been Englishmen in it without essentially

changing its character; and, on the other hand, the literary society of

London included Scotsmen and Irishmen as well as Englishmen. The

difference, therefore, was not so much that the one society consisted of

Scottish and the other of English elements. It was rather that the one

consisted of men independently resident in the place as lawyers,

clergymen, and what not, and employing their leisure in literature,

while the other consisted, to far greater extent, of authors by

profession. This difference is pointed out by one of the old Edinburgh

set itself, as serving to account for what he considered the greater

geniality and cordiality of the habits of that set in their intercourse

with each other in comparison with the contemporary habits of London

literary society under the dogmatic presidency of Johnson. “Free and

cordial communication of sentiments, the natural play of good humour,”

says Henry Mackenzie, in his memoir of his friend John Home, “prevailed

among the circle of men whom I have described. It was very different

from that display of learning, that prize-fighting of wit, which

distinguished a literary circle of our sister country of which we have

some authentic and curious records.” And the reason, he thinks, lay in

the different constitutions of the two societies. “The literary circle

of London was a sort of sect, a _caste_ separate from the ordinary

professions and habits of common life. They were traders in talent and

learning, and brought, like other traders, samples of their goods into

company, with a jealousy of competition which prevented their enjoying,

as much as otherwise they might, any excellence in their competitors.”

There is some truth in this, though it is expressed somewhat carpingly;

and even at the present day the remark may be taken as describing a

certain difference which the Edinburgh “wuts” think they see between

themselves and the London “wits.” But may not the fact under notice have

some bearing also on the centralisation question? If from the first, and

at the very time when the literary reputation of Edinburgh was at its

height, Edinburgh was not a centre of professional literary industry,

then,—despite the subsequent establishment of important newspapers and

some important periodicals in the city, and the generation in it by

their means of some amount of professional literary industry,—it is

hardly likely that it can long resist with visible success the tendency

which threatens to centralise British literary industry of that sort

mainly in London. If, indeed, in literature, as in other kinds of

production, the manufacture might be carried on at a distance from the

market, the tendency _might_ be resisted; in other words, authors might

live in Edinburgh and the publishing machinery might be in London. In

literature, however, less than in most trades, is such an arrangement

possible. But let not Edinburgh despair. Only let her still have within

her, as hitherto, a sufficient number of the right kind of persons,

distributed through her official appointments, or in other ways

habitually resident, and it is pretty certain that books of all

varieties will continue to be shot out from her at intervals, some of

them the more valuable perhaps because they will not have been made to

order.

To return to our more immediate subject:—It will enable us more

distinctly to conceive the state of Edinburgh society ninety or

ninety-five years ago if we enumerate the more important of the

individuals, old and young, who then figured in it. In doing so, it will

be well to fix on some one year, at which to take our census. For

various reasons the year 1802 may be selected. It was the first year of

the short peace, or “armed truce,” which intervened between the two wars

with France; it was the first year, also, of that short and perplexing

interregnum in home affairs during which Addington was prime minister

and Pitt and Dundas were out of office.

Few of the intellectual chiefs of the former generation were now

alive in Edinburgh. David Hume and the poet Fergusson had been dead

more than a quarter of a century; Kames and Gilbert Stuart for

nearly twenty years. Dr. Henry, Adam Smith, the physician Cullen,

Blacklock, Lord Hailes, the elder Tytler of Woodhouselee, and

Robertson the historian, had disappeared more recently, and were

still remembered. Fresher still was the local recollection of Lord

Monboddo, Dr. Hugh Blair, the chemist Black, whose death had

occurred in 1799, and of such minor celebrities as the Rev. Dr.

Macknight and Dr. Alexander Carlyle of Inveresk. Of nearly all these

men Lord Cockburn could remember something, either as having known

them domestically in his boyhood, or as having watched them taking

their daily walk in the “Meadows”; and it was one of the

gratifications of his after-life to think that, while privileged to

live into the splendours of a new age, he had been born early enough

to see the departing skirts of the old. Some remnants of the old

age, however, did survive as connecting links between it and the

new. Home, the author of “Douglas,” was alive in 1802, an infirm

veteran of eighty, with flashes of his former spirit in him, and

still capable of his claret. Another survivor was Dr. Adam Ferguson,

two years the junior of Home and much of an invalid, but with

fourteen years of life still before him. Henry Mackenzie, called

“The Man of Feeling,” but as shrewd a man of the world as there was

in Edinburgh, was another of the veterans,—fifty-seven years old,

but destined to reach the age of eighty-six. Dugald Stewart was

verging on his fiftieth year, and his philosophical reputation was

still on the increase. To these survivors in the world of philosophy

and letters add, as notables in the department of science, Robison,

the Professor of Natural Philosophy, and Playfair, the Professor of

Mathematics, and, as the ablest remaining specimens of the old

Edinburgh clergy, Dr. John Erskine and Sir Henry Moncreiff. Passing

into the miscellaneous society amid which those men moved, and which

they linked intellectually with the past, we may distribute their

Edinburgh contemporaries of the year 1802 into three categories:—(1)

_The Old Worthies._—This category includes a considerable number of

surviving citizens, belonging, by their age, habits, and costume, to

the same past generation as the notabilities above named, and many

of them, indeed, older than the younger notabilities of that list.

Most conspicuous among them were the old dons of the Parliament

House; of some of whom Lord Cockburn gives wonderful portraits. The

awful Braxfield was dead; but his successor on the bench, David Rae,

Lord Eskgrove,—more familiarly known as “Esky,”—was keeping the

Parliament House in a constant roar with the daily rumour of his

last absurdities. What a blessing for a moderately-sized community

to have at its heart such a preventive against insipidity, such a

clove or cassia-bud of all-diffusive relish, as this famous Lord

Justice-Clerk Esky; whom Lord Cockburn once heard sentence a tailor

to death for the murder of a soldier in these terms,—“Not only did

you murder him, whereby he was berea-ved of his life, but you did

thrust, or push, or pierce, or project, or propell the le-thall

weapon through the belly-band of his regimen-tal breeches, which

were his Majes-ty’s,” and of whom Lord Cockburn further vouches that

his customary formula of address to a criminal in concluding the

sentence of death was,—“Whatever your religi-ous persua-shon may be,

or even if, as I suppose, you be of no persua-shon at all, there are

plenty of reverend gentlemen who will be most happy to show you the

way to yeternal life.” Of the rest of the fifteen judges, the most

remarkable for their talents and their character were the Lord

President Hay Campbell, Lord Glenlee, Lord Hermand, Lord Meadowbank

the first, and Lord Cullen. After Esky, Hermand was the most

notorious oddity of the bench. At the bar, the witty Harry Erskine,

and Charles Hay, afterwards Lord Newton, might be ranked among the

older men. Coevals of these dons of the Parliament House, were

Andrew Dalzel, the Professor of Greek in the University, and Dr.

Finlayson, the Professor of Logic; with whom may be mentioned the

simple-hearted Dr. Adam, Rector of the High School, the Rev. Dr.

Struthers, a distinguished preacher of the Secession Church, and the

veteran bookseller Creech. (2) _The Middle-Aged Men._—Taking this

class to include all who, while old enough to have obtained some

standing in life, were still not past their maturity, we may

enumerate in it such leading lawyers as Robert Dundas of Arniston

(nephew of the great Dundas, and promoted to the office of Chief

Baron of the Exchequer in 1801, after having been Lord Advocate for

twelve years), and Robert Blair, Charles Hope, Adam Gillies, John

Clerk of Eldin, David Cathcart, and David Boyle, all of whom

subsequently rose to the Bench; Malcolm Laing, then also an

advocate, but subsequently better known as an antiquarian and

historian; James Gibson, Writer to the Signet, afterwards Sir James

Gibson Craig; the Presbyterian clergyman, Dr. John Inglis, and the

Rev. Archibald Alison of the Scottish Episcopal Church; in the

medical profession, Dr. Andrew Duncan, Dr. James Gregory, and Dr.

John Bell; and, among miscellaneous residents, Nasmyth, the portrait

painter, and George Thomson, the correspondent of Burns. (3) _Young

Edinburgh._—Here also the Bar had the preponderance. Reckoning among

the juniors at the bar all who had been called after 1790, one has

to include these in the list,—John Macfarlan, Archibald Fletcher,

Walter Scott, William Erskine, Thomas Thomson, George Cranstoun,

George Joseph Bell, James Grahame, James Moncreiff, Francis Jeffrey,

Francis Horner, J. A. Murray, John Richardson, Henry Cockburn, and

Henry Brougham. Of this group of young advocates, all afterwards

locally eminent, some had already revealed the faculties which were

to make them known far beyond the precincts of the Parliament House.

Brougham was about the youngest of them, being then only in his

twenty-third year; but he was the recognised dare-devil of the whole

group, the most vehement of the orators of the Speculative, and the

terror of old Esky. “That man Broom or Broug-ham,” Esky used to say,

“is the torment of my life.” Older than Brougham by a year, Horner

was already a leader among his associates by the solid strength and

integrity of his character. Jeffrey was in his twenty-ninth year, a

married young barrister, waiting for briefs. Scott, then also

married and past his thirtieth year, was more comfortably settled:

he was Sheriff of Selkirkshire, had some practice at the bar, and

had already some literary reputation by metrical translations from

the German, a few Scottish ballads, and his edition of _The Border

Minstrelsy_. But the bar did not include all the young talents.

Among the hopes of the medical profession were John Allen, John

Thomson, and Thomas Brown, the future meta-physician. Leyden, the

poet and linguist, was then one of the rising stars of Edinburgh;

and Thomas Campbell, whose _Pleasures of Hope_ had been for three

years before the public, was for the time a resident. Nor was a

sprinkling of English residents wanting, to exchange ideas with so

many fervid young Scots, and banter them about their dialect and

their prejudices. Had not the philosophic Lord Webb Seymour chosen

Edinburgh for his home; and was not Sydney Smith there on his

memorable visit? Finally, if any one in Edinburgh wanted to have his

portrait splendidly painted, to whom could he go but to Henry

Raeburn? Or, if any one wanted information about books which old

Creech, or Miller, or Bell and Bradfute could not give, from whom

was he so likely to obtain it as from the energetic and ambitious

young bookseller, Archibald Constable?

Looking down in fancy on the sea of 80,000 heads which in the year 1802

constituted the population of Edinburgh,—some gray with age, many wigged

and powdered, and many more wearing the brown or light locks of natural

youth,—it is on the above-named sixty or seventy that the instructed eye

now rests as the most conspicuous in the crowd. But the instructed eye

sees something more than the mere mass of heads, with here and there one

of the conspicuous sixty. It sees the mass swaying to and fro,—here

solid and restful, there discomposed and in motion, and the conspicuous

heads unequally distributed amid the wavering parts. In other words, the

society of Edinburgh in 1802, like every other society before or since,

presented the phenomenon of division into two parties,—the party of rest

and conservation, and the party of change or progress. The main fact in

the history of Edinburgh at that time was that an incessant

house-to-house battle was going on in it between old Scottish Toryism

and a new and vigorous Scottish Whiggism. Numerically, the Tories were

immensely in the majority, and the Whigs were but in small proportion.

But it is not by the numerical measure in such cases that History judges

or portions out her interest. The party that is largest may be the lump,

and that which is smallest may be the leaven. So it was most remarkably

in the Edinburgh of 1802. To any one surveying the society of Edinburgh

then, with something of that knowledge which we now possess, two facts

would have seemed significant: first, that, though the majority were on

the Tory side, most of the conspicuous heads were on the Whig side;

secondly, and still more obviously, that among the conspicuous heads the

Whigs claimed nearly all the young ones. If, for example, Toryism could

claim a full half of the veterans that have been named, the potent old

chiefs of the Parliament House included, yet even of those veterans a

few, such as Erskine, Dugald Stewart, Playfair, old Dr. Adam, and Sir

Henry Moncreiff, were Whigs; if among the middle-aged Toryism was

equally strong, yet here also Whiggism could count representatives in

Gillies, Clerk of Eldin, Malcolm Laing, and the resolute James Gibson;

and, if still, after surveying those two classes, there had been any

doubt which of the two political parties had the higher pretensions

intellectually, it was only necessary to descend among the young and

adolescent to see that among _them_ at least Whiggism had most recruits.

Of the younger men of Edinburgh then entering life who afterwards rose

to be something in the world’s eye, Scott alone, remarks Lord Cockburn,

was unmistakably a Tory. The exception is certainly a weighty one; and

there are some,—myself among them,—who would willingly take one Walter

Scott at any time as a sufficient offset against a Jeffrey, a Horner, a

Sydney Smith, a Brougham, an Allen, a Thomas Brown, and a Tom Campbell,

all put together. If the standard of judgment, however, is to be that of

the right and the wrong in politics, this will hardly be now the general

opinion.

