GEORGE GILFILLAN 
 
 Xetters anD journals, witb ^Remote 
 
 BY 
 
 ROBERT A. WATSON, M.A., D.D., 
 
 and 
 
 ELIZABETH S. WATSON 
 
 ITcnbon 
 
 HODDER AND STOUGHTON 
 27, PATERNOSTER ROW 
 
WORKS BY DR. R. A. WATSON. 
 
 i. 
 Judges and Ruth. 
 
 In the Third Series of the Expositors Bible. 
 Crown Svo, cloth, 75. 6d. 
 
 " This is an unusually attractive volume. Mr. Watson had a subject 
 admitting of much picturesque treatment, and he has treated it pictur- 
 esquely, though at the same time his explanations are not in the least 
 shallow, or wanting in solidity of thought. His pages will give many a 
 valuable hint to the preacher. " Literary Churchman. 
 
 II. 
 
 The Book of Job. 
 
 In the Fifth Series of the Expositors Bible. 
 Crown Svo, cloth, 75. 6d. 
 
 " Dr. Watson does not fall behind his predecessors in doing justice to this 
 magnificent effort of fcle.br.ew gfeniu'sjoi^inlpjratjon. The opening scene on 
 earth and the opening *sce|he in'htfaVfer^ r brofaght before us with graphic 
 power, and the problem* Raised by thtf situation of Job by the unmerited 
 suffering of the g^ood rnanj stated t ajid discussed.wit,h.much force and philo- 
 sophical insight. Dr? V& c tsod Ras t ^rijten JviAVonspJcuous ability and a 
 thorough mastery of hi subject.? S^of^tifa^. * *** 
 
 LONDON: HODDER & STOUGHTON. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 FOURTEEN years have elapsed since Mr. 
 Gilfillan's death. He is still a striking figure 
 in the memory of thousands who heard him speak, 
 and a power in the life of many who were informed 
 and stimulated by his written word. Those who 
 knew him will find something at least in the present 
 volume either fresh or freshly set. Others, to whom 
 his " History of a Man" and various bits of autobio- 
 graphy scattered here and there are unknown or 
 inaccessible, may now learn the main course of his 
 life. The material furnished is authentic and intimate 
 letters to close friends, and portions of a journal full 
 of reminiscence. It will be seen that Mr. Gilfillan 
 speaks for himself, and the confessedly fictitious 
 element in the " History of a Man " is corrected as if 
 by his own pen. At the close, one and another, men 
 of distinction, will say briefly what they knew of 
 Gilfillan, and acknowledge the debt owing to him by 
 all who love literature and care for religion. Many 
 other tributes might have been gathered ; but it was 
 desirable to keep the record within moderate lines. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Gilfillan had many devoted friends no man more 
 he had also his enemies, his mistaken partisans, and 
 more mistaken revilers. Because he loved and led 
 the people and spoke straight to them as he knew 
 and as he felt, he was once called a charlatan. It is 
 an accusation that will not be repeated now. Gil- 
 fillan's work was cast into the furrrow and has borne 
 its fruit. He helped to create modern religious 
 thought throughout the English-speaking world. He 
 took part in every battle for freedom that he counted 
 a straight battle, winning even when he seemed to 
 lose. He praised the worthy to his own hurt, and 
 aided the struggling to his own confusion. His great 
 humane heart was at once the making and the 
 dissipation of his power. He was beloved everywhere 
 by the intelligent plain man who was not a bigot, 
 and by the earnest young soul that felt the sting of 
 doubt or knew the poetic longing : to these, indeed, 
 he was a priest. 
 
 But if ever there was a minister of religion without 
 priestcraft, it was Gilfillan. Ecclesiastical intrigue 
 and pride were far from him. And if ever there was 
 a man who could not abide the intellectual prig it 
 was he. 
 
 Warm acknowledgments are due to many who 
 have interested themselves in this publication, and 
 contributed matter which has all been of service, 
 though it may not be directly used. Mrs. Dobell ; 
 Mrs. Smith, Whitehaven, sister of Thomas Aird ; 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Mrs. Jefferson, Ulverston ; Miss Robertson of Irvine ; 
 the Rev. Dr. Blair, Dunblane ; Mr. Allan, Sunderland ; 
 the Rev. Dr. Baxter, Kirkcaldy ; the Rev. John C. 
 Johnston, Dunoon ; Mr. A. C. Lamb, Dundee ; Mr. 
 Henry Prain, Longforgan, long an office-bearer of 
 School Wynd Church ; Mr. John Mair, M.A., Libra- 
 rian of the United Presbyterian Church, and Mr. A. 
 H. Millar, F.S.A. Scot, Dundee, have contributed 
 valuable letters, reminiscences, and other help. Mr. 
 David Lambie, Viewforth Street, Dundee, has given 
 assistance throughout of the most important kind, 
 relieving the editors in many ways. The tributes of 
 Dr. Hutchison Stirling, John Leng, Esq., M.P., and 
 Dr. Joseph Parker add greatly to the interest of the 
 book. Dr. W. Robertson Nicoll has kindly read the 
 proofs of the volume, and advised as to various 
 points. 
 
 The work has been undertaken at the request of 
 Mrs. Gilfillan who gave the use of manuscripts ; and 
 this memorial volume is affectionately inscribed to 
 her. 
 
 DUNDEE, November, 1892. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Jfirst Jortg Jeare, i 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE VILLAGE, THE MANSE, THE PARENTS, . . 3 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 RELIGION AND NATURE, 19 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE STUDENT, 1825-1835, 31 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 EARLY MINISTRY, 1835-1850, 56 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 EARLIER WRITINGS, . . . . . . 80 
 
 ips attb fMtn-0, . ... . . .113 
 
 239 
 vii 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 ^toentg- Jib* JJears, ... .387 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 PROGRESS OF THOUGHT, ...... 389 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 PUBLIC LIFE, 1862-1878, ..... .422 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE CLOSE CHARACTERISTICS, ..... 441 
 
 Jtppmbtx, . . 459 
 
 JJi0t xrf jpubliration0, 4 62 
 
 Inbex, 468 
 

 THE FIRST FORTY YEARS. 
 
NOTE. When the History of a Man, or briefly, The 
 History is mentioned, the reference is to Mr. Gilfillan's 
 own book, which is partly autobiographical. 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 THE VILLAGE THE MANSE THE PARENTS. 
 
 O GOTLAND is a country of memories. Every- 
 O where the glens and uplands have their associa- 
 tion with national history ; the villages and towns 
 have names they cherish of poet or patriot, meta- 
 physician or divine, some man who wrote a song, 
 reasoned out a criticism, governed a dependency, or 
 maintained a protest. The austere norland promon- 
 tory is full of birthplaces and graves ; wherever one 
 goes, one is in touch with the life of many genera- 
 tions. Among the rest, the village of Comrie, and the 
 Strath of the Earn, are poorer than some. Comrie 
 does not boast the usual crop of poets ; but she has 
 her share in Scottish history, and she has George 
 Gilfillan. 
 
 The modern traveller, glancing westward as the 
 train flies along the skirts of the Ochils down the last 
 incline to Perth, sees Crieff set in full view upon a low 
 mound in front of the Grampians. Just out of sight, 
 within the first foldings of the mountain land, lies 
 Comrie, birthplace of George Gilfillan, awaiting the 
 closer touch of the world. The railway pushes a few 
 miles farther this year, and invades the basin of the 
 Earn ; it makes an outpost where, two thousand 
 years ago, the Roman came to halt before the natural 
 
 3 
 
GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 fortress of the Cymry. Soon there may be a change 
 in the aspect of the region. As yet, however, it breathes 
 of that past time when the weavers of Comrie made 
 their " plaiden cloth " and tartan, and the women in 
 the farm-houses and cottages span the " harn yarn " 
 and the " oo." The old-world air lingers about the 
 low streets that lace the three waters of Comrie. 
 One looks to- see a weaver come to a door ; one 
 listens for the click of the shuttle ; the village has a 
 mark upon it of the old seceders, in a sort of New 
 England steadiness and subdued thrifty comfort. It 
 is a clean, composed, orderly place, half Highland, 
 half of the Lowlands, with its elements of interest for 
 the student of Scottish history and abounding charm 
 for the lover of the Scots' land. By three ways the 
 voices of the mountain wilderness reach Comrie, and 
 eastward it has easy access to the vale of Strath- 
 more, to the great artery of the country and the world 
 at large. In " the subsidence of the Highland feudal 
 system " (see the Duke of Argyll's interesting book), 
 there must have been a gathering of industrious per- 
 sons in the haugh of the Earn ; we find traces of 
 them about the early eighteenth century ; and toward 
 1770, when the Appin region and others sent out 
 shiploads of emigrants to " the plantations " of a new 
 world, Comrie would seem to have kept a fair stan- 
 dard of prosperity. The weavers sat under their own 
 thatched roofs, cultivated their own potato plots, and 
 grew steadily in number until this century was well 
 forward. Even in 1834 there were two hundred of 
 them, but about that time there was a great outgoing 
 from the glens, and the population of the parish began 
 to fall. Now the " oo mill " stands silent beside its 
 dam ; all the looms are gone save two or three ; in 
 
THE VILLAGE THE MANSE THE PARENTS. 5 
 
 the glens the stones of dismantled dwellings are 
 grass-grown the children born within them have 
 children of their own grown to men and women on 
 Canadian farms. 
 
 In the year 1791 there came to Comrie a young 
 minister of Scotland's earliest dissenting church if 
 dissenting be at all a right name for a company of 
 people who were separated from the national Church 
 because they wished liberty to choose their pastors, 
 and to have men of fire and fervour. It: seems a 
 strange thing now to create dissent in this way. It 
 was done, however, and the Associate Synod formed 
 in reality a rekindling of the Covenanting spirit, never 
 extinct, never cold, under its gathering peat. The 
 Associate Synod became the Secession Church, and 
 the nurse of the free church principle. A small and 
 struggling communion, it held with touching insistence 
 to the idea of culture. The ministers should be all 
 university men, the pulpits that were claimed for 
 warmth should not be sacrificed to mere declaiming 
 and ignorant zeal. So the little groups of seceders 
 had to wait until ministers were trained ; some of 
 them waited a whole generation, sharing the services 
 of a minister with other groups at greater or less dis- 
 tance. The cause in Comrie was associated with one 
 at Greenloaning, thirteen miles across the southern 
 ridge, with one at Kinkell, seventeen miles away, with 
 CriefT, finally, for several years. Toward the end of 
 last century a Mr. Barlas was the minister of Crieff 
 and Comrie until, at last, it became possible for the 
 sixty-five members in the upper Strathearn region to 
 have " a man " of their own. They chose Samuel 
 Gilfillan, who was a popular probationer and had two 
 other calls. By act of Synod which, in those days, 
 
GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 used paternal authority and interpreted the mind of 
 providence with quaint decisiveness his lot was cast 
 for him in Comrie, and there, in April of the year 
 1791, he was ordained, the congregation having been 
 in existence for more than fifty years. 
 
 On the second day of that same April month, 
 Mirabeau died over in Paris, and was buried on the 
 fourth. During the following ten days the French 
 cauldron hissed and steamed to its overflow. In 
 England the man called John Wesley had just ended 
 his labours, Burke was at the height of his fame, 
 Hazlitt, a boy of thirteen, had written his first thesis. 
 It was a notable time in the history of Europe and 
 of man, but in one Scottish village the great affair 
 was the "settlement" of Samuel Gilfillan. 
 
 He was the son of a small shopkeeper in the 
 village of Bucklyvie, and with the character of his 
 parents we seem to come to an end of family tradi- 
 tions on that side. The father was "a man of 
 uncommon sagacity and controversial acumen ; 
 almost a republican in opinions," fond of reading and 
 also of talking. The minister of Comrie, in describ- 
 ing him once to a friend, thought it necessary to 
 speak of his father's religious life declining in his 
 latter days, " owing to his being too often engaged in 
 controversy, which makes the life of religion to 
 evaporate." As to this, there may be two opinions ; 
 there is left with us an impression of a vigorous 
 Scottish radical, a man of good parts and sincere 
 religious faith. " My mother," writes Samuel Gilfillan, 
 " was a woman of great piety and discretion, but of a 
 quick temper, and at some times susceptible of 
 gloomy impressions." She died, her husband married 
 again, and the son seems to have been separated 
 
THE VILLAGE THE MANSE THE PARENTS. 7 
 
 from home influences, until he formed ties of his 
 own. Curiously enough he, like his own son George, 
 was the youngest of a numerous family, with a gap 
 between him and the next in age. His education, 
 too, followed a similar course. He went to Glasgow 
 University, gathered a large amount of general 
 information, developed some aptitude for languages, 
 and a great appetite for literature, and became in 
 many respects, an attractive sort of fellow ; not a 
 genius, yet a remarkable man, with gifts approaching 
 genius a fine presence, a buoyant, expansive temper, 
 a simple, warm heart, and as a minister, no little 
 power of engaging utterance, and affectionate sym- 
 pathy. " He was frank to excess guile had been 
 forgotten in his composition ; he had a childlike 
 gaiety and warmth of manner from which he rose 
 gently into dignity. He was full of talk, and especi- 
 ally of anecdote and allusion, and had a knack, 
 altogether his own, of bringing in his religious views." 
 His pulpit work furnished many volumes, and a 
 book on the Sabbath ran into eleven editions. As 
 a preacher, he was serious, always animated, some- 
 times vehement, as the preachers of that day were 
 apt to be ; few, however, possessed " the inexpress- 
 ible charm, the naivete, the power of adapting his 
 discourse to every little incident which occurred in 
 the history of his audience, every smallest surge in 
 its stream. He stood up before his people . . . 
 to converse, on their level, solemnly yet easily, 
 about the matters of their eternity, and as the con- 
 versation went on he allowed himself the widest 
 range, gathering illustrations from every remarkable 
 aspect of the sky above, or any singular incident 
 below ; here quoting a verse of poetry, there an 
 
GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 anecdote from his multifarious stores, here again 
 snatching a shaft from the newspapers of the day, 
 watching the while every countenance, and obliging 
 everyone to return the eager glance ; and doing all 
 this with such perfect mastery, and in such evident 
 good faith, as to secure undivided attention." 
 
 The description is taken from an article of 
 George Gilfillan's, first published in Hoggs Instruc- 
 tor, December, 1848, and reprinted in the com- 
 plete edition of " The Galleries " as a sketch of 
 Dr. Anderson. It is in some respects more apt, more 
 picturesque than corresponding passages in "The 
 History of a Man " or " Remoter Stars." The less 
 graphic yet carefully tender biography prepared by 
 James Gilfillan of Stirling, touches more definitely on 
 some points, and in nothing contradicts the warm, 
 vivid portraiture of George. We see their father in 
 his weakness and power, a soul quick to respond and 
 quick to seize ; not original in the larger sense, yet 
 somewhat before his time. His papers in the CJirist- 
 ian Magazine, signed " Leumas," were eagerly read 
 by many all over Scotland the uncles of Hugh 
 Miller, for example. (See " My Schools and School- 
 masters.") He exerted himself too, in some later 
 years, in planting village libraries about the Perthshire 
 Highlands, and, altogether, though he was scarcely 
 ever quite out of sight of Comrie, he enjoyed no small 
 measure of popularity and usefulness. " The patri- 
 archal preacher," says his son, " died out among the 
 Swiss mountains, with Oberlin, and in Scotland, with 
 Dr. Joseph Maclntyre, of Glen Orchy, and Samuel 
 Gilfillan, of Comrie." 
 
 So far, the father and his work. He found a bride 
 in the Crieff manse, and in 1793, Rachel Barlas came 
 
THE VILLAGE THE MANSE THE PARENTS. 9 
 
 up to Comrie to keep house on fifty pounds a-year. 
 He was thirty-one, handsome, popular, full of energy ; 
 she was twenty-two, comely, prudent, and kind, a 
 woman of healthy nature and cheerful pious heart. 
 They lived together thirty-three years, had twelve 
 children, eight of whom grew up, and the annual 
 stipend never reached the hundred. There were 
 "ekes" of course; the minister's garden had to 
 supply a good deal, like other gardens ; farmers 
 would send in meal and " drive peats ; " Comrie 
 abounds in wood, and native cloth was cheap ; still, 
 it must have been tight work, for we may be quite 
 sure The Christian Magazine did not help much. 
 Yet all went with homely dignity, as in many another 
 manse; sons had education and were put out in the 
 world, the minister got some, at least, of the new 
 books and periodicals he craved, and even contrived 
 to "give out for printing" to the extent of a few 
 pounds now and then. How much of this came back 
 is not known, but a balance-sheet for one year was 
 unearthed a while ago by the present minister of the 
 church, the Rev. William Hall, and from that one 
 may learn several curious facts. It is for 1803, when 
 there may have been five children, and the income 
 was 62, 145. od., all told. The outlay for clothes 
 was 7, 33. 4d., for fuel, 2, 75. od., for meal, milk, 
 "loaf bread," eggs, butter, and so forth, 24, I2s. od., 
 for "butcher meat," 2, 175. od., and "servant's fee," 
 3, los. od. Books, binding, the printer, and the 
 post took 7, 6s. od., but there was a per contra of 
 2, 145. od. for books sold. The account closes with 
 an over-plus of i, 75. 2d., and the head of the house- 
 hold thanks God for all His mercies, temporal and 
 spiritual. A pretty stern reckoning on the material 
 
10 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 side, yet the sons add their witness to the many 
 testimonies Puritanism has from her children. Noth- 
 ing oppressive, nothing sordid mingled with the life ; 
 it was strenuous but highly rational, filled with clear 
 cheerfulness and the fine courage of the best Scottish 
 exertion. The intelligence of the father kept it from 
 being narrow ; he was no bigot, either in thought or 
 practice, and bare as the home was of modern com- 
 forts (at one time, no carpet on the parlour floor), it 
 was rich in genial human sense and stimulus. George 
 Gilfillan does not allow that even the Sabbaths were 
 a weariness to the boy-nature. Like John Paton, he 
 remembered them as days of high intellectual interest, 
 of intimacy with kindling thoughts ; the hills of 
 Strathearn seemed to stand in a purer light, and 
 vistas were opened beyond them, beyond mortal 
 vision. The looms were all silent, the grey church 
 set wide its door to the gathering population, the 
 minister, with his sense of the prophet's mantle and the 
 message to be delivered between morning and evening, 
 became, for that day, a new and fascinating person- 
 age, minister of mysteries, awakener of glorious 
 dreams. The evangelical preaching of those days 
 had ever a diapason under-rolling its calmest exposi- 
 tion. When it spoke of doctrines, the national 
 history was enfolded with the teaching for people 
 whose immediate ancestors had spoken with those 
 who knew " the killing time " and the terrible fervours 
 of torture-chamber, dungeon, and scaffold. Nothing 
 could have more effect upon a young and fiery mind. 
 Heroism was not linked with vague names of Greek 
 or Latin heroes far-away glories ! but with those 
 of people one knew. A few miles over a hill was a 
 spot where plain men of one's own kin shed their 
 
THE VILLAGE THE MANSE THE PARENTS, it 
 
 heart's blood for " Christ's Crown and Covenant," as 
 they conceived it. One's own father had refused a 
 good promise of preferment that he might be a 
 minister of the poor Anti-burgher Church. All this, 
 echoing through the Sabbath preachings, was no 
 mean element of a boy's nurture. And to the last 
 moment of his life the blood of the Scottish reformer 
 was strong in George Gilfillan's veins. He parted 
 with some of his ancestors' Calvinism, no doubt, 
 but never with the Covenanter's and Seceder's 
 faith. And the memory of his father as a 
 preacher was always a cherished memory a potent 
 example. 
 
 The mother's share in the life of the Comrie manse 
 must have been a strenuous one, but her cheerful 
 dignity seems never to have failed. She was a 
 woman comely to look upon, with the bright hair and 
 open look that descended to George, and her tem- 
 perament was of that prudent firm cordiality which 
 ensures the warm esteem of others. She was strong, 
 says their son, where her husband was weak. When 
 he was excited she was calm. " He "had much of 
 the child, not a little of the poet. My mother, too, 
 had a dash of the romantic in her composition ; was 
 an enthusiastic lover of nature ; delighted in reading 
 such poets as Milton, Thomson, and Cowper ; and 
 was, withal, of a quiet and composed character. 
 I never saw her angry, I never saw her weep ; she 
 loved my father warmly, but shed no tears at his 
 death ; the grief was within. ... A month after- 
 wards her hair became grey, and she looked ten years 
 older." 
 
 People who knew her, speak of the impression of 
 mental strength that her look gave, and the hearty 
 
12 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 pressure of her hand in meeting or parting, her 
 cheery glance and word. In poverty and narrow 
 circumstance she found, as other Puritan women have 
 found, the strength of a great hope ; in pain and 
 labour she earned a woman's praise, trusting ever in 
 her God and His providence. If it be true that the 
 lives of the human race are sucked through the ages 
 into one vast ocean from which the vapours of life 
 rise again to water the earth with new pangs, new 
 fears, new hopes, which yet are just the old ones 
 re-dropped in evolutionary rain then, indeed, are 
 such women most miserable, for what have they of 
 all their travail under the sun ? Strangely indeed, if 
 our neo-Pagans are right, have such as Rachel Barlas 
 kept their faith and " looked for a city." 
 
 " To a temperament, susceptible yet calm, a con- 
 stitution, impressible yet strong, Calvinism came as 
 an appropriate atmosphere," says Gilfillan, writing of 
 his mother. " That mixture of high severe principle 
 and ardent devotion, the one acting and reacting on 
 the other (the eternal decrees standing as snowy 
 Alps above, and the streams from them refreshing 
 and beautifying the warm valleys of practical Christ- 
 ianity below), the profound convictions implied in 
 Calvinism became the very life of my mother's soul. 
 Calvinism lifted her up and lowered her at the same 
 time. . . . While still young and beautiful she used to 
 retire to the churchyard of Comrie, and there in sight 
 of one of the most lovely prospects in Scotland, 
 spend many an hour in devout exercises. Afterward 
 her religion assumed a quieter and deeper tone, and, 
 after living a long, useful, and serene, though careful 
 and anxious life, she fell asleep in Jesus, eighty-two 
 years of age." 
 
THE VILLAGE THE MANSE THE PARENTS. 13 
 
 After referring to the influence of the same creed 
 on two characters so different as those of his parents, 
 George Gilfillan adds that " both loved the Bible as 
 they loved each other, with an affection lawful and 
 unlimited, and both loved nature with a tendresse of 
 which they felt perhaps a little ashamed." It may be 
 added here that Gilfillan never printed one word, as 
 to father or mother, wife or near friend, which might 
 not have been read aloud in the streets of Comrie 
 and Dundee. 
 
 George Gilfillan was the eleventh child of his 
 parents, and " received the unalterable honours of 
 birth" on the 3<Dth of January "a cold Saturday 
 morning" of the year 1813. The event took place 
 in the old manse, now, with the church, tottering to 
 decay in a back lane of Comrie. An attic of this 
 house was provided with an opening into the end of 
 the church, so that the mother detained at home with 
 her babes could yet hear her husband preach. The 
 dwelling was by no means one of the meanest, but it 
 stands low upon the margin of the mingling Earn and 
 Ruchil, and in George's childhood when the modest 
 income had grown a little a move was made to 
 the south-lying district called Dalginross, which is 
 accounted the healthiest part of Comrie. It is this 
 home, chiefly, that is associated with Gilfillan's earlier 
 recollections. From it he had those walks v/ith his 
 father to church, or to the old garden beside .the 
 preaching green where the present manse was built. 
 In an upper room of this Dalginross home his father 
 died. 
 
 The youngest living child of the family, George was 
 left, by three deaths, in the position practically of 
 an only son. The other brothers were out of the 
 
GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 nest before he came to it, James to be a minister, 
 William to the cotton trade in Glasgow, a third to 
 a ramble which led him as far as Australia. One 
 sister married early, another somewhat later, three 
 remained with the mother, and beyond them, separated 
 in various ways, stood this eager-eyed boy, his father's 
 own son, and, for a few happy years his father's 
 favoured companion. " It was inevitable," he says, 
 " that I should be left a good deal alone in the house, 
 and should resort much to my father's company, who 
 was besides very partial to me. Never shall I forget 
 that sweetest intercourse ! . . . Between the &ar- 
 
 o 
 
 den and house was his favourite walk ; and, as 
 I accompanied him, I derived more pleasure, and more 
 information too, in an hour or two than from days of 
 my ordinary teachers. Now he asked questions ; 
 now he encouraged me to ask questions of him ; now 
 he stooped over a flower and told me something of its 
 construction, or repeated the famous story of Beattie 
 and the cresses. Now his eye caught a cloud, and 
 straightway his fine simple fancy a fancy resembling 
 in some points that of Addison was stirred, and 
 his soaring was as beautiful as it was brief. Now he 
 expatiated on some author of genius, Milton, Johnson, 
 or Cowper ; and his criticisms, if not subtle and 
 refined, were glowing and generous ; and now he told 
 me anecdotes of his early struggles and college 
 career, of which I remember little but a general 
 impression of their interest, and the genial humour in 
 which some of them were enshrined. Besides being 
 often with him in his walks, I was a good deal with 
 him in his study. The window of that ropm looked 
 out upon the fields and woods, ' having a look south- 
 ward and being open to the whole noon of nature/ 
 
THE VILLAGE THE MANSE THE PARENTS. 15 
 
 and near that window my father's desk was sure to be 
 placed. His books were collected in a recess, and 
 there I was often found, seated on a stool, and poring 
 over a book to the tune of my father's pen racing 
 over a page, and sometimes of his voice directing me 
 to consult a volume or supply a date." 
 
 Further on he tells how, when he had secured, by 
 stealth, a copy of " Rob Roy," and was found reading 
 it, his father took the book and put it away in his 
 own desk ; but was himself caught, a day or two 
 later, his desk half open and his grey head bent to 
 the spell that had entangled the boy : whereupon, 
 like a sensible man and a lover of genius, he smiled 
 and gave back the tale. No doubt he finished it 
 himself afterwards. The mother held somewhat 
 stricter views, but the little story is enough to show 
 what is implied in all Gilfillan's notes of his father, 
 that between these two there was a very good under- 
 standing. The nature of each was touched with the 
 same prickly heat ; and, if the parent had lived to an 
 advanced age he would have seen the eager intel- 
 ligence of his own life bearing a fruit of rougher rind 
 and stronger flavour. He fulfilled himself, one may 
 say, to the limit of time-powers ; his son was, to the 
 end, after a striking and influential career, to some 
 extent an unfulfilled prophecy. Did the difference 
 lie in circumstance or in the blood, or in that war 
 between the two which accounts for so much in our 
 human story ? It is certain that the boy had powers, 
 early asserting themselves, which required, and would 
 have answered to, a strong discipline ; and this was 
 wanting to him, both in childhood and youth. With 
 his father's library, and his father's talk, with the 
 Highland voices breathing continually about him, with 
 
16 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 self-chosen exercises that will be referred to presently, 
 and the occasional flash of some great book, like a 
 November meteor, across his sky, the lad found 
 much stimulus, but too little direction ; the mind 
 awakened fast, but lacked steady guidance on the 
 mental side. 
 
 At the same time, what is loss, what gain, in 
 the development of a spirit and a spirit so original, 
 so " forgitive " as that of George Gilfillan ? The only 
 thing irreparable in any life is to let go one's great 
 intuitions. For the rest, it is as Carlyle said : " The 
 expressly appointed schoolmasters and schoolings we 
 get are as nothing compared with the unappointed, 
 incidental, and continual ones, whose school-hours are 
 all the days and nights of our existence, and whose 
 lessons, noticed or unnoticed, stream in upon us with 
 every breath we draw." 
 
 Three influences chiefly swayed the life of Gilfillan 
 from his early days. They were Literary heroes 
 Highland scenery, and his father's free church minis- 
 try. The first two of these have to be traced in some 
 detail, for they were extraordinarily operative ; the 
 third interwove itself with all, but as a memory, for in 
 the autumn of 1826 the father was suddenly taken away. 
 Once and again the story is told by his younger son, 
 and each piece has its own bits of detail plucked 
 alive from a memory that forgot nothing which had 
 ever been of interest to it, least of all a matter of such 
 intense pain and pity as this death. 
 
 " It had been a splendid season ; and, although not 
 very robust, my father had enjoyed himself exceed- 
 ingly. ... I see him yet, sitting under a tree, when 
 the sun was westering in the afternoon, or when a 
 dim haze was covering the sky, telling us that this 
 
THE VILLAGE THE MANSE THE PARENTS. 17 
 
 was the kind of weather common in Peru. He was 
 preaching with even more than his usual power and 
 vivacity, and as autumn arrived seemed to enter on 
 an Indian summer. I shall never forget seeing him, 
 with my mother, setting out on his last excursion. 
 I had gone over to the village library for a volume 
 of Plutarch, which I was holding as a prize, and 
 occasionally stopping to read. Returning, I met my 
 parents setting out on the last walk they were ever 
 to have in this world. My father asked me, ' What 
 book is that ? ' I told him, and he darted at me a 
 look of eager complacency which has since often 
 been a key to unlock the fountain of my tearful 
 memories, and sometimes a ' perge ' to cheer me on 
 my way. It seemed to say, ' Be, if you can, a hero 
 like those whose lives you are about to read.' He 
 and my mother were going to visit a family in the 
 country. They returned at night (Wednesday, nth 
 October), and were scarcely home till my good, kind 
 father was seized with his last illness." 
 
 One who has reared a deathless trophy says of her 
 beloved in brief, keen words : " Never in all her life 
 had she lingered over any task that lay before her, 
 and she did not linger now. She sank rapidly. She 
 made haste to leave us." So might it have been said 
 of Samuel Gilfillan. The strong man wrestled with 
 the stronger than he, who had overtaken him, then 
 gave the victor his spoils and ended the struggle. 
 Two days he fought. The Saturday was an interlude, 
 " a quiet, grey day," and the disease seemed quelled. 
 The following morning a boy awoke in the grey 
 dawn to an experience he never forgot, the voice of a 
 father's anguish, renewed and renewed, till at last the 
 strength was exhausted, and silent spent farewells 
 
 C 
 
1 8 GEORGE GIL FILL AN. 
 
 succeeded to broken message and entreaty. His eye 
 lingered to the last upon her, who, the heavier labours 
 over, had looked for a gentle evening of life with him 
 and now stood " in calm, speechless sorrow, like one 
 seeing from the shore a friend rushing down a 
 remorseless rapid." Ere evening the rapids were 
 passed, " the presence of death was authentically pro- 
 claimed ; we turned from the bed, and looked with a 
 sick and strange emotion to the golden autumn day, 
 the stubble fields, the lonely hills, the solemn silence 
 of the Sabbath, which seemed to lie in sympathy 
 without." 
 
 " I was a child no more. I had lost in one day my 
 father and my childhood." 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 RELIGION AND NATURE. 
 
 THE influences that shaped Gilfillan's mind and 
 gave to his inner life its direction and colour 
 were more various than his early situation might have 
 seemed to promise. Comrie was an outlying village, 
 communicating with the outer world by means of a 
 weekly carrier, and though the atmosphere was far 
 from stupid, as we have seen, it cannot be thought of 
 as rich in material for an eager mind. Nevertheless, 
 in one way or another, the Gilfillans, father and sons, 
 obtained books and learned what was going on in the 
 world. Great names were borne on the breezes and 
 occasionally flittered through the conversation of 
 visitors. The local influences were those of nature 
 and religion ; the former felt chiefly by a few, the 
 latter sufficing nobly in many cases. For the special 
 case, however, the religious element in Comrie might 
 not suffice. One who refused definite fashioning and 
 could not endure restraint might fly altogether into 
 a land of his own choosing. Hazlitt, son of a dissent- 
 ing minister down in Shropshire, repudiates his early 
 associations so decidedly that he once confesses to 
 Leigh Hunt, " no thoughts on religion at all ; " that 
 greatest region of man's psychical and moral effort a 
 mere void to him. Gilfillan never went out into this 
 
 19 
 
20 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 desert. His was a religious soul. He loved imagina- 
 tion not wisely, but too well in some respects ; the 
 beautiful was always to him, wherever he found it, the 
 Divine. Yet nothing could be beautiful for him which 
 did not contain or suggest a thought of God. He 
 was not repelled by the Puritanism of Comrie ; 
 neither was he straitly fashioned ; and his originality 
 is seen in this, that for himself, by a native instinct, he 
 seized on the ideas essential to religion and those 
 essential to literature, and was the first to present, in 
 popular and taking form, a criticism of life that was 
 true, equally to each realm, in all necessary matters. 
 To many religious persons of his time he represented 
 the inrush of the secular spirit, heresy, and lawless- 
 ness ; for others, his desire to reach a new construc- 
 tion in faith was simply ruin to his character as critic 
 and literary man. There are many who set him on 
 one side as a man spoiled by theology. His effort, 
 they will say, was an impossible one. But the 
 religious world ought, at last, thoroughly to recognise 
 his genius and his achievement. 
 