We do not now associate Whiggism with any idea of the heroic. But in the

year 1802 one had to judge otherwise. Whiggism all over Britain, but

especially Scottish Whiggism, then required some courage, some spirit of

self-sacrifice, in its adherents. The actual creed of the Scottish Whigs

was moderate enough. It consisted in believing that there were a great

many remediable abuses in the Scottish political and administrative

system, that the people had too little power and the lairds too much,

that the Revolution in France had not been unmitigated madness, that at

any rate the dread of its effects on this country had been monstrously

exaggerated, and that, on the whole, the policy of Fox and his

associates was a policy to be supported in preference to that of his

rival, Pitt. The creed, we say, was moderate; and it was, undoubtedly,

in large measure, true. What made it heroism to hold to it was that the

holding of it involved serious personal consequences,—exclusion from all

share in the good things going, and even, to a considerable extent, from

popular confidence and favour; with no prospect either (for who could

tell when George III. might die, or how his son might act when he came

to the throne?) that this state of things would soon end. That in such

circumstances so many men in Scotland, and especially so many men of the

legal profession, should have maintained the obnoxious creed, and

maintained it with such tenacity and mutual fidelity in spite of all

temptation, is a fact of which Scotland may well be proud. As a body,

the Scottish Whigs of 1802 seem to have been as courageous and

pure-minded a set of men as there were in Great Britain. Theirs, in the

most literal sense, was “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence

of things not seen.” Most creditable of all, perhaps, was the

persevering Whiggism of so many of the younger men. Beating their heels

idly in a particular corner of the Parliament House, where no agents

came to them with briefs, and whiling away the rest of their time with

essays and debates in the Speculative Society, ambitious dreams in

secret, convivial meetings at each others’ houses, and eternal jokes

about Esky, those light-hearted young Whig lawyers had not even that

sense of social consequence to support them which their seniors on the

same side of politics could feel as an inspiration. They formed a little

band by themselves, cherishing their Whiggism for its own sake, and not

even visited by much countenance from their Whig seniors. And yet upon

them, to a greater extent than they or their seniors were aware,

depended the future history of Scotland.

The moving force in Scottish society at that time was consciously

possessed by the Whigs. Though by far the smaller party numerically over

Scotland as a whole, they could not but feel that they must eventually

win. The great want of the party hitherto had been some voice or organ,

some public means of proclaiming collectively the views which they

entertained individually, of propagating these views in new quarters,

and of exhibiting them again and again in contrast with those of their

opponents. No such means of utterance existed. The senior Edinburgh

Whigs had been in the habit of dining together on Fox’s birthday, on

which occasions constables were stationed at the doors by the

authorities to take down the names of the guests as they entered; they

also occasionally fought their opponents on a temporary local question.

This, however, was all; and Scottish Whiggism, though working as a

social ferment, had no organisation and no flag. The year 1802,—the

country then, as we have seen, in the lull of the brief peace with

France, and Pitt and Dundas out of office,—was a time when it began to

seem possible to supply this want. “Events,” says Lord Cockburn, “were

bringing people into somewhat better humour. Somewhat less was said

about Jacobinism, though still too much; and sedition had gone out.

Napoleon’s obvious progress towards military despotism opened the eyes

of those who used to see nothing but liberty in the French Revolution.

Instead of Jacobinism, Invasion became the word.” In short, though the

old habits and all the old abuses still remained, the state of the

public mind was such that it became more easy to establish a means for

publicly attacking them and advocating reform.

Whence was the expected demonstration to come, and what form was it to

take? Where in Scotland was the standard of Scottish Whiggism to be

first raised, and who was to step forth as the standard-bearer?

Scotland had recently lost one man who, had he lived till 1802, might

have been called on to act this part. Six or eight years before, when it

was most dangerous to be a Scottish Whig,—when to be too zealous a

Scottish Whig, unless one were powerfully connected, meant to run a risk

of trial for sedition,—there had not been a more daring Whig in Scotland

than the poet Burns. True, he was a Whig, as he was everything else,

after an uncovenanted fashion of his own, which did not keep touch with

any of the current definitions of Whiggism; but, for all that, he was,

and he called himself, a Scottish Whig. “Go on, sir,” he wrote from

Dumfries, in the end of 1792, to the Whig, or rather Whig-Radical,

editor of the shortlived _Edinburgh Gazetteer_, to which he had become a

subscriber: “Go on, and lay bare, with undaunted heart and steady hand,

that horrid mass of corruption called politics and statecraft. Dare to

draw in their native colours those ‘calm-thinking villains whom no faith

can fire,’ whatever be the shibboleth of their pretended party.” This

was Whiggism and a vast deal more; but the following song, written at

the same time, or not long after, shows that, all in all, as matters

then stood, it pleased Burns to be known as a Whig of the Fox school:—

“Here’s a health to them that’s awa,

Here’s a health to them that’s awa;

And wha winna wish guid luck to our cause,

May never guid luck be their fa’!

It’s guid to be merry and wise,

It’s guid to be honest and true,

It’s guid to support Caledonia’s cause

And bide by the buff and the blue.

Here’s a health to them that’s awa,

Here’s a health to them that’s awa;

Here’s a health to Charlie, the chief o’ the clan,

Although that his band be sma’!

May liberty meet wi’ success!

May prudence protect her frae evil!

May tyrants and tyranny tine in the mist,

And wander their way to the Devil!”

Had Burns lived till 1802, who knows to what his politics might have led

him? He would then have been still only in his forty-fourth year; and

what fate more imaginable for him, had he been still alive, than that,

deprived of his gaugership, or throwing it up, he should have left

Dumfries for Edinburgh, and, associating himself there with the many who

would have welcomed him, and with whom, whatever their rank, there was

no fear that his relations would have ever been other than those of

perfect equality, he should have become the editor, mayhap, of a Whig

newspaper? If so, who can doubt that prose would have become easier to

him, that he would have been a power among the Scottish Whigs, and that

his influence would have been felt, in his new character, by them and by

the nation? Ah! and, had he lived on through all their coming struggles,

would he not have been but seventy-three years of age at the time of the

passing of the Reform Bill; and, in gratitude to him as a veteran Whig

and ex-editor, might not his fellow-citizens at last have returned him

to the House of Commons as the senior colleague of young

Macaulay?—“Profanation! profanation!” is the cry that will rise to all

Scottish lips on the mere muttering of such a fancy. Nature herself had

been of that opinion. Burns had died in 1796, in the thirty-eighth year

of his age, a broken-down exciseman, in Dumfries; and he was to be

remembered to all eternity,—thank God!—simply as Robert Burns.

The required party-standard was raised by the young Whigs of Edinburgh.

It was in Jeffrey’s humble domicile, in an upper storey in one of the

houses of Buccleuch Place, that, on one memorable day in the year 1802,

Sydney Smith first started the idea of a new periodical, combining

literature with politics, to be published quarterly, and kept up by

contributions from the teeming minds of the members of the Speculative

Society. No sooner said than done: Constable at once undertook the

publication; and on the 10th of October 1802 the first number of the

_Edinburgh Review_ saw the light. For a number or two the editorship was

the joint-occupation of Sydney Smith, Jeffrey, Horner, Brougham, and a

few others,—Sydney Smith officiating in chief; but, on Smith’s return to

London soon afterwards, the management fell exclusively on Jeffrey.

The establishment of the _Edinburgh Review_, as all the world knows, was

the beginning of a new era in the history of British politics. For a

while, indeed, it was rather as a power in the general thought and

literature of the country than as a direct force in politics that the

new organ made itself felt. For its success in the latter function

circumstances for the first two or three years were not very propitious.

The war with France having been renewed in 1803, and the Addington

ministry having resigned in May 1804, and Pitt having then resumed the

Premiership with Dundas (now Lord Melville) as again his principal

colleague and at the head of the Admiralty, not only were the Scottish

Tories once more in a mood of placid satisfaction over this change, and

over the prospect which it brought of a reassured term of the Dundas

proconsulship in Scotland; but the very occasion of the recall of Pitt

to power, the very nature of the business in which Pitt and Dundas had

to exert themselves, tended for the time to a modification, or at least

a postponement, of party differences. Napoleon was now Emperor of the

French; what he threatened now was an actual invasion of Britain; how

could party differences continue operative in any virulent degree in

face of such a common danger?

Party differences did subside for the while. All over the island Whigs

and Tories alike were in a ferment of volunteering and drilling for

resistance to the French when they should land; and was it not a Whig

admiral that, having won for all Britain the glory, willingly bequeathed

to a Tory Government the usufruct, of the great battle of Trafalgar?

People were at no leisure to listen with sufficient attention at such a

time to expositions of the superiority of Whig principles, even from

such an organ as the _Edinburgh Review_.

In 1806, however, the face of things was suddenly altered. The death of

Pitt in the January of that year, when his second administration was

already tottering under the blow inflicted upon it by the impeachment of

Lord Melville, brought it to an abrupt close; and the Whigs, no less to

their own surprise than to that of the country, found themselves again

in power, after an interval since their last real experience of that

ecstasy which could be spanned by the memory only of old people then

living. The accession to office of the Whig ministry of Fox and

Grenville was startling enough, even had there been no especially

Whiggish acts to correspond. But, during the thirteen months of the Fox

and Grenville ministry (January 1806—March 1807), there _were_ acts to

correspond, over and above the prosecution of the Melville Impeachment

to its conclusion. As places fell vacant, Whigs were appointed to them;

an attempt was made to open negotiations for peace with Napoleon; and

various measures of domestic reform were introduced into Parliament. To

the Scottish Tories it was as if chaos had come again. Could they have

foreseen that the crisis was to be so short,—could they have foreseen

that the new Whig ministry, after having been weakened by the death of

Fox in September 1806, would be able to struggle on but for six months

more, and that then the Whigs would be driven back into their accustomed

place as a minority in opposition, with another quarter of a century of

uninterrupted Tory administration for Britain, and of a modified Dundas

rule in Scotland, to intervene before they should again rise to

supremacy,—it is possible that the consternation would have been less.

But this at the time could not have been foreseen. The accession of the

Whigs to power, and their retention of it during a whole year, were a

rude awakening to men who had been asleep; and from that moment Toryism

had bad dreams.

The crisis was powerfully felt in Edinburgh; and all that remains for us

in this paper is to move forward from 1802 to 1806, for a glance at the

state of Edinburgh in this latter year, when the effects of the crisis

there were most acute.

As was natural, the mere lapse of time, independently of the special

events that had been happening, had produced some changes. Of the

seniors, both of the Whig and of the Tory party, that have been noted as

alive in 1802, some had been removed by death; and, by these and other

deaths, those who in 1802 had occupied junior positions in their

respective parties found themselves promoted to higher places, and to

more active concern in party affairs. Among the Tories of the Parliament

House the most active heads, besides Robert Dundas of Arniston as Chief

Baron of Exchequer, were Hope, now Lord Justice-Clerk in the place of

old Esky, and Blair, afterwards Lord President; but among the younger

men who acted with these there was no one whose name stood higher, or

whose Toryism was more enthusiastic, than Scott. During the four years

that had elapsed since 1802 his literary reputation had been gradually

rising; and the publication in 1805 of his _Lay of the Last Minstrel_

had given him rank among the most popular poets of his age, and diffused

among his countrymen for the first time some adequate conception of the

nature and the measure of his genius. His literary celebrity had not

been without its effect on his worldly circumstances; for, besides

retaining his Sheriffship, he was now settled for life in the Clerkship

of the Court of Session. Very similar to the position which Scott thus

held among the Edinburgh Tories in 1806 was the position which Jeffrey

then held among the Edinburgh Whigs. The active heads of the Whig party

in the Parliament House were such seniors as Harry Erskine, John Clerk

of Eldin, and Adam Gillies. On the accession of the Fox and Grenville

Ministry to office, Erskine had become Lord Advocate, Clerk had been

made Solicitor-General, and Hay, another of the older set of Whig

lawyers, had been raised to the bench. But, under those men, Jeffrey was

now a person of far more consequence than he had been in 1802. Then he

was only a rising junior in that set of independent young Whigs whom

their elders were disposed rather to slight than to encourage; but his

rapidly increasing distinction at the Bar, not to speak of the

distinction accruing to him from the fame of the _Edinburgh Review_, had

broken down the reserve of his seniors and compelled them to yield him

due respect. Had Horner and Brougham remained in Edinburgh, they and

Jeffrey might have been a kind of triumvirate, dividing among them the

increased consideration which was now accorded to the younger portion of

the Whig bar. But Horner and Brougham, as well as Allen and others of

the little band of 1802, had by this time migrated to London, whence

they kept up their connection with Edinburgh chiefly by correspondence

and by contributions to the _Review_; and, as Cockburn and Murray had

not yet attained a standing at the bar equal to Jeffrey’s, there was no

doubt as to _his_ individual supremacy among the younger resident

Edinburgh Whigs.

Scott and Jeffrey: these names represent, therefore, the heartiest

Toryism of Scotland and its most hopeful and opinionative Whiggism, as

they stood opposed to each other in Edinburgh society in the year 1806.

Remembering this, and with the well-known portraits of the two men in

our minds, we can read the following passage in Lockhart’s _Life of

Scott_ with a new sense of its significance:—

“Scott’s Tory feelings appear to have been kept in a very excited

state during the whole of the short reign of the Whigs. He then, for

the first time, mingled keenly in the details of county

politics—canvassed electors—harangued meetings; and, in a word, made

himself conspicuous as a leading instrument of his party. But he was,

in truth, earnest and serious in his belief that the new rulers of the

country were disposed to abolish many of its most valuable

institutions; and he regarded with special jealousy certain schemes of

innovation with respect to the courts of law and the administration of

justice which were set on foot by the crown-officers for Scotland. At

a debate of the Faculty of Advocates on some of these propositions he

made a speech much longer than he had ever before delivered in that

assembly; and several who heard it have assured me that it had a flow

and energy of eloquence for which those who knew him best were quite

unprepared. When the meeting broke up, he walked across the Mound, on

his way to Castle Street, between Mr. Jeffrey and another of his

reforming friends, who complimented him on the rhetorical powers he

had been displaying, and would willingly have treated the

subject-matter of the discussion playfully. But his feelings had been

moved to an extent far beyond their apprehension. He exclaimed ‘No,

no—’tis no laughing matter; little by little, whatever your wishes may

be, you will destroy and undermine, until nothing of what makes

Scotland Scotland shall remain.’ And, so saying, he turned round to

conceal his agitation—but not until Mr. Jeffrey saw tears gushing down

his cheek,—resting his head, until he recovered himself, on the wall

of the Mound.”

Edinburgh in 1806 is painted for us in that incident. Of the two men

seen standing together on the Mound, under the tall clump of old houses

which still on that spot arrests the eye of the visitor, the stalwart

fair-haired one, leaning his head on the wall to conceal his tears, is

the genius of the Scottish past, while his less moved companion, of

smaller stature, with dark keen features and piercing hazel eyes, is the

confident spirit of the Scottish future. There was, indeed, one element,

then in making for the Scottish future, no representation of which was

discernible in Jeffrey, and which was not logically involved in any

ostensible form of Scottish Political Whiggism. This was that fervour of

a revived Evangelicism in Theology the effects of which on the national

character and the national polity of Scotland have been so strikingly

visible through the last two generations and more. But this was a

manifestation of later date, which even the closest observer of 1806

could hardly have pre-imagined. The traditional germ existed in Sir

Henry Moncreiff; but the full development was to come with the combative

Calvinistic and Presbyterian energy of Andrew Thomson, and the grander

and richer genius of Thomas Chalmers.

THE LAST YEARS OF SIR WALTER SCOTT[8]

After the death of Sir Walter Scott in 1832, a private journal of his,

extending over the greater part of the last seven years of his life, and

consisting of two thick vellum-bound volumes of close writing, carefully

clasped and locked, came into the hands of his son-in-law Lockhart, to

be used at his discretion for the biography of his great relative.

Accordingly, when that biography was published in 1837, the last portion

of it contained a large selection of extracts from this Diary.

Naturally, however, the matter in many places being of a kind which it

would have been premature then to make public, it was only a selection

that _could_ be given by Lockhart. For more than half a century,

therefore, the original manuscript volumes have remained at Abbotsford,

waiting for the time when it should be judged fit to make that more

complete publication of their contents which Scott himself had

contemplated as inevitable at some time or other. The time has now

arrived; and one of the most interesting literary events of the present

season is the publication, by Mr. David Douglas of Edinburgh, of the

great Sir Walter’s Journal in perfect form and with all requisite

annotations.

The Journal is a record, in the first place, of indomitable manliness,

and of prodigious industry. When it was begun, in November 1825, Scott

was at the very height of his enormous prosperity and popularity. He had

not advanced far in it, however,—had not, in fact, got through the first

month of his entries in it,—when there came upon him the ominous signs

of that commercial crash in which he and his fortunes were to be

overwhelmed. In several entries, day after day, there are anticipations

of this disaster, mixed with still struggling hopes that it might be

averted; but by the middle of January 1826 all hope had ceased, and he

was a ruined man. “Skene, this is the hand of a beggar,” was his

salutation in his room in Castle Street, at seven o’clock in the morning

of one of those cold January days, as he held out his hand to the

confidential friend whom he had asked to call upon him at that early

hour that they might consult over the news. All that he had possessed

was swept away; and he was liable for debts, as it turned out, to the

amount of about £130,000.

It is at this point that one may turn back, if one chooses, to the

retrospect of that in Scott’s previous life for which, amid boundless

admiration of him otherwise, strict opinion will probably always

pronounce him blameworthy. What but his worldly ambition, it is asked,

what but his passion for money-making on such a large scale as might

enable him to practise lavish social hospitalities, and to found and

support a hereditary Scottish lairdship of high rank and name,—what but

this had led him to be dissatisfied with his merely literary earnings,

and to link the pursuits and pleasures of authorship with the activities

and anxieties of a clandestine partnership in hazardous forms of

commerce? From one jotting in his Diary it would appear as if, in this

matter, even the ruin in which he found himself at last had not taught

him real repentance. Quoting a saying of a defunct old Scottish worthy

which had been reported to him in these words,—“No chance of opulence is

worth the risk of a competence,”—he appends this comment: “It was not

the thought of a _great_ man, but perhaps that of a _wise_ one.”

Evidently, the ruling passion in Scott had not yet been killed; and, had

the hazards of his previous life been still to run, he would have dared

them all over again.

More satisfactory it is to leave that retrospective question, and to

read the story which the journal tells of his unparalleled exertions to

right himself with the world, and with his own sense of honour, to the

last farthing of his huge responsibilities. For a while, indeed,—the new

shock of his wife’s death having come upon him in the very midst of the

first troubles of his ruined condition, and his ability to sustain the

load of his distresses being at the same time impaired by serious

ill-health and frequent and intense bodily pains,—it is as if the

downfall had been complete. Gloom seems to have settled on his spirits;

and, though he bears a brave face to the world, we see him, in hours

when he was alone, depressed secretly by crowding recollections of his

happy past in comparison with the woeful present, and sunk sometimes in

mere sobbings and tears. Gradually, however, he rouses himself; and what

is it that we see then? Either still at Abbotsford, when his official

duties in the Court of Session will allow him to leave town (for, by a

family-prearrangement, he had still a life-rent tenure of Abbotsford,

and could sequester himself there, when he chose, on a greatly reduced

establishment), or else in one or other of those Edinburgh residences to

which he removed after his house in Castle Street had been sold,—first,

lodgings in North St. David Street, then a furnished house in Walker

Street, and finally a house in Shandwick Place,—we see the widowed

veteran struggling on in the vast enterprise to which he had set himself

of the discharge ultimately of all his debts, dashing cares aside as

well as he could, and, though liable still to solitary hours of

melancholy and to interrupting worries with lawyers and creditors, yet

always pen in hand, and working, working, working. Extend the view over

the six years from 1826 to 1831, and what a prolonged labour of

Hercules! The voluminous _Life of Napoleon Bonaparte_; the novel of

_Woodstock_; the double series of “The Chronicles of the Canongate,”

including _The Two Drovers_, _The Highland Widow_, _The Surgeons

Daughter_, and _The Fair Maid of Perth_; the separate extra novels of

_Anne of Geierstein_, _Count Robert of Paris_, and _Castle Dangerous_;

the quadruple series of _The Tales of a Grandfather_, with a collateral

_History of Scotland_; the _Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft_; the

completion and publication of the verse-dramas called _The Doom of

Devorgoil_ and _The Ayrshire Tragedy_; a collective edition of the

Miscellaneous Prose Works; the commencement of the author’s _magnum

opus_, as it was termed, in the shape of the revised and annotated

reissue of the whole of the Waverley Novels: these, together with a

number of more casual performances, such as the Malachi Malagrowther

Letters and contributions to Reviews, formed the astonishing total of

Scott’s literary achievements during those six years, in addition to the

previous total at which the world had already wondered. What it is most

pleasing now to observe in the progress through this dense forest of

labour, as it is recorded month after month in the Diary, is the

evidence there furnished of Scott’s elasticity of spirits, and of his

ready resumption of his old habits of generous sociability, in exact

proportion to the success of his exertions. It is as if the immense mass

of his debts had stood before him as a huge black rock, and as if, on

beholding portion after portion of this rock blasted away by the

successive charges of dynamite, large or small, which he was able to

insert into its clefts in the shape of successive deposits of new

money-earnings,—now, as in the case of his _Life of Napoleon_, a £10,000

or so at once, and again a more moderate sum of £1000 or £2000 only,—he

watched each explosion, and each fall of detached slab or block, with a

gleeful “Hurrah! the whole big brute will be down at last!” And, as he

thus became himself again, Abbotsford became _itself_ again,—its old

hospitalities renewed in as frank and gallant a fashion as was

consistent with proper economy in the circumstances, and relays of

visitors arriving, and sometimes occupying his working-time too

inconsiderately, while at other times it was his happiness to scribble

on uninterruptedly, through whole mornings or whole rainy days, with no

other recreation than a trudge through his plantations, accompanied by

his dogs, and leaning on the arm of his faithful Tom Purdie. In

Edinburgh the revival of his old habits in the prospect of his retrieved

fortunes was much the same. Though he had not now such accommodation for

his own hospitalities there as had been afforded by his former house in

Castle Street, Edinburgh society could delight in the full possession of

him once more after his temporary seclusion and eclipse. At select

dinner-parties, or in other evening gatherings, he was present again

hardly less often than had been his previous custom,—the life of every

such company still by his overflowing good humour and endless stock of

anecdotes and good stories; and, through the day, as he limped along

Princes Street, on his way to or from the Parliament House, all heads

were turned to look at him,—a greater and more popular Sir Walter than

ever, now that it was no longer a mere accepted conjecture that he was

the author of the Waverley Novels, but the mask had been thrown aside

and the secret had been publicly divulged. He records, by the way, in

his Diary, that it was a real addition to his comfort when they

presented him with a key of the Princes Street Gardens, then a private

property of the Princes Street householders, so that he might walk to or

from the Parliament House on soft velvet turf, amid quiet green

shrubbery, and thus lessen the trouble caused by his stiffened joints

and the increasing pain of his lameness. Nor was it within the circuit

of Edinburgh only, or at Abbotsford only, that there was restored

sunshine round his path. We hear of occasional excursions to the country

seats of Scottish friends of his north of Edinburgh; and twice we follow

him on leisurely posting journeys into England, for the purpose of a

week or two in London again, and a round of calls and engagements in the

busy whirl of London society. Once he crosses the Channel, revisits

Paris, and spends some time amid the gaieties of that capital. Hardly

from the entries in his Diary relating to those journeys,—so modest

always are his mentions of himself,—should we learn what a pressure of

admiring curiosity, rising sometimes into tumults of enthusiasm and

applause, gathered about him wherever he went. Whosoever else might be

present,—ambassador, statesman, peer, scion of royalty, or even (as

happened several times) the great Duke of Wellington himself,—it was

always to Sir Walter Scott in chief, the contemporary memoirs tell us,

that the eyes of the assembly were turned. New veneration for him, by

reason of the diffused knowledge of the heroic contest which he had

begun and was still maintaining with adverse fortune, mingled now, it

seems, with all the former feelings which his name and recollections of

his writings called up; and for thousands on thousands, whether at home

or abroad, he was the most interesting man in all Europe.

What need to continue this sketch farther? The rest is known, in a

general way, to every one. He had reached his sixtieth year,—not

absolutely victorious as yet over the whole of the mass of debt against

which he had been exerting himself, but with absolute victory within

sight if he should live but a few years longer,—when it became evident

that no such extension of his life was to be looked for. Signs of

premature old age had become manifest in the complete whitening of his

hair and the worn aspect of his visage; there had been distinct

premonitions of failing powers in the inferior literary quality of some

of his later productions; and three paralytic or apoplectic seizures in

rapid succession, the last in April 1831, finished the process of wreck.

A journey to the Mediterranean was recommended; and thither he

went,—conveyed first to London by land, and then, by sea-voyage in a

Government frigate, to Malta. From Malta, which he reached late in

November 1831, he removed, about the middle of December, to Naples;

whence the proposal was that he should pass northwards through the rest

of Italy, visiting Rome and other famous Italian cities. All in vain! He

grew worse and worse; brain and speech lost their normal functions; his

restlessness and impatience became ungovernable. The Mediterranean,

Italy, Rome, blue skies and classical cities,—what are they all to _me_?

Give me back one hour of Scotland;

Let me see it ere I die.

They conveyed him back by slow stages, seeing this and that continental

sight on his homeward-route, but hardly knowing what he saw. He was in

London again for a week or two in June and July 1832, attended medically

in a hotel in Jermyn Street. Brought thence by sea to Edinburgh, he

passed a night, a day, and another night, in a hotel in St. Andrew

Square, in a state of utter unconsciousness; and on the 11th of July

they took him to Abbotsford. On their way thither through the old

familiar scenery he began to recognise places and objects, and to mutter

their names,—Gala Water, Buckholm, Torwoodlee; and, when they approached

Abbotsford itself, and he caught sight of its towers, he sprang up in

such a state of excitement that they could hardly hold him in the

carriage. “Ha! Willie Laidlaw! O man, I have often thought of _you_,”

were his first words, after his old friend and amanuensis Laidlaw, who

was waiting in the porch, had assisted the rest in carrying him into the

house, and seating him in a chair in the dining-room. The return of

consciousness which this recognition signified became more and more

marked, at least at intervals, in the two months and ten days through

which he still lingered. He talked with those of his family who were

about him, could be shifted from room to room or even wheeled in a Bath

chair through parts of his grounds, and could listen to readings and

seem to take an interest in them. Once he insisted on being placed at

his writing-table, with paper, pens, and ink before him in the

accustomed order, and wanted to be left to himself; but, when the pen

had been put into his hand and his fingers refused to hold it, tears

trickled down his cheeks, and he gave up the attempt. There were, as

often in such cases of brain-paralysis, some days of almost frantic

vehemence, when it was painful to be near him; but these were succeeded

by a feeble quietude and a gradual ebbing-away of life. On the 21st of

September 1832, with the ripple of the Tweed heard by those who stood

round his bed, Sir Walter Scott, then only in the sixty-second year of

his age, breathed his last.

In the Diary itself the narrative of those closing years of Scott’s life

is broken short at the point where they were bringing him back from

Italy as a dying invalid. The last few months are a total blank in the

Diary; where, indeed, the entries for the later years of the included

seven are scantier and more intermittent than those for the earlier. But

it is not solely as an exact autobiographic record of the incidents of

so many memorable years of a memorable life that the Diary is now of

interest. Implicated in that main interest, and catching the attention

of the reader again and again as he advances through the pages, are

certain recurring particular informations as to Scott’s character and

ways which possess an independent interest, and may be reverted to

separately.