 The Puritan home of childhood planted deep in 
 him its sense of moral order, and the convic- 
 tion, or, at least, the hope of certain great ideas, 
 "poem-mysteries" of faith. Whereunto he did 
 not attain in this he cast ever a look of ardent 
 regard and sympathy. No one can read his 
 writings in the most casual way, and not feel 
 the heart-throbs of a man to whom the word Christ 
 is the name above every name, the centre of the vast 
 processions of time, and the thought of the Eternal 
 Father the one oracle by which the soul makes its way 
 over the sands of destiny. Gilfillan, like many another, 
 found a riddle in Nature which he could never read. 
 
RELIGION AND NATURE. 21 
 
 The perpetual question was his question, but, happily, 
 the hope too : 
 
 " What of the heart of hate, 
 
 That beats in thy breast, O time ? 
 Red strife from the furthest prime, 
 And anguish of fierce debate ; 
 War that shatters her slain, 
 And peace that grinds them as grain, 
 And eyes fixed ever in vain, 
 On the pitiless eyes of Fate. 
 Still we say as we go, 
 
 ' Strange to think by the way, 
 Whatever there is to know, 
 That shall we know some day.' " 
 
 The greatest genius rises above that, above the 
 zone of storm ; but Gilfillan was always on the 
 shoulders of his own Ben Voirlich, where winds blow 
 and mists sweep, and the glorious panorama around 
 is caught in dazzling moments. His religious life 
 knew some great hours, little calm weather. If there 
 came to him such a time as came to Chalmers and 
 Duncan, it could not so thoroughly sweep his energy 
 before it. Haunted as he was, from the cradle to the 
 grave, by that double voice in the breast which men 
 call " the temperament of genius," it was impossible 
 for him to rise from a sick-bed and go forth, like 
 Chalmers, in the robust simplicity of a realised mis- 
 sion, or, like Rabbi Duncan, to accept repose and 
 hope as the satisfaction of the reason. Gilfillan 
 wanted the interpretation of the intellectual-religious 
 life ; and he never found it. He was one of those 
 who have to say at the end, " The chase takes our 
 life that is all!" To the majority of religious 
 people it seems too much. For them it is parting 
 with the benefit of Christ's sacrifice ; the believer 
 
GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 should find the dual voices hushed within him, and 
 the antinomy of nature overcome by the message of 
 Calvary. 
 
 They are right if they can attain to it. They 
 are right if their hearts do not condemn them. But 
 the simple faith that has left the name of Chalmers 
 clear on one page of Scottish history, and that of 
 John Cairns luminous on another, was not possible 
 to Gilfillan. If Cairns was haunted, he bore the 
 sense of it as a private weakness. To him the riddle 
 lay in the broken stream of Christianity, tortured 
 among old-time rocks and wasted in pools. Let men 
 seek, as they might, a clear course for the waters to 
 sweep through the lands. No private need could 
 overbear the need for that. At the very opposite of 
 John Cairns stood George Gilfillan, full of the per- 
 sonal question, turning now upon the church, now 
 upon the sceptic outside the church, upholding with 
 fervour the institutions of Puritanism, and then 
 shocking the Puritan by an eloge of Shelley or 
 Byron, a satire upon well-known ecclesiastics. All 
 this was harder to understand fifty years ago than 
 it is now. Gilfillan was one of those who have made 
 it possible for two men different as himself and John 
 Cairns to be ministers of the same church, the one 
 seeing Limitation as the law of Power, the other 
 feeling passionately the demand that power, in the 
 individual, ever raises for freedom. 
 
 The startling departure from himself which 
 Gilfillan seemed to make in " Christianity and 
 our Era" is a testimony to the strength of his 
 religious feelings, and the hold upon him of the 
 Church and the Church's pre-suppositions. He was 
 never one to fight and feel no wound ; he loved to 
 
RELIGION AND NATURE. 23 
 
 have the air warm around him ; above all, he clung 
 more and more to the great Figure on the Rock of 
 Calvary ; and while some inferior motives might mix 
 themselves, these great impulsions were no doubt the 
 cause of the new tone he seemed to adopt about the 
 year 1856. If inconsistency there were and that is 
 not proven to those who really know the man it 
 may well be forgiven by any who are concerned to 
 find him as earnest for faith as for liberty, as much 
 the Christian as the man of intellect. 
 
 And that he was, though he had to swim for the 
 life of his soul in a perilous sea. " The longer I live," 
 he once wrote to his friend Aird, " I am the more 
 firmly persuaded of the truth of our blessed faith, and 
 more anxious to do some little thing in its defence. 
 Oh, that I had as much of the spirit and grace of 
 Christianity as I have firmness of conviction in its 
 truth ! " Indeed, no one who knew him could doubt 
 that Gilfillan lived out his storm and stress in the 
 hope of the Gospel, a hope that never died away 
 though the soil of creed out of which it sprang was 
 loosened in frost and rain. 
 
 His friend, Thomas Aird, was fond of repeating, 
 " The great heart of the world is just," and the heart 
 of the Scots world has responded wonderfully to 
 George Gilfillan's. It has understood that he never 
 left behind him the great traditions of the fathers, 
 and that when he failed, even, he failed as one whose 
 passion was for highest truth and fairest beauty, for 
 Christian truth and Christian life. 
 
 How could it be otherwise ? He was extremely 
 sensitive to all large and kindling ideas, and as a mere 
 culture there is no rival to Christianity in the field of 
 human research or speculation. Take the form of it 
 
24 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 called Calvinism. Be its sins what they may, it is a 
 tremendous mental discipline, and has proved itself, 
 the world over, a unique instrument of mental no less 
 than moral development. The world is beginning to 
 see this, and there is no need to enlarge upon the fact. 
 Calvinism has entered into the life of the race with 
 strong affirmations and infinite possibilities. It is a 
 logic suffused with imagination both stern, both 
 majestic, coming with power to men who know the 
 struggle of time and desire the judgment of eternity. 
 The seceders of Scotland were such men, and there 
 were amongst them, from the first, many souls of 
 singular force and subtlety, many in whom was seen 
 a fine " other-worldliness " a strange and simple 
 charm. Among the ministers of Gilfillan's youth 
 scattered about the towns and villages of Scotland 
 were such men as Dr. Heugh, Dr. Young of Perth, 
 Dr. Jamieson of the Scottish Dictionary, and not a 
 few others who, in more public situations, related 
 visibly to affairs and persons called " important," 
 would have been known to general history by this 
 time as a very striking group of human personalities. 
 
 "About 1820," says Gilfillan, "genius was mainly 
 on the side of Christianity ; " and with Hall and 
 Chalmers, Irving and the Parthian Foster, he names 
 his father's friend John Jameson, minister of Methven, 
 near Perth. Dr. Cairns, in his life of Dr. John Brown, 
 endorses the estimate of Jameson as a man in whom 
 a certain unquestionable originality was lodged, and 
 Gilfillan's picture of him is confirmed by the portrait 
 in the memoir. There we see the face of a " wise- 
 like " boy, touched with a sorrowful experience that 
 feels strange to the guileless soul, and with a quaint 
 wistfulness of outlook, as of one who has heard angels 
 
RELIGION AND NATURE. 25 
 
 speak to him by the way, and would fain see them. 
 In the eyes a bright simplicity, on the shy lips a 
 tremulous patience ; the grey hair, falling back from 
 a high brow, is inappropriate to the rest. 
 
 As a very close friend of the family, Mr. Jameson 
 gave Samuel Gilfillan's funeral sermon ; and he 
 admitted George to the fellowship of the church, at a 
 Criefif communion, probably in the following year. His 
 preaching was full of charm for the lad, unequal, and 
 sometimes strangely wandering as it was. " His face," 
 says Gilfillan, " was long, thin, colourless, with a rapt 
 yet mild expression lying on it, like a sleepy sun- 
 shine ; his manner was now slow and drawling, now 
 fierce and violent. ... It was at Stirling, I think, 
 that my first impression of his peculiar genius was 
 received. I well remember, on an autumnal Saturday 
 evening, about the year 1825, being sent with a candle 
 into the room where he was alone, preparing for the 
 labours of the morrow, no notes or books beside 
 him, but on his face a look of rapt contemplation I 
 shall never forget." He goes on to recall the oddity 
 of Jameson's manner in the pulpit, the lingering 
 suggestiveness of some phrases, the canty pathos of 
 others, the weird rush with which he launched into 
 space when seized by a thought or a dream. It was 
 old-world preaching as to style, but infused with the 
 charm of a meek yet discerning personality. " There 
 was a generous incredulity in his heart, and about 
 his mind a fine floating atmosphere of enthusiasm. 
 Nature he loved to a passion. Literature was very 
 dear to him. His blood rose when he talked of. 
 Campbell's poetry or Scott's novels ; and his cheek 
 flushed a deep red, I remember, when I repeated to 
 him Blake's lines on the tiger, which till then he had 
 
26 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 not known/' Gilfillan adds that in untaught gentle- 
 manhood his old friend brought to mind the beloved 
 disciple. " You wondered that he was not translated." 
 
 But indeed he was. His father Anti-Burgher 
 minister in Kilwinning died kneeling at his chair 
 while the son conducted family prayer ; and the son 
 was writing a letter in his Methven study one day on 
 behalf of a parishioner, when a touch arrested his 
 hand : he lay down upon the hearth, and there a 
 daughter discovered him not long afterwards "with 
 the smile shining all radiant upon his face." They 
 say it was to be seen at the closing of the coffin. 
 
 This minister of Methven, who found in the evan- 
 gelicalism of our early century "a shelter and an 
 inspiration," did as much as any one to make 
 George Gilfillan draw towards it in the same way. 
 Jameson appears under the name Elphinstone in 
 " The History," but a paper in Hogg's Instructor, 1851, 
 gives a fuller portrait and more indication of 
 Gilfillan's debt to him. In this friend, as in his 
 own father, he saw warm and tender piety associated 
 with the keenest appetite for literature, art, nature, 
 with the love of song and rippling humour. The 
 intellectual life was honoured, practical duty no less, 
 man's existence not on any side ignored or practically 
 misunderstood. 
 
 Among the influences of youth Gilfillan himself 
 names the " tent preachings," those periodical 
 assemblies which seemed to combine all that was best 
 with some of what was worst in the Scottish character, 
 its passion for great ideas and for the intimacies of 
 nature, its rude freedom and noisy force. The tent 
 preachings have been often described, often, perhaps, 
 misconceived. In Gilfillan's youth they were drawing 
 
RELIGION AND NATURE. 27 
 
 to their close. Dr. Paton Gloag says they ended 
 shortly before his own time in lowland parishes, but 
 Comrie was half Highland, and he frequently assisted 
 there, during the ministry of Dr. Macdonald, in com- 
 munion services of a transition kind. Among the 
 Secession churches the custom seems to have lingered, 
 yet the great gathering at Comrie, in the beautiful 
 July of 1834, was probably among the last at which 
 Gilfillan was present. And in his description all is 
 favourable superb weather, impassioned utterance, 
 Mitchell preaching, Jameson in one of his finest 
 moods, the amphitheatre of dark hills rising against 
 the sky, and the muffled voice of the torrent stealing 
 out of a secret gorge. Religion and nature came 
 together here, the improvisator for God lifted his 
 voice over wood and stream, the crowds wavered 
 between high-strung feeling and secular recoil, the 
 whole event was full of drama and excitement, and 
 in all the assembly no one so quick to share these, or 
 so apt to retain a wild keen glow as Gilfillan, who, in 
 seeming carelessness, looked now to the mountains, 
 now to the bridge where Earn and Ruchil mingled 
 their waters, now glared at the audience and now at 
 the preacher. The story goes that when he was a 
 boy the circle of devout, scandalised by his manner, 
 would " quarrel " him afterwards for his airs, but 
 always found that he could repeat more of the dis- 
 courses than they could. His interest in preaching as 
 a fine art was ever of the keenest, and the scene which, 
 as he says, "stirred even dull men, and electrified 
 men of genius," thrilled himself with the charm of two 
 worlds. A large assembly never failed to have the 
 effect upon him of potent wine, running through his 
 veins, exciting every cell of the brain. And these 
 
28 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 gatherings were in the open, under a glorious summer 
 sky, fenced with blue hill and plumy wood ! The 
 mysteries of faith blent with those of earth ; the 
 insignificance of man as the last term of a mortal 
 series gave place to his power of insight and predic- 
 tion, the spell he drew from the clouds and cast over 
 his fellow-men. 
 
 Tent preachings are gone, with a departed age, its 
 vices and virtues, but in their passing they helped to 
 form the strength and the weakness of George Gilfillan. 
 
 The influence of Highland scenery must not be 
 passed over, in estimating Gilfillan. Perhaps it is 
 unwise to say of any genius that he was too much 
 alone in the natural habitat, that they had too much 
 to say to each other. Is it not this intimacy that 
 makes the genius ? And yet, if any one asks why this 
 man never came to his full heritage, the answer is 
 easily given ; he was too rich in youth, and rejoiced 
 too soon in his strength. In a sense he was an 
 intellectual libertine ; his boyhood in the Earn valley 
 gave him such a sense of the glory of tumultuous life 
 and abounding force. Those who were unaware of his 
 early circumstances may well have marvelled how the 
 literary instinct that was so strong in Gilfillan did not 
 compel him to chasten the excursions of his pen, and 
 how the penetrating judgment that made him a 
 singularly acute and stimulating critic did not apply 
 itself to his own aims and results. How could he be 
 satisfied with his style ? Could he fail to know that 
 he not infrequently drove upon the perilous edge, and 
 came home with the clay of mere bombast soiling the 
 wheels of his equipage? He did know it, but he 
 reproached himself too late. After forty it is as hard to 
 acquire a style as to shed a habit, and George Gilfillan, 
 
RELIGION AND NATURE. 29 
 
 if a son of Christopher North, was no less the child of 
 nature. His style was a Highland water, tearing a 
 glen for itself through the hills. Wander up the 
 Lednock valley after a week of storm, and you will 
 come at the secret of him in this point. Here a spell 
 was cast upon him that lasted his life. 
 
 The Lednock is a reserved and gloomy torrent, 
 keeping its passion more to itself than some others 
 do, and sliding swiftly from an open pastoral glen to 
 a dark rift of tree and rock from which it does not 
 emerge until its fury is spent, its dolour over, and it 
 becomes the babbling tributary of the Earn. You 
 stand on the brink of the gorge and listen to the 
 hidden thunder of the cataract above ; you descend 
 to the ledges beside the falls and watch the white fury 
 of the water-fiend as it flies from one black wall of 
 rock to be flung back from another, and hurl itself 
 out of your sight through the quick descending ravine 
 and the covering wood. That living torment of insati- 
 able desire, that keen fling of power against power, 
 that roar and hiss of a spirit leaping from one grave 
 to another conceive the effect upon an imaginative, 
 lonely boy, of pure Highland type, in mind and body, 
 who made his home as it were in this rift in the hills, 
 and came to know every note in the mingled shriek 
 and diapason of the water-spirit. Comrie has other 
 charms the brown babble of the Ruchil as it breaks 
 out of Glen Artney, the silent flow of the Earn, the 
 variety of line and richness of effect in the sweep of 
 the heights from pass to pass. But the weird trouble 
 of the Lednock had the most attraction for Samuel 
 Gilfillan's youngest son. We may think of him hang- 
 ing over the Deil's Cauldron, and vainly trying to 
 find words to express that ! No words can express it ; 
 
30 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 the thing is elemental and defies the symbol ; and in 
 George Gilfillan, too, there was a something elemental, 
 demanding, yet for ever unsatisfied with the most 
 vehement forms of human speech. Ossian, Byron, 
 Shelley, Wilson, Foster, Burke, Burns Foster, who 
 might have been a hermit of that Lednock chasm 
 all continued the craving aroused by the natural force. 
 The human spirit in its panting after the sublime, the 
 free, the strong, was it not a great Lednock, hurling 
 itself out of the earth against the iron walls that confine 
 thought and desire? The youth felt in himself a 
 throb at least of that which burned in poets and 
 patriots of his land, the poignant strife of the soul 
 with convention, with circumstance, with high and 
 deep necessity. How could the spirit deliver itself in 
 words written or spoken? Life is more than any 
 symbol. 
 
 True very strikingly of Carlyle, our greatest ; this 
 is true also of Gilfillan, and in his case the cosmic 
 influences " natural scenery " as we say were far 
 more intimately felt than by Carlyle. They were felt 
 as part of religion. That, too, was more than any 
 symbol. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE STUDENT, 1825-1835. 
 
 WITH the flash and gloom of the mountain 
 torrent in his soul, a country boy, but already 
 an observer of the larger world, George Gilfillan joined 
 in November, 1825, the first Latin class at Glasgow 
 University. Not yet thirteen years of age, he went 
 from Mr. Drummond's school, over against the church 
 of Comrie, within easy reach of crag, and wood, and 
 brawling stream, where lessons were an interlude in 
 the teaching of nature rather than the business of life, 
 to the crowded class-room in which keen city youth 
 met country novice, not without urbane scorn, and 
 distinction had to be won on harder terms. Gilfillan 
 seems to have felt the contrast, for his first session 
 has no notice in his recollections. 
 
 In the " History of a Man " he speaks of the follow- 
 ing winter as that in which he plunged into the new 
 life. The session began within a few weeks of his 
 father's death ; and as he took the southward road on 
 a quiet bright day of November, 1826, the landscape 
 appeared to be "suffused with a tenderer sadness." 
 " I had much in the past, and in the future," he says, 
 " which might well have made me melancholy ; but 
 what can depress the bubbling blood of fourteen ? " 
 
 It was unfortunate that firmer government at home 
 
32 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 and at school had not prepared him better for the 
 University. But every Scottish boy was expected to 
 bend himself to hard study by a sort of natural pre- 
 disposition ; and, although George had been wayward 
 and dreamy hitherto, would he not, like others, give 
 his whole mind now to the regulation tasks ? College 
 life, however, did not awaken the instinct. Books 
 were his enthusiasm, and those that attracted him 
 were devoured in haste. On the other hand, he dis- 
 liked the steady grind necessary to scholarship. His 
 earliest joy in Glasgow was not to find himself a red- 
 gowned student with the hope of academical distinc- 
 tion, but to discover in the house of the relation with 
 whom he lived a complete copy of " Shakespeare," the 
 first he had ever seen. "On Saturday mornings," 
 says the " History," " the only mornings the students 
 were not compelled to rise at seven and repair to their 
 classes, I was wont, awakening at the usual hour, to 
 dart out of a sofa-bed where I lay, and, seizing on 
 Shakespeare, keep it pressed to my bosom till the 
 first peep of day, when I lay on in luxurious enjoy- 
 ment, nestling among the warm blankets and reading 
 the immortal page." 
 
 The classes he attended in 1826-27 were Latin and 
 Greek, the Latin taught by Josiah Walker, the Greek 
 by Daniel Keyte Sandford. With a vein of social 
 or oratorical ambition, which led him afterwards to 
 become a candidate for Parliament, Sandford was a 
 strict disciplinarian, a patient teacher, an enthusiast 
 in his subject. " He showed," says Gilfillan, "a genuine 
 love of learning. Greek, we saw, was his universe." 
 The writing of Greek verse he greatly insisted on ; 
 but to this literary " divertisement " George never took 
 kindly. " While my fellow-students were making 
 
THE STUDENT, 1825-1835. 33 
 
 their hexameters and iambics, as they often did ex- 
 tempore in the class, I had a volume of Old Mor- 
 tality or of Tom Jones with me, and forgot what 
 I then deemed the pedantic hubbub around while 
 thrilling beside Burley in the cave, or accompany- 
 ing Jones and Partridge in their memorable night 
 journey." 
 
 This session was distinguished by an event which 
 thoroughly aroused young Gilfillan's literary enthu- 
 siasm the election of Thomas Campbell, the poet, 
 to the office of Lord Rector. He had always a keen 
 and proud remembrance of that high day in the Col- 
 lege when Campbell came to be installed and to 
 deliver his inaugural address. " I saw the pale, thin, 
 sensitive-faced poet, with those black, beaming eyes, 
 rising up to bespeak the breathless assembly. I 
 noticed that tremble in his voice and manner of 
 which his biographer speaks in describing the scene, 
 which left him, however, as he proceeded. I remem- 
 ber the effect produced by some of his better pas- 
 sages. When he said, for instance, that he was ' far 
 from wishing to damp the spirit of any boy-poet,' 
 a hundred young, ingenuous faces instantaneously 
 sparkled up as in a gleam of sudden sunshine." 
 Campbell seems to have electrified his young con- 
 stituents. " When we saw the active little man, 
 with his frank, easy manner and his universal fame, 
 walking daily in the midst of us, it was as if ' the 
 gods had come down to us in the likeness of men.' " 
 
 The summer of 1827 was spent at Comrie. The 
 cottage to which his mother and sisters soon after- 
 wards removed stands by the road to Strowan, on the 
 verge of a plantation which became to George a 
 mystical retreat. His studies were not neglected. 
 
 D 
 
34 GEORGE GIL FILL AN. 
 
 To read the Iliad and Lucian he rose at six in the 
 morning for a while. But his great discovery was 
 Chalmers' " Astronomical Discourses," which happily 
 gave his thought that spiritual direction it was in 
 danger of losing. Smollett, Fielding, and Scott were 
 beckoning him to humour, freedom, and romance. 
 Till he found Chalmers it might have appeared that 
 striking genius and power lay chiefly on the secular 
 side, and following Byron and the older novelists he 
 might have come to think of religion as too limiting 
 for a fiery spirit. Now he saw that one might have 
 literary power, might be eloquent and command the 
 ear of the age, might even be scientific, and none the 
 less Christian. It was romance turned to the highest 
 use, striking the bold and glowing notes of an eternal 
 lyre. He had been prepared by the influence of his 
 father and Mr. Jameson to find that religion could 
 expand by its own force into the widest region of 
 thought, and ally itself divinely with intellectual art. 
 Now he learned how the miracle was wrought ; and 
 Chalmers became a spiritual father. In one of his 
 first articles of any note, contributed in 1839 to the 
 Edinburgh University Magazine, he has the following 
 passage : " Hazlitt has recorded with much gusto his 
 first perusal of this volume (the ' Astronomical 
 Discourses'), under an apple-tree in the garden at 
 Boxhill. I shall not soon forget the time and 
 circumstances in which I first read it in the solitude 
 of a mountainous country, and at the age of fifteen. 
 Fontenelle had previously taught me the doctrine of 
 a plurality of worlds ; but Chalmers drew first fully 
 the curtain from the glories of the universe, and 
 showed my young soul some of the secrets of that 
 abyss which is foaming with worlds. I felt lifted up, 
 
THE STUDENT, 1825-1835. 35 
 
 upon his style as upon wings, into those regions 
 'calm, of mild and serene air/ where burn the 
 innumerous and eternal stars. I learned, speaking it 
 reverently, to take up the earth and all its isles as a 
 very little thing. ... It is a proud and lofty moment 
 when the imagination first launches away into that 
 great ocean, every wave of which is a world. And 
 I shall cherish its memory for ever." 
 
 Eager to sail forth on the mare magnum of English 
 composition, Gilfillan joined the logic class of 1827-28. 
 Of Buchanan the professor he says that " his sym- 
 pathies, on the whole, were with the artificial and 
 conventional." Yet he acknowledges the high 
 accomplishment, varied knowledge, and strong good 
 sense of the teacher. Three essays a -week were 
 required for the first part of the session, and towards 
 the close the writing of five large themes, a logic 
 essay, the analysis of part of a classical poem, an 
 exegesis, an oration, and a descriptive essay, in prose 
 or verse at the writer's pleasure. A fellow-student, 
 James Howie, M.D., author of " Sketches of Britain," 
 &c., dating in 1878 from Cuba, Mo., U.S.A., says: 
 " We were in the logic class together, and somewhat 
 early in the session of 1827-28 I well remember the 
 young, tall lad, dressed neatly, but in apparently 
 homespun garb, being called upon to read an essay 
 on the association of ideas, the subject for the class 
 given out two days before. The first words of 
 Professor Buchanan's criticism were, ' We have got a 
 young Chalmers among us ; ' and instantly we made 
 the floor and benches sound loud with our feet, the 
 Professor trying to modify his praise by saying that 
 he did not mean that logic students were to follow 
 the style of Dr. Chalmers. But the explanation only 
 
36 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 increased the noise ; and it being near the end of the 
 hour, no doubt to the relief of the Professor, we were 
 dismissed in great glee." 
 
 " How vividly," says Gilfillan, " I remember that 
 happiest of all my college sessions the bench (it was 
 number five) where I sat in the class the figures of 
 the students who were nearest me, as well as those of 
 the more distinguished scattered throughout the hall." 
 Among others, he mentions Robert Cotton Mather, 
 William Hanna, John Eadie, and John Croumbie 
 Brown. Two sessions later, Archibald Swinton, Tait 
 (afterwards Archbishop), and Morell Mackenzie, of 
 whom " Remoter Stars " contains a sketch, were the 
 triumvirate of the year. 
 
 Closing the session with distinction, the lad returned 
 to Comrie in the highest spirits. Writing was now 
 his luxury, and when that could not be afforded, for 
 paper was often beyond his means, he practised a 
 method of what he calls " internal composition " by 
 the river or among the woods. An essay on the 
 Scottish Covenanters, written partly this summer and 
 partly in 1829, long lost and almost forgotten, was 
 found in 1863 by his brother and put into his hands. 
 " It seemed," he says, " a buried bone of my body 
 revivified. Ere I read it again it acted like a shock 
 of electricity, bringing back not the mere facts of my 
 fifteenth year, for these are all daguerrotyped on my 
 memory, but all the freshness of the feeling I then 
 possessed. It restored me the sight of the old east 
 room in my mother's dwelling, with the little low 
 window looking out toward the woods of Lawers and 
 the banks of the Earn, where I began to read the 
 Hebrew Bible, wrote my first sermon (on the text, 
 ' God is a Spirit '), and hammered out with consider- 
 
THE STUDENT, 1825-1835. 37 
 
 able labour several essays besides that on the 
 Covenanters ; and of the old green-covered desk of 
 my father's, on which I was wont to write. . . . 
 I have decided to print the dear old essay as an 
 appendix to the new edition of the ' Covenanters.'* 
 That summer I read Kenilworth for the first time 
 with vast relish, part of it while sitting in a tree on 
 the east side of my mother's house. How delightful, 
 after reading or composing, it was to plunge into the 
 wood beside and wander there for hours in ecstasy. 
 God bless that wood and all its pure and pleasing 
 memories ! " 
 
 The intense activity of the lad's mind is illustrated 
 by an incident of this period which he narrates in 
 detail. On his way to college he stayed for a few 
 days at a friend's, probably his brother's, in Stirling, 
 and there procured some old volumes of Blackwood 
 containing Wilson's papers on " Streams," " Cottages," 
 " A Glance at Selby's Ornithology," and the best of 
 the " Noctes." " The impression produced on my 
 mind was exciting, electrifying, intoxicating. I 
 remember that one night, after reading, I think, 
 ' Cottages,' and ' Selby,' I could not sleep, but lay 
 awake till long past midnight in a rapt reverie com- 
 posing a description of my native place in my own 
 style, but coloured a little by the papers I had been 
 reading, or, to speak more correctly, all the scenery 
 of Strathearn came rushing in words upon my view. 
 It was the most glorious night I ever spent, and 
 when morning arrived I renewed my reading of the 
 inspiring page. ... I had met no writing which in its 
 wild freedom, its incontrollable power, its mag- 
 
 * Published by Gall & Inglis, 1863. 
 
38 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 nificent divergencies and errors pleased me so 
 much." 
 
 While he read there was in his mind the recollection 
 of former delight in Wilson's work and of one 
 glimpse of the yellow haired demigod driving through 
 the street of Comrie. The glamour of Christopher 
 North fell upon the young student and was certainly 
 one of the less happy influences of his life. He 
 lamented that his way had not led him to Edinburgh 
 for the session of 1828-29, where he would have 
 enjoyed the splendid excitement of the Moral Phil- 
 osophy class-room ; and there were reasons for this 
 regret, if it be true, as he alleges, that Professor Milne 
 " set himself in a quiet but effectual way to shake the 
 belief of his students," and that he " sneered at some 
 of the cardinal doctrines of Christianity." Wilson 
 made no such attempt to pervert faith. But the 
 " Walpurgis Nights" of the Nodes Ambrosiance were 
 not for a lad keenly susceptible alike on the sensuous 
 and the intellectual side, with little skill to decern be- 
 tween the good and evil in literature. From the hour of 
 his first introduction to Wilson's writings, Gilfillan was 
 caught in their splendid snare. The boldness of 
 Wilson was of just that kind Gilfillan did not need 
 to aim at. In his second sketch of Christopher 
 North, he says, " His criticisms are sometimes ram- 
 bling, sometimes rhapsodical, sometimes overdone in 
 praise or in blame ; often you are compelled to differ 
 from his opinions and sometimes to doubt if they are 
 fully formed in his own mind ; and in polish, pre- 
 cision, and depth, they are inferior to a few others ; 
 but in heartiness, eloquence, variety, consummate ease 
 of motion, native insight and sincerity they stand 
 alone." What he here praises as Wilson's virtues, he 
 
THE STUDENT, 1825-1835. 39 
 
 made his own, and not without yielding to the 
 attendant errors. 
 
 During the sessions 1828-29 an ^ 1829-30 Gilfillan's 
 chief companion was George Beveridge, a native of 
 Ayrshire, of whom he says : " I learned more facts 
 and more about philosophic theories from this poor, 
 pale, ill-dressed lad than from any source which ever 
 opened on me. He taught me to relish Godwin and 
 Shelley against whom I had strong prejudices. It 
 was at his lodging that I first saw Wilson's review in 
 Blackwood of the Revolt of Islam, the extracts from 
 which struck me so forcibly that I made Beveridge 
 procure me the poem from the college library ; and 
 I read it with rapture. . . . Day after day we paced up 
 those College-Green walks Scott has described in 
 ' Rob Roy,' walks shaded with trees and passing 
 amidst extensive fields through which a dull stream 
 called the Molendinar wound its Lethean current. 
 It was winter ; and the scene, although diversified by 
 merry groups of red-gowned students, with occasional 
 ladies, the wives or daughters of the professors, was 
 sufficiently dreary. Yet there are few scenes I have 
 ever visited, after long absence, with more pleasure, 
 more of the joy of grief, than those old walks where 
 George Beveridge and I talked down hours to mom- 
 ents in such themes as the Infinite Evil of Sin. It 
 was pure intellectual gladiatorship, familiar to him 
 by habit, but on which I entered with all the delight 
 of one who finds himself in a new element, and finds 
 that element more congenial to him than he sup- 
 posed." Further interesting recollections of Beveridge 
 are preserved in the Journal under I3th January, 1863. 
 He died in 1835. 
 
 Between his fourth and fifth college sessions 
 
40 GEORGE GIL FILL AN. 
 
 Gilfillan would, in the ordinary course, have proceeded 
 to the "Divinity Hall" of the United Secession 
 Church to begin his five years of theological study. 
 The purpose of entering the ministry, however, which 
 had so far been part of his life, was for a time in 
 abeyance, and the reason is indicated in the " History 
 of a Man." A mind like his could not escape the 
 fire-trial of doubt. Now the questionings of the boy 
 became more serious inquiries that led into the depths. 
 He affirms that even before he joined the Logic 
 class he began to be haunted with the question, Is 
 Christianity, after all, true ? " Sometimes I fancied 
 I perceived discrepancies in the Scriptural narratives; 
 sometimes I doubted of the divinity of Christ, or of 
 eternal torments, or of the doctrine of the Trinity. 
 ... I felt that I could not reconcile Christianity to 
 nature, to man, to philosophy and science, to litera- 
 ture and poetry." Allowance made for the precocity 
 of his intellect, and also for the salutary occupation 
 of his mind with study and books, it may be assumed 
 that these were mere superficial drifts of thought. 
 But a year or two afterwards he says : " I saw, along 
 with Beveridge, that the external evidences were not 
 demonstrative, and I had not then learned to feel the 
 force of the internal. I almost entirely lost my piety. 
 I lost all delight in prayer, although I still practised 
 it as a form. I became a listless hearer of sermons, 
 and felt little else than contempt for the preachers I 
 did hear, contrasting their platitudes with the burning 
 glories of the style of Shelley, Godwin, and my other 
 literary idols. I began, along with my friend, to 
 doubt the doctrine of Eternal Punishment, and to 
 do away with the main pillar of its support, the 
 infinite evil of sin. This I saw to be a logical fallacy, 
 
THE STUDENT, 1825-1835. 41 
 
 but did not see to be at the same time a melancholy 
 fact. . . . My conscience at this time was asleep, and 
 was confirmed in its slumbers by the fact that my life 
 was blameless. I found even a delight and luxury 
 in doubt, and read no books with such relish as those 
 mentioned above and the works of Brockden Brown ; 
 all of which are shadowed by a sublime scepticism, 
 amidst which I loved to walk as if in the cool, genial 
 glooms of a primeval forest. I felt, too, a species of 
 distinction in my sceptical notions, which, although I 
 dared not avow them, yet gave me a sweet sense of 
 superiority to others with whom I mingled. With 
 such ideas I felt excessively reluctant to enter on the 
 study of Divinity, to which my friends had destined 
 me, and contrived to put off beginning the course for 
 a year." 
 
 With great candour and even naivete he thus states 
 his position ; and when he goes on to tell how his 
 way was opened, or rather how he came to feel him- 
 self shut up to the ministry as a profession, he is 
 equally frank. There is no attempt to hide the fact 
 that his ambitions and likings would have made him 
 choose a literary life. " But I was miserably poor. I 
 was, in all matters of business, a blind blunderer. I 
 had heard, too, a great deal of the precariousness of 
 the literary man's life ; and I felt, therefore, that I 
 must become either a wreck or a minister." At 
 Comrie, during the summer, the society of his mother 
 and other friends, much solitary communion with the 
 great surrounding forms of nature, and, above all, the 
 study of the Scriptures in the original (he read the 
 Greek Testament through several times, and about 
 one-half of the Hebrew Bible), united to renew his 
 religious impressions. Church history also engaged 
 
42 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 his attention, and he describes himself as especially 
 interested in the heresies of the early centuries. But 
 there can be no doubt the turning point was reached, 
 and his resolution to undertake the ministry of the 
 gospel saved from becoming a mere make- shift by 
 the fascinating hope of a millennium which now broke 
 upon his mind. He speaks of this prospect as coming 
 to him, not in the form in which he afterwards believed 
 it, that is to say, as connected with the personal pre- 
 millennial advent, but in the form in which it is held 
 by the majority of Christians. By the glowing picture 
 it opened before him of a time of universal peace and 
 blessedness, by presenting Christ and the gospel as 
 the only means by which this world may become a 
 paradise, Christianity asserted its power and seized 
 his mind. His poetical, sympathetic imagination 
 responded to a great hope. " I loved the thought 
 for its consoling character, for its sublimity and its 
 poetry." The following summer was one of renewed 
 rapture in declamations or soliloquies like those of 
 his boyhood, the difference being that sacred subjects 
 now chiefly engaged him. 
 
 The first session of his theological course was spent 
 at Glasgow in the autumn of 1830. His work here 
 began under Dr. John Mitchell, professor of Biblical 
 Literature, a man of " rare simplicity, goodness, and 
 amiability," who, " though he had a quick and keen 
 eye for the peculiarities of human character and life 
 in all the grades and circles of society, never became 
 satirical, far less stoical." * "A better man," says Gil- 
 fillan, " a gentler, or one who displayed on occasion a 
 finer Christian unction in his prelections, preachings, 
 
 * " The United Presbyterian Hall," by the Rev. P. Lanclreth. 
 
THE STUDENT, 1825-1835. 43 
 
 and prayers never lived. ... I learned nothing from 
 him except a tolerable share of the little Hebrew 
 which was to be got in his class, which I have since 
 managed almost entirely to forget, and, I may add, a 
 profound appreciation of his own character as a 
 pattern of those pastoral virtues which he so affection- 
 ately inculcated on his students."* Dr. Mitchell taught 
 both the first and second classes, so that in 1831 as 
 well as 1830 Gilfillan was under him. In 1832 the 
 professor was Dr. Dick, a man of colder wisdom, 
 though full of interest in his class, whose lectures in 
 their published form were used as the Theological 
 Text-book long after he was gone. This class met 
 also in Glasgow, but the death of Dr. Dick in January, 
 1833, and the appointment of Dr. Duncan, minister in 
 Mid-Calder, shifted the scene of Gilfillan's fourth 
 session to that pleasant little Mid-Lothian town of 
 which he says : " Hours of richer, purer, and more 
 varied enjoyment, I and my companions never passed 
 on earth than in the mellow afternoons which 
 bathed thy scenery, or when at night the moon- 
 beams poured their ' holier day ' upon thy glimmer- 
 ing stubble fields ! The world was then all before 
 us ; life was new, and its enchanted cup was spark- 
 ling at the brim. Never do any of us meet who 
 studied together there, but the mention of the name 
 Mid-Calder abolishes the existence of twenty years, 
 and makes our eyes sparkle and our hearts heave as 
 we remember our walks, our talks, our little troubles, 
 our large joys, our cheerful symposia." -f- 
 
 The last session was spent in Edinburgh under the 
 
 * " History of a Man," pp. 156, 157. 
 t Ibid., p. 174. 
 
44 GEORGE GILF1LLAN. 
 
 Rev. Robert Balmer of Bervvick-on-Tweed, who with 
 the Rev. John Brown of Broughton Place had been 
 added to the professorial staff. Already, however, 
 our student had become acquainted with the capital. 
 Like many others he supported himself by teaching 
 in the winter months, and Edinburgh had drawn him 
 because, while it afforded a good field for the private 
 tutor, Wilson and Chalmers were to be heard there, 
 and the intellectual activity of the Scottish mind was 
 there at its highest. Describing the period in the 
 history of Edinburgh between 1815 and 1835, Gil- 
 fillan says : " During that time has commenced the 
 immortal series of the Waverley Novels. The Edin- 
 burgh Review is in undiminished force. John Wilson 
 has arrived and is forcing his way toward the 
 immense popularity he is soon to gain. In the chairs 
 of the University, Dugald Stewart, Playfair, Thomas 
 Brown, Leslie, Pillans, and Dalzel are teaching. 
 Andrew Thomson is thundering statedly in the 
 pulpit, and Chalmers is preaching as no one but him- 
 self can preach, and is by-and-by to be Divinity 
 Professor. James Hogg is in Gabriel's Road meditat- 
 ing the ' Queen's Wake.' Edward Irving is studying 
 in Bristo Street for the ministry. M'Crie is issuing 
 the 'Life of Andrew Melville/ and attacking 'Old 
 Mortality ' with merciless power. Blackwood's Maga- 
 zine has started and is attracting to itself such spirits 
 as Thomas Pringle (at first), J. G. Lockhart, Maginn, 
 Gait, Croly, Delta, and Christopher North, who also in 
 1820 mounts the Moral Philosophy chair, and takes to 
 him his great power and reigns for more than thirty 
 years ; while a profounder if not so brilliant man has 
 been obliged to retire upon the chair of History, 
 whence he by-and-by emerges on that of Logic as the 
 
THE STUDENT, 1825-1835. 45 
 
 full fledged and unique Sir William Hamilton. . . . 
 The two Chamberses are laying the slow but sure 
 foundations of their extensive fame and useful- 
 ness. ... In the Dissenting pulpit, besides old Dr. 
 James Peddie and Dr. Hall, two men, very different, 
 but both of no ordinary powers, have appeared in Dr. 
 John Brown and Dr. John Ritchie. In the news- 
 paper Press the Weekly Journal^ the Caledonian 
 Mercury, and above all the manly and liberal Scots- 
 man have made their mark. And this last may be 
 considered the avant-courier of Taifs Magazine which 
 comes to the aid of the Liberal interest in 1832 and 
 rallies round it, besides its energetic publisher, such 
 writers as William Weir, Roebuck, Fonblanque, Mrs. 
 Johnstone, Bowring, Professor Nichol, Robert Nicoll, 
 Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, and the wondrous De 
 Quincey. . . . 
 
 " Changed is the college from the days when we 
 could pass over from tracing Sir John Leslie in his 
 giant leaps from system to system of the stellar 
 universe, to the class where Wilson was painting 
 scenery with the potent dash of a Salvator Rosa, and 
 analysing the human heart and its intricacies of 
 passion and motive with the clear vision and minute 
 anatomy of a Fielding or a Shakespeare, and 
 thence again to the * large upper room ' where 
 Chalmers was discoursing with all the vehemence of 
 the pulpit on theism and anti-theism, Clarke, Hobbes, 
 and Butler, and sometimes snatching up his ' Astro- 
 nomical Discourses ' and reading a passage from them 
 with the fire and freshness with which he had given it 
 originally, fifteen years before, in the Tron Church of 
 Glasgow ; and thence once more to the hall where 
 Sir William Hamilton was spreading out his enormous 
 
46 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 treasures of knowledge to an audience, few if fit. It 
 seemed almost as if Plato and Aristotle, and Chrysos- 
 tom and Copernicus had come down from the higher 
 spheres and alighted beside each other."* 
 
 Drawn irresistibly to this Edinburgh, one of the 
 poorest of the many poor students who gathered there 
 from year to year, yet with growing intellectual power 
 and ambition, Gilfillan found himself in the outer 
 court of literature. His lodging was with two ladies, 
 Taylor by name, in the second floor of a house in 
 Bristo Street, opening from the " General's Entry," so 
 called from General Monk. There at different times 
 William Wylie of Orkney and John Eadie lodged 
 with him, the latter like himself so poor that on one 
 occasion, coming to the city ill, he had to throw him- 
 self on Gilfillan's bounty. Then as always the appeal 
 of a friend was heartily met, for then and always 
 Gilfillan was as lavishly hospitable as a Highland 
 chief. And now the student could hear men whose 
 forms and voices had been long present to his mind. 
 " I first heard Chalmers preach on Sabbath the pth 
 October, 1831, when introducing Mr. Martin of St. 
 George's, Edinburgh, to his flock. Through the kind- 
 ness of a friend who sat in the church, I obtained, 
 although with difficulty, a seat in the very front of the 
 gallery, near a pew in which, on Sabbath, the 8th of 
 February, 1846, I enjoyed a comfortable nap under a 
 sermon from Dr. Brunton. There was no napping 
 that forenoon. I went with excited but uncertain 
 expectations. I had learned to admire the ' Astro- 
 nomical Discourses/ but had no clear or decided view 
 of their author, and was not without certain dissenting 
 
 * "Edinburgh, Past and Present," 1886, pp. 91-93. 
 
THE STUDENT, 1825-1835. 47 
 
 prejudices against him. Being near sighted, and the 
 morning being rather dim, I could not catch a distinct 
 glimpse of his features. I saw only a dark large mass 
 bustling up the pulpit stairs as if in some dread and 
 desperate haste. I heard next a hoarse voice, first 
 giving out the psalm in a tone of rapid familiar energy, 
 and after it was sung and prayer was over, announc- 
 ing for text, ' He that is unjust let him be unjust still 
 (stull he pronounced it) ; he that is filthy let him be 
 filthy still, and he that is righteous let him be righteous 
 still.' And then like an eagle leaving the mountain 
 cliff, he launched out at once upon his subject, and 
 soared on without any diminution of energy or flutter 
 of wing for an hour and more. . . . Strange as it may 
 seem, neither Wilson nor Chalmers, nor Professor 
 Leslie, nor Dr. Gordon, nor Jeffrey, produced at first 
 on me a tithe of the impression which many country 
 ministers, whose names are extant only in the Lamb's 
 Book of Life, had easily and ineffaceably left." 
 
 Of Wilson, into whose class-room he frequently 
 found his way, he says in the " History of a Man : " 
 " I enjoyed the humours of the class as conducted by 
 him and his personal eccentricities exceedingly. His 
 abrupt and fiery entrance ; the habit he had of glaring 
 out, at the end of every paragraph, through the 
 window on the right hand side ; the watch laid out 
 before him, and, when the lecture was poor, glanced 
 at every five minutes in his impatience to be done. . . . 
 The great man grew on me as I continued to visit his 
 class. I found that what I thought coarseness was 
 simply the shaggy mane of the lion, and that the roar 
 though peculiar was intensely his own, and that if he 
 did not add much to what I had already learned at 
 Glasgow he gave his students what no professor there 
 
48 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 could give the benefits of the inspiration of his own 
 powerful genius." 
 
 The account of a more direct relation to Wilson 
 during student days is thus authentically given : " I 
 came first in contact with him, or rather he came in 
 contact with my writing in a peculiar way. A lad, 
 William Wylie, who was lodging with me in Edinburgh, 
 was attending Wilson's class. At his request I wrote 
 five essays, including three on Genius which were 
 handed in in Wylie's name. The professor sent for 
 him and expressed a doubt whether they were his 
 own, adding : * I wish I could write as well myself.' 
 Wylie maintained his claim to their paternity and 
 got a high prize. One of these essays on ' The 
 Aberrations of Genius ' struck Wilson's fancy particu- 
 larly, and he spoke of its being worth printing. I can 
 remember writing nothing with such rapture, such 
 inspiration as that essay. I wrote it chiefly at night 
 after returning from teaching and after swallowing 
 potations of strong tea. Wylie carried all those 
 essays to Orkney with him. After his death (he died 
 early, poor fellow !) I received two or three of them 
 but not the ' Aberrations.' I never knew whether 
 Wilson was aware or not of my connection with 
 them." 
 
 Gilfillan's part in this transaction shows more of 
 his readiness to oblige a needy brother, and his eager- 
 ness to find an audience of the great professor, than 
 any less pardonable traits. In poverty and obscurity, 
 goaded rather than sustained by the high opinion of 
 some of his fellow-students who were full of enthusi- 
 astic expectations, he saw as yet no way of entrance to 
 the ranks of literature. The praise of Wilson, although 
 snatched unawares, was a great encouragement to a 
 
THE STUDENT, 1825-1835. 49 
 
 youth with Gilfillan's ambition, but it did not save 
 him from many a dreary hour of depression and 
 debate. Perhaps, on the other hand, it made him 
 turn on himself, and reconsider with more inquisitorial 
 fierceness his position as a student of theology, and 
 his fitness for the ministry. Evidently his faith while 
 in Edinburgh was mainly in the achievements of the 
 intellect, and religious doubts came again with literary 
 disappointment. 
 
 He tells us in the " History," and although the 
 question of fact cannot now be settled, the probability 
 of the statement remains that Wilson's praise led him 
 to copy out some of his essays along with a poem, and 
 send them to a leading periodical. He describes him- 
 self sickening with the delay, and - receiving, after two 
 months, a reply stating that it might be impossible to 
 print the essays, but asking the writer to call. The 
 initials subjoined to the letter were T. W. which 
 appear to point to William Tait. The pride of 
 Gilfillan took fire, hastily he resolved never to darken 
 the publisher's door. This, then, was to be the end 
 of his bright expectations of literary fame as well as 
 of the pecuniary recompense he needed so much ! The 
 agony was absurdly unnecessary, but it was real 
 enough. In the deep depression of the time he 
 reckoned that against the " sea of troubles " he had 
 but two defences first youth, and secondly the recol- 
 lection, at least, of a time when he was as serene as 
 he had become sorrowful, as firm in belief as he had 
 become unsettled, of a time when " the candle of 
 the Lord shined " upon him. 
 
 But there was work to do. His theological studies 
 and exercises had to be proceeded with ; and in one 
 engagement he was peculiarly happy. The charge of 
 
 E 
 
50 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 a mission station in the Cross Causeway had fallen to 
 him, and every Sabbath evening he had to address the 
 people who gathered in the humble meeting-place. 
 " While talking to those simple beings amid the dark- 
 ening shadows of a summer eve about Jesus and the 
 other grand themes of Christianity, my doubts and 
 difficulties seemed to retire, even as the shadows of 
 those objects which darken a stream in its usual 
 channel are unable to reach it when it is up in flood. 
 How often since have I, while addressing large and 
 intelligent audiences, panted and prayed for something 
 of the spirit which breathed on me while speaking to 
 twenty people in the Cross Causeway ! " 
 
 And, again, a visit to Comrie made a pleasant 
 interlude. His father's successor there, the Rev. James 
 Mitchell (the James Brechin of the "History"), 
 described by him as a man of no little culture, who 
 appeared to have reached the cross over a stony 
 wilderness of doubt, met him with great sympathy. 
 " He accompanied me on my return to Edinburgh as 
 far as where the moors were separated from the hill- 
 side sloping down to the level of Strathearn, by a 
 little bridge. We sat down to rest on the ledge. It 
 was the afternoon of an August day, and the sullen 
 face of the moorlands was all smiling with purple 
 heather, and humming with bees and winged insects 
 of every kind. I had never found him so communica- 
 tive. He said he had come to Strathearn a disap- 
 pointed man, and perplexed, moreover, with terrible 
 doubts, but added, ' Blessings on these dark rugged 
 hills (they were towering up to the north-west, like a 
 saw of ebon-coloured iron, distinctly defined against 
 a glowing sky), I would not exchange what 1 have 
 learned of God, Jesus, man, myself, amid their silent 
 
THE STUDENT, 1825-1835. 51 
 
 circuit for ten thousand worlds.' As he wrung my 
 hand in parting, he said * My dear lad, you may, you 
 must with your temperament doubt ; but, for God's 
 sake, never disbelieve, never despair ; and you will 
 come at last to that resolution of your doubts, which 
 only patience, prayer, and peace of conscience can 
 bestow." He turned rapidly down the valley, and 
 I never saw him again." This seems to have occurred 
 in August, 1834 ; in the course of the following winter 
 Mr. Mitchell died. 
 
 A valued friend of Mr. Gilfillan's, the Rev. Alexander 
 Kennedy, Ontario, Canada, who has just passed away, 
 recalls in a communication of date 4th September, 
 1891, their intimacy as students. " It was my privilege 
 to make the acquaintance of Mr. Gilfillan in the year 
 1830, at the Theological Hall of the United Secession 
 Church. But our intimacy began in 1832 when we 
 were both resident in Edinburgh, and it continued till 
 1835, when I left for the West Indies. From that 
 time till his death we corresponded, though somewhat 
 fitfully. A more prompt correspondent than he could 
 not have been desired. I have had a long letter from 
 him, written on the very day that one from me had 
 reached him from beyond the Atlantic. But his 
 practice in this respect rebuked me severely. 
 
 " In many respects Mr. Gilfillan was remarkable, 
 even in his student days. His idiosyncrasies awoke 
 expectations concerning his future that taxed possi- 
 bilities. His fellow-students who were in any measure 
 acquainted with him, gave him credit for possessing 
 very high intellectual power, though he seemed to 
 have little or no desire to excel in class-work. He 
 appeared to be quite content with performing the 
 duties of the class so as to stand fairly well in the 
 
52 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 estimation of professor and fellow-students. And 
 this he ever did. He spent a great deal of his time 
 in reading at large, but with a special liking for poetry 
 and fiction. He and John Eadie (afterwards professor 
 in the United Presbyterian Theological Hall) were 
 the most extensively read of all the students ; and 
 they read to advantage as each possessed a singularly 
 retentive memory. Mr. Gilfillan read with remark- 
 able rapidity. I have watched him when engaged 
 with a book, and he appeared to be merely running 
 his eyes down page after page, [as if scanning the 
 first sentence of each paragraph ; yet he was making 
 the entire contents his own, so much so that he could 
 recall them at pleasure. 
 
 "When a student Mr. Gilfillan was of a retiring 
 disposition, though to a stranger he might at times 
 appear to border on brusqueness. Called on to 
 answer a question or to state his opinion, he expressed 
 himself with singular sententious terseness, and he 
 hardly ever spoke either of persons or things in 
 neutral terms. He was incapable of duplicity, ardent 
 in his likes and dislikes. A hater of pretension and 
 sham, he was intensely generous. He might err in 
 judgment and in act, but he could not be a hypocrite. 
 
 " In extemporaneous speech he was by no means 
 ready. Once when at an annual meeting between 
 the Secession and Relief Students he was expected to 
 do credit to his hall as one of the speakers, he rose, 
 both hands resting on his staff, and stammered out, 
 1 Gentlemen ! ' paused for a moment or two, and then 
 said with emphasis expressive of a galled spirit, and 
 with a stamp of his staff on the floor, ' I cannot utter 
 a word.' 
 
 " I had frequent Saturday walks with Mr. Gilfillan, 
 
THE STUDENT, 1825-1835. 53 
 
 and sometimes on other days also to me enjoyable 
 in no common degree. The various subjects included 
 in our curriculum as students, ministers and sermons, 
 religious doctrines and duties were discussed ; but 
 authors and books were chiefly canvassed. As a 
 critic he wielded an exceedingly free lance ; but if he 
 awarded blame it was untarnished by malignity. If 
 our conversation chanced at any time to verge on 
 flatness, I had only to speak disparagingly of the 
 works of those authors whom he specially idolised, 
 Shelley or Carlyle for example. This unfailingly 
 roused my friend and called forth a torrent of indig- 
 nant rebuke and more than an apologetic defence of 
 the author. Stepping in front of me, and with a 
 stamp of his staff on the ground, he would excitedly 
 exclaim, ' I say, Ken. ! ' and then would follow a 
 Niagara of mingled denunciation and laudation, 
 I the while enjoying his withering rebuke in 
 admiration of the flashes of his genius. And this 
 he would do on the street, regardless of passers-by. 
 I remember an instance that occurred in Leith Walk 
 when a gentleman turned in wonder at our somewhat 
 ludicrous exhibition." 
 
 Mr. Kennedy adds : " While home in Scotland in 
 1840, I had the pleasure of visiting Mr. and Mrs. 
 Gilfillan at Dundee. The few days I spent under 
 their roof were crowded with enjoyment. I found 
 him in high health and spirits, the beloved pastor of 
 the Church assembling in School Wynd. It ever 
 was my wish and prayer that he and I might be 
 enabled personally to cling to the Cross, and in our 
 preaching to keep it ever prominently in view. I do 
 trust that through sovereign mercy my departed 
 friend and I will meet in the eternal home of the 
 
54 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 redeemed, having been washed in the blood that 
 cleanseth from all sin." 
 
 Thus the veteran of eighty-eight concludes, with a 
 pious hope he had conveyed to his friend at intervals 
 for forty years in letters always valued. On the 
 receipt of one of them in 1863 Mr. Gilfillan makes 
 the following note : " He was the first of my com- 
 panions at the Hall who formed sanguine hopes of 
 me. Afterwards we had much pleasant intercourse. 
 He is a man of excellent abilities, genuine heart and 
 piety, although of irritable and highly nervous tem- 
 perament which the sun of the tropics (he was some- 
 time in Trinidad) considerably exasperated. He 
 says to me in a very fine brotherly spirit, ' My dear 
 friend, let us cling to the Cross and strive to get close 
 to the heart of Him who hung thereon. Let us 
 labour for Christ while life lasts. He is the sole hope 
 of our sin-begloomed and guilt-bemired race. At the 
 end of the day the fame of a faithful servant of Christ 
 will be found to be the best and highest of all fame, 
 and the reward of him who has " well done " in the 
 Lord's work the richest of all rewards.' Dear 
 Ken., I value highly your words and wishes, and 
 feel, I trust, that they are as true as they are 
 friendly." 
 
 One other recollection of the period may be given. 
 Speaking of Alexander MacGregor, a native of 
 St. Fillan's, who afterwards became minister of 
 Kilwinning United Secession Church, Mr. Gilfillan 
 writes, in 1875: "I met him at the Hall and 
 remember some pleasant evenings with him in his 
 lodgings, one especially, in the autumn of 1831, when 
 we had some interesting talk, and I gave an extem- 
 pore address on the $th Chapter of 2nd Corinthians, 
 
THE STUDENT, 1825-1835. 55 
 
 he my sole auditor, which I have often wished to 
 revive, but it perished in the utterance. I never 
 thought myself half-inspired but on that evening."* 
 
 * Letter to Rev. G. Philp, Saltcoats, quoted in Historical 
 Sketch of Kilwinning United Presbyterian Church, by Mr. R. 
 Wylie. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 EARLY MINISTRY, 1835-50. 
 
 HIS Theological course completed, George Gil- 
 fillan was " licensed to preach the Gospel " by 
 the Presbytery of Edinburgh, in April, 1835. As to 
 his " trials for license," that is to say the sermon and 
 other exercises delivered before the Presbytery, he 
 notes only that some of the clergymen were cold and 
 severe, others genial and liberal. It is clear he 
 was by no means sorry to find his term of life in 
 Edinburgh at an end, although he enjoyed various 
 intellectual opportunities which the city offered. He 
 had never felt at home in Edinburgh, and had spent 
 his last year almost in solitude. 
 
 During his wander-jahr, when by appointment he 
 passed from church to church, preaching for ministers, 
 or as a candidate in vacancies, he visited the Islands 
 of Bute and Man, went south as far as Liverpool, 
 north as far as Aberdeen. In the autumn he was 
 invited to become minister of the church which had 
 been his father's, no small tribute to one who had 
 grown up amongst the people and been watched 
 through his boyhood with some wonder and doubt. 
 But Comrie, though it always charmed, did not 
 commend itself as a scene of ministerial work ; and a 
 56 
 
EARLY MINISTRY, 1835-1850. 57 
 
 new friendship had, meanwhile, carried his hopes 
 beyond the little church of his nativity. 
 
 Familiar to many in one form or other, usually with 
 more or less of legend, is the story of his introduction 
 to the lady who became his wife. In the second 
 week of August, 1835, at Montrose, he made acquaint- 
 ance with a son of the Rev. Andrew Wilson, and was 
 invited to join him and other friends in a visit to 
 the Burn, a beautiful estate on the North Esk between 
 Fettercairn and Edzell. It was a large party, and 
 they went on foot ; first, on Monday as far as the 
 Muirton Secession Manse, and then on Wednesday to 
 the Burn. There is a story that they were taken for a 
 marriage company, and Gilfillan, at the head, in 
 riotous spirits, for the bridegroom. Mr. Valentine, 
 factor of the Burn estate, lived at Bogmuir, and his 
 eldest daughter joined the excursion. They all went 
 back to Bogmuir to tea, and soon after, Margaret 
 Valentine, the second daughter, returned from an 
 engagement. She had been there when they passed 
 in the forenoon, and even then the tall young preacher 
 had noticed her. Meanwhile, a thunderstorm had 
 come on with continued lightning. " I saw the Burn 
 first," says Gilfillan, " as one of a gay party who had 
 thrown for that day all care to the winds, whose 
 merry and innocent laughter was not materially 
 disturbed even when a thunder-storm drove them 
 within doors." 
 
 According to another account than his own, George 
 surprised his companions by his singular enjoyment 
 of the storm. He would have the windows uncovered 
 that he might watch the lightning. Bashful as a rule 
 in company, he was for once bold and free ; and the 
 night was more than the day. Heavy rain detained 
 
58 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 the whole party, and even country hospitality was 
 taxed. Four young men had to share one room, and 
 their uproarious mirth extended into the morning. 
 One of them had a special reason. As he said after- 
 wards, " he had seen her by whom he was taken by 
 storm. God had let down an angel to him on a stair 
 of lightning from heaven." To Margaret, the proba- 
 tioner had looked unkempt and untrained. But she 
 heard him preach next day at Muirton, and it seems 
 even then partly altered her first view. The wooing 
 began with a rush, and, though Gilfillan found some- 
 thing to overcome, he prospered in the end. 
 
 The incidents of this month of August are singu- 
 larly in evidence when searched for. On the istof the 
 month Gilfillan travelled by road from Dundee, then of 
 little interest to him, to Forfar, across the valley of 
 Strathmore, admiring for the first time that noble 
 landscape ; on the 9th, he was in Montrose preaching 
 for Mr. Hyslop ; on the loth, came the walk to 
 Muirton; on the 1 2th, the memorable visit to the 
 Burn; on the I3th, the "fast-day" at Muirton, he 
 preached for Mr. Renwick ; on the i6th, he was 
 again officiating at Montrose, and on the I7th, 
 retraced the eight miles to Muirton, met Margaret 
 Valentine at dinner and took her home in the even- 
 ing. On the 23rd, he occupied the pulpit of School 
 Wynd Church, Dundee, then vacant through the 
 removal of the Rev. Alexander Davidson to Edin- 
 burgh, the subject of his first sermon being the par- 
 able of the rich man and Lazarus. The following 
 Sabbath he seems to have been also in Dundee, and 
 about this time he went to Edinburgh expressly to 
 hear Daniel O'Connell, whose great oration on the 
 Calton Hill to an enormous gathering left a warm 
 
EARLY MINISTRY, 1835-1850. 59 
 
 and vivid impression. During September the pro- 
 posal was made to call him to become minister of 
 School Wynd congregation. On the Qth October, he 
 was at Bogmuir, and in the highest spirits went next 
 day to Forfar. But there he learned that the 
 " moderation " in his favour as a candidate had failed. 
 He had just declined the call to Comrie, and the 
 disappointment was great. It was a day " on the 
 brink of the bottomless." On the 22nd December, 
 however, came better tidings and hopes that were not 
 disappointed. He heard, at Douglas, in the Isle of 
 Man, that he had been called by a large majority 
 to School Wynd. All going well, he completed his 
 trials to the satisfaction of the Presbytery of Cupar, 
 sitting at Pitlessie on 23rd February, 1836, and his 
 ordination was fixed for the 23rd March. For those 
 unacquainted with Dundee Secession history, it may 
 be explained that the School Wynd Congregation had 
 been then in existence for ninety years, having had 
 its origin at a time when the Secession movement 
 was reaching northward from Fifeshire. The old 
 ecclesiastical connection still survived, and Mr. 
 Gilfillan accordingly was ordained as a minister of 
 the Cupar Presbytery. 
 
 The congregation worshipping in School Wynd 
 Chapel was large, though comparatively poor, and 
 the stipend promised was ^"220, with a manse ; a con- 
 siderable salary for the time. The promise, too, 
 was good ; there was an open door and a wide 
 field, and the young minister addressed himself 
 hopefully to his work. He is remembered still as 
 he then was a tall and almost gaunt youth, with 
 a high complexion, a quantity of auburn hair 
 gathered into a mass on the top of his head, with 
 
60 GEORGE GIL FILL AN. 
 
 fire in his eye, and impatience on his lip in the 
 pulpit extraordinarily vehement and using much 
 gesticulation. His sermons were delivered ; indeed, 
 they could not possibly have been read in public, 
 written as they were in a manuscript of some ten 
 lines to the inch. He was more of a phenomenon 
 in a Secession pulpit than his people knew ; still 
 the most of them admired. For a time his mother 
 was with him in Dundee, then Margaret Valentine 
 came it was on the 23rd November, 1836 to be 
 a help-meet indeed to him for life. His first year, he 
 records, was uneasy, although youth, hope, and mar- 
 riage rendered it on the whole happy. Passing 
 rapidly from fervour to gloom, easily elated, easily 
 disheartened, he soon went the round of a minister's 
 experience. Towards the close of the first year he 
 seemed to himself to have lost the popularity with 
 which he began ; that is to say, the first excitement 
 had waned. In the following year the tide began to 
 rise ; but typhus fever attacked him in the house in 
 Seagate where he lived while the manse was being 
 rebuilt. " For weeks/' he says, " I swam for my life, 
 and for three months was absent from my pulpit." 
 Then came recovery, settlement in the new house, 
 Paradise by common appellation, for it stood in Para- 
 dise Road, and increasing ministerial power. From 
 1838 his position was so far assured, and falling into 
 the way of work or, let us say, having his own way 
 more or less accepted he could feel himself on his 
 voyage. 
 
 The work of ministering to a Secession congrega- 
 tion fifty years ago was to men of a certain kind 
 sufficiently engrossing. One might find his world 
 within the limits of his charge. To understand the 
 
THE MANSE, PARADISE ROAD, DUNDEE. 
 
EARLY MINISTRY, 1835-1850. 61 
 
 circles within circles of kinship and acquaintance in 
 the congregation, to please his people by edifying 
 visitation, to keep the agencies in full and successful 
 motion, to find subjects, write and commit discourses ; 
 and, besides, to sustain the character of a " member of 
 Presbytery" with credit in public and private this 
 might be his whole care, his whole life. Some, how- 
 ever, widened their outlook and interest by taking 
 part in the affairs of the town, and adventuring into 
 literature. And these were not few. Throughout 
 Scotland the Seceders were well in advance, propor- 
 tionately to their numbers, in public spirit, breadth of 
 sympathy, and intelligence. They would not have 
 been dissenters, indeed, and undertaken to support 
 a ministry of their own unless they had given their 
 minds to large and serious questions, and profited all 
 round by the discipline. They were the steady-going 
 reformers of the time, alert in all political discussions, 
 in temperance and other movements, keen dialec- 
 ticians within their range, taking more than their 
 share of honourable work on public boards. It was 
 not uncommon for the few Secession congregations 
 in a Scottish town to supply at one time half the 
 bailies and perhaps a third of the council. The 
 ministers, therefore, were not restrained from seeking 
 wide influence and usefulness. 
 
 It was, however, Gilfillan's peculiarity, almost from 
 the first, that he was broader, less disposed to occupy 
 himself with small details, more secular, it might 
 perhaps be said, than his co-presbyters in other 
 words, more a man of the world. While others 
 resisted the splendid lure of poetry and fiction, he 
 could not ; while they could live within a creed, he 
 could not. His preaching, always honest and out- 
 
62 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 spoken, was founded squarely on the great corner- 
 stones of evangelical truth ; but he was deeply aware 
 of shadows through which he had himself passed 
 not shadows of an evil unbelief, but of ignorance 
 and he had the desire to make religion free where it 
 was timorous and open where it was still suspicious. 
 The conservatism of a Church could not bind him, 
 could not control the courage of his heart. True, he 
 was not equipped to be a reformer of theology. He 
 had not science enough for a pioneer of interpretation, 
 reconstruction, and judgment. Yet to him, as he was, 
 a call came. Necessity was laid upon him by the 
 fervid nature of his mind and the fierce initiations 
 of his youth. And it was from no want of piety, but 
 rather from the sense of an obligation to truth and to 
 God those utterances sprang which by-and-by made 
 him appear to many a perilous guide, if not a rebel 
 from the faith. 
 