Bound up, for example, with the proofs furnished by the Diary of Scott’s

prodigious literary industry, there is plenty of minute information as

to his habits of composition and his rate of composition. I do not like

that word “composition” in any such application, thinking it a miserable

word for the description of the process by which a great writer marshals

the contents of his mind and commits them to paper; but the word is

current, and may serve for the nonce. Well, Scott’s rate of composition

was about the fastest known in the history of literature. Of all his

predecessors in the literary history of the British Islands, Shakespeare

seems to have been the likest to him in this particular of fluent

facility and swiftness of production. “His mind and hand went together,”

is the well-known report concerning Shakespeare by his literary

executors and editors: “his mind and hand went together, and what he

thought he uttered with that easiness that we have scarce received from

him a blot in his papers.” One has an impression, however, that

Shakespeare, with all his facility when he had the pen in his hand, had

it less constantly in his hand, was less “_eident_” in the use of it (as

our good northern phrase goes), than Scott,—whether because he had less

actual need to be “eident,” or because verse, which was Shakespeare’s

main element, is intrinsically more difficult, takes more out of a man

in a given time, and so is less favourable to “eidency,” than the prose

element in which, latterly, Scott worked all but exclusively. At all

events, “eidency” and “facility” taken together, the result, in the mere

matter of quantity, was larger from Scott’s industry than from

Shakespeare’s. But it is with the “facility” that we are now concerned,

and with the proofs of this “facility” which are furnished by the

Journal in particular. The mere look of the handwriting is one of

these,—that rapid _currente calamo_ look, without hesitation, and with

hardly an erasure, stoppage to point, or any such thing, and with the

words almost running into each other in their hurry, which is familiar

to all who have seen facsimile reproductions of any portions of the copy

of Scott’s novels, when they were written with his own hand, and not

dictated. That, however, is a characteristic common to all his writings;

and the specific interest of the Diary in this connection is that it

gives us definite information as to the amount of writing per day which

Scott usually got through in his _currente calamo_ style. In entry after

entry there is note of the number of pages he had prescribed to himself

as a sufficient day’s “task” or “darg,” with growls when for any reason

he had fallen short of it, and smiles of satisfaction when he had

exceeded it; and from one entry we ascertain that his _maximum_ per day

when he was in good vein was eight pages of his own close manuscript,

making forty pages of the usual type in which his copy was set up by the

printers. One can compute the difference between that rate and any other

rate of which one may happen to have knowledge or experience; but there

is no need to conclude that Scott’s rate is to be passionately desired

or universally aimed at, or that, because it suited Scott, it would suit

others. On the contrary, one sees some disadvantages, even in Scott’s

own case, counterbalancing the advantages of such extreme rapidity. He

was aware of the fact himself; and he once quotes, with some

approbation, an admirable maxim of Chaucer on the subject:—

“There n’ is no werkman, whatsoever he be,

That may both werken well and hastily.”

That Scott was an exception,—that he was, like Shakespeare, one of those

workmen who _could_ work both well and hastily,—was owing doubtless to

the fact that, in this also resembling Shakespeare, he brought always to

the act of writing a mind already full of matter, and of the very kinds

of matter required for his occasions. One has but to recollect the

extraordinary range and variety of his readings from his earliest youth,

the extraordinary range and variety also of his observations of men and

manners, and the extraordinary retentiveness of his memory, to see that

never since he had begun authorship could he have had to spin, as so

many have to do, the threads of his ideas or imaginations out of a

vacuum. At the same time, and this notwithstanding, there is something

more to be said, when the comparison is between Scott as an

exceptionally rapid worker and Shakespeare as the same. Scott had a

standard of the kind of matter that would answer for the purposes of

_his_ literary productions; and, though a very good standard, it was

lower than Shakespeare’s standard for _his_ writings. When Shakespeare

was in the act of writing, or was meditating his themes by himself in

the solitude of his chamber, or in his walks over the fields, before he

proceeded to the act of writing, we see his mind rolling within itself,

like a great sea-wash that would rush through all the deeps and caverns,

and search through all the intricacies, of its prior structure and

acquisitions,—so ruled and commissioned, however, that what the reflux

should fetch back for use should not be any wreckage whatsoever that

might be commonly relevant and interesting, but only things of gleaming

worth and rarity, presentable indeed to all, but appreciable in full

only by kings and sages. Hear, on the other hand, in Scott’s own words,

the definition of what satisfied _him_ in his dealings with the public.

“I am sensible,” he wrote, “that, if there be anything good about my

poetry, or prose either, it is a hurried frankness of composition which

pleases soldiers, sailors, and young people of bold and active

disposition.” That Scott was grossly unfair to himself in this

under-estimate will be the verdict now of universal opinion; and I shall

have to touch again upon that point presently. Meanwhile there is one

other difference to be noted between the two men in respect of that very

circumstance of their marked similarity in one characteristic which has

led us to view them together. Shakespeare’s boundless ease and fluency

in writing did not prevent perfection in his literary execution. His

grammar, with all its impetuosity and lightness of spring, is logical

and accurate to the utmost demands of the most fastidious English

scholarship; and, though he would have repudiated with scorn the name

“stylist,” invented of late as a title of literary honour by some of our

critics, and it would be profane to think of him under that execrable

and disastrous appellation, he wrote always with the sure cunning of a

disciplined artist in verbal expression,—an artist so highly

self-disciplined that his art in such matters had become an instinct.

Scott’s habitual style, on the other hand,—his style when he is not

strongly moved either by vehement feeling or by high poetic

conception,—is a kind of homely and comfortable slipshod, neglectful of

any rule of extreme accuracy, and careless even of the most obvious

grammatical solecisms. It is not exactly with reference to this

difference between himself and Shakespeare that there occurs in one

passage in his Diary a protest against being compared with Shakespeare

at all. But the protest is worth quoting. “_Like_ Shakespeare!” he

exclaims, noticing the already formed habit of this perilous comparison

among his most ardent admirers in his own lifetime,—“_like_ Shakespeare!

Not fit to tie his brogues!” It was the superlative of compliment on

Scott’s side; but its very wording may be construed into a certain

significance in connection with that point of dissimilarity between the

two men to which I have just adverted. Shakespeare never wore “brogues.”

In our present metaphorical sense, I mean; in the literal sense, I would

not be sure but he may have found such articles convenient quite as

often as Scott did. There were muddy roads about Stratford-on-Avon as

well as about Abbotsford.

It would be wrong not to mention, however briefly, the confirmation

furnished by the Journal of all our previous impressions of Scott’s high

excellence among his fellow-men, not only in the general virtues of

integrity, honour, courage, and persevering industry, but also in all

those virtues which constitute what we call in a more particular sense

_goodness_. “Great and good” is one of our common alliterative phrases;

and it is a phrase which we seem to require when we would characterise

the kind of human being that is entitled to supreme admiration. We feel

that either adjective by itself would be inadequate in such a case, but

that the doubling suffices. Another of our alliterative phrases, nearly

the same in meaning at root, is “head and heart.” Only when there is a

conjunction in a human being of what we call “heart” with what we call

“intellect” are we quite satisfied even in cases of ordinary experience;

and only when there is the conjunction of “great heart” with “great

intellect” do we bow down with absolute veneration before this man or

that man of historical celebrity. Common and simple though this word

“heart” is, there is a world of unused applicability in it yet in many

directions. In the criticism of literature, for example, it supplies a

test that would make havoc with some high reputations. There have been,

and are, writers of the most indubitable ability, and of every variety

of ability, in whose writings, if you search them through and through,

though you may find instruction in abundance, novelties of thought in

abundance, and amusement in abundance, you will find very little of real

“heart.” There is no such disappointment when you turn to Scott.

Benevolence, charitableness, tolerance, sympathy with those about him in

their joys and their sorrows, kindly readiness to serve others when he

could, utter absence of envy or real ill-will,—these are qualities that

shine out everywhere in his life and in the succession of his writings,

and that receive, though they hardly need, additional and more intimate

illustration in his Journal. Positively, when I contemplate this

richness of heart in Scott, and remember also how free he was all

through his life from those moral weaknesses which sometimes accompany

and disfigure an unusually rich endowment in this species of

excellence,—for, born though he was in an old Scottish age of roughish

habits and not over-squeamish speech, and carrying though he did the

strong Scottish build of that age, and somewhat of its unabashed

joviality, to the very last, his life was exemplary throughout in most

particulars of personal conduct,—positively, I say, with all this in my

mind, I can express my feeling about Scott no otherwise than by

declaring him to have been one of the very best men that ever breathed.

Of the interest of the miscellaneous contents of the book, as including

individual incidents in Scott’s life, sketches of the physiognomies and

characters of his Edinburgh contemporaries and London contemporaries,

descriptions of scenes and places, curious Scottish and other anecdotes,

literary criticisms, and expressions of Scott’s opinions on public

questions and on men and things in general, no adequate idea can be

formed except from itself. As to Scott’s opinions on all the various

questions, public or private, on which he had occasion to make up his

mind and express what he felt, we may venture on one general remark.

They are shrewd opinions, and often or generally just,—the judgments of

a man of strong natural sagacity, and mature business-experience,

adhering in the main to use and wont, but ready for an independent

consideration of exigencies as they arose, and for any clear and safe

improvement. Even in politics, though his partisanship in that

department was obdurate, avowed, unflinching, and sometimes uproarious,

his shrewdness in the forecast of what was possible, or his private

determination in favour of what he thought just and desirable, led him

sometimes,—especially where Scottish nationality was concerned, and the

Thistle seemed to be insulted,—into dissent from his party, and the

proclamation of opinions peculiarly his own. It is when we leave the

plain ground of such practical and everyday questions, and either ascend

to those higher levels, or descend to those deeper, at which the human

intellect finds its powers more hardly tasked,—it is then that we

observe what is usually reckoned a defect in Scott in comparison with

many who have been far inferior to him in other intellectual respects.

There was little in his mind of what may be called the purely _noetic_

organ, that faculty which speculates, investigates, deals with difficult

problems of science or philosophy, and seeks in every subject for

ultimate principles and a resting-ground of final conclusions. He either

refrained from such exercises of mind entirely, or was content with

proximate and easily accessible axioms. Even in literary criticism,

where he might be supposed to have been most at home, it is sagacious

_extempore_ judgments that he offers, honest expressions of his own

immediate likings or dislikings, rather than suggestions or deductions

from any code of reasoned principles. So in matters of higher and more

solemn concern. From that simpler kind of philosophy which has been

defined as a constant Meditation of Death Scott did not refrain, because

no good or serious man can. There is evidence in his Journal that in his

solitary hours he allowed himself often enough to lapse into this

profoundest of meditations, and rolled through his mind the whole

burthen of its everlasting mysteries. But the inscrutable for Scott, in

this subject as in others, began at a short distance from his first

cogitations or his inherited creed. “I would, if called upon, die a

martyr for the Christian Religion,” he writes once in his Diary; and no

one can doubt that the words were written with the most earnest

sincerity. But, when we interpret them duly by the light of other

passages, and of all that we know independently, it is as if we saw

Scott standing upright with flushed face and clenched hands, and saying

to those about him who might want to trouble him too much on so sacred a

subject,—“This is the faith that has been transmitted to us from

far-back generations; this is the faith in which millions of abler men

than I am, or than you are, have lived and died; I hold by that faith,

without seeking too curiously to define it or to discuss its several

tenets; and, if you come too near me, to pester me with your doubts and

questionings, and new inquiries and speculations, and all the rest of

your clever nineteenth-century metaphysics, I warn you that the soul of

all my fathers will rise in me, and I shall become dangerous.” In

plainer words, on this subject, as on others, it was in Scott’s

constitution to rest in that kind of wisdom which declines thinking

beyond a certain distance.

Here, again, and in a new connection, we come round to Shakespeare. In

_him_, no one needs to be reminded, the noetic faculty existed in

dimensions absolutely enormous, working wonderfully in conjunction with

his equally enormous faculty of imagination, and yet with the incessant

alertness, the universal aggressiveness, and the self-enjoying mobility,

of a separate mental organ. Hence those glances from heaven to earth and

to the underworld which earth conceals, those shafts of reasoned insight

into the roots of all things, those lightning gleams of speculation to

its last extreme, that wealth of maxims of worldly prudence outrivalling

and double-distilling the essence of all that is in Bacon’s Essays,

those hints and reaches towards an ultimate philosophy both of nature

and of human life, which have made Shakespeare’s writings till now, and

will make them henceforth, a perennial amazement. Well, after what has

just been said of Scott, are we bound, on this account, to give up the

customary juxtaposition of the two men? Hardly so, I think; for there is

a consideration of some importance yet in reserve. I will introduce it

by a little anecdote taken from the Journal itself.

People are still alive who have had personal acquaintance with Miss

Stirling Graham,—the lady who died as recently as 1877 at the venerable

age of ninety-five years, and who, some fifty or sixty years before

that, was famous in Edinburgh society for what were called her

_mystifications_. These consisted in her power of assuming an imaginary

character (generally that of an old Scottish lady), dressing up in that

character, appearing so dressed up unexpectedly in any large company in

a drawing-room, or even in the private study of some eminent lawyer or

judge, and carrying on a long rigmarole conversation in the assumed

character with such bewildering effect that her auditor or auditors were

completely deceived, and supposed the garrulous intruder to be some

crazy eccentric from a country-house or some escaped madwoman. It was on

the 7th of March 1828 that Sir Walter Scott witnessed, in the house of

Lord Gillies, after dinner, one of those “mystifications” of Miss

Stirling Graham; and he describes it in his Journal thus:—“Miss Stirling

Græme, a lady of the Duntroon family, from whom Clavers was descended,

looks like thirty years old, and has a face of the Scottish cast, with a

good expression in point of good sense and good-humour. Her

conversation, so far as I have had the advantage of hearing it, is

shrewd and sensible, but noways brilliant. She dined with us, went off

as if to the play, and returned in the character of an old Scottish

lady. Her dress and behaviour were admirable, and her conversation

unique. I was in the secret, of course, and did my best to keep up the

ball; but she cut me out of all feather. The prosing account which she

gave of her son, the antiquary, who found an auld wig in a slate-quarry,

was extremely ludicrous; and she puzzled the Professor of Agriculture

with a merciless account of the succession of crops in the parks around

her old mansion-house. No person to whom the secret was not entrusted

had the least guess of an imposture, except one shrewd young lady

present, who observed the hand narrowly, and saw that it was plumper

than the age of the lady seemed to warrant.” From a note appended to

this entry by Mr. Douglas we learn what Sir Walter said to Miss Stirling

Graham on this occasion, by way of complimenting her on her performance

after it was over. “Awa’, awa’!” he said; “the Deil’s ower grit wi’

you.” There was, he saw, something supernatural in her when she was in

the mood and attitude of her one most congenial function. All the gifts

that were latent in the shrewd and sensible-looking, but noways

brilliant lady, flashed out upon others, and were revealed even to

herself, in the act of her personations.