 For a time Gilfillan found, as a preacher, sufficient 
 room for his intellectual energy and the use of his 
 literary stores. It was a happy change from the 
 vague unsettled life of the student and probationer to 
 the healthy engagements of the pastorate and the 
 quiet routine of a well-ordered home. The manse 
 was always a hospice for many friends ; yet the new 
 conditions tended to calm his restless nature and 
 guide his powers in a channel of steady endeavour. 
 And this first period may be said to have ended in 
 the opening of 1840 with the publication of his " Five 
 Discourses." Perhaps that venture was itself a symp- 
 ton of restlessness, and it is significant that in the 
 previous September when in Edinburgh he first met 
 De Quincey. " I was introduced," he wrote, " to the 
 celebrated Opium-Eater, and spent two nights with 
 
EARLY MINISTRY, 1835-1850. 63 
 
 him. He is the most extraordinary specimen of 
 humanity I ever met with." Did those nights with 
 the " pale, woe-begone little man " revive a smoulder- 
 ing fire ? 
 
 The " Five Discourses " show no trace of doctrinal 
 impatience, although for the time they were novel 
 and bold. Often expressed in the exuberant style of 
 a young orator who found his audience responsive to 
 the crudities of speech rather than to fine discrimina- 
 tions, they run along very unusual lines of figure and 
 fancy ; at the same time their orthodoxy is blameless. 
 The author's sympathy with the imaginative flights of 
 Byron and Shelley appears as pity for their untoward 
 scepticism, their revolt from Christianity. One of the 
 discourses, on " Not many wise men after the flesh 
 are called," speaks of Churchill " reeking with 
 debauch and scoffing at the faith which he once 
 preached till he could scoff nor speak no longer" 
 of Byron, " an unsolved, splendid, entombed rid- 
 dle "of Shelley, to whom he cries, "What ailed 
 thee, O great but misled spirit, against Him who 
 had so bountifully enriched thee?" and judgment is 
 given in sombre certainty : " The soul shudders as it 
 looks forward to the eternity of a great ruined mind, 
 acting for ever, but acting as a scourge, lashing itself 
 to deeper and deeper agony . . . remembering for 
 ever the raptures which have been succeeded by the 
 horror of horrors, the blackness of darkness." 
 
 Even during this period, however, while Gilfillan 
 kept his thought and work within accredited lines, he 
 was yielding anew to the attraction of that world of 
 literature from which, in the first years of his ministry, 
 he had partially withdrawn. In 1839, he contributed 
 articles on Chalmers and Professor Wilson to the 
 
64 GEORGE GILFILLAN, 
 
 EdinburgJi University Magazine, brief but germinal. 
 Then, also, his acquaintance with Thomas Aird was 
 assuming more consequence and opening a door he 
 was not slow to enter. In the columns of the 
 Dumfriesshire and Galloway Herald, of which Aird 
 was editor, he began, in 1840, to say, with almost 
 perfect freedom, of literary men and things, what 
 was inadmissible in the pulpit. 
 
 The friendship began in 1837, when Aird visited 
 Dundee to attend the funeral of a brother, who had 
 been a member of School Wynd Church. He was at 
 that time thirty-five years of age, already an author 
 of repute and an acknowledged poet, although his 
 " Devil's Dream on Mount Aksbeck " had not yet 
 appeared. " A strong man, of a tall and handsome 
 person, with a beautiful head and striking presence," 
 he had something classical, Grecian one would say, 
 both in his countenance and in his mind. He was 
 like a Greek athlete who, in opening manhood, had 
 bent himself with rigour to the task of the academy. 
 Gilfillan was drawn to him as a literary elder brother, 
 whose friendship with Thomas Carlyle and John 
 Wilson gave him a high place in the guild, and still 
 more by his wise warm character and engaging frank- 
 ness. Altogether, it was a day of good augury to 
 Gilfillan when he found this friend, whose encour- 
 agement and counsel were to be his for nearly forty 
 years. At the same time, the acquaintance he made 
 with Aird, so early in his ministry, had the disadvan- 
 tage of forcing somewhat the harvest which, if it had 
 ripened more slowly, would have yielded finer grain. 
 The opportunity of publication given, Gilfillan dashed 
 into portraiture with an eagerness that was really 
 fierce. Once started on the new career, he threw ofT, 
 
EARLY MINISTRY, 1835-1850. 65 
 
 month after month, sketches that startled the Scottish 
 world. His early dreams were now fulfilling them- 
 selves ; he, like those he had worshipped, was finding 
 audience for thoughts that had slumbered long. 
 Ambition spurred him, and with that he felt the 
 sharp goad of need a goad without which power 
 often sleeps. The exchequer of the church was low. 
 The stipend, reduced from the original sum, was not 
 always forthcoming. How to live became the ques- 
 tion. Though the Dumfries Herald could afford no 
 fee to a literary writer, it was more than a step on the 
 ascent ; and Gilfillan mounted. 
 
 He wrote rapidly, with the force and fulness of one 
 to whom writing was a new delight. His sermon 
 making was swift. Of one Sabbath's work there is a 
 clear reminiscence. On a Saturday, in 1842, he 
 reached home straight from the side of a little grave. 
 He could write nothing, though he tried again and 
 again. In the morning, after an early breakfast, he 
 took the pen, and the forenoon discourse was finished 
 in time. Returning, he set to work again, and finished 
 a second, which was delivered in the afternoon. 
 There was a third service and the third discourse 
 was written and preached in its turn. This was the 
 heat he threw into literary work. It was improvisa- 
 tion ; but the improvisation of one whose thinking 
 had been done beforehand. Towards the close of 
 1 840 Aird wrote him : " You have made a great 
 stride forward since you published your sermons ; 
 and, let me tell you once for all, you have helped 
 me greatly to establish a literary character for the 
 Herald" Yet the rapidity meant fault. In the same 
 letter Aird says that he takes the liberty of suppress- 
 ing two or three sentences in an article, where, " in the 
 
 F 
 
66 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 fervour of fast and immediately-sent-off composition," 
 Gilfillan seems to have " unconsciously touched the 
 borders of the too daring/' The sketches sent thus, 
 in hot succession, to Aird's paper formed the sub- 
 stance of the first "Gallery of Literary Portraits," 
 published in 1845. 
 
 Added to De Quincey's and Aird's, a third friend- 
 ship, begun in 1841, gave Gilfillan a great intellectual 
 impulse. In Edinburgh, early in the year, he met 
 Samuel Brown, then the close companion of the 
 brilliant Edward Forbes, and himself already of some 
 note in science and society. Of the stock of the 
 Haddington Browns, a grandson of the old Professor, 
 cousin of John Brown of " Rab and His Friends," and 
 brother of John Croumbie Brown, whose fine poetical 
 epistles came in those days to the manse at Paradise 
 Road, Dr. Samuel Morrison Brown, the young 
 chemist, was a fervid and fascinating personality. 
 Slender and dark, not unlike Brougham in feature, 
 " he had a pale, sickly, but expressive face, immense 
 elasticity of body, a voice not strong but musical, 
 which, as he went on, became tremulous with impas- 
 sioned enthusiasm, and a manner in which you did 
 not know whether more to admire the abandonment 
 and impulse, the torrent and tempest of feeling, or 
 the taste and temperance which gave the whirlwind 
 an aspect of * smoothness.'"* At their first meeting 
 the " Alchymist," as Brown was familiarly called, 
 made a deep impression on Gilfillan, who also, by his 
 contrasted power a ruder energy and more devour- 
 ing fire and by his faith and love gave full return. 
 " I repeated to him," says Gilfillan, " Aird's ' Devil's 
 
 * " History of a Man," p. 203. 
 
EARLV MINISTRY, 1835-1850. 67 
 
 Dream on Mount Aksbeck,' a poem which he had 
 never seen. One line in it especially struck him and 
 continued, he said afterwards, to haunt him for years, 
 while pursuing his dim and perilous way through the 
 abyss of scientific research 
 
 " ' The silent magnanimity of Nature and her God. 3 
 
 ' I should love the man/ he wrote, ' although he had 
 never written another line.'"* In July Brown 
 visited the manse in Dundee, and the friends had 
 an excursion together into the nearer Highlands. 
 Both were enthusiastic lovers of nature, although in 
 quite different ways. A few of the letters addressed 
 to the " Alchymist," from Dundee, are given further 
 on, and the recollection of his fascinating society 
 survived the friendship and the life. " Come back to 
 our memory as thou wert in thy hot youth, thy heart 
 boiling with enthusiasm, thy brain throbbing with 
 bright and new imaginations, thy tongue touched 
 with fire as always when ' men gathered around 
 thee, and the stars came out' Samuel Brown, 
 chymist, philosopher, orator, and poet ! and let us 
 hear again thy beautiful accents, soft as woman's, yet 
 strong in the vigour of manly youth, warbling their 
 wondrous story through the deepening shadows, and 
 the solemn starry silence of those charmed autumnal 
 eves."f 
 
 Brown came repeatedly to Dundee as a lecturer to 
 the Watt Institution, in which Gilfillan took a long 
 and active interest, and on the occasion of those 
 lectures he was always a guest at the manse. His 
 
 * Scottish Review, 1857, p. 293. 
 + Ibid., p. 297. 
 
68 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 subjects were : The Atomic Theory of Nature (1842) ; 
 The Law of Polarity and Mesmerism (1847) ; five on 
 the Idea of Magnetism (1848) ; A Course on the 
 History of Chemistry (1850). In the last lecture of 
 this course there seemed, says Gilfillan, " a certain 
 pathetic tone, as if he were half conscious that he was 
 to appear in this scene of his many triumphs no more. 
 He had probably many more intelligent audiences in 
 other places than in Dundee ; but by none was he 
 welcomed with more uniform and unbounded 
 enthusiasm." 
 
 The lectures given by Mr. Gilfillan to the Watt 
 Institution during this period may be named. In the 
 session of 1839-40, he filled the place of some other 
 speaker with an " eloquent and powerful address " (so 
 the official report) on The Immortality of the Soul ; 
 in 1840-41 he gave A Short Survey of the Literature 
 of the Present Age ; in February, 1844, two lectures 
 on the Reconciliation of Astronomy with Scripture ; 
 in December, 1844, On the Relation of Religion to 
 Poetry and to Painting (two lectures) ; in January, 
 1845, On the Relation of Religion to Painting (2nd) 
 and the Relation of Religion to Music. The same 
 month he gave an address on The Wonders of 
 Geology. In 1846, he delivered five lectures on 
 Modern British Literature ; and an Introductory 
 Address on Books : their Uses and Abuses ; in 1847, 
 one on the Genius of Byron, and a Review of Our 
 Past Literature as Influencing our Present ; and in 
 1848, two on the Genius of Milton. 
 
 The Report for 1846 contains the following: 
 "To the Rev. George Gilfillan the Directors feel 
 themselves deeply indebted for the very hearty and 
 handsome manner in which he acceded to their 
 
EARLY MINISTRY, 1835-1850. 69 
 
 wishes, by delivering a highly valuable course of 
 lectures on Modern British Literature. From the 
 success which attended the delivery of the lectures 
 the Directors were gratified to find that their mem- 
 bers, and the public in general, had so well appreci- 
 ated the ability and literary acumen of that 
 distinguished gentleman." Thus within his tenth 
 year in the ministry, Gilfillan had found in Dundee a 
 place of high regard as a man of public spirit and 
 unusual, indeed pre-eminent, literary influence. 
 And far beyond Dundee, through the publication of 
 his first Gallery of Literary Portraits, and in Hoggs 
 Instructor and Taifs Magazine of many brilliant 
 sketches and reviews, his name stood for that of a 
 new and glowing personality. 
 
 Henceforth to the close of his life, Gilfillan gave 
 his service readily on public occasions alike as 
 preacher and lecturer. But lecturing effort was felt 
 by him, at an early stage, to be on the whole unprofit- 
 able. Literary success did not harmonise with that 
 of the popular orator. Again and again he bade 
 farewell to the platform, and again and again recalled 
 his resolution, In some districts, the north-east of 
 England for example, he came to be looked for every 
 year, and was greeted with unfailing interest and 
 enthusiasm. No other Scotsman could command 
 audiences like his beyond the Tweed, as well as 
 north of it. He knew this and was gratified. At the 
 same time he was able to give needed help to 
 many a struggling fellow-minister, and he went on 
 lecturing and preaching because he loved to serve his 
 friends. 
 
 Returning on the decade, a great loss of the year 
 1842 made that season very dark to him. Always 
 
70 GEORGE GILF1LLAN. 
 
 delighting in children, though he had none of his own, 
 Gilfillan's affections were closely entwined with one 
 child-life. Mrs. Gilfillan's youngest sister, Agnes 
 Valentine, was his dear little friend. A quaint, 
 vivacious, loving creature, she had a peculiar wise 
 insight into his moods, a taking naivete touched with 
 sauciness that won his fancy. Between them more 
 than any two in the genial circle of Bogmuir there 
 was a tender understanding which never failed. 
 " Her brow was prominent, pale as marble and nobly 
 expanded ; her cheek in exercise or motion often 
 flushing up through its paleness into a rich roseate 
 hue ; her voice, clear, sweet, none the less for its Nor- 
 land accent ; and her step light, airy, and swift as a 
 roe, or a young hart upon the mountains." Very 
 pathetically, in a passage written immediately after 
 the death of little Agg, and also in the " History," is 
 given the story of their friendship and the sad close. 
 " She was my playfellow when cheerful, my comforter 
 when sad ; her artless yet piercing prattle at once 
 soothed and roused my mind ; and assuredly, amid 
 all the ' chambers of my imagery,' I have never had 
 an idol like her whose premature loss- I continue 
 bitterly, yet submissively, to deplore." These words 
 were written thirteen years after her death. His visits 
 to Fettercairn were never complete without a visit to 
 the grave. 
 
 His mind thus sorrowfully bent to thought upon 
 death by the loss of the child, Gilfillan must needs 
 utter himself. In October of the same year a fruit 
 of his meditations, with some flavour of angry revolt 
 against limiting theories, appeared in the " Discourse 
 on Hades ; or, the Unseen." It excited an amount 
 of interest, criticism, and abuse, which may seem in- 
 
EARLY MINISTRY, 1835-1850. 71 
 
 credible to the race of to-day. The sermon contained 
 little more than a simple line of speculation, varying 
 in no essential point from the Westminster Confes- 
 sion. The anxious care with which appeal was made 
 to the letter of Scripture, the distinct refusal of the 
 Roman Catholic dogma of purgatory, the endeavour 
 at every stage of the argument to conciliate those 
 who recoiled from doctrinal novelty remove the 
 whole, one would think, from any charge of audacity. 
 In one passage only could the boldness of the preacher 
 have even seemed to run into a perilous demand for 
 liberty. But modern readers will smile when they 
 read it, so thoroughly does the claim agree with the 
 mind of thoughtful Christendom. " Though I respect 
 the Shorter Catechism highly, and hold it to contain 
 the great outlines of the truth of God, and am ready 
 still further to subscribe to almost all its ipsissinia 
 verba, I do not consider myself bound, nor do I ever 
 design to bind others, to its every jot of clause and 
 tittle of word, to its every plait of phraseology and 
 minute shade of distinction. Those who would thus 
 strap me down by such innumerable ligaments to 
 such a panting and breathless belief make me a 
 slave, not a man. . . . They would endow an earthly 
 document with the most odious pretended quality of 
 the Papal power, infallibility, and exalt a compilation 
 of human minds to the level of the immediate and 
 fire-breathing syllables of Divine Inspiration." 
 
 One who now wrote in this strain would be regarded 
 as standing firmly on the " impregnable rock." But 
 his claim alarmed the church of that day. Pamphlet 
 followed pamphlet in criticism and rebuke ; recanta- 
 tion was called for. Yet the battle was not fought 
 out. In a long speech to the Presbytery, Mr. Gilfillan 
 
72 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 is described in the minutes as having made some 
 " candid concessions and explanations," which were 
 deemed satisfactory. His friends had been talking 
 to him Samuel Brown and others. An impulsive 
 man is more easily persuaded than another that he 
 has given cause for offence. Though he provoked so 
 much opposition, he felt it keenly, and was glad to 
 bring the matter to an end so far. But his thought 
 had to some extent delivered itself, and was not re- 
 called. 
 
 Principal Tulloch, writing in 1877 f tne new theo- 
 logical freedom in Scotland, said that " the main influ- 
 ences which were educating the youthful Scottish 
 mind in the decade of years which followed the Seces- 
 sion of 1843 were to a large extent outside both the 
 Universities and the Church;"* and Mr. Gilfillan 
 is merely mentioned in reference to a later time. 
 But the freedom which, from 1843, Gilfillan continued 
 to claim, and was tacitly allowed, of treating the 
 Scriptures from a literary as well as a religious point 
 of view was unquestionably the great element of 
 his distinction and popularity in Scotland. Sydney 
 Dobell saw clearly and indicated the outstanding 
 features of Gilfillan's work those which commended 
 him far and wide to the eager minds of the time 
 when, reviewing the " Galleries of Literary Portraits " 
 in the Palladium (July, 1850) he wrote : " Here is an 
 orthodox divine who proclaims that ' a powerful cause 
 of our recent refined scepticism may be found in the 
 narrow, bigoted, and unworthy notions of Christianity 
 which prevail, in the obstinacy with which they are 
 retained, and in the contrast thus presented to the 
 
 * Contemporary Review, vol. xxix. p. 537. 
 
EARLY MINISTRY, 1835-1850. 73 
 
 liberal and fluent motion of the general age.' . . . 
 Here is a philosopher, the friend of Carlyle, the 
 panegyrist of Emerson, sitting and in his right 
 mind at the feet of Christ. Here is a man burning 
 in zeal, adamantine in faith, but who steps out to 
 spiritual combat with the difficulties of the day, 
 crying, ' It will not do now to skulk from the field 
 under a flight of nicknames. It will not do to call 
 our opponents miscreants and monsters. While we 
 state their doubts, let us pity the pain and sorrow, 
 amounting almost to distraction and despair, which 
 attend them ; and let us inquire, if we have no 
 difficulties, may it not be because we have never 
 thought at all.' . . . Here is one who has been on 
 the heights and into the depths of doubt, and every- 
 where finds them peopled by men and brothers ; who 
 has dived into the mines of disbelief, where the eye 
 of the indweller has lost capacity for sunshine has 
 stood in that mount of confusion where the sight is 
 blinded with bare light, and with the calm, clear voice 
 of sympathy lays bare the hearts of their inhabitants 
 the sceptic of the eighteenth and the sceptic of the 
 nineteenth centuries. Here is a comprehensive be- 
 liever in God and in man who asks in hope and hails 
 in love every human effort to solve the great problems 
 of the earth who feels that ' to believe in man is 
 an indispensable requisite to a proper conception of 
 Deity' but looks for their highest solution to that 
 ' unearthly advent for which the weary world and 
 wearier Church are beginning to pant with unutter- 
 able groanings.' " 
 
 Not from the comfortable seat of an easy incum- 
 bency did Gilfillan deliver his judgments of men and 
 their beliefs, but from a vessel tossed with storm, often 
 
74 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 apparently among the breakers. His public appear- 
 ances were those of a very popular man, but there was 
 much in the circumstances of his life to gall a proud 
 spirit. The petty monetary cares his soul loathed 
 were thrust upon him. He disagreed with many from 
 whose dogmatism he could not escape ; he could not 
 school himself to silence. All the more wonderful is 
 it that his theology was so humane, that he continued 
 a passionate lover of men, while he held his high 
 solitary way testifying on behalf of that religion of 
 the future which he found for himself in the Gospel. 
 Those who heard and praised him knew little of the 
 trials he endured. " The year 1843," he writes, " was 
 one of dark struggle, misery, and almost derangement 
 of mind. That year I met Carlyle in Dumfries and 
 found him great, friendly, but on the whole a miserable 
 comforter. The close of the year fell with awful and 
 almost hopeless darkness on my prospects." " Sartor 
 Resartus " had fallen into his hands about this time, and 
 writing of it in the " First Gallery " he gives a picture 
 of his own inner state, for the substantial truth of which 
 he afterwards vouches. " Whoever has struggled with 
 doubts and difficulties almost to strangling whoever 
 has covered with his cloak a Gehenna of bitter 
 disappointment and misery, and walked out never- 
 theless firm, and calm, and silent, among his fellow- 
 men whoever has mourned for ' all the oppressions 
 which are done under the sun,' and been mad ' for the 
 sight of his eyes which he did see,' whoever has 
 bowed down at night upon his pillow in belief that 
 he was the most wretched and God-forsaken of men 
 whoever has felt ' all the wanderer in his soul,' and 
 a sense of the deepest solitude, even when mingling 
 in the business and the crowded thoroughfares of his 
 
EARLY MINISTRY, 1835-1850. 75 
 
 kind . . . whoever has at last attained, not happiness, 
 not assurance, but child-like submission, child-like 
 faith and meek-eyed " blessedness " let him 
 approach, and study, and press to his heart, and 
 bedew with his tears ' Sartor Resartus,' and bless the 
 while its brave and true-hearted author." Gilfillan 
 turned fiercely against Carlyle and Carlyleism after- 
 wards. The impression of the time remains, however, 
 as part of his life. 
 
 With the year 1844, "things mended considerably." 
 With growing prosperity in the town and congrega- 
 tion he lifted up his head. The hope of publishing 
 his portraits, encouraged by Aird and Brown and 
 aided to the best of their ability by both in the face 
 of galling difficulties, gave him a new impulse. " In 
 1845 things were still better, and near the end of it 
 my first ' Gallery ' was published by Tait. Its 
 success was gratifying. In 1846 I lectured for the 
 Philosophical Institution (Edinburgh), sooth to say, 
 with little success. My literary reputation was how- 
 ever steadily rising, although the year was sadly 
 chequered. In 1847 I lectured in England and 
 visited London. Returning, my nervous system 
 received on 24th July a shock from which I did not 
 fully recover for years. 1848 was on the whole a 
 white year. I wrote a good deal for Tait and Hogg ; 
 my congregation was steadily increasing ; the autumn 
 was divinely beautiful, and in December I had rather 
 an enclatant visit to London and lecture in Exeter 
 Hall. 1849 was a glowing season till near the close. 
 My wife fell ill ; cholera was in the country and the 
 town, and my own system, injured by a fall from 
 a horse, not very sound. I visited Dumfries again 
 this season and enjoyed Aird much. I published the 
 
76 GEORGE GILF1LLAN. 
 
 ( Second Gallery,' which was very well received in 
 the winter. In 1850 there were various changes and 
 misadventures ; but in the end of it I published my 
 ' Bards of the Bible,' which became exceedingly 
 popular." 
 
 This rapid outline, quoted from a private manu- 
 script, is filled in to a great extent by the letters 
 which follow, and also by passages in the Journal 
 referring to incidents of the time. In addition some 
 brief particulars may be given. 
 
 Gilfillan's first meeting with Carlyle was at Dum- 
 fries in 1843, " on one f tne most glorious days of 
 that most glorious autumn." From Mrs. Aitkin's 
 tea-table, where Aird and Gilfillan were guests with 
 Thomas Carlyle, the three men walked to a point 
 above Dumfries, commanding a view of the valley 
 of the Nith. In the thick and slumbrous light of the 
 autumn evening " inspiration seemed to stoop down 
 on Carlyle from the sky. He spoke much of his 
 own private experience, particularly of one journey 
 to Edinburgh, when after travelling all the day, with 
 no company save the great dumb ' monsters of 
 mountains,' he rested at a little way-side inn and lay 
 down that night 'the most miserable being under 
 God's heaven.' " On the way home the friends passed 
 Burns' house and "gave it the worship of silence." 
 The evening was spent in Thomas Aird's house, 
 Carlyle speaking of his favourite German writers. 
 Next evening the same company walked together by 
 the Nith, and in the moonlight Carlyle " monologised " 
 on Coleridge, the formalism of religion, and the 
 necessity of its genuine revival. 
 
 A month afterwards, Carlyle was visiting Mr. 
 Erskine of Linlathen and with him called on Gilfillan 
 
EARLY MINISTRY, 1835-1850. 77 
 
 in Dundee. The visit was brief as Carlyle was on 
 his way to the London steamer. 
 
 The third meeting was not till 1847. In the 
 interval Gilfillan had heard occasionally from Carlyle 
 and been indebted to him for personal kindness and 
 attention, " which made the visit more that of a grate- 
 ful friend than of a distant admirer." Calling at 
 Cheyne Row, Gilfillan was fortunate in finding both 
 Mr. and Mrs. Carlyle, while Dr. John Carlyle after- 
 wards dropt in. The talk began with Chalmers, who 
 was just dead and had been a visitor not long before 
 his sudden removal. Carlyle spoke also of " Festus," 
 which he would not praise ; of Tennyson, whom he 
 admired; of O'Connell, regarding whom he was pointed 
 and severe ; and when Gilfillan left for Islington the 
 two brothers went with him a considerable way. 
 
 Next, on I9th December, 1848, after visiting Mary 
 Howitt and Leigh Hunt whose " old, genial nature 
 was shining out through dulness and decay" 
 Gilfillan saw Carlyle at Chelsea, again found him 
 cordial, and the talk was of Chalmers, Irving, and 
 Brougham. 
 
 Finally, in 1850, Gilfillan writes: " I spent a fore- 
 noon lately with Thomas Erskine and Thomas 
 Carlyle on the brink of the German Ocean [walking 
 out from Linlathen]. It was fine to find their deep 
 and eternal dissimilarities mellowed and softened into 
 harmony, and to hear the concert formed between the 
 meek, low voice of the one and the strong, yet still 
 and melancholy accents of the other. It was the 
 flute accompanying the sea. I could not thoroughly 
 sympathise with either, but I loved and shall I add ? 
 pitied both. I suspect I was repaid in kind." 
 
 believed that the publication of his " Bards 
 
78 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 of the Bible," in which he prefers Bunyan to Sartor, 
 provoked the displeasure, and perhaps the contempt, 
 of Carlyle. At all events, when Dobell met Carlyle 
 at Malvern in 1852, although Gilfillan sent a message 
 there was no response. And the alienation of feeling 
 and of opinion ran afterwards on Gilfillan's side into ' 
 a vehement and whole-souled attack on the Carlylean 
 gospel, with such a force of dogmatism and such 
 oracular vigour of style, matching Sartor's own, that 
 sympathy or accord henceforth in almost any form 
 became impossible. What the " Bards of the Bible " 
 hinted, " Christianity and Our Era " plainly affirmed, 
 and in a sense demonstrated, that Carlyle's " savage 
 and barbarous" tests of human worth were out of 
 key with any gospel for men. So Gilfillan broke 
 away in utter sincerity, still admiring, however, the 
 rugged, penetrating genius he would no longer allow 
 to dominate his mind. 
 
 In February, 1848, Mr. and Mrs. Gilfillan had the 
 pleasure of entertaining Emerson when he visited 
 Dundee. The great American, whose praises had 
 been published in the first " Gallery," was received 
 with all the honour and kindness due to him as a 
 unique thinker and a stranger, and Gilfillan risked 
 not a little in his honour. His lectures on the 
 " Spirit of the Times " and " Eloquence " were finely 
 noticed in the second " Gallery," and so far as his 
 private life was concerned, no word was written there 
 or elsewhere that could offend. In return for his 
 attention and friendly offices to his guest, Mr. Gil- 
 fillan received a copy of Emerson's next work. In 
 the " English Traits " Samuel Brown was named and 
 thanked. Modesty, perhaps, kept Emerson from 
 naming Dundee and his panegyrist there. 
 
EARLY MINISTRY, 1835-1850. 79 
 
 Into the Anti-Slavery movement Gilfillan threw 
 himself with his whole heart, and his church George's 
 Chapel as it was called was on the loth March, 
 1846, the scene of an extraordinary meeting at which 
 Frederick Douglass outdid himself in the boldness 
 of his charges against those whom he held faithless 
 to the cause of liberty. Gilfillan's speech reflected 
 the intense excitement of the time. In a heated 
 assembly he was apt to pour himself out in eulogy 
 or protest as the case might be ; in this case indigna- 
 tion flowed like lava, and scorched. Many still alive 
 will no doubt remember how the cities of Scotland 
 were roused by the whole discussion, and how, in 
 1853, Mrs. Stowe was greeted everywhere with the 
 eloquence and fervour of the country. At her recep- 
 tion in Dundee Gilfillan was of course conspicuous. 
 The city did nothing in those days without him. 
 
V. 
 
 EARLIER WRITINGS. 
 
 THE little papers on Professor Wilson and Dr. 
 Chalmers that stole into the Edinburgh Univer- 
 sity Magazine in the latter part of the year 1839 
 were the first notes in literature of a strong voice. 
 In September of that year, Gilfillan, preaching in 
 Edinburgh, met De Quincey, and had two nights 
 of the opium-eater's " sublime gossip." He felt 
 a rare and subtle charm ; he has conveyed it to 
 those who never saw De Quincey, or heard the 
 " small, thin, yet piercing voice winding out subtle- 
 ties of thought and feeling in long and strange 
 sentences, evolving like a piece of complicated music." 
 At that time, he says, De Quincey, after long absence 
 from the arena of Black-wood's Magazine, had leaped 
 down upon it again. Is it not likely that Gilfillan, 
 the younger, warmer-blooded man, conscious of his 
 own mental boldness, would say to himself, even 
 while he sat fascinated beside the learned dreamer : 
 " For me, also, there is a place, could I but find it, in 
 this rich and glorious realm where imagination and 
 enthusiasm, knowledge and philosophy intermingle 
 their fires, and the smoke of their sacrifice goes up to 
 God continually." There is one faculty which a man, 
 when he has it, can never mistake ; nor does it betray 
 80 
 
EARLIER WRITINGS. 81 
 
 him the power of intellectual apprehension. Men 
 may dream of themselves as philosophers, hope of 
 themselves as poets, painters, administrators ; but 
 one who has the eyes of the mind, strong and 
 straight-set in his head, knows that it is so with 
 him, and that he is entitled to look the world in 
 the face and record his judgment. Gilfillan had 
 this unwarped vision, and especially where he found 
 the men of his own immediate time expressing 
 themselves, their views of life. With an essential 
 truthfulness that one admires the more as one enters 
 the more into Gilfillan's work, he launched himself 
 into Judgment of Men, their nature, their moral and 
 mental character, their mortal and immortal " pas- 
 sions." He frequently used that word ; it is signi- 
 ficant of himself and his own enterprise. When he 
 made his rush into literature in 1840 with the articles 
 for Aird's paper, he put himself in comparison with 
 De Quincey, and more especially with Hazlitt and 
 Macaulay, just where these appeared beyond rivalry, 
 holding their own unapproached way. He had sub- 
 jects of his own Irving, Foster, and others ; but 
 there were not enough of these ; he seized upon the 
 great names of general literature Shelley, Coleridge, 
 Byron already painted by Hazlitt and De Quincey ; 
 upon De Quincey and Hazlitt themselves ; and while 
 the praise of style, and most of what is implied in 
 style, has to be allowed to them, Gilfillan quite makes 
 good his pretension. He had something of his own 
 to report, and he gave it with native force and free- 
 dom. He had neither the cosmopolitan riches of the 
 great literary trader, nor the practical touch of artistic 
 fingers full of nerve, nor the fine classic tone that 
 lingers for ever about such a passage as that in which 
 
 G 
 
82 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 Hazlitt makes you read Congreve with him in the 
 quaint old inn-parlour at Alton, while coffee steams 
 in a silver pot, and " the flavour of Congreve's style 
 prevails over all." There is nameless magic in this 
 and many another bit, as there is though differently 
 distilled in De Quincey's fluid amber of curious 
 learning and half-impertinent " monologising." Gil- 
 fillan came with a certain rural tone which never 
 left him ; a blunt, half-disdainful positiveness, giving 
 his own personal impression, and pouring it out with 
 haste like a stream " in spate." Is it too much to 
 say that there was more of the French Revolution, 
 that is, of the new age and the delivery of the human 
 mind, in his first " Gallery of Literary Portraits " than 
 in all Hazlitt ? The young minister in Dundee, with 
 his weekly sermons to compose, usually two and often 
 three, with his sick people and sorry people to visit, 
 his meetings and lecturings, his intimacy with all 
 kinds of common human experience had neither 
 the time nor the gift to be a finished essayist. But 
 he was very much alive ; his passion for life was 
 hardly second to that of Robert Burns. When he 
 turned to criticism, he seized upon some man, looked 
 at his work as an utterance of him, and threw himself 
 into the whole as a humane production. Here lay the 
 freshness and the strength of Gilfillan's interpretations, 
 and here he still remains unsurpassed. You will go 
 to others for rich and delicate infiltration of light 
 through a subject. He illustrates Men, not Subjects. 
 His writings are not so much literature as life itself, 
 the material and object of literature. After all, 
 vitality is the main point everywhere and always. 
 When the reckoning is made stern, the first point and 
 the last point is how much life ? 
 