With the lesson in our minds which this little story supplies, we may

return to the matter of Scott’s reputed deficiency in the speculative or

purely noetic faculty:—Noetic faculty! Noetic fiddlestick! This faculty,

with a score of others perhaps for which our meagre science of mind has

no names, you will find in Scott too, if you know how to look for them.

When and where would you have looked for the noetic faculty in Nelson?

Not, certainly, as he was to be seen in common life, a little man of

slouching gait, with his empty right arm-sleeve pinned to his breast,

and gravely propounding as an unanswerable argument in his own

experience for the immateriality of the soul the fact that, though there

was now an interval of half a yard from the stump of his lost arm and

the place where his fingers had been, he could still sometimes feel

twitches of rheumatism in those merely spectral finger-tips. No! but see

him on his own great wooden three-decker, as he was taking her into

action between the enemy’s lines, when the battle-roar and the

battle-flashes had brought the electric shiver through his veins, and he

stood among his sailors transmuted into the real Nelson, seamanship

incarnate and a fighting demigod! So, with the necessary difference for

the purpose now in view, in the case of Scott. His various faculties of

intellect were involved inextricably somehow in that imaginative faculty

which he did possess, and also in enormous degree, in common with

Shakespeare. When Scott was engaged on any of his greater works,—a _Lay

of the Last Minstrel_, a _Marmion_, a _Lady of the Lake_, a _Waverley_,

a _Guy Mannering_, an _Antiquary_, an _Old Mortality_, a _Heart of

Midlothian_, an _Ivanhoe_, or a _Redgauntlet_,—when he was so engaged,

and when the poetic phrenzy had seized him strongly,—then what happened?

Why, then that imaginative faculty which seemed to be the whole of him,

or the best of him, revealed itself somehow as not a single faculty, but

a complex composition of various faculties, some of them usually

dormant. This it did by visibly splitting itself, resolving itself, into

the multiplicity of which it was composed; and then the plain everyday

man of the tall upright head, sagacious face, and shaggy eyebrows, was

transmuted, even to his own surprise, into a wizard that could range and

speculate,—range and speculate incalculably. It was, I say, as if then

there were loosened within him, out of his one supposed faculty of

phantasy, a simultaneous leash of other faculties, a noetic faculty

included, that could spring to incredible distances from his ordinary

self, each pursuing its appropriate prey, finding it, seizing it,

sporting with it, and coiling it back obediently to the master’s feet.

In some such way, I think, must be explained the splendour of the actual

achievements of Scott’s genius, the moderate dimensions of his purely

reasoning energy in all ordinary circumstances notwithstanding. His

reasoning energy was locked up organically, let us say, in his

marvellous imagination. And so, remembering all that Scott has left

us,—those imperishable tales and romances which no subsequent successes

in the British literature of fiction have superseded, and by the glamour

of which his own little land of brown heath and shaggy wood, formerly of

small account in the world, has become a dream and fascination for all

the leisurely of all the nations,—need we cease, after all, from

thinking of him in juxtaposition, due interval allowed, with England’s

greatest man, the whole world’s greatest man, of the literary order, or

abandon the habit of speaking of Sir Walter Scott as our Scottish

Shakespeare?

CARLYLE’S EDINBURGH LIFE[9]

PART I.—1809–1818

Early in November 1809 two boys walked together from Ecclefechan in

Dumfriesshire to Edinburgh, to attend the classes in the University

there. The distance, as the crow flies, is about sixty miles; and the

boys took three days to it. The elder, who had been at College in the

previous session, and therefore acted as the guide, generally stalked on

a few paces ahead, whistling an Irish tune to himself. The younger, who

was not quite fourteen years of age, and had never been out of

Dumfriesshire before, followed rather wearily, irritated by the eternal

Irish tune in front of him, but mainly given up to his own “bits of

reflections in the silence of the moors and hills.” The elder of the two

boys was a Thomas Smail, afterwards of some note as a Burgher minister

in Galloway; the younger was Thomas Carlyle.

Of the arrival of the two boys in Edinburgh on the 9th of November 1809,

after their third day’s walk of twenty miles, and of Carlyle’s first

stroll, that afternoon, under Smail’s convoy, through some of the main

streets, to see the sights, one may read in his own _Reminiscences_.

What he remembered best of that first stroll was the look of the Old

High Street, with St. Giles’s Kirk on one side and the old Luckenbooths

running up the middle in its broadest part, but chiefly the amazing

spectacle to which he was introduced when Smail pushed open a door

behind St. Giles’s Kirk, and he found himself in the outer house of the

Court of Session, amid the buzz of the lawyers and others walking up and

down, with the red-robed judges hearing cases in their little throned

enclosures.

Content with the description of that first stroll, he leaves us to

imagine how, in the first days and weeks of his residence in the city,

he gradually extended his acquaintance with it by further rambles, and

by inspection of this and that interesting to a young stranger. The task

is not difficult. The lodging which Smail and he had taken between them

was, he says, “a clean-looking, most cheap lodging,” in the “poor

locality” called Simon Square. The locality still survives under that

name, though hardly as a square any longer, but only a poor street, at

the back of Nicolson Street, on the left hand as one goes southwards

from the University, and accessible most directly by an arched passage

called Gibb’s Entry. From that obscure centre, by walks from it in the

mornings, and returns to it during the day and in the evenings, we can

see the little Dumfriesshire fellow gradually conquering for himself

some notion of the whole of that Edinburgh into which he had come. It

was the old Edinburgh, of less than 100,000 inhabitants, which we think

of so fondly now as the Edinburgh of Scott before his novels had been

heard of and when his fame depended chiefly on his poems, of Jeffrey in

the early heyday of his lawyership and editorship of the _Edinburgh

Review_, and of the other local celebrities, Whig and Tory, immortalised

in tradition and in Cockburn’s _Memorials_.

It was chiefly of the externals of the city that the boy was making his

notes; for the living celebrities, as he tells us, were hardly even

names to him then. Scott and Jeffrey, he says, may have been in the

peripatetic crowd of wigged and gowned lawyers he had seen in the hall

of the Parliament House on the day of his arrival; but the only

physiognomy he had marked there so as to know it again was that of John

Clerk of Eldin. A reminiscence which I have heard from his own lips

enables me, however, to connect his first days in Edinburgh with the

memory of at least one Edinburgh worthy of a still elder generation. It

was on the 18th of December 1809, or just six weeks after Carlyle’s

arrival in Edinburgh, that the well-known Dr. Adam, Rector of the High

School, died; and I have heard Carlyle tell how the event impressed him,

and how he went to see the funeral procession of the old scholar start

from the High School yard at the foot of Infirmary Street. With a number

of other boys, he said, he hung on by the railings outside, looking in

upon the gathered assemblage of mourners. He seemed to remember the

scene with peculiar vividness; for, after picturing himself as a boy

hanging on by the High School railings, and watching the incidents

within, he added, “Ay me! that moment then, and this now, and nothing

but the rushing of Time’s wings between!”[10] He had a liking to the

last for old Dr. Adam. I have heard him say that any Scotsman who was at

a loss on the subject of _shall_ and _will_ would find the whole

doctrine in a nutshell in two or three lucid sentences of Dr. Adam’s

Latin Grammar; and I had an idea at the time that he had used this brief

precept of Dr. Adam’s little book in his own early practice of English.

At the date of Dr. Adam’s death Carlyle had been for six weeks a student

in the University, with pupils of Dr. Adam among his fellow-students on

the same benches. One can see his matriculation signature, “Thomas

Carlyle,” in his own hand,—a clear and good boyish hand, differing

considerably from that which he afterwards wrote,—in the alphabetically

arranged matriculation list of the Arts Students of the session 1809–10.

It is the sixth signature under the letter C, the immediately preceding

signature being that of a Dumfries youth named “Irvine Carlyle” (spelt

so, and not “Irving Carlyle,”) of whom there is mention in the

_Reminiscences_. It is clear that the two Carlyles were drawn to each

other by community of name and county, if not by kin, and had gone up

for matriculation together.

The College of those days was not the present complete quadrangle, but a

chaotic jumble of inconvenient old class-rooms, with only parts of the

present building risen among them, and finished and occupied. The

classes which Carlyle attended in his first session were the 1st

Humanity Class, under Professor Alexander Christison, and the 1st Greek

Class, under Professor George Dunbar. From an examination of the records

I find that among his class-fellows in both classes were the aforesaid

Irving Carlyle, and Lord Inverurie, afterwards seventh Earl of Kintore,

and that among his class-fellows in the 1st Greek Class was the late

venerable Earl of Wemyss, then Lord Elcho. Neither from the records nor

from the _Reminiscences_ can anything be gathered of the history of the

two classes through the session, or of the place taken in each by the

young Dumfriesshire boy among the medley of his fellow-students, from

150 to 200 in number. The Latin class-room, we do learn from the

_Reminiscences_, was a very dark room, so that Professor Christison,

having two students of the name of Carlyle, never succeeded in

distinguishing the one from the other; which was all the harder, Carlyle

thought, because the other Carlyle, Mr. Irving Carlyle, was not only

different physically, being “an older, considerably bigger boy, with red

hair, wild buck teeth, and scorched complexion,” but was also the worst

Latinist in the whole class. Carlyle himself had been so well grounded

in Latin at Annan School that probably he could have held his own in the

class even against Dr. Adam’s pupils from the Edinburgh High School. To

the end of his life, at all events, he was a fair Latinist. To Greek he

never in later life made any pretence; and whatever Greek he did learn

from Dunbar,—which can have been but small in quantity,—must have faded

through disuse. He retained, however, a high admiration for the

_Elementa Linguæ Græcæ_ of Dr. James Moor of Glasgow,—which was, I

suppose, the Greek grammar then used in Dunbar’s class,—thinking it the

very best grammar of any language for teaching purposes he had ever

seen.

While we know so little of Carlyle’s Greek and Latin studies in his

first University session, it is something to know that he was a pretty

diligent reader of books that session from the College Library. Having

examined a dusty old folio of the library receipts and outgoings, which

chances to have been preserved, I am able to report that Carlyle had

duly paid, before December 1809, his deposit or security of one guinea,

entitling him to take books out, and that, in that month and the

succeeding month of January 1810, he had out the following books, in

parcels or in succession, in the following order:—Robertson’s _History

of Scotland_, vol. ii.; Cook’s _Voyages_; Byron’s _Narrative_, _i.e._

“the Hon. John Byron’s Narrative of the Great Distresses suffered by

Himself and his Companions on the Coast of Patagonia, 1740–6”; the first

volume of Gibbon; two volumes of Shakespeare; a volume of the _Arabian

Nights_; Congreve’s Works; another volume of the _Arabian Nights_; two

volumes of Hume’s _England_; _Gil Blas_; a third volume of Shakespeare;

and a volume of the _Spectator_. This is a sufficiently remarkable

series of volumes for a boy of fourteen to have had out from the College

library; and other books from other libraries may have been lying at the

same time on the table in the small room in Simon Square which he shared

with Tom Smail. What is most remarkable is the run upon books of voyages

and travels, and on classic books of English literature, or books of

mere literary amusement, rather than on academic books. Clearly there

had been a great deal of previous and very miscellaneous reading at

Ecclefechan and Annan, with the already formed result of a passion for

reading, and very decided notions and tastes as to the kinds of books

that might be worth looking after. But how, whether at Ecclefechan or in

Annan, had the sedate boy been attracted to Congreve?

At the close of Carlyle’s first college session in April 1810 he

returned to Ecclefechan. He was met on the road near the village, as he

tells us so touchingly in his _Reminiscences_, by his father, who had

walked out, “with a red plaid about him,” on the chance of seeing Tom

coming; and the whole of the vacation was spent by him at home in his

father’s house. It is not, therefore, till the beginning of the session

of 1810–11 that we again hear of him in Edinburgh. He then duly

matriculated for his second session, his signature again standing in the

alphabetical Arts matriculation-list immediately after that of his

namesake “Irving Carlyle” (now spelt so). His classes for this session

were the 1st Mathematical Class, under Professor John Leslie, and the

Logic Class, under Professor David Ritchie; and I have found no note of

his having gone back that year, or any other, for a second course of

Latin from Professor Christison. In the 1st Mathematical Class,

consisting of seventy students, he had again Irving Carlyle on the

benches with him; in the Logic Class, consisting of 194 students, the

same Irving Carlyle was one of his fellow-students, and the late Earl of

Wemyss was another. What he made of the Logic Class we have not the

least intimation; and it is only by inference that we know that he must

have distinguished himself in the Mathematical Class and given evidences

there of his unusual mathematical ability. As before, however, he found

variation, or diversion, from his work for the classes by diligent

reading in his lodgings. Between Saturday the 1st December 1810 and

Saturday 9th March 1811, I find, he took from the University library the

following books in the following order:—_Voyages and Travels_, the 15th

volume of some collection under that name; a volume of Fielding’s works;

a volume of Smollett; Reid’s _Inquiry into the Human Mind_; a book

called _Scotland Described_; two more volumes of Fielding’s works;

Locke’s _Essay_ in folio; another volume of Fielding; a volume of

_Anacharsis_, _i.e._, of an English Translation of the Abbé Barthélémy’s

Travels of Anacharsis the Younger in Greece during the middle of the

Fourth Century before the Christian Era; and a volume of some

translation of _Don Quixote_. His choice of books, it will be seen, is

still very independent. Reid’s _Inquiry_ and Locke’s _Essay_ connect

themselves with the work in the Logic Class; but the other volumes were

evidently for mere amusement. Whether it was still in the lodging in

Simon Square, and with Smail for his chum, that these books were read,

is uncertain. His comradeship with Smail continued, indeed, he tells us,

over two sessions; but the lodging may have been changed. It was still,

doubtless, somewhere near the University.