EARLIER WRITINGS. 83 
 
 Now, during Gilfillan's ascending period, say from 
 1840 to 1855, he discharged into the literary and 
 religious atmosphere a very considerable quantity of 
 ozone from his own mountain-reared nature. Not 
 Carlyle himself was more a centre of interest and 
 authority than Gilfillan was for many years. The 
 author of " The French Revolution " had powers more 
 massive and more disciplined ; his commanding posi- 
 tion in London made him a prophet to men of high 
 standing, while George Gilfillan's ministry was exer- 
 cised partly among wide ranks of the less vocal multi- 
 tude, partly among thinking young men and women 
 of the middle classes over Britain and America, partly 
 among the brilliant scattered ones who are but now 
 coming fully to their own offices of interpreter, poet, 
 and preacher in this end of the century. 
 
 It was a broken ministry, as he well knew, and 
 there were many hours in his life when he asked, 
 sadly enough, why it had been appointed to him. 
 This note will be caught often in the journal that 
 helped to beguile rather than occupy the later years 
 in which, as he often repeats, he was still possessed 
 of full intellectual vigour and desire. Yes ; it was a 
 divided ministry ; and it was so partly because his 
 religious conscience was quick and operative. For 
 a man of his temperament, Gilfillan was wonderfully 
 disciplined on the moral side. His sudden flares of 
 temper went down as suddenly at the touch of a 
 loving hand especially one hand, which could do 
 as it would with him. His proud, hot soul, lavish 
 in all things, took guidance more and more, as the 
 years went by, from the chosen companion and 
 helper. It was because he recognised that her 
 qualities were the exact complement of his own ; 
 
84 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 and he gave to affectionate counsel what no man 
 could extort from him in fight This applies further. 
 He was ambitious : frankly desirous of large influence, 
 and rejoicing in it. But he held himself under a 
 yoke of duty to the people who had called him in his 
 youth, and to the church from which he had his 
 father and mother and many a holy memory. Once 
 or twice, in excitement, he wrote hastily (and, it would 
 appear, with singular illegibility) of leaving the Church. 
 He never came near doing that in reality. At all 
 events, there is almost no evidence that he could have 
 so broken his life in two. 
 
 Gilfillan examined himself with the candour he 
 used towards other men, and he made no hazardous 
 experiments for the sake of ambition. He recognised 
 that in the great affairs of life a man must owe some- 
 thing to the environment, to the accepted charge, 
 to the honoured companion ; he recognised that for 
 such a man as he was God gives safety in giving 
 conventional duty ; and even at the height of his 
 literary exertions and fame, when a host of aspiring 
 souls turned toward " Gilfillan " with their hopes of 
 life and achievement, even then he remained where 
 he was, preaching the gospel in a provincial city, 
 and leaving with God the answer to his own restless 
 desire. 
 
 The faults of his literary manner are evident. It 
 must be remembered how he wrought and where. He 
 was practically alone nearly all his life, both as a 
 litterateur and a preacher, his hand against many a 
 man's while his heart was fuller than most of humane 
 sympathy and purpose. Literature is a jealous god, 
 and Mr. Gilfillan's position of solitude was as much 
 against his development on one side as the life of a 
 
EARLIER WRITINGS. 85 
 
 nonconformist minister was against it on another. 
 He was at once too much alone and too much engaged. 
 But what was damaging to him as a thinker and 
 writer was no reproach to him. The reproach lies 
 elsewhere with literary men despising one whose 
 native powers of head and heart were of an order 
 altogether above theirs, and with ministers and 
 laymen of Scottish churches who knew a little of his 
 heresy, all his imprudence, and next to nothing of his 
 large warm conservatism. 
 
 Isolation was not a congenial state to Gilfillan, 
 though he did at times enthrone himself in it gloomily. 
 His journal shows depression, dissatisfaction, even 
 now and then the old fierceness ; but it is entirely free 
 of cynicism. He was in one sense a disappointed man 
 as regards literature that may frankly be allowed, 
 with some proviso but he was never an embittered 
 man. The great engagement of his soul with religion 
 saved him there. Men might fail ; Christ could not ; 
 and the affairs of Christ's kingdom included alike the 
 success and the failure of His servants. Gilfillan's 
 heart remained, not at rest, but acquainted with 
 hope ; and he compares well in respect of disposition 
 with many men of genius. Often moody, he was 
 never mean ; often crude and unseasoned in speech 
 and writing, he was never coarse in thought ; while 
 whispered detraction, cool malice, calculating mischief, 
 were beyond his comprehension, not in his region at 
 all. There was always something leonine about him 
 in his personal appearance, which from his prime 
 became very striking the broad poise of the head 
 upon the shoulders, the bold look of the prominent 
 eyes, the haughty aquiline strength of the face, as of 
 the eagle and lion in Ezekiel's dream of human power. 
 
86 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 These things were an index to the demonstrative 
 unsuspiciousness of the soul and its restless outlook. 
 Here was a man who emphatically lived, who honour- 
 ably lived, and though he suffered still called life good. 
 He loved the poets and nature and all great ideas 
 with a deep and glorious passion ; he loved the heart 
 in the human breast and God who gave it. This poet- 
 life of his roared through all his writings, every article 
 he published, every sermon he preached, almost every 
 tea-meeting speech all the utterances that made him 
 felt near and far. Wherever there was a man there 
 was one who might partake the free joy of intellectual 
 passion, the sense of " something interfused," and to 
 him Gilfillan called as to a fellow and equal, a son of 
 the Highest. He would have all men and women, 
 even the little children listen with their own ears to 
 the voice of nature and of God in nature, he would 
 have every man and woman a poet. They were not 
 to lodge in the commonplace, but to scale the heights. 
 For himself, he rose on wings not always eagle-strong, 
 saw with eyes not always eagle-clear. He knew that ; 
 but he showed the way, showed it bravely and not 
 without royalty in his own flight toward the empyrean. 
 God was there, and God was the Alpha and Omega 
 of Life. 
 
 Men felt the rush and the glow. Carlyle felt it ; 
 Emerson felt it ; after and with them many a bright 
 bounding spirit and a grateful multitude of those whom 
 the commonplace had well-nigh buried. Let Gilfillan 
 have his right his hope. He was a prophet whose 
 burden was the terrible joy of existence, the God-given 
 fire of pure passionate intellect. Burns left unspoken 
 a message which Gilfillan, with the clean lips of a 
 chaste man, and the flaming judgment of a religious 
 
EARLIER WRITINGS. 87 
 
 man essayed to render. If it might have been better 
 given, so, assuredly, might the word spoken by 
 Burns ; yet we prefer to think how much we owe, 
 rather than how little, to the poet of the passionate 
 will. To endorse and justify the sense of debt is the 
 province of critical biography, and where Gilfillan 
 rendered in his sphere may it be rendered to him 
 again ! His function peculiarly, was the Christian 
 that 's really the vital interpretation of the man of 
 genius as poet, patriot, prophet ; and if one considers 
 the variety of his own personal temperament and 
 sympathy, his intimacy with the toiling multitude as 
 well as with the man of thought, his peculiar gift of 
 establishing the great ideas of religion out-of-doors 
 under the open sky among the liberators of the race, 
 his affectionate family life as a man, his unselfish 
 laborious life as a citizen and clergyman certainly 
 one has to ask whether, in certain respects, he stood 
 far below Carlyle. At any rate, no one knew better 
 than Gilfillan the nature and the responsibility of 
 genius, the eternal youth and eternal appetite of the 
 soul. Those who as young fellows, in the forties of 
 our century, caught a brand from his fire, have no 
 need to be ashamed now of their enthusiasm or their 
 priest. 
 
 Writing in January, 1844, to Emerson, Carlyle said : 
 " Did you receive a Dumfries newspaper with a 
 criticism (of me) in it ? The author is one Gilfillan, a 
 young dissenting minister in Dundee, a person of 
 great talent, ingenuousness, enthusiasm and other 
 virtues ; whose position as a preacher of bare old 
 Calvinism under penalty of death sometimes makes 
 me tremble for him. He has written in that same 
 newspaper about all the notablest men of his time ; 
 
88 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 Godwin, Corn-Law Elliott, and I know not all whom ; 
 if he publish the book I will take care to send it you. 
 I saw the man for the first time last autumn at 
 Dumfries. As I said, his being a Calvinist dissenting 
 minister, economically fixed and spiritually with such 
 germinations in him, forces me to be very reserved 
 with him." 
 
 The spiritual germinations so evident to Carlyle, 
 could not fail to strike in with his own. It was, as he 
 said to Aird, a nature kindred with his that gave 
 a view of him and of other " notablest " men in the 
 Dumfries newspaper. The well-known words may be 
 set down here in their connection : " It is a noble 
 panegyric a picture painted by a poet : which means 
 with me a man of insight and of heart ; decisive, sharp 
 of outline, in hues borrowed from the sun. It is rare 
 to find oneself so mirrored in a brother's soul." * 
 
 True, they differed afterwards as we have seen, 
 when "The Bards of the Bible" gave hint of 
 Gilfillan's move on into sharp criticism and opposition. 
 And probably there was not wanting the assistance of 
 private gossip to inflame contempt. Gilfillan was 
 never prudent nor was Carlyle. Nevertheless, the 
 first testimony stands, from one whose mental eye- 
 sight was terribly strong, that here he found a 
 brother in thought and feeling. 
 
 Naturally, a writer situated as Gilfillan was, had to 
 write of what lay in his memory and possession. He 
 could not choose the best subject and retire with a 
 parcel of books to a Winterslow Hutt, like Hazlitt, to 
 a den near Edinburgh, like De Quincey, to a Craigen- 
 
 * Carlyle to Aird, after the publication of Gilfillan's sketch. 
 
EARLIER WRITINGS. 89 
 
 puttock or Chelsea, like Carlyle, and there put himself, 
 body and mind, to one task. Hazlitt first gathered 
 out of the world all the help it could give him, and 
 then shut himself away from it to produce. Carlyle 
 and his wife, with sublime courage, dared all for free- 
 dom of thought, for means of knowledge and careful 
 production. Carlyle had full leave from his own 
 sense of power, and from a woman's faith in him, to 
 think and write according to his intuitions. He 
 reaped the grain and also the straw of his own resolu- 
 tion, and the gallantry of his companion. Mr. and 
 Mrs. Carlyle were unencumbered by the religious and 
 ecclesiastical element ; Gilfillan lived half his life in it 
 as a circumstance, and all his life in it as a control. 
 For him, no Craigenputtock, no Chelsea. Embarked 
 on another profession than literature, and deeply 
 pledged to it in his own conscience, he turned, as a 
 writer, to the material that lay stored, and could be 
 thrown into vivid form in short time. Moreover, his 
 opportunity came at first with a country newspaper, 
 and brought certain disadvantages. Gilfillan's instinct 
 led him to address chiefly the inquiring young mind 
 of Scotland, and there, indeed, his strength lay. At 
 the same time, newspaper publication is less severe 
 than some others ; even Aird's fine taste had to 
 remember what ensures popular effect ; and there is 
 no denying that the literary portraits which began to 
 appear in 1840, the first, De Quincey, in February, 
 Carlyle, in October, Irving, in December, and went 
 on rapidly for four years, were not in the classic style. 
 That being allowed, their extraordinary force and 
 boldness arrest attention, and as soon as one considers 
 the spirit in which they were done, and the milieu 
 into which they were cast, they are seen to be sui 
 
90 GEORGE GILF1LLAN. 
 
 generis. To men of the reading, reflecting, and 
 religious order, they came as a revelation : the bush 
 burned and was not consumed. Imagination had 
 been a splendid sin one does not need to be very old 
 to remember the evangelical circles in which it con- 
 tinued to wear the brand forced upon its brow. True, 
 these circles were not all, but they were large and 
 insistent, especially in England, where Byron and 
 Shelley acted the part of Ptolemy in their own holy 
 place. It was impossible for the logic of the English 
 mind to see that this imagination was justified of her 
 children, when the children themselves profaned her 
 temple. Nor was the matter helped when Hazlitt and 
 Leigh Hunt stepped in as interpreters. 
 
 Scotland, to be sure, held to her Burns despite his 
 errors ; piety in Scotland was always bred within 
 sight of the hills. Yet there was plenty of room for 
 one who knew how to justify Burns, and with him 
 Shelley, Byron, and others, and prove the debt of 
 general mankind to these few glorious wandering 
 stars. 
 
 Gilfillan scarcely knew what he was doing. He 
 loved the imaginative intellect as co-witness with con- 
 science for God ; ever since he could remember he 
 had loved it, and thrilled with heavenly rapture as he 
 felt its motion within his own breast. He had seen 
 it in Wilson, in Chalmers ; now, like a hound let loose, 
 he threw himself upon the track of it in Irving, 
 Coleridge, Shelley, Carlyle, peasant-poets, women- 
 poets, preachers and orators, old friends and new 
 unknown stars, radiating from a distance. The 
 search was itself a poem of humane love and criticism, 
 of literary passion at a white heat. 
 
 Take from the portrait of Hazlitt this, which will 
 
EARLIER WRITINGS. 91 
 
 show the spirit and compass of Gilfillan's enterprise 
 as he launched forth : " Hazlitt's forte lay in fastening 
 by sure, swift, instinct upon the differential quality 
 of the author, book, or picture which was the topic 
 of his criticism. And in saying this, we intimate our 
 belief that he does not belong to the highest order of 
 minds in whom imagination, or, more properly, 
 creative intellect, is ever the presiding power . . . 
 What are the very highest minds (not Hebrew) by 
 universal admission, which have yet appeared among 
 men ? Are they not those of Homer, Plato, Dante, 
 Shakespeare, Milton, Spenser ; perhaps we should 
 add, Sir Walter Scott, Goethe, Newton, and Lord 
 Bacon ? Now, with the exception of the two last 
 mentioned can any one doubt that imagination, 
 though far from being the sole, was the presiding 
 power in all those majestic minds ? Was it not this 
 faculty which animated the old bard who on the 
 Chian strand : 
 
 " ' Beheld the Iliad and the Odyssee 
 
 Rise to the swelling of the tuneful sea ?' 
 
 Was it not imagination which prompted the golden 
 fantasies and eloquence of Plato? Was it not the 
 same power, in a darker and more demoniac shape, 
 which took down the mighty Florentine through the 
 descending circles of damnation and up the bright 
 steps of celestial blessedness ? Did not imagination 
 bind in like a glorious girdle the varied and number- 
 less faculties of Shakespeare? Did it not show to 
 Milton's inward eye the secrets of eternity ? Did it 
 not pour all 'The Arabian heaven/ upon the days 
 and nights of Spenser ? Did it not people the blank 
 of the past with crowding forms and faces to the 
 exhaustless mind and on the many-coloured page of 
 
92 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 Scott ? Did not its magic robe bear Goethe harmless 
 as he entered with Faust and Mephistopheles amid 
 the hurry and horror of the Walpurgis night ? Nay, 
 even in reference to Newton and Bacon, we can 
 hardly persuade ourselves, that in both their minds it 
 was not the ruling, as we know that in the latter it 
 was a principal, faculty ; that it did not attend the one 
 in the giant leaps of his geometry, nor assist the other 
 in making out his map of all the provinces of science 
 and all the capabilities of mind. In somewhat lower, 
 but still lofty regions we find the same faculty pre- 
 siding over the rest as in Wordsworth, Coleridge, 
 Shelley, Byron, and Burke. In those writers who had 
 the benefit of inspiration it is the same. Think of 
 Isaiah with his glowing eloquence ! Ezekiei with his 
 stupendous visions, tinged by the ' terrible crystal ; ' 
 the author of Job with his gorgeous imagery ; Daniel 
 with his allegory ; David with his lyric enthusiasm ; 
 and the author of the Apocalypse, where the events of 
 time and the cycles of eternity are blended in one 
 tremendous tragedy, and enacted on one obscure and 
 visionary stage. 
 
 " Imagination thus seems, in its higher form, to be 
 the sovereign faculty of the loftiest natures . . . 
 Perhaps Foster, in under-rating imagination, is only 
 committing the common error of confounding it with 
 fancy confounding a faculty which supplies foliage 
 with that finer power which produces fruit. But 
 imagination is at once illustrative and creative. It 
 sees by intuition, it illustrates by metaphor, it thinks 
 in music. Great thought links itself instantaneously 
 to imagery, and comes forth like Minerva in a 
 panoply of glittering armour." 
 
 Since that was written fifty years have passed 
 
EARLIER WRITINGS, 93 
 
 half of one of j:he most changeful centuries in history ; 
 and the writer was notable among those who helped 
 to make change. Take his estimate of Shelley, 
 printed first in Aird's paper in July, 1841, when 
 Gilfillan was struggling for his position as a minister in 
 Dundee, and Moxon the publisher was being pro- 
 secuted for his dealings with the poet. The temper 
 of the religious world at that time may be judged 
 from the fact that Aird felt himself obliged to 
 suppress some of Gilfillan's references and to have 
 the paper signed with a nom de plume. He chose 
 Apollodorus, and to some extent Mr. Gilfillan became 
 known by that designation. Aird also wrote an intro- 
 duction, to make the daring essay all the less offensive. 
 Startling it must certainly have been to ordinary 
 readers at that time, whether or not it appeared after- 
 wards as in the book. 
 
 " Percy Bysshe Shelley, of all the modern poets, 
 with the exception of Coleridge in his youth, reminds 
 us most in his earnestness, his possession, his manner 
 of communication of Israel's prophets. His was a 
 burdened soul ; he was the mere organ of a power 
 which dwelt in him ; like one of Ezekiel's wheels his 
 being moved in the might of an invisible spirit. . . . We 
 deplore the atheism of such a spirit and wonder at it 
 with a great admiration, that a being of such richly 
 endowed intellect and warm quick beating heart 
 who was no profligate, no worldling, tinged with no 
 selfish or sinister motives, but a sincere, shy, and lofty 
 enthusiast standing up in a creation so full of testi- 
 monies to the existence of a Great Spirit ; where 
 there is not a flower that blossoms in the garden but 
 preaches that there is a God, not a leaf that twinkles 
 in the sunbeam, nor a cloud that passes over the moon, 
 
94 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 nor an insect which flutters in the breath of the gale 
 or creates a tiny tempest on the waves of the pool, 
 but repeats and re-echoes the testimony that there is 
 a God ; where snow in its silence and storm in its 
 turmoil, summer in its beauty and winter in its wrath, 
 the blossoms of spring and the golden glories of 
 autumn, alike testify to a God . . . that such a being, 
 placed in the centre of so sublime a circle of witnesses, 
 should say * I doubt, I deny, I cannot believe that 
 there is a God ; ' that he should have realised in his 
 imaginary experience the tremendous dream of Jean 
 Paul ... is in truth an awful, an inscrutable mystery. 
 What ailed this noble misled spirit against the God 
 who had so bountifully enriched him ? What ailed 
 him against the holy child Jesus, with His perfect 
 character and His bleeding love ? He said ' Love is 
 God,' why did he not change it into ' God is Love ' ? 
 He deified a vague beautiful principle of benevo- 
 lence. Why did he not turn and see it in a purer, 
 loftier form, condensed in the countenance, illustrated 
 in the character, and sealed by the blood of Jesus ? 
 
 " Shelley was a denier, a dogmatiser ; but he was no 
 whiner, lying across the wheel-way or reclining on the 
 shore. Shelley was a workman, though his under- 
 taking was a desperate one. He shot an infant finger 
 amid the thunder-crashing spokes of the grim wheel 
 of necessity ; it was crushed, and if he did utter one 
 wild wailing cry as he drew it back, mangled into his 
 bosom, who shall blame him ? Shelley was a work- 
 man ; though such a workman as in Shinar of old 
 sought to reach heaven by piling brick on brick and 
 mortar on mortar ; working, too, alone, under a black 
 sky, with lightning blinding his eyes." 
 
 That is merely a taste of the article, much abbrevi- 
 
EARLIER WRITINGS. 95 
 
 ated and failing therefore to give an adequate idea of 
 the glowing abundance of the style, which seems to 
 exult in rolling from clause to clause, from one tribu- 
 tary sentence to another, the gathering flow continuing 
 perfectly distinct in its direction. One sentence is 
 precisely a whole close printed octavo page in length. 
 Part of it is given above ; it gathers itself together in 
 folds like the clouds in a warm April sky. The Shelley 
 oration is undoubtedly the morning flame of Gilfillan's 
 writing day, but it went on to a strong noon. The 
 Byron paper has one of his finest things, the com- 
 parison of the poet to his own "Dark Lochnagar," 
 a prose poem of singular power and aptness. " Not 
 the loftiest of his country's poets, he is the most 
 sharply and terribly defined. In magnitude and 
 round completeness he yields to many ; in jagged, 
 abrupt, and passionate projection of himself over the 
 world of literature, to none. The genius of convul- 
 sion, a dire attraction, dwells around him, and volcanic 
 as he is, the coldness of wintry selfishness too often 
 collects in the hollows of his verse. He loves, too, the 
 cloud and the thick darkness, and comes ' veiling all 
 the lightnings of his song in sorrow.' . . . No poet, 
 since Homer and Ida, has thus everlastingly shot his 
 genius into the heart of one great mountain, identify- 
 ing with it himself and his song. Not Horace with 
 Soracte not Wordsworth with Helvellyn not 
 Coleridge with Mount Blanc not even Scott with 
 the Eildons all these are still common property, 
 but Lochnagar is Byron's property ; no poet will ever 
 venture to sing it again." 
 
 The whole passage when first read stamps itself on 
 the mind, and it is Gilfillan's very own ; it contains 
 his essential and peculiar genius for large critical 
 
96 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 rhetoric, for memorable picturesque identification and 
 comparison, for association of nature and religion and 
 the flights of the human spirit in one view, as from a 
 mountain one sees cities, and lakes, and forests, and, 
 passing over them, the quick flight of birds. 
 
 Yet, in the " Second Gallery " Byron is followed by 
 Crabbe, and nothing is more notable in the whole 
 matter than the ease of the transition and the exceed- 
 ing sympathy of the writer for this very different 
 poet. 
 
 " To be the poet of the waste places of Creation, to 
 adopt the orphans of the mighty mother, to wed her 
 dowerless daughters, to find out the beauty which has 
 been spilt in tiny drops in the most unlovely regions, 
 to echo the low music which arises from even her 
 stillest and most sterile spots, this was the mission of 
 Crabbe as a descriptive poet. He preferred the 
 Leahs to the Rachels of nature ; and this not merely 
 that his lot had cast him amid such scenes, and that 
 early associations had taught him a profound interest 
 in them, but apparently from native taste. He 
 actually loved that beauty which stands shivering on 
 the brink of barrenness, loved it for its timidity and 
 its loneliness. Nay, he seemed to love barrenness 
 itself; brooding over the dull page till there arose 
 from it a strange lustre. . . . Crabbe differs from 
 other modern masters, alike in his selection of subjects 
 and in his mode of treating the subjects he selects. 
 Byron moves over nature with a fastidious and aristo- 
 cratic step, touching only upon objects already 
 interesting or ennobled. This, at least, is true of his 
 " Childe Harold " and earlier pieces. In later pro- 
 ductions he goes to the opposite extreme ; alights 
 with a daring yet dainty foot upon all shunned and 
 
EARLIER WRITINGS. 97 
 
 forbidden things, and rushes in where modesty and 
 reserve have alike forbidden entrance. . . . Shelley 
 and Coleridge attach themselves almost exclusively 
 to the great, understanding this term in a wide sense 
 as including much that is grotesque and much that is 
 homely, which the magic of their genius sublimates to 
 a proper pitch of keeping with the rest. Wordsworth, 
 again, seems always standing above the objects he 
 describes, the bending furze bush and the lowly 
 broom, the nest lying in the level clover-field, the tarn 
 sinking away seemingly before his eye, the prospect 
 from the mountain summit cast far beneath him ; at 
 highest, the star burning low upon the mountain 
 ridge like an ' untended watch-fire.' Crabbe, on the 
 other hand, goes down on his knees that he may the 
 more accurately describe the marsh given over to 
 desolation from immemorial time, the slush left by 
 the sea and revealing the dead body of the suicide, 
 the bare crag and the stunted tree diversifying the 
 scenery of the saline wilderness, the house on the 
 heath, creaking in the storm and telling strange 
 stories of misery and crime, the pine in a wintry wood 
 which had acted as the gallows of some miserable 
 man, the gorse surrounding with yellow light the 
 encampment of the gypsies, the snow putting out the 
 fire of the pauper or lying unmelted on his pillow of 
 death, the web of the spider blinding the cottager's 
 window, the wheel turned by the meagre hand of 
 contented or cursing penury, the stocking that forms 
 a cap by night and the garter by midnight, the dung- 
 hill becoming the accidental grave of the drunkard, 
 the poorhouse of forty years ago with its appalling 
 blasphemies, its ferocity without fun, its huddled 
 murders and its shrieks of disease dumb in the 
 
 H 
 
98 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 uproar around ; the Bedlam of forty years ago, with 
 its straw on end under the restlessness of the insane, 
 its keepers cold and stern as the snow covered cliffs 
 above the wintry cataract, its songs dying away in 
 despairing gurgles down the miserable throat ; such 
 familiar faces of want, guilt, and woe, of nakedness, 
 sterility, and shame, does Crabbe delight in showing 
 us. ... It is the peculiarity and the daring of this 
 poet that he often tries us with truth and nothing but 
 truth, as if to bring the question to an issue whether, 
 in nature, absolute truth [fact?] be not essential 
 though severe poetry. On this question, certainly, 
 issue was never so fully joined before. In Words- 
 worth's eye there is a misty glimmer of imagina- 
 tion, through which all objects, low and high, are 
 seen. Even his ' five blue eggs ' gleam upon him 
 with a light which comes not from themselves, 
 which comes, it may be, from the Great Bear, 
 or Arcturus and his sons. And when he strives to 
 see out of this medium he loses his vision and 
 describes little better than would his own 'Old 
 Cumberland Beggar.' Shakespeare in his witches' 
 caldron, and Burns in 'haly table,' are shockingly 
 circumstantial, but the element of imagination creeps 
 in, and the light that never was on sea or land 
 disdains not to rest on 'eye of newt/ 'toe of frog,' 
 baboon's blood, the garter that strangled the babe, 
 and all the rest of the ingredients. Crabbe, on the 
 other hand, would have described the five blue eggs, 
 and, besides, the materials of the nest and the kind 
 of hedge in which it was built, like a bird-nesting 
 schoolboy ; but he would never have given the gleam. 
 He could have made an inventory of the ingredients 
 of the hell-broth, or the curiosities on the holy table, 
 
EARLIER WRITINGS. 99 
 
 but could not have conceived them, nor have slipped 
 in that one flashing word, that single cross-ray of 
 imagination which is required to elevate and startle 
 them into ideal life. And before his pictures we are 
 compelled to say, ' Well, that is poetry after all, for 
 it is truth ; but it is poetry of comparatively a low 
 order it is the last gasp of the poetic spirit ; and, 
 moreover, perfect and matchless as it is of its kind, 
 it is not worthy of the powers of its author, who can 
 rise, and has, at other times, risen to much loftier 
 ground.' 
 
 " Had Crabbe been a Scottish clergyman we should 
 have said that he had versified his session-book." 
 
 The whole paper is admirable ; it is Gilfillan at his 
 best yet the subject would not, per se, appear the 
 most likely to awaken his powers. 
 
 The first "Gallery," published in 1845, at once 
 placed its author among men of genius, and, with all 
 deductions for the " anecdotal " and the " tall," estab- 
 lished him as a new force in critical literature. With 
 this book he entered, as one says, " the great golden 
 period of his life, during which he was, perhaps, the 
 most popular of all writers with young men ; and, 
 certainly, divided the honours with Carlyle." 
 
 The volume was brought out by William Tait, of 
 Edinburgh, and Aird generously did his best for it, 
 although he knew that his friend was passing to some 
 extent from the pages of the Herald. In March, 
 1845, James Hogg began to issue his Instructor, a 
 rival, and a very worthy rival, to Chambers 's Journal 
 for many years. Gilfillan was one of the chief con- 
 tributors from the first, and the payments from that 
 source were welcome to him. Aird writes in the 
 month of June : " Hogg has sent me the four 
 
ioo GEORGE GIL FILL AN. 
 
 monthly parts of the Instructor. It is really good, 
 and I shall say a good word for it. I recognise 
 your pieces ; they are slighter than your wont." 
 Part of the next sentence has been cut away by an 
 autograph-hunter, but apparently Aird advised Gil- 
 fillan to give Hogg of his best, and if, afterwards, 
 there was time, the Herald would be thankful to get 
 what it might. " Give me one more good article, if 
 you can, signed with the old stamp of G. G. I do not 
 pretend to disclaim its being very acceptable to 
 myself; and it might help your book by agreeably 
 reminding your friends in this quarter of what stuff 
 the book consists." 
 
 There had been some intromissions with Black- 
 wood, also furthered by Aird, so far as he was able. 
 Blackwood, however and he knew it did not in the 
 least wish a radical hand like Gilfillan's, and the 
 correspondence soon came to an end finally. Hogg's 
 Instructor, on the other hand, plumed itself on having 
 him among its enlisted contributors, and Taifs Edin- 
 burgh Magazine, the first to open its pages to him, 
 continued to have some of his best work, such as the 
 papers on Byron and Crabbe, with those on Foster's 
 Life, and Leigh Hunt, and Emerson, all for the 
 Second Gallery, which was published in 1849. Tait 
 being the first publisher of the Literary Portraits, 
 they were naturally sent there. The articles for 
 Hogg were at first of a more general kind, as the 
 bibliography will show ; but the sketch of Sir D. K, 
 Sandford appeared there, with others ; and, after- 
 wards, the " Literary Divines." Some of these have 
 been already referred to. Gilfillan was here writing 
 a chapter or two in the religious history of Scotland. 
 
 Of all this periodicalising there is nothing more 
 
EARLIER WRITINGS. 101 
 
 remarkable in its way than the scattered series of 
 papers called, " Bundles of Books," done chiefly for 
 Hoggs Instructor, from 1847 onwards. They were 
 short reviews of books and pamphlets sent to Gilfillan 
 for his notice, and as one comes upon them in the 
 pages of the magazine they never fail to give a keen 
 sense of intellectual power and verve. An article on 
 " Books," in April, 1847, may be taken as a preface of 
 these. It is full of the fine optimism that ever sprang 
 up in Gilfillan after and conquering his storms as it 
 conquered his readers. "The mind of man," he 
 proclaims, "is loosing its bands and is irresistibly 
 advancing. In every country and clime there is an 
 awakening from intellectual slumber, a resurrection 
 of the soul." And how is this, he cries, after an 
 impassioned and somewhat too sanguine review of the 
 nations, how but through the diffusion of knowledge, 
 chosen instrument of God's providence ? Therefore 
 " a book is a great spiritual power ; it is a rod of 
 magic, a sceptre of command, a fork of the lightning 
 to smite, a ray of the sun to illuminate ; now a live 
 coal from the altar, and now a spark from the pit. 
 What, in one sense, says it ? Nothing. It seems 
 quite dumb ; no sound issues from its largest page 
 even in the wide Bodleian or vast Vatican not a 
 whisper can be heard. What says it in another sense ? 
 What says it not? . . . Take up the shell sitting 
 silent on the mantelpiece and apply it to the ear ; it 
 begins immediately to speak as ' pleased it remembers 
 its august abodes, and murmurs as the ocean murmurs 
 there.' Take up the book and it will tell you news 
 from remoter shores than those of the Pacific, from 
 mightier and older oceans than those of the Atlantic. 
 How looks it in one sense ? Dim perhaps with age, 
 
GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 dusky with usage, covered with dust, or stained with 
 the trace of tears there seems little beauty about it. 
 How looks it in another ? If a book of genius there 
 is a glory about its every page ; it shines, it speaks, it 
 stirs ; there is a venerableness in its stains, a glory in 
 its tear traces ; the duskiest binding is radiant, and 
 time, which deforms so much else, only adds to the 
 beauty and deepens the interest of a book. Is a man 
 absolutely alone? Still, if he have his books with 
 him, books suggesting high and holy thoughts, he 
 may venture even to take up the language of the 
 great Teacher Himself, and say, ' I am not alone, for 
 the Father is with me.' " 
 
 And a following paragraph must be given, for it de- 
 scribes what books were to Gilfillan, and what his were 
 to uncounted hundreds of readers what they may be 
 yet, for their spirit is essentially modern. 
 
 " In approaching great and good books you, in fact, 
 draw near to electrical batteries, whence, at any 
 moment, shocks may be derived that shall vibrate 
 through the soul for ever. In the excitement created 
 by books lies a higher power than in the mere 
 instruction they give. The one the knowledge 
 is dead and cold ; the excitement is warm and living. 
 Instructed by books you may shut up your knowledge 
 in yourself as a dungeon ; excited by books you pour 
 it abroad from you in flowing streams." 
 
 The " Bundles of Books " gave Gilfillan just the 
 opportunity he liked and could use. In one (March, 
 1850, Hogg), noticing Edward Miall's "British 
 Churches," he speaks of Miall, Carlyle, and M'Cheyne 
 as the three men who seemed to him the most 
 terribly sincere he had known and alive with the 
 same kind of heat. 
 
EARLIER WRITINGS. 103 
 
 " Although M'Cheyne spent his last sermon in 
 denouncing one of ours, and although his views of the 
 character of the Most High, expressed in that same 
 sermon, were little else than libellous, yet we are free 
 to confess him one of the sincerest and best, albeit 
 narrowest of men. As Mirabeau said of Robespierre, 
 ' That man will go far ; he believes every word he 
 says.' M'Cheyne believes every word he says. 
 Thomas Carlyle's purpose is to inculcate a new and 
 wide Protestantism, and every fresh book of his comes 
 down with the noise and force of a protesting shilling.* 
 Miall's object is to make our existing Protestantism 
 once more a living thing. In the personnel qf the 
 three men there is a certain resemblance a grave if 
 not gloomy cast of countenance, a firmness of deter- 
 mination, betraying the flame of zeal burning within. 
 In M'Cheyne's case the fuel of the fire is sentimental 
 fancy; in Miall's, intellect ; in Carlyle's, genius ; and 
 in all, moral purpose is the mastering power. Miall 
 has much the air of an old common-wealth man." 
 
 In November, 1850, among a lot of small fry, all 
 carefully attended to, comes a notice of William 
 Allingham's " Poets and Flowers," very kind and 
 prophetic of good. In April, 1851, Gilfillan takes 
 occasion to read a fellow-minister, Dr. John Macfar- 
 lane of Clapham, a right slashing lecture on some 
 bigoted nonsense of his about novels and novel read- 
 ing. " Since the novel is the form into which so 
 much of the highest genius of the country is poured, 
 would he instruct his intelligent readers to stultify 
 themselves by remaining ignorant of an important 
 
 * Shilling tabled by one who protests and appeals in a 
 Scottish Clerical Court. 
 
104 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 part of their country's literature? Dr. Macfarlane's 
 indiscriminate assault on novels is a disgrace alike to 
 letters and to Christianity, unworthy both of his own 
 very respectable literary talents and of the church of 
 which he is a popular minister." 
 
 That is straight from the shoulder, and not the 
 least bit insolent or unfair. If anyone wants to 
 see the difference between criticism and assault he 
 may compare Gilfillan's work any of it, even the 
 most hurried with certain articles in Blackwood 
 (presumably Aytoun's), in 1854, when Professor Wil- 
 son's control had just ceased and other counsels than 
 his prevailed. 
 
 From the most dashing of the " Bundles," the 
 faults of which are mere specks on their vigour, and 
 which must have been written as fast as pen would 
 go, for Gilfillan was at that time (July, 1852) pushing 
 hard to finish the " Covenanters," one passage must 
 be extracted, for what it is in itself and for illustration 
 of the way the writer spent himself and his own 
 personal experience at every turn. He was never 
 reserving himself, Gilfillan ; the fault of repetition 
 that has been alleged against him is simply the defect 
 of that free, frank extemporising, that outpouring of 
 himself which made him the popular man of letters, 
 and planted him deep in the affection of all who 
 prefer the natural and vivid to the finished and 
 regulated. 
 
 Scene. A study in a manse ; pamphlets, letters, 
 books and MSS. crowding a table. Writer, solus, 
 sitting at an old desk. He takes up one letter after 
 another, some anonymous, many more or less abusive, 
 and monologises on them ; a servant comes in with a 
 fresh parcel, and then three friends enter. Conversa- 
 
EARLIER WRITINGS. 105 
 
 tion, very lively, ensues, some of the jesting is a bit 
 rough ; hits are exchanged freely : it is pretty much 
 a rendering of an actual sederunt in the library of 
 Paradise manse. 
 
 " G. I have brought back Delta's ' Remains.' 
 
 " N. They are admirable. Aird is the best memoir 
 writer I have read for years. He neither says too 
 much nor too little about his hero. And what 
 genuine because not stilted taste ! What gleams of 
 poetic description, and what a healthy, natural, breezy 
 tone in the whole book ! Thomas Aird is the May 
 among mankind. 
 
 " W. That 's wonderfully laudatory for you. 
 
 " N. Delta was a minor Campbell. His stanzas on 
 Burns are worthy of the bard of * Hope/ and so are 
 his lines on ' A Deserted Churchyard/ 
 
 " W. You are a pretty fellow to praise Campbell, 
 after cutting him up in a magazine a defunct one 
 by the way. You speak of ' A Deserted Churchyard.' 
 I could fill a ' Gallery ' with those I know. Four will 
 I mention, dearer than the rest. First, one placed 
 near the banks of the river Ruchil, in my native 
 parish, just where the rough and rapid stream cleaves 
 the woody hollow of Dalrannoch. Often have 
 I mused in that churchyard, and bathed in the clear 
 determined stream running between cold polished 
 rocks, which at one point nearly close above it. The 
 second is the churchyard of Strowan, laved by the 
 Earn, which here is one of the most pellucid of 
 streams. Surely that bridge is one of enchantment ! 
 I have leant over it for hours, looking at nothing but 
 the clear pebbles, hearing nothing but the soft lapse 
 of the river, which seemed lingering and speaking to 
 itself. The third is set on a bare, heathy eminence 
 
106 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 in Kincardineshire, commanding, toward the west, a 
 prospect of the glorious gorge of the Burn, which 
 seems at a distance a thin strip of woodland, but, 
 neared, includes six miles of varied magnificence of 
 rock, cornfield, purple waters, lawn, tower, grotto, and 
 rich embowering wood. My fourth and favourite 
 churchyard is that on the east end of Loch Lee. It, 
 in Shelley's language, * might make one in love with 
 death.' There lies one of our poets, Ross, author of 
 ' The Fortunate Shepherdess ' fortunate shepherd, 
 he, in finding such a resting-place. Trees cast their 
 calm and musical shadows over the graves ; an old 
 castle is near, ' silent in its age ; ' the dark lake, with 
 the bare mountains sinking sheer down upon its 
 waters, lies toward the west ; only two human habita- 
 tions are in sight ; all combine to give the scene the 
 loveliness and grandeur of desolation. How well 
 I remember, five years ago, while twilight was deepen- 
 ing into night, plunging into the cold, black wave, 
 and receiving a shock that seemed to come from the 
 very foundations of the earth ; and how fresh and 
 strong I felt when I came out alone, below a misty 
 night sky, with the lake beginning to murmur in 
 storm at my feet, the stern mountains around, and 
 the little, lonely kirkyard behind me." 
 
 Turning from Hogg and Tait ; out of many short 
 publications a little green pamphlet may have special 
 notice. It is the sermon preached by Mr. Gilfillan in 
 the evening of Sabbath, the 26th January, 1851, to 
 the Aberdeen Students' Missionary Union. He gave 
 it in the Free West Church. Among his audience 
 no fewer than four hundred university students ; the 
 subject, "The Apocalypse of Jesus Christ." " It may 
 be considered," says the author, " a rude sketch of a 
 
EARLIER WRITINGS. 107 
 
 series of discourses ; " it is certainly in his own marked 
 style, and not bombastic, not over-strained. Of the 
 bright ranks of Scotland's youth that night gathered 
 in the northern city by the sea, how diverse and thril- 
 ling were the story if all could be rehearsed ! Some at 
 least there were of fine and delicate genius, and many 
 of robust talent, afterwards scattered over the wide 
 earth to every kind of service. A finer audience no 
 man might stand before, and Gilfillan could command it. 
 
 We come now to " The Bards of the Bible," issued 
 late in the year 1850. The germ of it existed as far 
 back as 1840, when Gilfillan's brain boiled with 
 schemes. In December, Aird wrote : " If you find 
 you have ample matter for an extension of your 
 papers on Biblical poetry keep it, and extend the 
 thing for after-publication. In the meantime, how- 
 ever, to secure the suitableness of your papers for 
 Blackwoody I am certain I have given you sound 
 advice in recommending limitation. I cannot sup- 
 pose it possible that the Blackwoods will not hail 
 you as an infusion of fresh blood." 
 
 They did, however the blood would have been 
 too strong, perhaps, for the system and later on 
 Aird (who had the use of the papers meanwhile) 
 suggested including them in a sort of Miscellany of 
 articles with the personal sketches and some descrip- 
 tive papers, Reise-bilder on Peebles, Comrie, &c. 
 This was not the happiest of notions, and Gilfillan 
 struck out a much better plan for himself in making 
 a book of portraits and keeping his nidus of Bible 
 exposition by him. It glimmers through the corre- 
 spondence of the friends thenceforth as one of how 
 many? seeds that grew more or less rapidly to 
 plants under Gilfillan's culture. It was not forced 
 
io8 GEORGE GILF1LLAN. 
 
 growth, but rather a tropical heat and fulness blazing 
 into production. At the same time, some books were 
 long in hand. 
 
 Incidentally, here, it may be noted that in the 
 Aird-Gilfillan correspondence, while the delicate wit 
 and shrewd practical sense of Aird continually prompt 
 the soundest advice and the most wise and genial 
 criticism, it remains evident that Gilfillan had the 
 advantage in a certain large judgment. Aird prunes 
 away " redundancies " and lops off " flourishes," and 
 courteously improves his friend's style for his good ; 
 cautions him, too, as he much needed, against haste 
 in publishing ; yet Aird altogether mistook the Non- 
 intrusion Controversy. " Our non-intrusion friends 
 have got their answer," he writes, in January, 1843. 
 " * To budge or not to budge, that is the question.' 
 For the honour of human nature I hope they are 
 sincere in their resolution, but 
 
 ' He fitted the halter, he traversed the cart, 
 And often took leave, yet seemed loath to depart. 1 
 They are not out yet ! Good, sympathetic people 
 who had floods of tears ready to shed on the occasion 
 may bottle them up, not forgetting to cork them well, 
 for they must stand long before they be needed." 
 
 That, by-the-way, as a bit of history and an illus- 
 tration of the free independence of the life-long friend- 
 ship between these two. If they never differed, it 
 was not because they always agreed. The Disruption 
 came a few weeks after the above lines were written. 
 
 One opens " The Bards of the Bible " to be sur- 
 prised as one rarely is with a book on the Scriptures. 
 These holy and wonderful writings put to ordeal the 
 man who would comment upon them. They enfold 
 a secret, the discovery of which is man's highest 
 
EARLIER WRITINGS. 109 
 
 labour and noblest joy ; yet they scarcely permit 
 intrusion, and must be approached with careful 
 entreaty and humble courage. They give largely 
 or not at all largely to the simple inquirer, not at 
 all to some of the most learned ; and while com- 
 mentaries may be the best of reading, they are some- 
 times nearly the worst, overlaying the mind of the 
 reader as a too anxious parent smothers a child in 
 clothes. Of all literary ventures, a wooden exposi- 
 tion of some part of the Bible is, perhaps, the most 
 vicious, being a sin against the nature of the Scrip- 
 tures and their mission to the human soul. Now, 
 " The Bards of the Bible " is emphatically a living 
 book. From the first declaration " The language 
 of the imagination is the native language of man " to 
 the last plea " Listen to the voice of Christ, which 
 He sends before Him along His dread and glorious 
 way " the pages seem to utter themselves in living 
 tones. The first impression is of extraordinary rich- 
 ness and profusion. Less earnest, less vital than it 
 is, the writing would be fustian " a bright sore," to 
 use one of Gilfillan's own striking phrases. But it is 
 too intense, too spontaneous for that. It glows and 
 flows like a river of Ind. The most captious reader, 
 if he be at all just, feels the strong wealthy move- 
 ment. No one can say of Gilfillan, as he once said 
 of another, " His language is picturesque and power- 
 ful, but comes from far, and comes as a captive." 
 That is not how his own comes. No Roman triumph 
 swells his pages. Rather might one think, in reading 
 them, of a national celebration, to which all parts of 
 a wide and wealthy empire have sent tribute and 
 pageant ; a medley, no doubt, yet a medley of strik- 
 ing significance and wonderful richesse. A little 
 
no GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 barbarous here and there, certainly ; but no small 
 dukedom or petty island could send forth such a 
 stream of figure and group, circumstance and illus- 
 tration. Here is life, and here is wealth. 
 
 Carlyle could have done it better ; and yet, again, 
 as we all know by this time, Carlyle could not have 
 done it at all. He passed by the whole region to 
 which this book belongs and confined himself to 
 a secondary world. We have later writers of much 
 distinction, who, with grace and good intent, have 
 something also of the more pungent, all -needful 
 quality. But, perhaps, Gilfillan's work comes nearer 
 than any other to the utterance of one of the old 
 Hebrews on whom he makes his oration. He comes 
 to us very much like an Ezekiel, full of images, 
 of warnings, of complaint and of strenuous hope. 
 " The language of imagination," he says, " to which 
 man is accustomed'' This takes the cool realist quite 
 unaware. The bold, fervid certainty of it warns 
 away criticism and invites intimacy. It will be 
 impossible to quarrel with a writer who thus mounts 
 at once to the table-land of man's freedom, man's 
 possibility, and proclaims it the universal home. 
 
 It is a broad, sweeping movement, yet it strikes one 
 as the old orthodoxy writ large, after all writ very 
 large, not translated into another tongue. " The Bible," 
 he says, " has only one declaration to make, but utters 
 it in the voice of creation." This seems a thing clean 
 inspired ; as you read on you see that the writer 
 only knew the half of his own oracle. He builded 
 better than he knew. His work is not an examination 
 of points, not an improving of the occasion, not, 
 certainly, a philosophic inquiry ; it is a prose poem 
 on the Hebrew poets, as men, as voices, as visionaries. 
 
EARLIER WRITINGS. in 
 
 The maker of the book is a Christian bard chanting 
 of God and man and the cosmos, half in lyric, half in 
 epic strain, with hot eager lips and a voice that sobs 
 and cries. Of our " higher criticism " there is none ; 
 there would have been none had the writer lived 
 and written to-day, for though he was certainly a 
 critic, his was Celtic criticism, not Teutonic. It drove 
 at vital facts and left historical detail aside. This 
 was a canon of the interpretation : " Those modes of 
 presenting religious truth which, amid beautiful 
 scenery and seasons of special spiritual interest, seem 
 harsh, hard, and unsuitable, which jar upon the musi- 
 cal sweetness and incense breathing all around, and 
 the echo of which sounds like a scream of laughter, 
 contradiction, and scorn, are therein proved to be 
 imperfect, if not false. They are not in unison with 
 the spirit of the surrounding universe, but are rejected 
 and flung back by it as foul or rabid falsehoods." 
 There we hear the voice of one who, but for the con- 
 straining love of Christ, and the throb in his own 
 breast answering to Christ's personal call, would have 
 been a pantheist. To such a man, the German 
 analytic criticism is a side road ; if right at all, in its 
 results., then pretty much a truism ; and anyway not 
 the high road of progress. He, too, is a critic, but 
 not after that manner. For examples of this read 
 the passage on the Hebrew language in the first 
 chapter ; that on unconscious inspiration in the 
 second ; the remarks upon Herder and Ewald ; the 
 emphatic judgment upon the authorship of Job, with 
 reasons given. For a passage in which there is no 
 criticism at all, but the strong-beating heart of a man 
 answers back through the centuries to its fellow, and 
 be it David or another, it is life religion a vital 
 
112 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 thing ; for this, one may turn to a page on the 1 39th 
 Psalm and be satisfied : "The poet inverts his gaze 
 from the blaze of suns to the strange atoms compos- 
 ing his own frame. He stands shuddering over the 
 precipice of himself. Above, is the all-encompassing 
 Spirit from whom the morning wings cannot save ; 
 and below, at a deep distance, appears amid the 
 branching forest of his animal structure, so fearfully 
 and wonderfully made, the abyss of his spiritual 
 existence, lying like a dark lake in the midst. Between 
 mystery and mystery, his mind, his wonder, his very 
 reason, seem to rock like a little boat between the sea 
 and the sky. But speedily does he regain his serenity ; 
 when he throws himself with child-like haste and 
 confidence into the arms of that Fatherly Spirit and 
 murmurs in His bosom, ' How precious also are thy 
 thoughts unto me, O God, how great is the sum of 
 them ! ' and looking up at last into the Face, cries, 
 ' Search me, O Lord ; I cannot search Thee ; I am 
 overwhelmed by those dreadful depths ; but search 
 me as Thou only canst ; see if there be any wicked 
 way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting ! ' ' 
 
 The book is gloriously imperfect a studio, full of 
 bold and breathing sketches, some worked-up pieces, 
 some mere heads, bits of scenes and so forth ; all, 
 indubitably, the painter's own work and done with a 
 living hand. Would we had more such galleries of 
 fragments ! They would do much for our young 
 preachers. Nevertheless, the reader cannot but regret 
 that Isaiah is not more fully treated. The greatness 
 of the subject seems to have oppressed Gilfillan's 
 conscience and his wings failed. He wrote a sermon 
 that was to have been embodied in the volume, but 
 it is not there, only a few pages of introduction. 
 
FRIENDSHIPS AND LETTERS, 
 
LETTERS TO WILLIAM B. ROBERTSON. 
 
 WILLIAM B. ROBERTSON (born 26th May, 
 1820; died 27th June, 1886), known always 
 as Robertson of Irvine, was a bright figure in the 
 Secession Church to which Gilfillan belonged. A 
 small man, with a rather large head and flowing hair ; 
 a bard-man, one of those who cannot bend to the 
 lamp, but who can give men visions and leave them 
 wondering how they saw. He had a quite remark- 
 able gift of irradiating the familiar with new lights, 
 and making it flash out in bright sweet surprises. 
 There was thought in the work as well as feeling and 
 fancy, and his few published remains show what he 
 might have done had it ever seemed to him worth 
 while ; but he was essentially of the race who spend 
 themselves and leave only an iridescent memory. 
 Between him and Gilfillan the likeness was at points 
 that of brothers. Elsewhere they were opposites, yet 
 never out of the same hemisphere. Gilfillan had more 
 of the will to achieve something, Robertson more of 
 what charms and fascinates. In their earlier man- 
 hood they corresponded and frequently met ; and 
 they had ever a warm feeling one for the other. 
 Only a few letters remain. 
 
 GILFILLAN TO ROBERTSON : 
 
 \6th June, 1843. I g ot your kind note a fortnight 
 
n6 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 ago. The disappointment was less as, having given 
 up all hopes of you, I had not apprised our Portobello 
 friends, and had made my own preparations. I have 
 got the list of preachers this moment, and find that 
 you have no appointments all July, August, Septem- 
 ber, and October. Any day in any of those months 
 would of course be most grateful to me, with the 
 exception of the fifth Sabbath of July, which is my 
 Sacrament ; but even that, by the way, would suit me 
 very well, for the Communion being simultaneous, 
 you could serve as an assistant. I am, moreover, 
 probably to be over at Dumfries on the second and 
 perhaps third Sabbaths of August ; but striking off 
 those two days you are welcome to fix on any that 
 may suit yourself, and it will and must suit as well as 
 greatly gratify me. Please let me know as soon as 
 convenient what day you think you can come. Ceteris 
 paribus, a first Sabbath day of the month, being that 
 of my evening discourse, would be particularly refresh- 
 ing ; but don't stickle about this. 
 
 I compear before the Presbytery on Tuesday, I 
 believe, to answer for the enormous offence of "Hades." 
 I intend taking a low and gentle ground. It is a 
 little thing, and not worth making a big bother or 
 pother about. It might indeed be prosecuted and 
 defended so as to involve a great question connected 
 with religious liberty, but I feel daily more and more 
 that I am not the person to defend such a great thesis 
 before God, angels, and men. 
 
 I am busy at intervals, now rewriting my sketches, 
 and now adding to their number in my private port- 
 folio. It is, I must confess, with no little pleasure 
 that I turn aside now and then from the thorny path 
 of polemical divinity to the quiet walks of literature, 
 
LETTERS TO WILLIAM B. ROBERTSON. 117 
 
 to its fadeless and fragrant roses, to that genuine 
 religious odour which steams up like incense from its 
 glorious evergreens. I have got some Greek plays 
 and poems with which I intend to renew my acquaint- 
 ance, the Iliad, Pindar, Sophocles. I a'm also 
 reading on geology. Campbell is at present under- 
 going dissection for the ' Gallery,' and Charles Lamb, 
 Emerson, and Elliott are lying beside me in MSS. 
 finished. Do you think I should publish the sketches 
 separately, or interweave them into a book on litera- 
 ture ? I tremble at the vastitude of the latter enter- 
 prise, at the time it would yet occupy, at the 
 expectation it would excite. At the same time, 
 would separate sketches, unconnected and uhconsoli- 
 dated, have a chance of taking or telling ? 
 
 And what are your doings or proposings? How 
 like you the preachers' list ? Is there not a good deal 
 at first to jar upon a mind of genius and sensibility, 
 in the tossing and tumbling about, the slender interest 
 you feel in the perpetually shifting audience, in the 
 apathy, coldness, and misappreciation of some of your 
 auditors, in the lack of thorough sympathy with 
 almost any of them ? You will by-and-by learn like 
 me to be thankful if you can cast the full-length 
 shadow of your mind upon even one or two out of a 
 thousand hearers. Oh, how often have I communed 
 with one beaming face in a large audience, and exulted 
 if it responded to all my emotions and seemed to 
 follow all the steps of my mind, and been enabled, 
 uplifted on its silent sympathy, to bear the conscious- 
 ness that I had only the glimmering perception, the 
 imperfect appreciation, or worse, the ignorant wonder 
 of the rest. Do not split upon what has been my 
 rock as a preacher, conceiving too highly and expect- 
 
ii8 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 ing too much from your hearers. There is just one 
 way in which a man of genius like you can descend 
 to their level, if it do not rather deserve the name of 
 ascending. Be a child and speak to them as to 
 children. You cannot stop at common-place twaddle, 
 such as the majority of preachers use ; but you can 
 be gloriously childish. So was Jesus Himself, in his 
 sermon on the mount. Yes, it is a positive ascent thus 
 to the cradle. It is a true fulfilment of the words : 
 " He that humbleth himself shall be exalted." The 
 true sovereign receipt for preaching is precisely that 
 for entering the kingdom that is preached becoming 
 a little child. Be not displeased with me for giving 
 you this'advice : 
 
 " And may you better reck the rede, 
 Than ever did the adviser." 
 
 Is Irvine henceforth to be your field of labour, or 
 where ? We had your brother George a night with 
 us some time ago, and enjoyed him much. When 
 heard you of him, or of James ? 
 
 I expect Thomas Aird over about the end of this 
 or the beginning of the next month. The Portobello 
 men* are all well, when they come I know not, as 
 this will depend upon your motions. 
 
 2^rd May, 1846. Delighted should I have been to 
 be with you on the 3rd, but I am engaged to James 
 Lindsay of Kilmarnock on the third Sabbath of June, 
 I will, however, D. V., and if you have no objections, 
 run down to Irvine on the Monday or Tuesday after 
 Lindsay's sacrament and see Ayr with. you, and the 
 
 Samuel Brown and friends. 
 
LETTERS TO WILLIAM B. ROBERTSON. 119 
 
 Spirit of Burns. Have I well said? Write and 
 tell. 
 
 Many thanks for your pleasant puffery anent the 
 " Gallery." I have had somewhere about a hundred 
 newspaper and periodical puffs, what from this country 
 and from America, Jamaica, Isle of Man, &c., so I am 
 case-hardened to praise. Still I deeply value your 
 approbation, and am even glad that my brethren in 
 the west have found so little to growl at. An edition 
 of two thousand is out in America, and a bookseller 
 writes me he could have given me 100 had there 
 been an international law ; instead of which he sends 
 me what ? a bit of a Baltimore newspaper with a 
 puff on my book. Could commercial impudence go 
 further ? 
 
 I am glad you have seen Samuel [Brown] and 
 Craig. You would have a glorious time of it. Would 
 I had been with you ! 
 
 I am engaged in constant correspondence with 
 Landreth of Aberchirder. He is a rare fellow in his 
 way. What a strong vein of sarcasm there 's in him, 
 besides his acumen and imagination. He is somewhat 
 cloudy and very peculiar in his style. I have never 
 met him, but he wrote me recently and we are keep- 
 ing it up. He is hardly reconciled to the position he 
 occupies in such a miserable corner. He writes a 
 good deal in Lewes' Magazine. 
 
 jtk June, 1847, from Liverpool. The address at 
 the top of this letter will itself excuse me from accept- 
 ing your invitation. I trust there's a guid time 
 coming. Mrs. Gilfillan and I are here on our way to 
 London, which we hope to reach by Monday next. 
 
120 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 I have still two lectures to give ; and when these are 
 over, I close my lecturing career for ever. . . . 
 
 Alison I met in Glasgow, and he was very cordial. 
 I still write in his Maga. I am sending away a paper 
 on Byron for next number. I saw De Quincey more 
 than once in Glasgow. 
 
 You would be struck by the tidings of Chalmers' 
 death. A great man hath fallen in Israel. 
 
LETTERS TO DR. SAMUEL BROWN. 
 
 SAMUEL MORRISON BROWN (born, 1817; 
 died, 1856) was commemorated by his cousin, 
 John Brown, in the North British Review, vol. xxvi., 
 and by George Gilfillan most fully in the Scottish 
 Review, 1857. Already we have seen him taken to 
 Gilfillan's heart. His life was in chemical research, 
 and there, staking all on certain bold theorems, he 
 failed yet as a pioneer. As a religious thinker he 
 struck some daring notes, and his " Lay Sermons on 
 the Theory of Christianity," obtained the praise of 
 Carlyle. His "Tragedy of Galileo Galilei" was his 
 highest literary effort ; but he was best known as a 
 dazzling expounder of science. The sorrow of many 
 brilliant and noble men overtook him, and his life 
 closed at forty. Yet the motto that hung in his 
 laboratory shines over his dust " Perfect through 
 suffering." He was one of those whose friends can 
 never forget that they have lived. 
 
 A playful letter to Mrs. Gilfillan, without date, 
 but written obviously before his happy marriage, will 
 show his light, glancing wit and tenderness of touch. 
 Addressing her as " My dear Mother," he says : " You 
 mistake me. These noble lady-forms I praise with 
 so much enthusiasm to George Gilfillan I do not love 
 but admire. It is as 'pieces of celestial art' alone 
 that I bow before them in body and soul. Where 
 
 121 
 
122 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 love is concerned, I do not praise. I am silent and 
 steadfast. I do not even admire. I cannot put at 
 sufficient distance to admire. I could no more extol 
 an object of my love than I could myself. I can 
 praise by devotion, by deeds, by constancy, but not 
 by words. As a lover I am the stablest and most 
 unchangeable of men. You accuse me wrongfully. 
 Let my life speak when I am dead. 
 
 " As for making a bad husband. Alas ! it is too 
 true. I am capricious in my humours, exactive in 
 my demands, all too delicate in my tastes. It were 
 hard to please me always, I fear. I warn all women 
 to avoid me in that relation as a pestilence. Yet, 
 Heaven knows, I would be kind, kind. I should love 
 most deeply, cherish most tenderly, sympathise most 
 gently, if one could only bear my moods. 
 
 " On the whole, if ever you hear about my being 
 about to ruin the felicity of any fair soul by making 
 her the wife of a wild man, you had best find her 
 address and warn her of her danger. Do if you 
 have the heart to do it. But, no ; I believe, in your 
 heart, you know that I would not be so bad as 
 you declare, and I allow." 
 
 GILFILLAN TO SAMUEL BROWN : 
 
 \Ajli March, 1845. As Tait declined applying to 
 Mitchell, on the ground that he would probably 
 refuse him, or ask a sum of money for the permission, 
 I wrote again to Carlyle, and heard from him yester- 
 day. He had ascertained that D'Orsey, and not 
 Mitchell, was the proprietor, and had kindly applied 
 to him. In the most cheerful and handsome manner 
 D'Orsey has complied with the request, stipulating 
 only that I put upon my copy of the sketch, " Pub- 
 
LETTERS TO DR. SAMUEL BROWN. 123 
 
 lished with Comte D'Orsey's permission," and that 
 I send him a copy of the book. Carlyle encloses 
 D'Orsey's note, which is in French, and which, of 
 course, I will keep as a curiosity. Carlyle wishes me 
 well through the enterprise, and well into another, 
 " as worthy, or worthier, of me." [The reference here 
 is to a portrait of Carlyle for the " Gallery."] 
 
 I am still in a great press of little jobs ; have been 
 lecturing to large evening audiences ; speaking at the 
 London Missionary Society's Jubilee here on the 
 wrongs of Tahiti better than I ever spoke on a 
 platform before ; correcting proofs ; away at Dunning 
 Sacrament, &c. I have been refusing, too, on the 
 right hand and the left, but have still several super- 
 numerary engagements ere the winter campaign close 
 the busiest, by many degrees, I ever had. And, on 
 the whole, I have been tolerably happy, though with 
 occasional lapses into my old liver complaints. 
 
 Have you seen Hogg ? It is prodigiously popular 
 here and elsewhere, in proportion to its age, selling 
 well ; and I have been gathering golden opinions of 
 my "Poetry and Religion." I am revolving some 
 sketches for it, for which I am promised payment. 
 Mrs. Crowe got five pounds for her first tale in it. 
 My " Painting " and " Music " are forthcoming. Its 
 proprietors and editors are very sanguine of success. 
 Chambers has recently offended the working-classes 
 by one of his issues on labour, and Hogg wishes to 
 pour his forces through the breach. Abundance of 
 room for both. 
 
 " Spring is flushing " round us, indeed, in the shape 
 of heavy snow and sharp, talon-like hail, pelting on 
 the windows and down the chimney ; but when it 
 really, and not nominally comes, then, God willing, 
 
I2 4 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 Mrs. Gilfillan and I intend paying Glasgow a visit, 
 probably in the merry month of May. Remember 
 how Hazlitt kept up his poor weary heart all winter 
 by the words, " I am to visit Coleridge in spring ; " 
 so we are sustaining ourselves by the prospect of 
 seeing, though not properly visiting, the Alchymist 
 in spring. 
 
 I am glad you know Nichol, for surely he is worthy 
 even of your knowledge. I am glad that he has 
 fought a fight and gained a partial victory over an 
 enemy whose power and malignity I know well. God 
 speed him still. 
 
 See you or hear you aught of Robertson ? What 
 is he about? In what angle of ascension stands 
 his star? I have entirely lost sight of, though not 
 ceased to love one so different from my own nature. 
 
 Aird has got perfectly comatose, still he is the 
 same dear, kind, noble man, as a letter now and then 
 proves. Hear you ever from him ? 
 
 Isn't " Suspiria " a grand mythic strain the more 
 as the provincial press is abusing it ? So would an 
 eagle under opium scream and soar, to the wonder 
 and terror of its aboriginal rocks and recesses. 
 
 yli May, 1845. Thanks for your kind little note 
 which set my mind at ease. I had been anxious 
 about your silence. My plans are not yet fixed ; but if 
 nothing come in the way we will see Glasgow and the 
 Alchymist in a fortnight. James Vallentine has dis- 
 arranged our former purpose. I once thought of going 
 over to the Synod where some three hundred meet to- 
 day to square out and measure the bounds of the 
 Divine Death, most probably to "shut the gates of 
 
LETTERS TO DR. SAMUEL BROWN. 125 
 
 mercy " on all but a few hundreds of the species, and 
 hand over all the rest unconditionally to the hangman 
 of hell, but suspect now I won't get. My book is 
 all but out. I corrected its penultimate sheet on 
 Saturday. The lithographers are now the delay. 
 Wilson is to sit for it. Nay, to Tait's great surprise 
 and delight De Quincey has promised to sit. Carlyle 
 and two or three others are to be the rest. A German 
 with a horrid name, Schetke or some such, is the 
 lithographer. By the way Miss Steele, a young 
 paintress of this town, has taken me in chalk, to be 
 lithographed by the same hand. It will soon be for 
 sale at five shillings a copy. It is said to be tolerably 
 like. 
 
 I got two pounds this morning from Hogg for a 
 short sketch of Sydney Smith. More are requested. 
 The thing is paying well, thanks chiefly to me and 
 " Susan Hopley." I am glad you allow it at length a 
 little merit. Must I write about nothing except what 
 I understand? Then should all theologians from 
 the beginning of time have made a bon-fire of their 
 quills ; for their elementary propositions are the most 
 unintelligible of all and from nonsense what but 
 nonsense can come? You see I am still a parlous 
 heretic indeed more at utter sea in my soul than 
 ever. 
 
 The "Witch" [lecture on the Witch of Endor] 
 drew as great a squeeze as ever followed Faucit the 
 sorceress 1600 in the church and hundreds going 
 away. Last night was nearly as bad. I mention 
 this more in shame than vanity, for well I know it is 
 curiosity and little else that collects them, 'to hear 
 " what an out of the way fellow will say," 
 
 Aird wrote me lately, as follows : " Beg Brown to 
 
126 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 write me. Why does he not? I refrained because 
 he intimated his engrossing engagements, and I was 
 loath to disturb him. The onus lies with him. 
 I trust he is making way forward. Were those fine 
 faculties of his in regular harness they might draw the 
 chariot of the sun. God forbid he should lose faith in 
 himself." Do write the dear noble fellow. 
 