For the session of 1811–12 the Matriculation Book is not alphabetically

in Faculties, but general or mixed for the three Faculties of Arts, Law,

and Medicine. There were 1475 students for those three Faculties

conjointly; and “Thomas Carlyle, Ecclefechan,” appears among them, his

matriculation number being 966. That session, his third at the

University, he attended the 2d Greek Class, under Dunbar, the 2d

Mathematical Class, under Leslie, and the Moral Philosophy Class, under

Dr. Thomas Brown. In the Greek Class, which consisted of 189 students,

he had among his class-fellows the late venerable Sir Robert Christison,

Sir Robert’s twin-brother, Alexander Christison, the late Earl of Wemyss

again, his brother, the Honourable Walter Charteris, a Thomas Murray

from Kirkcudbrightshire, afterwards a well-known citizen of Edinburgh,

the inextinguishable Irving Carlyle, and an Andrew Combe, whom I

identify with the subsequently well-known Dr. Andrew Combe, the brother

of George Combe the phrenologist. In the Mathematical Class, which

numbered forty-six, there were several Dumfriesshire students besides

himself; and it was in this 2d Mathematical Class, if the tradition is

correct, that Carlyle took the first prize,—another Dumfriesshire youth,

who lived in the same lodging with him, taking the second. I have turned

with most interest, in this session, to the “List of Students attending

Dr. Thomas Brown’s Class,” preserved in the peculiarly neat, small

handwriting of Dr. Brown himself. It was the second session of Brown’s

full tenure of the Professorship of Moral Philosophy in succession to

Dugald Stewart, and the fame of his lectures was at its highest. The

class consisted of 151 students; and among them, besides Carlyle and his

inseparable Irving Carlyle, and a Robert Mitchell and a Paulus Aemilius

Irving, both from Dumfriesshire, there were Duncan McNeill, afterwards

Lord Colonsay, his brother, John McNeill, Sir Andrew Agnew, David Welsh,

afterwards Dr. David Welsh and Professor of Church History, and a James

Bisset from Aberdeenshire, whom I identify with the late Rev. Dr. Bisset

of Bourtie. Some of these were outsiders, already in the Divinity or Law

Classes, who had returned to the Moral Philosophy Class for the benefit

of Dr. Brown’s brilliant lectures,—notably young David Welsh, who had

already attended the class for two sessions, but was full of enthusiasm

for Brown, whose biographer and editor he was to be in time. Carlyle, I

am sorry to say, was not one of the admirers of the brilliant Brown.

Over and over again I have heard him speak of Brown, and always with

mimicry and contempt, as “a finical man they called Brown, or sometimes

Missy Brown, that used to spout poetry.” This can hardly have been out

of disregard for metaphysics as such, for he had much respect for Dugald

Stewart, the then retired professor. The dislike seems to have been

partly personal, partly to the new kind of highly ingenious metaphysics

which Brown was trying to substitute for the older and more orthodox

Scottish Philosophy of Reid and Stewart. At all events, it is worthy of

note that those brilliant lectures of Thomas Brown, which James Mill and

John Stuart Mill admired so much in their published form, regarding them

as an introduction to much that is best in modern British Philosophy,

had no effect, in their actual delivery, on the hard-headed young

Carlyle, but fell upon him as mere dazzle and moonshine.

As Carlyle tells us incidentally that he was in Edinburgh in the summer

of 1812, it is to be supposed that he spent less of that vacation than

usual in his Dumfriesshire home. I find also that he matriculated rather

late in our books for the session of 1812–13, his name not appearing in

the first or main matriculation list, but only in a supplementary list,

and then as “Thomas Carlyle, Hoddam, Dumfriesshire.” His father had by

that time given up his trade of mason, and had left Ecclefechan to try a

small farm in the neighbourhood. The number of students matriculated

that year in the three faculties of Arts, Law, and Medicine, was 1503;

and Carlyle’s matriculation number was 1403. The classes in which he was

enrolled for that session, his fourth and last in Arts, were Leslie’s 2d

Mathematical Class (attended a second time, we may suppose, for such

higher instruction as might be fit for very advanced students), and the

Natural Philosophy Class, under Professor John Playfair. In this last

session, accordingly, as a student only of Mathematics and Physics, with

no distraction towards either Classics or Mental Philosophy, Carlyle may

be said to have been in his element. He worked very hard in both

classes, and distinguished himself in both. My own impression, from

talks with him on the subject, is that he was, by acknowledgment of

professors and fellow-students, easily supreme in both. Leslie’s second

class that year numbered but forty-one students, and it was natural that

his most distinguished student in two previous sessions should now be

familiar with him and receive his especial notice. Certain it is that of

all the Professors of Edinburgh University in Carlyle’s time Leslie was

the only one of whom he spoke always with something of real gratitude

and affection. The affection was mixed, indeed, with a kind of laughing

remembrance of Leslie’s odd, corpulent figure, and odd rough ways; and

he would describe with particular gusto the occasional effects of

Leslie’s persistent habit of using hair-dyes, as when a streak of pink

or green would be observable amid the dark-brown or black on those less

accessible parts of his head where the chemicals had been too liberally

or too rashly applied. But he had a real esteem for Leslie’s great

abilities, and remembered him as a man to whose mathematical

instructions, and to whose private kindness, he owed much.——A greater

Hero with him in Pure Mathematics than even Leslie, I may mention

parenthetically, was the now totally-forgotten John West, who had been

assistant-teacher of Mathematics in the University of St. Andrews for

some time from about 1780 onwards, and of whom Leslie, Ivory, and all

the other ablest mathematicians sent forth from that University, had

been pupils. Of this man, whom he knew of only by tradition, but whom he

regarded as, after Robert Simson of Glasgow, the most original

geometrical genius there had been in Scotland, I have heard him talk I

know not how often. He would sketch West’s life, from the time of his

hard and little-appreciated labours at St. Andrews to his death in the

West Indies, whither he had emigrated in despair for some chaplaincy or

the like; he would avow his belief that Leslie had derived some of his

best ideas from that poor man; and he expressed pleasure at finding I

knew something of West independently, and had a copy of West’s rare

_Elements of Mathematics_, published in 1784. That book, obsolete now,

was, I have no doubt, a manual with Carlyle while he was studying

Mathematics in Edinburgh University, as I chance to know it had been

with Dr. Chalmers at St. Andrews in _his_ earlier mathematical days.——Of

Leslie’s colleague, the celebrated Playfair, formerly in the

Mathematical Chair, but since 1805 in that of Natural Philosophy,

Carlyle had a less affectionate recollection personally than of Leslie.

Sharing, I believe, the common opinion of Playfair’s great merits, and

minutely acquainted with the facts of his life, as indeed he was with

the biographies of all persons of any mark with whom he had come into

contact, he rather resented a piece of injustice which he thought

Playfair had done to himself. There were 131 students in the Natural

Philosophy Class in 1812–13; and Carlyle, as he assured me, was single

in that whole number for having performed and given in every one of all

the prescribed exercises, mathematical or other. Another Dumfriesshire

student, who came next to him, had failed in one, and that the most

difficult. Naturally, at the end of the session, he expected that his

certificate would correspond to his distinction in the class; and it was

of some consequence to him that it should. But, when he called at

Playfair’s house for the certificate, and it was delivered to him by a

man-servant, he was a good deal disappointed. The usual form of the

wording for a good student was to the effect that the Professor

certified that so-and-so had attended the class in such and such a

session and had “made good proficiency in his studies.” In Carlyle’s

case there was a certain deviation from this form, but only to the

effect that he had attended the class and that the Professor “_had

reason to know_ that he had made good proficiency in his studies.” I can

remember Carlyle’s laugh as he told me of this delicate distinction; and

I have always treasured the anecdote as a lesson for professors. They

ought to be very careful not only in noting talent on the benches before

them, but also in _signifying_ what they have noted, if only because, as

in Playfair’s case, they may be sometimes entertaining an angel

unawares, and some angels have severe memories.

We have thus brought Carlyle to the summer of 1813, when he had

completed his Arts course in the University of Edinburgh, and was in the

eighteenth year of his age. Though qualified, according to the present

standard, for the degree of M.A., he did not take it; but in that he was

not in the least singular. In those days hardly any Edinburgh student

ever thought of taking a degree in Arts; as far as Edinburgh University

was concerned, the M.A. degree had fallen into almost complete disuse;

and not till within very recent memory has it become customary again.

After his course in Arts, therefore, Carlyle, with 95 per cent of those

of his contemporaries who had passed the same course, was in the

position merely of a _virtual_ M.A., who had obtained the best education

in Literature, Science, and Philosophy that the Edinburgh University

could afford. His own estimate of the worth of that was not very high.

Without assuming that he meant the university described in _Sartor

Resartus_ to stand literally for the Edinburgh University of his own

experience, we have seen enough to show that any specific training of

much value he considered himself to owe to his four years in the Arts

classes in Edinburgh University was the culture of his mathematical

faculty under Leslie, and that, for the rest, he acknowledged merely a

certain benefit from having been in so many class-rooms, where matters

intellectual were professedly in the atmosphere, and where he learnt to

take advantage of books. “What I have found the University did for me,”

he said definitely in his _Rectorial Address_ of 1866, “is that it

taught me to read, in various languages, in various sciences, so that I

could go into the books which treated of these things, and gradually

penetrate into any department I wanted to make myself master of, as I

found it suit me.” Similarly, in his _Sartor Resartus_, he made

Teufelsdröckh declare that his chief benefit at the University had been

from his private use of the University library. “From the chaos of that

library I succeeded in fishing up more books perhaps than had been known

to the very keepers thereof. The foundation of a literary life was

hereby laid: I learned, on my own strength, to read fluently in almost

all cultivated languages, on almost all subjects and sciences.” This may

describe Carlyle’s own use of the University library all in all, but

hardly his use of it during the four years of his Arts course. Only in

Latin and French, and to some small extent in Greek, could he then have

ranged beyond English in his readings; nor can his readings, in whatever

language, have been then so vast and miscellaneous as Teufelsdröckh’s.

We have seen, on the irrefragable evidence of preserved registers, what

were the books, numbering between twenty and thirty volumes in all,

which he actually took out from the University library in the first two

winter-sessions of his course; and, though the series is very

interesting, with some signs even of oddity, it contains hardly a book

that the librarians would have had any difficulty in “fishing up.” I

regret that, from the destruction or at least the disappearance of the

library registers for a considerable lapse of years immediately after

Carlyle’s second session, I am unable to exhibit his readings in his

third and fourth sessions. The list for those two sessions, when he was

passing from his sixteenth year to his eighteenth, and had been bitten

by mathematics and physical science, would doubtless have been even more

interesting, and probably more extensive and various, than that for the

two sessions preceding. That he did continue to be a very diligent

reader from the College library I positively know. He used to draw a

ludicrous picture of the library accommodations of those days, when the

books were in one of the surviving old buildings on one side of the

present quadrangle. As I understood him, the students came at definite

hours, and ranged themselves in _queue_ in some passage, or at some

entry, waiting for the opening of the door, and perhaps battering at it

when the sub-librarian inside was dilatory. He was a sulky gentleman, of

Celtic blood and stout build, who regarded the readers as his natural

enemies; and, when he did open the door, he generally presented himself

in _rear_ to the impatient crowd, taking care to bend his body at the

final moment so as to administer one last impediment of contempt for the

entrants and send some of them sprawling. That was the kind of

encouragement to reading, by Carlyle’s account, that he and other

University students had in those days. To the end of his life he was all

but savage in his resentment of difficulties thrown in the way of access

to books by those who had charge of them; and the great Panizzi of the

British Museum came in for a good deal of his wrath in private on this

account.

“Entertaining an angel unawares” is the phrase I have used to indicate

the relations of Carlyle’s teachers in the University to the then

unknown young man that sat in their class-rooms. In fact, Carlyle, when

he left the University in 1813, a virtual M.A., aged seventeen years and

four months, was already potentially the very Carlyle we now revere, in

consequence of his subsequent life, as one of the greatest and noblest

spirits of his generation. Not yet at his full stature (which, when I

knew him first in his yet unbent manhood, was over five feet eleven

inches), and of thin, lean, rather gaunt frame (he told me himself he

had never weighed more than about ten stone), he was a youth of as great

faculty, as noble promise, as Scotland had produced since her Burns,

born in 1759, and her Scott, born in 1771. This, or something very

little short of this, seems to have been already recognised by those who

knew him intimately. They were not many; for he was of peculiarly proud,

shy, and reserved ways, if not even morose and unsocial. Poverty also

kept him back. It was not for an Ecclefechan lad, chumming with one or

two others in like circumstances in a poor lodging in Simon Square, or

some other Old Town locality, and receiving his meagre supplies from

home, to mix much with general Edinburgh society. The celebrities of

that society, indeed, were no longer strangers to him by name or sight,

as they had been on his first Edinburgh walk with Smail in 1809. He

mentions particularly that Jeffrey’s face and figure had been quite

familiar to him since 1811 by visits to the Parliament House; and the

same visits, or walks in Princes Street, must have made him familiar

with the face and figure of Scott, and the faces and figures of not a

few others that were among the civic somebodies of their time. But it

was by sight only, and by no more introduction than he had to Arthur

Seat or Holyrood House, that he knew those important personages; and

into the circles in which they moved he had never entered. Even the

Professors of the University, if we except Leslie, seem to have been

known to him only by their aspects in college or the vicinity. Further,

his acquaintanceships among his fellow-students do not appear to have

been numerous. He is not known to have been a member of any of the

literary and debating societies which in those days, as in these, were

so important an appendage to the apparatus of lectures, class-rooms, and

library, and which draw young men together so congenially for the

exchange of ideas, the exercise of oratory, and the formation of lasting

friendships between kindred souls. His habits were those of solitary

reading and musing, with intercourse only with a few companions,

clannishly selected for the most part from among the Dumfriesshire or

Galloway lads who could claim him as their district-compatriot, whose

families he knew, and with one or other of whom he had made his

pedestrian journeys homewards at the ends of the sessions. Smail has now

vanished from his side; and we hear chiefly of James Johnstone,

afterwards schoolmaster of Haddington, the Robert Mitchell already

mentioned as one of his fellow-students in the Moral Philosophy class, a

Thomas Mitchell, afterwards one of the classical masters in the

Edinburgh Academy, and the Thomas Murray already mentioned as having

been with him in the 2d Greek class. To these has to be added, on the

faith of certain extant letters, a certain clever and whimsical

fellow-student of the name of Hill, who used to delight in signing

himself “Peter Pindar.” In the circle of these, and of others whose

names are forgotten, young Carlyle, at the time of his leaving college,

was already an object of admiration and respect passing all that is

ordinary in such cases of juvenile _camaraderie_. Intellectually and

morally, he had impressed them as absolutely _unique_ among them

all,—such a combination of strength of character, rugged independence of

manner, prudence, great literary powers, high aspirations and ambition,

habitual despondency, and a variety of other humours, ranging from the

ferociously sarcastic to the wildly tender, that it was impossible to

set limits to what he was likely to become in the world.