 I heard from Crombie that you were hearing 
 Nichol. He had had splendid audiences and lectures. 
 Could I possibly see or hear him in Glasgow ? 
 
 \\th June, 1845. Here I am once more in the 
 bowers of Paradise, bowers burning at present under 
 the fieriest heat of the season, and sitting down to 
 indite a few lines to the Alchymist. Let me tell my 
 story since we parted in the Trongate. We drove to 
 Whitevale, found Jeffrey out i.e., did not find him in 
 but spent an hour pleasantly enough with his wife, 
 wean, mother-in-law, and sister-in-law. We thence 
 walked to Eadie's, who received us constrainedly but 
 kindly. We found him poring over Hebrew MSS. 
 with a large library beside him. We supped, talked 
 of everything but Hades, among others of you whose 
 visit he is to return soon, and hasted to my uncle's. 
 Next morning dawning a tempest of wind and rain, 
 I went alone to MacGilFs, and had some pleasant 
 semi-literary crack till eleven, when I departed for 
 Edinburgh. Nothing particular occurred on the ride. 
 At Edinburgh I saw Crombie, sat two hours with 
 Crawford, who has taken a rough, red, gum-boiled 
 sketch of me, better than the other, and Schenke 
 between the two expects to have me ; called on Hogg 
 and had some talk about the rate of payment. It is 
 
LETTERS TO DR. SAMUEL BROWN. 127 
 
 likely to be ten shillings a page, and they are hence- 
 forth, they say, to pay for every article. I met 
 Crombie again at the " shut of eve " and shop, and 
 with him went and met Mrs. Gilfillan at the train. 
 While there up came my old friend A. Rutherford, 
 and " for auld lang syne " we had a noble shake of 
 the hand. I was at once glad and sorry to see him ; 
 and he, I presume, reciprocated both emotions. 
 Thence Margaret, Crombie, and I, hiring a cab drove 
 down to Newhaven, found Schenke in Jeffrey's shop, 
 had him in, supped emphatically, sent Crombie home 
 and went to bed. Next morning we started by the 
 Britannia and reached this in four hours' sail, Mrs. 
 Gilfillan sick, I almost alone of all the passengers not. 
 I read Alfred Tennyson all the night, preached the 
 next day, rather well in the afternoon, and have 
 been as dull as ditch-water ever since. This morning 
 I heard from Crombie, and this afternoon from Tait. 
 The latter is sorely displeased with Crawford's De 
 Quincey. He says the little man must sit again. 
 He is furious also at a Jeffrey he has got. He wants 
 me in fine to delay now the publication till October, 
 and wishes me to consult you on the subject. He is 
 ready indeed and willing, if I wish it, to publish by 
 ist of July. I could tear out my eyes to think of my 
 book being deferred again and again, under sorry 
 pretexts, till now, when all printed and all but all 
 plated, it must be put off four months more. Tell me 
 what you think of this. People here are very 
 impatient for its forthcoming. If, as he has always 
 said, it is likely to be a failure as a paying concern, 
 what much matters it whether it fail in June or in 
 January ? Do tell me your honest and candid judg- 
 ment as to this point of delay soon. 
 
128 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 une, 1845. I have very reluctantly consented 
 to what you approve of, delay till October. It will 
 tutor me more and more in that stern and rugged 
 resignation which seems the lesson in which circum- 
 stances and fate are trying, with some difficulty, to 
 indoctrinate my wild and wayward spirit. 
 
 I long for Festus, not for Home [Ballad Romances?], 
 though he do puff my Landor. I have written to 
 John Brown to try and get it, for your recommenda- 
 tion alone stamps it as first-rate. 
 
 I have read or rather am reading " Anastasis " 
 again. I think it effectually and for ever blows up 
 the common doctrine of Resurrection ; whether it 
 establishes his own upon Scriptural grounds is a 
 different question. With what Benthamic or Miltonic 
 calmness and confidence does he enunciate his idea as 
 one which will be denied, resisted, abused, but which 
 must ultimately triumph. In fact, if his book do not 
 contain the genuine doctrine of resurrection, the thing 
 will with many sink into a more monstrous transub- 
 stantiation, a treble trinity for difficulty and self- 
 contradiction, and become, if anything, a badge not 
 a belief. I think that even as a Scriptural argument 
 Bush's is very plausible, much more so than the 
 common, and the harshest apparent dogmatisms to 
 the contrary yield, soften, and become flexible in his 
 subtle hands. Read him and judge for yourself. 
 
 I have been in Stirling and Comrie since I saw you. 
 While in Comrie I spent one very pleasant day in 
 writing for Hogg a sketch of my old teacher Sand- 
 ford, and another more agreeably still in climbing 
 Dunmore, and seeing the unequalled prospect com- 
 manded from its summit. It was one of those 
 dappled days in which drops of sunshine are sprinkled 
 
LETTERS TO DR. SAMUEL BROWN. 129 
 
 on the shadowy hills. The ferns were very green, 
 very tall, and added inexpressible beauty to the dark 
 and iron-bound mountains. I wished myself a 
 conscious Lot's Wife Stylites, stiffened before the 
 lovely spectacle for ever. I have now returned from 
 a brief bit of romance to the stern monotony of my 
 official duties. 
 
 [The rest of the letter shows the mood of the hour 
 to have been that of depression and great irritation 
 with his surroundings. He begs for a brief note 
 whenever his friend has " a spare evening hour and a 
 memory " of him.] 
 
 9//z July, 1845. Many thanks for your brief but 
 brave and kindly letter. I am thankful for its 
 encouragement, especially as it is ministered by one 
 who is " himself in the body," and who has felt and 
 feels by bitter experience that it is verily a body of 
 death. Still must we and shall we bear it, whether it 
 be matter obstinate and only as yet tickled by your 
 strong and subtle finger, or whether it be minds 
 seared and sensualised into a hardness which no 
 eloquence of mine has yet been able to dissolve. You 
 seem in spite of this to feel that your " labour has not 
 been in vain in the Lord ; " I, that mine, whether 
 appreciated or not, whether deserving of appreciation 
 or not, has been its own exceeding great reward. 
 Let us, as Shelley, poor fellow, says to Leigh Hunt, 
 " comforting each other in the task, live and die." 
 
 Have you read in Balmer's reminiscences of Hall the 
 latter's estimate of Coleridge? It is very poor and 
 pitiful, and springs, in a double descent, from an intense 
 ignorance and deep prejudice against the " mighty 
 
130 GEORGE G1LFILLAN. 
 
 poet and subtle-souled psychologist" The two had 
 met and Inter-despised, as might have been inter- 
 preted from their intensely opposite constitutions of 
 mind. And now Coleridge is to Hall a mere will-o'- 
 the-wisp, leading over bogs ; and Hall, I warrant me, 
 was to Coleridge a polished pebble of the brook, an 
 elegant mediocrity wrapt up in a leaf of poppy 
 conclusions both unjust but inevitable. Even their 
 common habit of opium-eating was no bond of 
 connection. Both dictatorial talkers, how could they 
 adjust their strains of conversation to each other? 
 In a like way might Johnson and Goethe have met 
 and recoiled ; only, I fear, Johnson would have first 
 knocked the old Pagan down. [The letter goes on 
 to speak of a minister of his acquaintance, and 
 proceeds : ] 
 
 Commend me, rather, by twenty degrees, to honest, 
 bold, generous, coarse, drunken, and inimitable Charley 
 Churchill, of whom I was also reading. I felt while con- 
 trasting the two the one perfectly stainless, pursuing 
 his consistent course, adjusting his periods, nibbling 
 at his confessions of faith, missing small heresies by a 
 hair's-breadth, never daring to look for a moment at 
 the truth, beauty, and terror of the universe, but 
 living and dying a great, grown-up schoolboy ; the 
 other, with the noblest, native tendencies, the honest- 
 est purpose, the most generous, genial heart, the most 
 masculine understanding, but cast on a low age, 
 wedded to an unloved profession as to a body of 
 death, hurried into acts of sin which his soul abhorred, 
 warring with reptile antagonists, doing single-handed 
 battle against overbearing political and clerical tyr- 
 anny, struggling against the direr enemies of his own 
 temperament and heart, alas ! in vain, scattering on 
 
LETTERS TO DR. SAMUEL BROWN. 131 
 
 every side of his wild career acts of benevolence, 
 munificence, and justice, as amid his rudest and 
 coarsest verse he was wont to interpose lines of 
 savage grandeur, expressed in Drydenian rhythm 
 in short, amid an age of false, sneaking peers and 
 soul-galled bishops, intriguing statesmen, and imbecile 
 kings, living and dying an honest man, an English- 
 man, a gentleman, and a patriot, his friend and sister 
 dying both for grief of his loss, and his grave wet 
 with tears from the holy eye of Cowper who shall 
 say that the one man stands higher than the other, 
 or that, any more than the other, he was made in 
 vain. 
 
LETTERS TO SYDNEY DOBELL. 
 
 SYDNEY DOBELL, the most cultured of the 
 young poets whom Gilfillan introduced to the 
 world, 'was the son of a Sussex family, trading people, 
 refined and devout ; his father a careful man of 
 business, his mother the daughter of Samuel Thomp- 
 son, a political reformer and founder of a religious 
 sect, a man well known in London in the earlier part 
 of our century. The home influences were peculiarly 
 religious. Sydney was a singularly precocious boy, 
 and his mind "fidgetted away his body's powers." 
 Married at twenty to one whom he passionately 
 loved, he was known as a poet of rare promise by the 
 time he was twenty-six, was set in favouring circum- 
 stances and enjoyed much love and admiration. He 
 was for several years in constant correspondence with 
 Gilfillan, to whom he once wrote : " If I should ever 
 be called Poet, you will know that my success is in 
 some sort your work." Born in 1824, his- mind wore 
 out the body in 1874. His poems were " The Roman," 
 "Balder," "Sonnets on the War" (written conjointly 
 with Alexander Smith), " England in Time of War." 
 Of his shorter flights, "Keith of Ravelston " is the 
 most finished and impressive. 
 
 GILFILLAN TO DOBELL : 
 
 ist May, 1849. I do not yet return your poem. I 
 132 
 
LETTERS TO SYDNEY DOBELL. 133 
 
 have read it, but I wish to read it again and to make 
 some notes here and there, both of beauties and faults. 
 It is unquestionably a very striking, poetical, and 
 impassioned production. The opening" is very fine, 
 and many of the individual passages burn with the 
 fire of genius. Perhaps the monk speaks too much, 
 and here and there in too frenzied a style. The 
 language is sometimes too diffuse, and occasionally 
 verges on the turgid. A worse fault, however, is a 
 frequent obscurity which in the speech of a missionary 
 is not in good keeping or taste. Such blemishes, 
 however, can easily be amended, and leave entire the 
 poem's originality of conception, fervour of spirit, 
 abundance of imagery, and fluency, and force of 
 language. I will note one or two trifling slips which 
 surprise me, and one or two errors in taste. 
 
 As to the periodical for which it may be suited, I 
 know not what to say. Its talent, besides the interest 
 at present felt in Italy, ought to admit it into any of 
 the monthlies, but editors are often queer fish. Might 
 you not try Fraser or the Dublin ? If I had any 
 interest with either, which I have not, I should cer- 
 tainly use it for you. Meantime revise carefully. 
 There is enough of the genuine metal to bear a little 
 rubbing-up. 
 
 May I ask what and who you, my correspondent, 
 are. Most of my distant unknown friends begin by 
 telling me their whole history, when the " gods made 
 them poetical," and an infinite deal of similar "no- 
 things." You have told me only your name. 
 
 I am writing at present a book on the Hebrew 
 Bards, which I hope to have out by December or so. 
 It is a good theme, a theme long neglected and to me 
 particularly dear. You will find a paper in this 
 
134 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 month's British Quarterly by me on " Thomas 
 Campbell Modern Poetry." Vaughan has muti- 
 lated it considerably, at which I am not a little 
 displeased. 
 
 August, 1849. Thanks for your kind and 
 interesting note. I re-inclose you the " Monk's Solil- 
 oquy." I like the beginning and the close, the middle 
 not so well. You don't in it bring out your idea so 
 clearly or sharply. The thought running through the 
 whole is very striking, and the picture of the " Great 
 Presence " bending over the neophyte rises to the 
 sublime. I do not somehow think the language or 
 melody quite worthy of the grandeur of the concep- 
 tion. There is some earth still around the feet of your 
 rising lion. The spirit, however, and thought are all 
 I could wish. Expunge, I would advise, the first line, 
 which is Shakespeare's. Don't you remember how 
 some of the noblest scenes in the " Cenci " are spoiled 
 by one or two unintentional plagiarisms from Macbeth? 
 I am glad your work is so nearly complete. Don't be 
 over anxious about its success. The fate of a first 
 work is always precarious. As Carlyle wrote me 
 when my " Gallery " appeared : " If they receive it ill, 
 write you the second better, so much better as to 
 shame them." I predict, however, that real judges 
 will receive your beautiful poem well. 
 
 Ay ! come and come quickly to our glens and 
 moors, and lochs and mountains. They will, if not 
 give you new thoughts, yet wondrously correspond 
 with your old and most exalted ones. Thoughts 
 which you had rejected as Utopian, and feelings you 
 had deemed extravagant you will find fled before you 
 
LETTERS TO SYDNEY DOBELL. 135 
 
 and nestled in those glorious crags as their native and 
 unalienable home. 
 
 I must close. I sent Armitage the engraving. My 
 little notice of you appeared a month ago. Have you 
 not yet seen it ? 
 
 igth November, 1849. I think Moxon (albeit I 
 owe him a grudge for declining my "Second Gallery") 
 is the best publisher for poetry in London. But 
 would it not be better to try Edinburgh first ? 
 
 Your " vision " is very powerful, and, like a vision, 
 here and there a little dense. It is worthy of the 
 poem, but not the best thing in it. It has some 
 striking lines 
 
 " Gods ! the very stars 
 Are nearer to us than to-morrow," 
 
 is a golden thought. 
 
 All success on your journey. Don't be discouraged 
 by want of success. The " Gallery," of which you 
 speak, was rejected by Blackwood and Black, and 
 but for the risk undertaken by some of my friends 
 would not have been received by Tait. Yet I cleared 
 ;ioo by it. But this is a base plebeianism. 
 
 Kind regards to your cara sposa. I, too, have an 
 admirable and devoted wife. 
 
 P.S. Have you a likeness of yourself that you 
 could send me? I have taken a yearning to see 
 you. Only twenty-five ! What you may yet do. 
 I am thirty-six. Eheu ! 
 
 December, 1849. Thanks for your interesting 
 
136 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 and graphic letter. I rejoiced in it ; but you are too 
 severe on Croly (that 's the proper spelling of it), who, 
 apart from his many and monstrous prejudices and 
 his mere outer man, has a distinct greatness about 
 him ; and for native power, as for acquired knowledge, 
 is worth a dozen Marstons and three Leigh Hunts. 
 But you have not read his " Salathiel." Then, you 
 know him not. He is bringing out a second series 
 of that noble tale. From a note of his to-day I 
 rather think that he saw your feelings towards him. 
 I regret having introduced you. You are both young ; 
 when ten years older you will have more charity for 
 those who differ, and less faith in mere external 
 indications of the inner man. How many an idiot 
 bears a magnificent development, while it is denied 
 to the poet of "Paris in 1815" and "Salathiel," as 
 it was to Keats and Shelley. " Man looketh at the 
 outward appearance, God at the heart." 
 
 I hope Bentley has bit. I haye no doubt you are 
 sure of a publisher. Should you fail everywhere else, 
 go to Henry K. Lewis, 15 Gower Street, North, name 
 my name, show him, if necessary, this letter, and I 
 think he will be your accoucheur. Let me know soon 
 how you have sped. 
 
 %th March, 1850. I have only time to acknow- 
 ledge your valuable and most valued packet [a review 
 of the " Galleries "]. I have read it twice with the 
 deepest pleasure. In the language of Carlyle, " I 
 will not thank you for so much praise, but I will, 
 right heartily, for being a brave, true-hearted man, 
 and loving me so well." I will also thank you for the 
 many beautiful and striking thoughts contained in it. 
 
LETTERS TO SYDNE Y DOB ELL. 137 
 
 You shall have my full mind and Brown's on it next 
 week. 
 
 I send you a paper where your name occurs. You 
 will recognise the " friend " at once. Aird writes the 
 notice. By the way, I have promised that you will send 
 him a copy of " The Roman." Mrs. Gilfillan thanks 
 you warmly for your forthcoming " Snowdrop." She 
 keeps no album, but she will put it in her heart. 
 
 Commend me kindly to your cara sposa. 
 
 May, 1850. I do not know how to answer 
 your last " pleasing yet dreadful " letter 
 
 " Like a maiden sword 
 Startlingly beautiful." (Festus.) 
 
 Nor do I mean to answer it at length. I sympa- 
 thise with much in it. God knows we need a new 
 theory both of sin and of punishment ; but till I know 
 fully yours, how you accomplish your theory of the 
 relation of the outward visible signs which we reward 
 and punish to the inward spiritual features which our 
 human legislation ignores, I must just wonder, wait, 
 and hope. 
 
 I have no doubt the poem you contemplate will be 
 worthy of you. But at the risk of, to after ages, seem- 
 ing a dirty dub (as we say in Scotland) obstructing 
 the forming of the foundation of what may be an 
 immortal pile, I beg leave to say that, first, I think 
 the title decidedly a mistake. Everybody will shrink 
 from the " Scoundrel." And from your former nom 
 de guerre " The Roman " what a falling off! If you 
 publish, do so under another name. Then, is your 
 theory of sin pondered and complete that you are free 
 to cast it into a dramatic and permanent, if not 
 
138 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 immortal form ? Have you weighed the dangers of 
 altering the common and conventional notions of sin ? 
 I have in the course of my ministry come so much in 
 contact with sin, have seen the fascination of its breath 
 to be so powerful that I tremble if the ugly name 
 were changed that it would propagate the ugly thing. 
 Your poem, certainly, would appeal to a higher class ; 
 but, alas, I fear in that class each individual has his 
 own notion of sin, a notion founded on his own 
 inclinations, and which your definition, however 
 livingly conveyed, would not permanently change. 
 
 Dear friend, let sin alone, I mean the definition of 
 it but attack society with all the energy of your 
 mind and the affluence of your young genius. It is 
 a lie. You and I are at one here, and also at one 
 with a person who, I suspect, laughs at, if not abuses 
 us both Thomas Carlyle. (I know nothing, mark 
 you, of what he says of either.) We are at one too, 
 I find, in our notion of what is to remedy the evils of 
 society, namely, an advent I hope of the " same 
 Jesus." Is yours identical? I ask for information, 
 for my notion of you would remain precisely the same 
 even if I found that you hoped for Bramah or Shelley 
 (provided you thought either of them the Man-God) 
 from heaven. But is it the Jesus of Calvary you 
 expect ? Tell me, the more as I am almost alone in 
 this city of 80,000 in pleading month after month that 
 He it is who shall come and not tarry. 
 
 I doubt not, dear friend, that you are among those 
 who shall be the forerunners of that Second Coming, 
 nay, one of the foremost. But as I love and fear all 
 exclusive expressions of design from the noblest 
 minds, as I fear " Bedlam and the grave," even for the 
 gifted, as I remember Edward Irving and Percy Bysshe 
 
LE TTERS TO S YDNE Y D OB ELL. 1 39 
 
 Shelley let me implore you to pause ere you discover 
 yourself in any other attitude than that you have 
 victoriously won a right to assume, the name and 
 title of our most rising and sincere poet. 
 
 Your " Spring " is very beautiful. Write on for a 
 few months at such things, and God will by-and-by 
 give you, not a " load of flowers fresh from heaven," 
 but one consummate broad-faced sun-flower, at which 
 nations and gods may conspire enviously to gaze. 
 
 2Ot/i June, 1850. Give Mr. Newton my kind 
 thanks. From a hurried glance at his poem it seems 
 good. I always liked his communications, from their 
 modesty as well as their merit His fear of being a 
 bore is totally unfounded. 
 
 I am very sorry you can't be here this summer ; 
 and yet I rejoice, too. I should like you to see the 
 man, of whom you have prophesied so kindly, " as he 
 is." And alas ! there is at present a gloom over him, 
 arising partly from his wife's illness and unhappiness, 
 and partly from some sad trailing shadows of his 
 once stedfast darkness a darkness which his critique 
 on " Sartor Resartus" in the first "Gallery" faithfully 
 mirrors. They are, I hope, passing away, as their 
 brethren did before them, but he is not yet out of the 
 route of their retreating march. 
 
 I wish you had done your work. At present, 
 to me, everything sounds hollow, like cavernous 
 earth. The words, hell, heaven, truth, God seem 
 ringing below one, and with strange echoes of 
 denial. Oh, that the Saviour were come ! I think 
 that, with all my errors and faults, He would accept 
 me, were it for nothing else than that I have never 
 
140 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 despaired of the race for which He died, and of Him 
 as alone competent to the rescue of us all. 
 
 I am asked to lecture in Leeds in winter. It is not 
 absolutely impossible that then I may dash on to 
 Cheltenham in response to your kind invitation. 
 
 ^th July, 1850. Thanks for your letter. It (as did 
 your article) at once encouraged and humiliated me. 
 I can, I have struggled against many difficulties, and 
 felt the victory easy. Such things as rejected con- 
 tributions, coldness, alienated friendships, &c., never 
 moved me for more than a few nights. But the 
 burden of a prophecy, from a friend like you, comes 
 down like the burden upon Atlas, sure either to crush 
 or to create a stir of respondent strength ; but I know 
 my weakness. You see my original and still extant 
 nature. I know my environment, to use one of 
 Carlyle's darkly-winged words. I seem to myself to 
 walk, a prophecy of a more energic G. G., of another 
 temperament and another time. I see men, every 
 day, most pitiable in intellect, and with little heart 
 and little belief, and yet so strongly one in their aim 
 and object, that I seem beside them like a shattered 
 rainbow beside a star or a clod ! Mark you, I do 
 not plead guilty to any shade of Coleridgeism. I am 
 the most punctual and regular of men. I do not, like 
 'you, lead a life absolutely anchoretical ; but my 
 enjoyments are always limited, and subordinated to 
 my many urgent duties. Externalities, indeed, are 
 all in my favour. But I have a restlessness and un- 
 certainty of spirit which are for ever preventing the 
 " master-current of my brain " from flowing 
 
 " Permanent and free." 
 
LETTERS TO SYDNEY DOBELL. 141 
 
 In that width you have ascribed to me, I feel like 
 dames of old with their trains. I am often entangled 
 in it, and sometimes tumble over it. In short, I want 
 to my disparted and disentangled powers and feelings, 
 now touching Christ and now Shelley, the one 
 trumpet-blast of united purpose which, freeing and 
 consolidating me, may in me consolidate and liberate 
 many. When shall that trumpet sound. Perhaps 
 over my dust. Be it so. I shan't then, if you live, 
 want one friend who has seen me, loved me, and 
 hoped against hope in my possibilities. Your article 
 and letter are, while humbling me to the dust, helping 
 me in what I am doing at present i.e., hewing out a 
 statue of Paul for the " Bards." I am, from a hint or 
 two of yours, painting the " Paul of the present." It 
 points out the being, probably yourself, of whom 
 I walk, the wraith. 
 
 Tis time something should be done, for there is now 
 no enthusiasm or sincerity in Scotland I mean little. 
 The clever minds in it are all infidel, of the lowest 
 kind, more or less disguised under an affected 
 Carlylism, for that in Scotland is the cormorant 
 shape of the Devil just now. The few really gifted 
 men in it are walking cloudy, uncertain, and probably 
 unhappy. John Wilson has no theory or belief, and 
 wishes to have none : he is resting on his oars, and 
 awaiting the cataract's information, to which he is fast 
 hasting. Professor Nichol is trying to patch a kind 
 of Mauriceism upon an old coat of Godwin's, sincerely 
 doing so, mark you, and in a noble spirit, for " were 
 you to call a dog Nichol, I should love him." 
 Thomas Aird is reposing, a noble sluggard (in con- 
 scious imbecility on that subject), under the slumbrous 
 .but not rich light of the Scottish Establishment. 
 
142 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 Samuel Brown is working out some really mechanical, 
 but professedly spiritual, dream of his own, ignoring, 
 I fear, Christ and His miraculous mission. I, if 
 I dare name myself with such people, am as yet, to a 
 great extent, ignored on that subject, partly because 
 many reject me because I am a clergyman ; others 
 abhor me because I am a literary man ; and some 
 venture to question my honesty and sincerity. At 
 this last, especially, you will laugh. 
 
 Meanwhile the rabble-rout of Carlylists, who have 
 borrowed his bile without his brain, his unbelief with- 
 out the deep howling faith which lies below, are in- 
 creasing, and among the wretched creatures he has 
 unwittingly spawned, the worst are in Edinburgh. 
 These combine in themselves all the unbeliefs of 
 their sceptical city, Hume's dogmatic doubt, Thomas 
 Brown's faltering and half-hinted quasi belief, Jeffrey's 
 elegant indifference, Wilson's non-belief, and Carlyle's 
 craving cry for belief. . . . But I wax cynical, and 
 am letting poor Paul stand still. Forgive me, and 
 write soon. 
 
 2Qth October^ 1850. I heard last night in Glasgow 
 the best criticism on myself ever given. It was from 
 a plain, decent man, who had been one of my flock, 
 but who is now in Glasgow. He was asked by some 
 one how he liked me. He said, " He is " (I waive 
 the blunt and sincere compliments) " but he has not 
 come to his point yet/' This from a poor mechanic ! 
 It seemed to me vox populi et Dei. 
 
 What that point is, Deus alone knows. But I beg 
 you, as my prospective critic, not to find, nor say you 
 have found it in the " Bards." That is criticism still, 
 
LETTERS TO SYDNEY DOB ELL. 143 
 
 although, I think, here and there of a higher order 
 than before. The work of origination is yet, so far as 
 a whole is concerned, future. Ah ! no one, not my 
 most malignant detractor, not the Athenaum critic, 
 nor his smallest snarling mimic, knows more thoroughly 
 than I do myself that I have yet much, perhaps all, to 
 learn. 
 
 You already know much that I am only beginning 
 to see. Your notion of literature was, ab initio, the 
 high and only true one. It was from the first a reli- 
 gion with you ; with me a frenzied passion, which 
 saved me almost all other passions, and has only of 
 late been subsiding into a quiet and deep feeling. 
 You have always subordinated it to a grander object. 
 I am only learning as yet to do so, and may never 
 be permitted to perfect the instruction. 
 
 26tk November, 1850. I write to acknowledge your 
 charming poem [" Crazed "] for, in spite of the sad- 
 ness of the subject, charming it is the finest thing 
 you have written since " The Roman." The idea is 
 new and affecting ; the mania is followed out with 
 profound subtlety in its quick alternations, its unity 
 and endless and dark diversities and deviations ; the 
 interjected descriptions are in admirable keeping, and 
 the explanation at the close is graceful and tender in 
 the extreme. I have asked Aird to give me his 
 notion of the poem, which, when he does, I '11 acquaint 
 you with. 
 
 December, 1850. To Coxhorne it was abso- 
 lutely impossible that I could have gone, for my every 
 
144 GEORGE GILFILLAN, 
 
 night of absence was occupied with public duty, and 
 I was compelled to be home last night. I gave eight 
 lectures and preached once, and, on the whole, was 
 pleased with my reception. But my conviction of 
 the inutility of lecturing grows. Oh that I could 
 afford to retire to some Highland wild, and there 
 muse and dream, and think and write ! I hope yet, 
 if God spare me for ten years, to be able to do 
 so. 
 
 I met >with great kindness and with many interest- 
 ing men, with clergymen " not ashamed of the Gospel 
 of Christ " nor of the beauty of literature, with strug- 
 gling and sincere laymen seeking their way to Zion, 
 with aspiring youths who had my works almost by 
 heart, and with some devout admirers of " The Roman." 
 Neither you nor it are any worse of my little progress 
 in Yorkshire. But there were several to whom it 
 needed no introduction. 
 
 I can solve, I think, your difficulty as to the 
 inequality of the " Bards." Many parts of it were 
 written ten years ago ; the " Destiny of the Bible " 
 was written this October, and written at Comrie to 
 the tune of the Grampians. But I plead guilty to 
 inequality. I cannot write equally well at all times, 
 nor ever expect to do so. Spring and autumn inspire 
 me ; the heat of summer enervates, and the cold of 
 winter chills and cripples me. . . . 
 
 I look for your " Newman." I read part of his 
 " Phases " at Leeds, and thought it feeble. He is a 
 learned, pious, and sincere fribble. 
 
 I had a kind note from Bailey anent my notice of 
 his " Angel World." It is as I suspected. It was 
 meant for a bit of " Festus." By the way, what is 
 your idea of that poem Festus, I mean ? 
 
LETTERS TO SYDNEY DOBELL. 145 
 
 I must close. Mrs. Gilfillan sends kind regards to 
 your lady and to yourself. 
 
 December, 1850. Your letter has cheered my 
 " Mondayishness " you don't know the full meaning 
 of that clerical term. I am now much better, but not 
 quite myself yet. A certain languor still hangs about 
 me ; and yet yesterday I preached three times, and 
 am rather better instead of worse of it. 
 
 Thanks, dear friend, for your unwearied kindness in 
 the matter of my book. It is doing well, both as to 
 sale and opinions with some exceptions which 
 hitherto have rather honoured the book from the 
 dense stupidity or open malice visible in the attacks. 
 All, however, admit the orthodoxy and ability of the 
 book but stumble, some of them, at this or the other 
 stumbling stone. 
 
 I am no believer in eternal punishment, nor have 
 been for years. And now I find few who, when you 
 come to close quarters, are. But I do not believe in 
 the universal restoration of Midges, Madmen, Tigers, 
 Serpents, and all the other Dark Disarrangements we 
 have called men. I incline to Destructionism ; or 
 rather to the idea of God selecting His own children 
 from among the mass, and leaving the others silently 
 to die away. Have not whole races of animals expired 
 already ? And what were they worse than the major- 
 ity of men ? I believe in the word of the Apostle, 
 " Elect unto everlasting life!' But I believe also that 
 the number of the elect company shall be " a great 
 multitude which no man can number," out of every 
 kindred and people and colour and creed, yes even 
 from ultra-Calvinism itself. Am I not now heterodox 
 to your heart's content ? 
 
 L 
 
146 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 How glad I am that you will so soon see Brown ! 
 He is a man you must hear and see ere you can know 
 him. His hitherto works give no adequate notion 
 of him at all. He is better in health, too, and quite 
 another man from what he was last spring. I envy 
 your mutual pleasures in your lovely retreat. I '11 be 
 with you in spirit and in dreams. 
 
 Mrs. Gilfillan, who is in her usual, sends kind Christ- 
 mas and New Year's wishes woven in one for your 
 cara sposa and yourself. 
 
 \jth February, 185 1. I was very happy to see your 
 handwriting once more, although the tidings it con- 
 veys are somewhat unpleasing. Alas, these frail 
 bodies of ours ! The soul suspended for health, 
 strength, and even action upon the throbbing of an 
 organ, or the digestion of a meal ! God send you 
 a good and speedy restoration. 
 
 I wrote instantly to Price {Eclectic} pleading your 
 apology, and assuring him that no other could do the 
 thing so well. He is a sensible and a kindly man, 
 and is sure to accept our joint excuse. 
 
 I am dull to a point of depression, which is now 
 unusual with me. It is partly the reaction of yester- 
 day's excitement, but I have other reasons for it. 
 The Palladium is dead ! Its next number is its 
 last. So there is an end of an " auld sang." No 
 more " Newman " ! No more " Poem-Mysteries " ! 
 It has been ill-managed on the whole, has not been 
 widely sold, was involving Wight in pecuniary risks, 
 and is to be stopped in the midst of some five series 
 of papers ! This, however, I have got in a secret, and 
 you must keep it till the first day of March, after 
 
LE TTERS TO S YDNE Y D OB ELL. 1 47 
 
 which it shall be no secret to its small but select 
 world. Do write me an elegy on it, and relieve your 
 sorrow and mine. 
 
 My far deeper grief is this Thomas Aird, my 
 thrice-noble friend, my sweet and gifted " elder 
 brother," the man who first encouraged me in my 
 literary way, the high-minded man, the original poet is, 
 I fear, dying. Spasmodic affections of the heart have 
 so enfeebled him that he has repaired to his native 
 village to set his house in order, to arrange especially 
 the affairs of the family of a deceased brother to 
 which he has been a father, and then returns to Dum- 
 fries to prepare, I fear, for a farther journey. It is 
 barely possible that he may yet recover. But it is an 
 old complaint, and its attack this time has been pecu- 
 liarly and alarmingly severe. It has troubled me 
 terribly. And yet why should it do this, since 
 I know that " living or dying he is the Lord's ? " 
 A better man does not breathe. 
 
 I have not the heart to-night to enter on a minute 
 criticism of your cousin's work. It has, as I have told 
 him, many and great beauties, although full of impro- 
 babilities and crudenesses which testify to a first work. 
 He is evidently a fine, true, genial, and, even in some 
 measure, gifted person. I notice it soon and briefly 
 along with some others in " Hogg." 
 