The proofs are extant in documents of a date only a few months in

advance of our present point. On the 1st of January 1814, the

above-mentioned Hill, who seems to have been the freest and most jocose

in his style of address to Carlyle, and had nicknamed him “The Dean” or

“The Doctor,” by some implied comparison with Dean Swift, wrote to him

as follows.—“You mention some two or three disappointments you have met

with lately. For shame, sir, to be so peevish and splenetic! Your

disappointments are trifles light as air when compared with the

vexations and disappointments _I_ have experienced.” Again, in a letter

dated the 9th of May in the same year, he begins:—“Dear Doctor, I

received yours last night; and a scurrilous, blackguardly, flattering,

vexing, pernickety, humorous, witty, daft letter it is. Shall I answer

it piecemeal, as a certain Honourable House does a speech from its

sovereign, by echoing back each syllable? No; this won’t do. Oh! how I

envy you, Dean, that you can run on in such an off-hand way, ever

varying the scene with wit and mirth, while honest Peter must hold on in

one numskull track to all eternity, pursuing the even tenor of his way,

so that one of Peter’s letters is as good as a thousand.”[11] More

significant and serious is the following from one of the preserved

letters to Carlyle by his friend Thomas Murray, the date “July 27,” and

presumably of the year 1814:—“I have had the pleasure of receiving, my

dear Carlyle, your very humorous and friendly letter, a letter

remarkable for vivacity, a Shandean turn of expression, and an

affectionate pathos, which indicate a peculiar turn of mind, make

sincerity doubly striking, and wit doubly poignant. You flatter me with

saying my letter was good; but allow me to observe that among all my

elegant and respectable correspondents there is none whose manner of

letter-writing I so much envy as yours. A happy flow of language, either

for pathos, description, or humour, and an easy, graceful current of

ideas appropriate to every subject, characterise your style. This is not

adulation; I speak what I think. Your letters will always be a feast to

me, a varied and exquisite repast; and the time, I hope, will come, but

I trust is far distant, when these, our juvenile epistles, will be read

and publicly applauded by a generation unborn, and the name of Carlyle

at least will be inseparably connected with the Literary History of the

Nineteenth Century.”[12] Strangely enough, Carlyle’s answer to this

letter has survived, and it is no less memorable:—“Oh Tom!” it says,

“what a foolish flattering creature thou art! To talk of future eminence

in connection with the Literary History of the Nineteenth Century to

such a one as me! Alas! my good lad, when I and all my fancies and

reveries and speculations shall have been swept over by the besom of

oblivion, the Literary History of no century will feel itself the worse.

Yet think not, because I talk thus, I am careless about literary fame.

No, Heaven knows that, ever since I have been able to form a wish, the

wish of being known has been the foremost. O Fortune! thou that givest

unto each his portion on this dirty planet, bestow, if it shall please

thee, coronets and crowns, and principalities and purses, and pudding

and power, upon the great and noble and fat ones of the earth; grant

_me_ that, with a heart of independence, unyielding to thy favours and

unbending to thy frowns, I may attain to literary fame,—and, though

starvation be my lot, I will smile that I have not been born a

King.”[13]

Brave words these from the moody lad we saw, not five years ago,

plodding up to Edinburgh from Ecclefechan, hardly fourteen years of age,

with Tom Smail for pilot. From these words, and from the letters from

Hill and Murray with which they connect themselves, we learn two things

which I think we should have hardly known otherwise. One is the fact of

Carlyle’s decisive passion for literature at this early period of his

life, and of his reputation then among his intimates for great powers

and acquirements of the purely literary kind. My own fancy, confirmed by

one particular talk I had with him during a walk along the Thames

Embankment and in the Temple Gardens, had rather been that the passion

for literature came latish in his case, and that his original bent had

been wholly the mathematical. He certainly did tell me that he had not

cared much for poetry, or thought much about matters verbal, till the

enthusiasm of an older companion, who used to recite Campbell’s lyrics

and dwell with ecstasy on their beauties, came as a revelation to him

and set him on fire with a similar passion. My mistake must have been in

post-dating the reminiscence. He must have referred, I now see, not to

so late a period as that of his college life in Edinburgh, but to the

previous days of his mere boyhood in Ecclefechan and at Annan school.

Indeed, we have already seen, in the list of his readings from the

college library in his first two sessions, that he must have brought

with him to the University some strongly formed literary tastes and

likings of Ecclefechan and Annan origin. Connecting this piece of

evidence with that of the just-quoted letters of himself and his friends

in 1814, we are entitled, I think, now to assume the literary stratum to

have been the deeper and more primitive in Carlyle’s constitution, and

the mathematical vein to have been a superposition upon that. At all

events, it is clear that in 1814, when he had concluded his Arts course

in the University, it was for his literary powers that he was the wonder

of his little circle, and it was on those powers that he set most store

himself. For the letters reveal to us yet a second contradiction of what

we might have supposed otherwise. No man was ever more contemptuous of

fame, and especially of literary fame, than Carlyle was in conversation

in his later life. The very phrase “desire for fame,” or any synonym for

it, if used in his presence as the name of a worthy motive to exertion

of any kind, would have provoked his most scathing scorn. He had no

patience for “that last infirmity of noble mind,” and would have

regarded even such a designation for the feeling as much too honourable.

Yet, as we have seen, he had not escaped the malady himself. Call the

ambition after fame by the homeliest name of sarcasm you please,—call it

the measles of budding genius,—and the fact, on the evidence of

Carlyle’s own confession, is that the attack in his case had been even

more severe than it had been in the case of Burns, much more severe than

we know it to have been in the case of Scott, and quite as severe as the

records show it to have been in the case of young Chalmers. The

condition of his mind, in his nineteenth year, with all his moodiness,

all his self-despondency, was that of settled literary ambition, an

appetency after literary distinction all but enormous. That this rested

on honest consciousness of his own extraordinary powers, and was

accompanied by a resolve, as deep as was ever in any young man’s heart,

that the fame for which he craved should be won, if won at all, only by

noble and manly methods, there is no room for doubt. There we see him

standing, an unknown youth, teeth clenched and face determined, fronting

the world, and anticipating his own future in it, with something of that

feeling which, call it what we may, and smile at it as any one may in

the retrospect, has probably, by God’s own ordinance, filled every great

and honest heart at the outset of a great career:—

Lay the vain impostors low!

Blockheads fall in every foe;

Splendour comes with every blow;

Let me do or die.

Meanwhile the near future was not very inspiring. Hardly by any wish of

his own, but in deference to the fond hopes of his father and mother,

and to those social necessities which made the clerical career the only

natural and possible one in those days for an educated Scottish youth

from the humbler ranks, Carlyle had proceeded to qualify himself for the

ministry. Not, however, for the ministry in that Nonconforming

communion, called “the Burgher Seceders,” to which his parents belonged,

but, apparently with no objection on their part, in the Established or

National Scottish Church.[14] Now, the regular qualification for the

ministry of the Scottish Church in those days, after a student had

passed his Arts course in the University, consisted in further

attendance for four winter-sessions in the Divinity Hall of one of the

Universities, for instruction in Theology, Hebrew, and Church History,

and for the delivery of so many trial-discourses, one in Latin and the

rest in English, at appointed intervals. But, to accommodate students

whose means made it difficult for them to reside in town during four

consecutive winters, there was a device of “partial sessions,” by which

a certain small amount of personal appearance in the Divinity Hall, if

protracted over six sessions, and duly signalised by delivery of the

required discourses, was accepted as sufficient. By the former plan,

Carlyle, entering the Divinity Hall in Edinburgh in the session 1813–14,

immediately after his last session in Arts, would have been a qualified

probationer or preacher in the Scottish Church, and eligible for a fixed

parochial charge, in 1817, _i.e._ in his twenty-second year. The other

plan, however, permitting him to find some occupation out of Edinburgh,

if it could be had, and so to spare his parents further expense in his

education, was altogether the more convenient. His connection with

Edinburgh was not yet over; but it was to be continued only in the form

of such occasional visits through six years as might enable him to pass

as “licentiate” or “probationer” in 1819, _i.e._ in his twenty-fourth

year. _That_, however he may have reconciled it to his ambition or to

his conscience, was his immediate worldly outlook.

Divinity students did not need to register in the general Matriculation

Book of the University, as the Arts, Medicine, and Law students did; and

so we have not that means of tracing Carlyle’s connection with the

University during his Divinity course. Another Thomas Carlyle, indeed,

is found in the matriculation lists and in the Arts classes, just after

_our_ Carlyle had left those classes; but he is a Thomas Carlyle from

Galloway, and is probably the person to whom Carlyle refers angrily as

his troublesome _double-goer_, about whom and himself mistakes were

constantly occurring, from this early period in the lives of both, on

even to the time when this Thomas Carlyle was an “Angel” in the

Irvingite Church and an author of books, and took the precaution of

distinguishing himself always on his title-pages as “Thomas Carlyle,

_Advocate_.” It is in the special Divinity Hall Registers that we should

look now for _our_ Carlyle. Unfortunately, these Registers are

defective. I have not found a list of the Divinity Hall students for

1813–14, though I believe it must have been in that session that Carlyle

entered himself in the books of Dr. William Ritchie, the chief Divinity

Professor, as going on nominally in the Divinity course, if not

attending lectures. The only sessions in which I do find his name

registered are those of 1814–15 and 1817–18, both times as “Thomas

Carlyle, Hoddam,” and both times as one of 183 students then attending

the Divinity Hall. Whether this means that his attendance in those two

sessions amounted to something more real than in those in which his name

is not found, I cannot determine, though I should like to be able to do

so. It would be a pleasure to me to know to what real extent Carlyle

attended the lectures of Dr. Ritchie in Divinity and of Dr. Hugh

Meiklejohn in Church History; and it would be a greater pleasure to me

to know whether he ever sat in the Hebrew class-room and was called up

by Dr. Alexander Brunton to read a bit from the Hebrew Bible. For I had

the fortune to be a disciple of this “Rabbi Brunton” myself in the same

Hebrew class a great many years afterwards, when he was a very old

gentleman, a wonder of antique clerical neatness in his dress, and with

a great bald head, and large, pink, bland face, which it did one good to

look at. That was all the good you got, however; for, though he

professed to teach Hebrew in two sessions, with the elements of Chaldee

and Syriac, and, I think, Arabic in addition, the amount of linguistic

instruction he gave, or was capable of giving, was as if you had boiled

ten chapters of the Hebrew Bible in the same kettle with three or four

leaves of Hebrew and Chaldee grammar, and drunk the concoction in a

series of doses. Carlyle on Rabbi Brunton’s benches would have been a

picture for my fancy worth a thousand; and I wish now I had asked him

whether he _did_ attend the Hebrew class. Once I spoke to him of

Brunton’s predecessor in the Hebrew chair, Dr. Alexander Murray, a real

linguist, and one of the finest minds of his time in Scotland, as any

one may see who will read his letters published in that most delightful

of recent books of literary anecdote, _Archibald Constable and his

Literary Correspondents_, edited by the late Thomas Constable. This fine

scholar and thinker had died in 1813, after having held the Hebrew chair

only one year; and Brunton, who had been a rival candidate with him, had

stepped into his place. That had been in the last year of Carlyle’s Arts

course, and he retained no more than a vague recollection of Murray’s

figure as seen about the College.

What makes it all the likelier that Carlyle did begin his Divinity

course in 1813–14, and did give some attendance in the Divinity Hall

that session, is that he informs us in his _Reminiscences_ that he was

in Edinburgh in May 1814, and was among the audience in the General

Assembly of the Kirk for that year, when he heard Jeffrey plead, and

Drs. Hill and Inglis, and also Dr. Chalmers, speak. The annual meeting

of the General Assembly in May was then, as it is now, a great affair;

and it would have been the most natural thing in the world for a young

student of Divinity, fresh from his first session at the Hall, to be in

the gallery of the Assembly, to see the physiognomies of the leaders,

Moderate or Evangelical, and to hear the debates. If he _had_ resided in

Edinburgh through the preceding session, the probability is that he had

teaching engagements which helped to pay his expenses. We do not,

however, hear definitely of any such teaching employment in Edinburgh in

1813–14, but only that, later in 1814, he applied for the vacant

mathematical mastership in his own school of Annan, won the post by

competition in Dumfries, and settled in Annan to perform the duties.

The Annan mathematical mastership lasted about two years, or from the

autumn of 1814 to the autumn of 1816, bringing Carlyle from his

nineteenth year to his twenty-first. His receipts were between £60 and

£70 a year; and he boarded in the house of Mr. Glen, the Burgher

minister of Annan, where he read prodigiously at nights in all sorts of

books, latterly sitting up till three in the morning over Newton’s

_Principia_. But, though the Glens were pleasant, kind people, and he

was not far from his father’s house, and had two or three good friends

in the neighbourhood,—one of them the Rev. Henry Duncan of Ruthwell, a

man of many accomplishments, and the real founder of Savings Banks,—he

found himself, on the whole, “lonesome, uncomfortable, and out of

place.” His character among the Annan people was that of “morose

dissociableness,” and he detested his school-work.

The two visits which he paid to Edinburgh in the course of the two years

were bright interruptions in his dull routine. The first was about the

Christmas of 1814, only a few months after he had gone to Annan. His

purpose was to read the first of his trial-discourses in the Divinity

Hall,—that being, as we have supposed, his second session in Divinity,

and one of the two sessions in which, as we have seen, his name occurs

in the Divinity Hall lists. The discourse was an English sermon on the

text (Psalm cxix. 67): “_Before I was afflicted I went astray; but now

have I kept Thy Word._” It was, he says, “a very weak, flowery, and

sentimental piece,”—which we may believe if we like. The second visit

was in the Christmas-time of 1815, for the delivery of his second

discourse, a Latin exegesis on the question, “_Num detur Religio

Naturalis?_” (“Is a Natural Religion possible?”) This too, he supposes,

was “weak enough,” though the writing of the Latin had given him some

satisfaction, and there had been some momentary pleasure in “the bits of

compliments and flimsy approbation from comrades and professors” which

greeted this performance, as indeed had been the case with the previous

year’s sermon. But this visit of the Christmas of 1815 was memorable to

him for something more than the delivery of his exegesis. That trouble

off his mind, he was taking a holiday week, and looking up old Edinburgh

acquaintances; and it was one night, when he was in Rose Street, sitting

rather silently in the rooms of a certain Waugh, a distant cousin of his

own, and his predecessor in the Annan mastership, that the door opened,

and there stepped in Edward Irving, accompanied by an Edinburgh

mathematical teacher named Nichol. Carlyle had once seen Irving casually

long before in the Annan schoolroom, when Irving called there as a

former boy of the school, home from the University with prizes and

honours; he had heard much of Irving since,—especially of his continued

University triumphs and his brilliant success in schoolmastering, first

in the new academy he had set up in Haddington, and more recently in a

similar academy at Kirkcaldy; but this was their first real meeting. It

was, as Carlyle tells us, by no means promising. Irving, in a somewhat

grandiose way, asked Carlyle this and that about what was going on in

Annan. Carlyle, irritated a little by his air of superiority, answered

more and more succinctly, till at last to such questions as “Has Mrs. ——

got a baby? Is it a son or daughter?” his answers were merely that he

did not know. “You seem to know nothing,” said Irving, after one or two

rebuffs of the kind. “To which,” says Carlyle, “I, with prompt emphasis,

somewhat provoked, replied, ‘Sir, by what right do you try my knowledge

in this way? Are you the grand inquisitor, or have you authority to

question people and cross-question at discretion? I have had no interest

to inform myself about the births in Annan, and care not if the process

of birth and generation there should cease and determine altogether.’”

There might be worse subjects for a painter than this first meeting

between Irving and Carlyle. The very room in Rose Street, I suppose,

still exists, and there would be little difficulty in imagining the

group. On one side, staggering from the blow he has just received, we

see the Herculean Irving, three-and-twenty years of age, with coal-black

hair, and handsome and jovial visage, despite his glaring squint; seated

on the other side we see the thinner and more bilious figure of the

stripling Carlyle, just after he has delivered the blow; and Waugh and

Nichol stand between, looking on and laughing.[15]

The next meeting of Carlyle and Irving was in Annan about six months

afterwards. In the interval the Kirkcaldy people, many of whom were

dissatisfied with Irving’s conduct in the new academy there, and

especially with the severity of his discipline among the young ones, had

resolved on resuscitating their regular or Burgh School; and, on the

recommendation of Professors Leslie and Christison, Carlyle had been

offered the mastership of that school. If Carlyle accepted and went to

Kirkcaldy, it would thus be as Irving’s rival. The meeting, therefore,

might have been awkward but for Irving’s magnanimity. He invited Carlyle

cordially to be his guest in the preliminary visit he meditated to

Kirkcaldy for the purpose of inquiry; said that his books were at

Carlyle’s service, that two Annandale men must not be strangers in

Fifeshire, etc. Accordingly, when Carlyle did accept the appointment,

and transfer himself from Annan to Kirkcaldy in the autumn of 1816, the

two became inseparable. They were the David and Jonathan of Kirkcaldy

town; and one of the pleasantest parts of Carlyle’s _Reminiscences_ is

his description of those Kirkcaldy days, from 1816 to the end of 1818,

when he and Irving were constantly together, walking on the Kirkcaldy

sands, or making Saturday excursions to Fifeshire places round about, or

boating expeditions on the Firth, or longer rambles in holiday time to

the Lochlomond country and the West, or to their native Dumfriesshire by

Moffat and the Yarrow. Irving was by this time a licensed preacher in

the Scottish Church; and Carlyle attended him in his occasional

preachings in Kirkcaldy or the neighbourhood, or accompanied him to hear

other preachers,—once, for example, to Dunfermline to hear Dr. Chalmers.

This was the time too of some memorable incidents of more private mark

in the lives of the two young men. It was the time of Irving’s intimacy

with the Martins of Kirkcaldy Manse, and of his engagement to a daughter

of that family, though his heart was with the Jane Welsh who had been

his pupil at Haddington; and it was also the time of Carlyle’s

frustrated first love,—the object of which was a Margaret Gordon, an

orphan girl, then residing in Kirkcaldy with her widowed Aberdeenshire

aunt. Though it is with the Edinburgh connections of Carlyle during his

two years at Kirkcaldy that we are concerned here, I cannot refrain from

this episode of his acquaintance with Margaret Gordon.

This girl, interesting long ago to all inquirers into Carlyle’s

biography as the nameless original of the “Blumine” of his _Sartor

Resartus_, has become even more interesting since the revelation of her

name and the description of her by Carlyle himself in his

_Reminiscences_. Even this description, however, falls far short of the

impression made by that fragment of her own farewell letter to Carlyle

which Mr. Froude published in his _Nineteenth Century_ article on

Carlyle’s Early Life. Nothing finer than that letter has come to light,

or ever can come to light, in all Carlyle’s correspondence:—

“And now, my dear friend, a long, long adieu! One advice; and, as a

parting one, consider, value it. Cultivate the milder dispositions of

your heart. Subdue the more extravagant visions of the brain. In time

your abilities must be known. Among your acquaintance they are already

beheld with wonder and delight. By those whose opinion will be

valuable they hereafter will be appreciated. Genius will render you

great. May virtue render you beloved! Remove the awful distance

between you and ordinary men by kind and gentle manners. Deal gently

with their inferiority, and be convinced they will respect you as

much, and like you more. Why conceal the real goodness that flows in

your heart?... Again adieu! Pardon the freedom I have used; and, when

you think of me, be it as of a kind sister, to whom your happiness

will always yield delight, and your griefs sorrow.... I give you not

my address, because I dare not promise to see you.”

Valuable as an additional attestation of the enormous impression made by

Carlyle upon all who came near him even at this early date, and of the

prodigious expectations entertained of his future career, these words

reveal also such a character in the writer herself as almost to compel

speculation as to what might have happened if she had become his wife.

That there was real affection on both sides is evident. The obstacle was

partly in circumstances. In the opinion of her aunt and guardian, and of

others, Margaret Gordon, who, though the daughter of a poor colonial,

and left with little or nothing, was one of the aristocratic family of

the Aberdeenshire Gordons, could hardly marry a Kirkcaldy schoolmaster.

But perhaps some dread on her own part, arising from those perceptions

of the harder side of his character which she communicated to himself so

tenderly and frankly, may have aided in the separation. Her subsequent

history could be told in some detail by persons still living. She became

the wife of Alexander Bannerman of Aberdeen, a man of note in the

commerce of that city, and of a family of old standing and landed

estates in the shire. There were traditions of him in his youth as

“Sandy Bannerman,” one of the wild Maule of Panmure and Duke of Gordon

set, who filled the north with their pranks; but my own recollection of

him in his more mature days is of the staid and highly respectable

Alexander Bannerman, latterly Sir Alexander Bannerman, who was long the

Whig M.P. for Aberdeen, and in that capacity was very attentive to the

interests of the city, and very kind to old pensioners and the like who

had any grievances or claims on the Government. The Whigs promoted him

at last to a colonial governorship; and I think he died in that post. I

might have seen Carlyle’s “Blumine” myself when she was Lady Bannerman,

if only when she drove through the streets of Aberdeen to grace one of

her husband’s elections; but I have no recollection that I ever did.

To my surprise, Carlyle did not seem indisposed to talk of the “Blumine”

episode in his life at Kirkcaldy. He used to make inquiries about the

Aberdeenshire Bannermans; and he once sketched the whole story to me, in

a shadowy way and without naming names (though I then knew them for

myself), but dwelling on various particulars, and especially on those

casual meetings with his first love in her married state which he has

described in his _Reminiscences_. Though he talked prettily and tenderly

on the subject, the impression left was that the whole thing had become

“objective” to him, a mere dream of the past. But fifty years had then

elapsed since those Kirkcaldy days when Margaret Gordon and he were

first together.

Among Carlyle’s Edinburgh connections in the Kirkcaldy days, one comes

to us in a book form. It was in 1817 that Professor Leslie, not yet Sir

John Leslie, brought out the third edition of his _Elements of Geometry

and Plane Trigonometry_, being an improvement and enlargement of the two

previous editions of 1809 and 1811. The geometrical portion of the

volume consists of six books, intended to supersede the traditional six

books of Euclid, and containing many propositions not to be found there.

The seventeenth proposition of the sixth book is the problem “_To divide

a straight line, whether internally or externally, so that the rectangle

under its segments shall be equivalent to a given rectangle_.” The

solution, with diagrams, occupies a page; and there is an additional

page of “scholium,” pointing out in what circumstances the problem is

impossible, and calling attention to the value of the proposition in the

construction of quadratic equations. So much for the text of the

proposition at pp. 176–177; but, when we turn to the “Notes and

Illustrations” appended to the volume, we find, at p. 340, this note by

Leslie:—

“The solution of this important problem now inserted in the text was

suggested to me by Mr. Thomas Carlyle, an ingenious young

mathematician, formerly my pupil. But I here subjoin likewise the

original construction given by Pappus; which, though rather more

complex, has yet some peculiar advantages.”

Leslie then proceeds to give the solution of Pappus, in about two pages,

and to add about three pages of further remarks on the application of

the problem to the construction of quadratics. The mention of Carlyle by

Leslie in this volume of 1817 is, I believe, the first mention of

Carlyle by name in print; and it was no small compliment to prefer, for

text purposes, young Carlyle’s solution of an important problem to the

old one that had come down from the famous Greek geometrician. Evidently

Carlyle’s mathematical reputation was still kept up about the Edinburgh

University, and Leslie was anxious to do his favourite pupil a good

turn.[16]

More personal were the connections with Edinburgh which Carlyle still

kept up by visits from Kirkcaldy, either by himself or with Irving. As

it was not much to cross the Firth on a Saturday or occasional holiday,

such visits were pretty frequent. Carlyle notes them, and the meetings

and little convivialities which he and Irving had in the course of them

with nondescript and clerical Edinburgh acquaintances, chiefly Irving’s,

here and there in Edinburgh houses and lodgings. Nothing of consequence

came of these convivialities, passed mostly, he says, in “gossip and

more or less ingenious giggle,” and serving only to make Irving and him

feel that, though living in Kirkcaldy, they had the brighter Edinburgh

element close at hand. One Edinburgh visit of Carlyle’s from Kirkcaldy

deserves particular record:—“On one of these visits,” he says, “my last

feeble tatter of connection with Divinity Hall affairs or clerical

outlooks was allowed to snap itself and fall definitely to the ground.

Old Dr. Ritchie ‘not at home’ when I called to enter myself. ‘Good!’

answered I; ‘_let the omen be fulfilled_.’” In other words, he never

went back to Dr. Ritchie, and ceased to be a Divinity student. Such is

the account in the _Reminiscences_, confirmed by a private note in

Carlyle’s hand, published in Mr. Froude’s article:—“The theological

course, which could be prosecuted or kept open by appearing annually,

putting down your name, but with some trifling fee, in the register, and

then going your way, was,” he says, “after perhaps two years of this

languid form, allowed to close itself for good. I remember yet being on

the street in Argyll Square, Edinburgh, probably in 1817, and come over

from Kirkcaldy with some intent, the languidest possible, still to put

down my name and fee. The official person, when I rang, was not at home,

and my instant feeling was, ‘_Very good, then, very good; let this be

finis in the matter._’ And it really was.” This is precise enough, but

perhaps with a slight mistake in the dating. The name, “Thomas Carlyle,

Hoddam,” as we have seen, does stand in the register of the Edinburgh

Divinity Hall students for the session 1817–18, its only previous

appearance in the preserved lists being in 1814–15, though it is likely

he had begun his Divinity course in 1813–14. It must, therefore, have

been after 1817 that he made the above-mentioned call on Dr. Ritchie in

Argyll Square. The probability is that it was late in 1818, in

anticipation of the coming session of 1818–19.