 Send a copy to Wilson, by all means ; only be 
 aware of this he is the most irregular of all men ; 
 may never notice it in the " Boreales ; " may never 
 even acknowledge its receipt by letter. I know that 
 he is friendly to me after a fashion. Yet he has never 
 by letter or public notice acknowledged the receipt of 
 any of my three volumes, all of which I have sent 
 him. I have, apart from my own experience, my own 
 
148 GEORGE G1LFILLAN. 
 
 very decided opinion as to Wilson's truth and morale, 
 but don't care to express it everywhere. So be pre- 
 pared for disappointment. 
 
 February ', 1851. Aird is considerably better, 
 but far from being out of danger. The least annoy- 
 ance, he says, " puts his poor heart off the rails." 
 I heard from him to-day. Did I ever tell you that 
 the " First Gallery " appeared almost entirely in his 
 paper, and was indeed prompted by his generous 
 suggestion ? So that I am after a manner his literary 
 son. He was a day last week at Portobello with 
 Brown, and they both descended upon Delta who 
 lives some miles off. Aird also saw Wilson, who 
 seems to have been commending the " Bards." He 
 (Wilson) is also in bad health, so that I fear a copy 
 of " The Roman " were wasted on him, except indeed 
 as a gift to a dying Lion. . . . 
 
 You have hit the cause, or one of the causes, of my 
 literary imperfections, present or past that is over- 
 engagement. I have scarcely ever an hour free from 
 the liability of interruption from visitors or members 
 of my church, or the necessity of visiting pastorally, 
 &c., so that I write, read, think, eat, and drink in 
 snatches and broken fragments of time. My sleep 
 only is entirely free, and of that I must have eight or 
 nine hours. Then I have MSS. to peruse, meetings 
 to attend, and very often three discourses each Sab- 
 bath, so that many wonder how I can ever write 
 elaborately or with full purpose of heart at all. Then, 
 I have no good library to consult, and my income 
 will not permit me to buy many important works, so 
 that the strain upon my time, memory, body, the 
 
LETTERS TO SYDNEY DOBELL. 149 
 
 entire man in short, is incessant and growing. But 
 hitherto I have been "helped wonderfully," as the 
 Methodists say, and may, perhaps, in a few years be 
 able to accomplish a kind of ideal purpose of seclu- 
 sion and study, the hope of which has cast a rainbow 
 for a season over my scattery sky. If not, why then, 
 this is my portion under the sun, and my works, such 
 as they are, may sink or swim, fragmentary remains 
 of a life of fragments. 
 
 As to poetry, I have not promised in the "Bards" 
 or anywhere else publicly a poem as forthcoming. 
 But six or seven years ago a warm friend suggested 
 to me " Night " as the subject of a poem, and it has 
 since been stirring obscurely in my bosom, although 
 I feel that my time to sing of it has not yet come 
 nor may for many years. Tell me sometime or other 
 why you don't wish me to poetise. Dr. Alexander 
 of Edinburgh has, you would notice in last month's 
 Palladium, forbidden me fiction ; and now comes the 
 cruel " Roman " and forbids me poetry too ! " And 
 the voice said : What shall I cry ? " 
 
 You don't love Dr. Croly ; yet you will be grieved 
 to see from the papers that he has lost his wife. 
 I saw her but for half-an-hour, but she seemed an 
 interesting and lady-like person. 
 
 My dear Margaret (when one hears of others losing 
 their wives, how much closer does one press his ! ) 
 unites in kind regards to you both. 
 
 \gtli March, 1851. Many thanks for your note, its 
 tidings, its inclosure, and all. What a small, scratchy 
 fist, like that of a rebel fairy, does the Italian Demi- 
 urge write ! But his thanks are most gracefully 
 
ISO GEORGE GIL FILL AN. 
 
 conveyed. That first sentence, especially ! I was 
 often wondering within myself how Mazzini was 
 pleased with " The Roman ; " or rather, whether he 
 had seen it, for as to his opinion there could be no 
 peradventure. And now that the Hand of Italy has 
 come out in your favour, should you not try its 
 Tongue I mean Gavazzi? 
 
 Although I have called Tennyson " an artist, not a 
 prophet," I grant that in the instance you tell me of 
 he is and must be a true prophet. But you are 
 already one of the greatest poets we have ; and, 
 mark you, I take more credit to myself for my pre- 
 dictions, since I made them before you were known, 
 and pronounced them concerning a volume of MS. 
 not of popular print Has he not " plentifully de- 
 clared the thing as it is ? " However, his verdict is 
 honourable to his generosity and must do you service. 
 
 I have not seen the volume of specimens [of 
 English Literature]. I know nothing whatever of 
 the selections. I only wrote the preface, of which 
 I do not think moreover very highly, although it be 
 a true vidimus I think. The publisher, I fear, is not 
 the thing. He has neither paid me for the preface 
 nor sent me the book. 
 
 Aird is better, I rejoice to say. I saw he quoted 
 your beautiful " Snowdrop " the other day. How 
 truly you call it " The Snowdrop in the Snow," pub- 
 lished as it is in the Athcn&um. 
 
 April, 1851. I cannot write you "beautiful 
 letters " like Samuel Brown. I do not feel the voca- 
 tion. " Honesty in ink " is my theory of letter-writ- 
 ing ; the artistic epistle I have never practised, nor 
 
LE TTERS TO S YDNE Y D OB ELL. 1 5 1 
 
 shall. At the same time I feel called on to answer 
 very shortly your kind letter of the 2 1 st. 
 
 No! write "Newmans" and "Romans" for a long 
 time to come, like treatises of Reformation and 
 " Comuses," till the time for the Epos come. Only, 
 don't underrate the " Paradise Lost " ! You have 
 satisfactorily proved that it is human, not in a sense 
 Divine. But, sanguine as I am, I never expect (not 
 even from Yendys or Bailey) to find the better parts 
 of that Divine Song surpassed. If you equal them, 
 I shall fall on my knees in sincere thankfulness. But 
 where have we any whole even to be compared to it ? 
 Nor ever perhaps again ! 
 
 yh May, 1851. Delta the delightful [D. M. Moir] 
 has sent me his " Lectures on the Poetry of the last 
 Fifty Years," delivered to the Edinburgh Philosophi- 
 cal Institution. They are very pleasant, if not pro- 
 found. He is greatly pleased with the " Bards," which 
 he thinks by much my best book. 
 
 May, 1851. I somehow don't like the plan of 
 fixing the volatile hermes of our correspondence within 
 any weekly limits. Whenever the thought strikes either 
 of us, let him write and the oftener and the longer 
 the better. But, no compulsion, to freeze the generous 
 cream of our friendly communication, Besides, don't 
 you know I have another and a superstitious reason ! 
 I had once a correspondent who wrote me on a 
 paction once a-week. It became a terrible affair ! 
 We quarrelled about the Evangelical Alliance (he 
 being for it, I against) and for a month or so our 
 
152 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 correspondence, ere it dropped for ever, was the meet- 
 ing of two batteries of abuse ; and he (being a cousin 
 of Samuel Brown) was able to give nearly as good as 
 he got. So I have contracted a nervous horror of 
 regular martinet correspondence, and tremble at the 
 dimmest idea that we shall commence it, perhaps to 
 terminate in a similar way. Let us stick to the old 
 " Voluntary system," and long may it thrive. 
 
 Young Hogg has just left me, leaving a copy of the 
 second edition of the " Bards " and one hundred 
 pounds or rather guineas. Good ! I have, in the 
 second edition, excised the minor blemishes of the 
 book. I mean, hereafter, to add a chapter or two, 
 and so complete the thing. In my next work I shall 
 try to be a bit of a Bard myself I don't mean a 
 rhymer. 
 
 Delta can't have seen your poem, else he would 
 have noticed it. I was writing him yesterday and 
 gave him a broad hint on the subject. But he is a 
 true man and has, I do verily believe, been only guilty 
 of a sin of ignorance, so think well of him till you 
 hear from me again, and by the way have you sent 
 him "The Roman"? Mark you, he is at present 
 the Scottish Autocrat of Poetry, Jeffrey being dead, 
 Wilson retired, and G. G. not yet recognised in 
 Modern Athens. So perhaps a copy may come on 
 him with demonstration and power. 
 
 \gth May, 1851. I think you should write to Delta; 
 he is a friend worth gripping close to one. Every- 
 body speaks well of his heart, although there are 
 various opinions as to the question of his original 
 genius. But he is a most accomplished man, and, as 
 
LETTERS TO SYDNEY DOB ELL. 153 
 
 I said before, there is much confidence reposed in 
 Scotland in his taste and judgment. 
 
 gth June,\$>$\. Why so silent? I was expecting 
 long ago a letter containing the outline of your new 
 work. 
 
 I am asked to write for the Critic, which has got 
 into new and able hands. My reason for accepting 
 the request is, I don't disguise it, to do all that in me 
 lies to destroy the Athenaum, that Times of literature, 
 only without its thunder. I have told the editor of 
 the Critic to try and engage you into his cohort. It 
 may take a hard fight, but the interests of real literature 
 and of true Christianity demand that I shall take my 
 part in it to break down, if possible, the monopoly of 
 a set of small clever men who are clubbing their little 
 individualities into the appearance of genuine life. 
 I believe there is a secret history in such joint-stock 
 judgment-seats which, were it known, would prevent 
 any man who regarded his own character from enter- 
 ing them. 
 
 I have lost all faith in human philosophies or 
 literatures. I love them just as I love the babblings 
 of my wife's dear little nephew, a boy of four, who is 
 at present in my house. But where is the word of 
 " our Elder Brother," of one speaking with authority ? 
 Alas ! alas ! the whole race (misled hitherto by 
 superstition or fanaticism, or false philosophy) should 
 proclaim a fast, call a solemn assembly as wide as the 
 earth, and on quivering knees should repeat the cry 
 " Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly " otherwise ! 
 
 But Thomas Carlyle is issuing a new life of John 
 Sterling, and let you and me wait for its revelations!!! 
 
154 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 1st September, 1851. I am back from a little stroll 
 among the beautiful woods and hills of Kincardine- 
 shire, the birthplace of my dear wife, where I have 
 seen lovely rivers, bounding on their way amid richly 
 wooded rocks and divine glens, rainbows as vivid as 
 the sun standing for hours together over the wild 
 wind-swept mountains, heard the moaning of the mid- 
 night storm upon miles of woodland, and, what 
 was dearer still, mingled myself, soul and body, with 
 some dear children, nephews and nieces of my wife, 
 whom we both love like their parents, and whose 
 occasional company here or there is the sweetest solace 
 of both our lives. One of them is a boy of five, with 
 a head of seven, and the strangest idiosyncrasy I have 
 ever met in a boy, manly, intrepid, full of life, and yet 
 queer, odd, and what we call auld-farrant. Two of 
 them are beautiful affectionate little girls, with a 
 storm of rich ringlets descending each neck, and with 
 archness, kindliness, and na'ivete looking out at every 
 feature. Oh, it is pleasant to bathe in those fresh 
 waters of immortal life ! Surely there is no well in 
 Malvern that can be named in comparison with such 
 sainted springs of God. 
 
 I am truly sorry that the " Second Angel " has 
 been compelled to seek healing instead of giving it. 
 May virtue go out of the waters and repair her fine 
 frame ! 
 
 So you are living beside Carlyle. I knew he was 
 at Malvern. Poor fellow ! He has been of late very 
 bilious, and consequently morbid. I have been told 
 that his " Life of Sterling " is not at all polemical, but 
 written in a gentle conciliating spirit. I long to see 
 it, and since you seem resolute in declining the task, 
 I suppose I must review it. 
 
LE TTERS TO S YDNE Y D OB ELL. \ 5 5 
 
 I am extremely glad of your short but satisfactory 
 confession of faith to which my whole soul responds. 
 I have been looking lately into Neander's " Life of 
 Christ." I do not think him very successful in 
 removing the external difficulties ; but, amid all the 
 contradictions and confusions of that early history, 
 there dawns more distinctly on me every hour the 
 image of a Divine Man, God's well-beloved and only- 
 begotten Son, not a mere man, but God-in-us ; and 
 on Neander's page this image lies, stronger for the 
 shadows which he tries but is unable to remove. 
 
 You are right as to the creed of Carlyle and Brown. 
 It is naturalism, disguised, in the one by that prophet- 
 seeming spray of earnest fury which surrounds him 
 from head to foot, and in the other by his fine 
 enthusiasm which looks like Christianity, and by his 
 admirable artistic selection and use of language and 
 divine (? ? ?) double entendres. But to me and you the 
 cold granite of Natural Religion looks out through all 
 the fiercer or finer mist amid which it is environed. 
 
 Poor Smith has written me again, in a very modest 
 style. He is labouring ten hours a-day, and has been 
 so since ten years of age ; he is twenty-one. He is 
 anxious to rise to a more suitable sphere, but does 
 not know how. I have written him encouragingly, 
 and intend to notice him in some of the periodicals. 
 He has sent me some more poetry of real merit. 
 I half fancy that while in you I found another 
 Shelley, of a manlier and Christian type, in Smith 
 I am to find another Keats. He is at all events a 
 true poet, although as yet he has only been plucking 
 and weaving stray wild-flowers, and must bend him- 
 self to some enterprise of pith and moment. Poor 
 fellow ! he kept his poetry beside him for a month, 
 
156 GEORGE GIL FILL AN. 
 
 not sure whether to burn it and " tame himself down 
 to his destiny," or to send it to me. 
 
 I hope to hear from you soon with all tidings of 
 Dark Thomas and the promised excerpt from your 
 poem. 
 
 P.S. You may remember me to T. C, although 
 I fear that since the Bards he has less hope in my 
 discipleship than when he wrote thanking me for 
 "John Sterling." He's a great unhappy soul, after 
 all. 
 
 October, 1851. I was glad to see your hand- 
 writing once more. I was apprehensive that in some 
 unknown way I had offended you, and that you had 
 tried that " inexorable silence " which sometime ago 
 you said would be your only revenge against me were 
 I to displease you. 
 
 I ought to have sent you " Macaulay " as a whole- 
 burnt-offering to the shade of Plato. You only saw 
 the third part of it. I am glad to say that some men 
 whose opinions I value, think very highly of it. Nor 
 do I much regard what you say (except that you say 
 it) about calling names. It is a practice as early as 
 Adam, who, I suppose, when the ape and the monkey 
 passed by did not remain silent. I hold to my 
 privilege, and shall always do, to call a spade a spade, 
 an ass an ass, and a liar a liar. Unhappily there still 
 remain such beings in God's universe, although it 
 would need much logic to persuade me that they 
 derived themselves and their detestable qualities from 
 the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 As to isms, I am much of your mind. But, reading 
 
LETTERS TO SYDNEY DOB ELL. 157 
 
 Macaulay, I found him so determined to magnify 
 Bacon's utilitarianism, that I was compelled to pre- 
 sent in strong relief the other and more excellent 
 way. Nor am I exactly of opinion that Hygeia is to 
 supplant Jehovah or Jesus. I think very lightly 
 indeed of our sanatory religions, or of the cleansed 
 and sparkling bubbles which arise in our mountain 
 cold-water pools of Siloam. 
 
 You tell me nothing of Carlyle and your one walk 
 with him. 
 
 i$th February, 1852. I have been in London 
 lecturing in Exeter Hall, and on returning yesterday, 
 found your letter as a bonne bouche waiting for me. 
 My conscience was smiting me during all my journey, 
 why not take a run to Cheltenham and see your 
 friend there whom you love so dearly? but I 
 appeased it with the two true facts that my time was 
 limited, that every day of it in London was engaged, 
 and that your dear wife's health was likely to render 
 a visit inconvenient. I therefore did not obey the 
 impulse to rush down unexpectedly upon you and 
 catch you, perhaps, in the very act of committing the 
 crime of poetry. However, there's a good time coming. 
 
 I enjoyed London very well. I saw two men of 
 mark and name I had never met before F. Newman 
 and Mazzini. Newman is, I think, a feeble man, but 
 highly cultured, gentlemanly and sincere. Still as 
 I scanned him in the "Friend of Italy" office the 
 thought would not flee : A pretty fellow you are to 
 put yourself against Moses, Isaiah, and Paul. You 
 must mount many miles of ladder ere you can spit on 
 their faces. You had better let that matter alone. 
 
158 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 Ah ! but Mazzini is another kind of person alto- 
 gether. What a white capacious forehead ! What a 
 mass of blackness opens like a dark star in his eye, 
 what firmness in his mouth, and how his words came 
 forth from his lips through that grizzly beard, like 
 sharp cutting winds from a forest ! His talk is clear, 
 strong, practical, choked almost at times with its 
 earnestness, and the emphasis which his confused 
 English sometimes fails to give is always supplied by 
 his eye. I saw him only for one half-hour in the 
 house of a Mr. Stansford, a gentleman who knows you 
 and highly appreciates many parts of your idiosyn- 
 crasy, although I don't think that the gods have made 
 him poetical or competent to appreciate the best 
 poetry. 
 
 Thanks for your kindly and admirable analysis of 
 your father's mind. I long for a sight of that little 
 book of his which you praise so highly. I heard much 
 at that same house ere Mazzini arrived about your 
 family relationships, your grandfather Mr. Thompson, 
 and others, which interested me greatly. 
 
 I got on better in Exeter Hall than I expected, but 
 as usual closed my lecture with the feeling of the false 
 position all lecturers put themselves into, or rather are 
 pushed into by their audience. I felt this more on the 
 Tuesday following when hearing Mr. Binney. His 
 lecture had many striking points and much truth in 
 it, but abounded in claptrap, and took altogether a 
 low commercial view of the matter. That matter 
 was : Is it possible to make the best of both worlds ? 
 an absurd title in the first place, a low title in the 
 second (making the best of Heaven what an idea !), 
 the truth actually implied in which amounts to little 
 else than commonplace. His aim was to prove that 
 
LE TTERS TO S YDNE Y DOB ELL. 1 59 
 
 good men are the happiest both here and hereafter, 
 which, in one sense of the word happiness, is not true, 
 else why have all the great and true been the severest 
 strugglers, which if you understand the word in a 
 lower sense, that namely of earthly respectability, does 
 not need to be proclaimed, for is that not the god of 
 all the mere mediocrities of the world ; and where 
 was the need of telling 4000 London persons that 
 Mammon, when sprinkled with a few drops of Christ- 
 ian baptism, is a very decent kind of devil, almost 
 indeed a god ? It was a small, snug coach-and-six 
 Christianity he inculcated only better than Atheism 
 or licentiousness a scheme of calculation, not a Div- 
 ine procession of spiritual instincts passing like solar 
 waves over the being, and carrying it ever forward 
 till it is stranded on heaven, and the glorious although 
 turbulent sea becomes dry land. Yet Binney is a 
 fine and a clever fellow, and is doing good in 
 London. 
 
 My subject was Byron, my audience some 3000, 
 filling the hall comfortably, and I had no reason to 
 complain of my reception. I was forced into the 
 thing by the Secretary coming down here from Lon- 
 don to get me. 
 
 Smith and some others are busy starting a Scottish 
 Atkenceum in Glasgow. He is also working out his 
 redaction. Were it not a pity that so many beautiful 
 thoughts and images as his early poems contain 
 should perish ? 
 
 What has become of the comparison between Mil- 
 ton and Shakespeare you promised to send me? 
 Verb. Sat. 
 
 Mrs. Gilfillan unites in kindest regards to you both. 
 Write soon ; you are now idle in a manner. 
 
160 GEORGE GILF1LLAN. 
 
 8t/i March, 1852. I have promised to write a book 
 on the Scottish Covenanters for the British Anti- 
 State Church Association. It is a fine theme and 
 will give me scope among other things for a little 
 invective, a thing I rather like occasionally when the 
 bile moves me. 
 
 Have you read Poe's works. What a strange being, 
 and what a horrid history ! It might almost at times 
 drive you to Atheism to think of a man so rarely 
 gifted, with such a subtle and powerful intellect, with 
 gleams of positive inspiration lightening about him 
 at times, and yet a wretch, a drunkard, living in hell 
 and dying in a poorhouse. There is no tragedy in 
 the whole sad history of genius so utterly mysterious 
 and inscrutable as his. It was not circumstances 
 that were to blame. The man seems from the begin- 
 ing an unclean spirit determined on his own des- 
 truction, hateful too, and hating all, except sudden 
 idols who fascinated his fancy and who went about 
 latterly roaring out that he was " damned/' and seem- 
 ing to glory in his damnation. And yet this man 
 thought that he had found the key of the universe, 
 gave a lecture entitled Eureka, containing, it is said, 
 the most astonishing glimpses into the very depths 
 of things, and has left some fragmentary but 
 wonderful productions both in verse and prose 
 with more I think of true genius in them than 
 anything from the American mind. "Lord, what 
 is man ! " 
 
 Smith's journal has started. The first number is 
 rather poor, barring his poem, " The Page and the 
 Lady," which appears entire. You will find his 
 second scene in next " Critic," a most rich and beauti- 
 ful one. 
 
L E TTERS TO S YDNE Y D OB ELL. 1 6 1 
 
 [Dobell appears to have stated that Dr. Samuel 
 Brown was engaged with a work on the Covenanters.] 
 
 nth May, 1852. Many thanks for the information, 
 but I do not see what can be done. I am engaged 
 positively for a certain sum, and at a certain time to 
 write for the British Anti-State-Church Association 
 a work of 256 pages, consisting of sketches rather 
 than a history of the covenanting era, and with a 
 distinct bearing on the question of Church and State. 
 Brown's will be an altogether different business. 
 Besides, I have collected materials at some cost and 
 pains, have told many that I am at it, and have 
 written a very considerable portion of it already. 
 I cannot, therefore, alter the arrangement. This 
 I regret both for my own sake and Brown's. 
 
 By the way, I respect Brown much, but quietly 
 think that you enormously overrate him. He has 
 talent, great energy, readiness, enthusiasm, but his 
 old fellow-students would look aghast if they heard 
 of his learning. As to blood one of my ancestors 
 was in Dunottar Castle for the Covenant and don't 
 you mind "Gifted Gilfillan " in "Waverley." But, 
 seriously, there is ample room for both of us ; I will 
 sketch the outline, and he will fill up the details. 
 
 Should he hear of my book, pray assure him that 
 I have not the slightest intention of coming in contact 
 with him, and regret now that I selected the subject, 
 for it was my selection, at all. 
 
 gtk January, 1853. I am editing two books, the 
 one, the works of a poor poet, Nevay of Forfar, and 
 the other the sermons of a deceased divine. 
 
 M 
 
1 62 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 I am glad you like Anderson [the " Surfaceman "]. 
 He is a modest youth with a good gift. He was 
 greatly pleased with you and your reception of him. 
 
 Smith is lucky in his first venture. I had a curious 
 letter from his minister about him, deploring his 
 irregularity in attending church. I intend to urge 
 Smith to go to some church at least 
 
 My " Covenanters" are in, and I suppose, well through 
 their third thousand. I suppose you have never seen 
 them yet. 
 
 \2tJi April, 1853. I shall take an opportunity soon 
 of transmitting your message to Smith. His recep- 
 tion has been very kind, but not more so than the 
 merits of his book deserve. His poetry has struck 
 the Scottish lovers of poetry more than anything of 
 Scottish parentage for twenty years, and had the 
 London journals received it rudely they had only 
 murdered the small modicum of value which we here 
 and many there, too, set upon their critical judgment. 
 
 As to plagiarism, I really wonder at the charge, 
 the more as I have been going over lately, in an 
 editorial capacity, all Milton's poetry, and find twenty 
 plagiarisms in your sense of the term, in every fifty 
 lines. I don't believe there is one conscious plagiar- 
 ism in all the " Life Drama," and all the finer passages, 
 such as the " Garden and the Child," the " Page and 
 the Lady," are entirely free from even resemblance 
 to others. And this is all the more astonishing as 
 the poor fellow has had time to read little but poetry, 
 and that chiefly too of one school. Nothing but 
 unavoidable originality could have so saved him. 
 The things you quote from Shelley, Smith has greatly 
 
LETTERS TO SYDNEY DOBELL. 163 
 
 improved, turning nonsense into beauty. "Bright 
 lovely beast," applied to fire, is absurd. " Bright 
 wild beast," applied to lightning is noble. An " orbed 
 maiden walking through the night " is barely sense. 
 A " naked maiden " passing, like Godiva, through the 
 heavens, is a beautiful thought. 
 
 You will be glad to hear that Glasgow is doing its 
 duty to him, has bought 500 copies of his poem, and 
 that its Parliamentary members are moving heaven 
 and earth for his advancement. This is as it should 
 be. 
 
 I have forwarded your note to poor Nevay. 
 
 I am glad your poem is so near completion. Much 
 will depend on its being ahead of your former. A 
 second poem must be better than a first. It is 
 unalterable literary etiquette. And "Chamouni" 
 gives me high hopes. 
 
 I am about to bring out a new poet, one Bigg in 
 Ulverston. I think I mentioned him to you before. 
 He has much more culture than Smith, and a subtler 
 if not so strong a genius. I intend to do with him 
 precisely as I did with Smith i.e., write a notice with 
 copious extracts, and then publish his poem piece- 
 meal in the Critic. 
 
 I was sure you would be astonished at Brown's life 
 and ambidextrous energy. Poor fellow, he has had 
 a strange, and in many things, an unhappy life. 
 I don't know if he yet has found what his true work 
 is. It is not, I fear, a revolution in chemistry. His 
 real position in a worldly sense should have been a 
 Professor's chair. 
 
 The first volume of the " Poets " [NichoFs Series] 
 appears in a day or two. It will be a very cheap and 
 very handsome edition, and promises to have a large 
 
1 64 GEORGE GIL FILL AN. 
 
 sale. Its strength will lie, apart from the prefaces, in 
 correctness of text and clearness and beauty of type, 
 and in absence of all but strictly necessary notes. It 
 has given me the great satisfaction of a complete re- 
 perusal of all Milton's poetry, with feelings of renewed 
 wonder. Don't you know that I think " Samson 
 Agonistes " the most powerful thing he did ? There 
 is in it more of the ^Eschylean or Dantesque rugged 
 power. It accomplishes equal effects at less apparent 
 expenditure. It has all the power without the efflores- 
 cence of Job, and rises almost to the severe and 
 simple majesty of Moses. It is no Hymettus hum- 
 ming with bees and decked with flowers ; it is a Sinai 
 bared by Divine fire, blackened by the frown of the 
 Eternal. 
 
 No spring here yet ! Cold, bleak skies, and a new 
 moon with edges as sharp and blue as the points of 
 a pitchfork. 
 
 May, 1853. Right glad I am to hear that 
 there is even a "possibility" of our meeting this 
 autumn. I trust it will be, and turn out, a profitable 
 as well as delightful reunion. Give me due notice, 
 and I shall manage that you meet some others far 
 more worthy than I. 
 
 I heard from Tucker of Bath that you were poorly, 
 and I need not say how deeply I sympathise with all 
 your sorrows. It has long seemed to me that bodily 
 health is the one thing you want to assert yourself 
 as one of our greatest spiritual potentates, and that 
 God only can supply. But His promise is: "As thy 
 day, so thy strength." 
 
 Tucker has decided promise, but is too much bit by 
 
LETTERS TO SYDNEY DOB ELL. 165 
 
 your prose style, which he cannot always adequately 
 handle. 
 
 I have my doubts about the success of Wight's 
 scheme,* but intend to do all for him I can. I 
 intend beginning to-morrow a paper on Burke for 
 his first number. De Quincey and Aird have both 
 promised him something. 
 
 My labours are still very weighty. The new edition 
 of the " Poets " promises to succeed, but will entail 
 on me a burden of constant work for years i.e., if 
 the scheme goes on. I am busy at present with 
 Thomson. He is a true poet, but in a style and 
 manner compared to Milton, whom I read last, 
 how coarse and clumsy ! He is an inspired boor 
 of the Dutch or rather Cape of Good Hope 
 species. 
 
 I have a letter from my brother-in-law in Australia. 
 He tells me he saw lately a guinea copy of my 
 " Bards " in Melbourne, and was of course well 
 pleased. Is this, or is it not, true fame ? 
 
 Mrs. Stowe was here lately. She is, let the Exeter 
 Hall idiots say what they please and they don't 
 admire, though they cheered her a noble woman, 
 reminding me of the Ruths, Maries, and Marthas 
 of the past. How meekly she bears her unparalleled 
 honours, and what genuine humanity and Christianity 
 (but this is pleonasm and repetition, for humanity and 
 Christianity rightly understood are one) ooze out from 
 every cranny of her constitution ! God bless her ! 
 Her appearance and reception here that meek, plain 
 woman, a year ago utterly unknown gave me a thrill 
 of sublime emotion I seldom have experienced in all 
 
 * New series of Hogg's Instructor. 
 
1 66 GEORGE GILF1LLAN. 
 
 my life. It seemed a minute of the Millennium sent 
 before its time. 
 
 Do write me now and then. 
 
 Mrs. Gilfillan unites in love to Mrs. Dobell and 
 yourself. 
 
 22nd July, 1853. I had almost given you up for 
 lost or dead when your welcome letter came in. 
 Short as it is, it contains matter both of much joy 
 and much sorrow ; joy that your poem is so near 
 completion, and sorrow that poor Mrs. Dobell's health 
 seems so hopeless. If she die, I fear she will not die 
 alone. God open up some way amid those dark hills 
 of her pilgrimage ! I have never till now lost hopes 
 of her recovery. 
 
 I am glad you have seen and that you love Smith. 
 I see his appearance has disappointed the Londoners, 
 who were expecting a " curled darling." Bigg comes 
 out next Critic. 
 
 Since I got your note I have read " Love in Idle- 
 ness," and see in it the promise of a very powerful 
 tale on a most original plan. Perge puella. Is she 
 a relation of the novelist ? 
 
 I am glad you like Milton. It has been very well 
 received. Thomson is now ready, and I have begun 
 Herbert. Ah ! divine old George ! What a contrast 
 to Jemmy Thomson, what a contrast to almost all 
 men and pastors ! Indeed, the standard he sets up 
 is so hopelessly high, that I am not sure but it does 
 me more ill than good. It is to me a " sad sight " 
 when I compare him with myself and others. His 
 life and Milton's poetry alike drive me to despair as 
 equally inimitable. But does not Christ do this far 
 
LETTERS TO SYDNEY DOBELL. 167 
 
 more? And yet is not His image hung up before 
 every eye as a model ? 
 
 Yes, dear friend, these are fearful times. The end 
 of all things seems to be at hand. I have had a good 
 deal of interesting conversation with a very promis- 
 ing youth named (you will see his hand in the 
 
 September Hogg in a paper on my Milton). He 
 is a divinity student, but is plunging in the deepest 
 waters of doubt and is driven almost to despair, and 
 may, I fear, be thrown violently back into the mere 
 world and its pollutions from the uncertainty of his 
 religious creed. And, alas ! he is a specimen of 
 thousands. I strongly urged him to go onward to 
 the church, and to wait and pray for light ; but he 
 seems reluctant. He is irritated, too, by the severe 
 criticisms of the Presbytery on his sermons, which are 
 exuberant to a fault, and may thus be lost to the 
 church through the same bad and ungenerous style 
 of judgment which lost Keats to poetry. And yet I 
 verily believe that, were I in his position, I could not 
 take my own advice. 
 
 But the morning cometh as well as the night. We 
 can do little but watch for it ; yet it is all our hope. 
 
 Mrs. Gilfillan was drooping much in spring, but is 
 considerably better since this most flushed and leafy 
 of all leafy summers has come in. 
 
 She joins me in kind love to yourself, and sympathy 
 with your dear sufferer. 
 
 Aftk October, 1853. Your silence would have been 
 surprising were it not that I heard indirectly (through 
 Tucker) that you were busy with your poem. I long 
 to see it, the more as your plan seems to be somewhat 
 
168 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 obscure. How can natural goodness return to restore 
 the world ? I thought our common creed was that 
 Divine interference is to be the main instrument in 
 that restoration. I rather regret your choice of the 
 allegory, though I have no fear as to your manage- 
 ment of it. A long allegory in verse is a dangerous 
 experiment. I speak, however, in profound darkness 
 lighted up only by my faith in your genius. I shall 
 count the days till it appears. 
 
 If it comes forth in November it will issue 
 simultaneously with a little book of mine, written at 
 the request of a London house, entitled " The Grand 
 Discovery ; or, The Fatherhood of God," a tractate 
 embodying an outline of what at present is my creed. 
 I do not expect you to agree with it all, but I think 
 you will like it as a piece of writing. My object is to 
 inculcate a doctrine you hold namely, that without a 
 Revelation we never could have reached any certain 
 knowledge of a Divine Father. I have interspersed 
 it with a few blows at Carlyleism, &c. I preached 
 the substance of it in two discourses to large and 
 intellectual audiences in Leith, beside Edinburgh, ten 
 days ago, and was glad of the opportunity, in the 
 presence of many savans and sucking Emersonians, 
 of declaring my contempt for their hope and faith, 
 and of hanging up before their eyes the old banner of 
 the Cross. 
 
 This, along with my editorial work at the poets and 
 my usual periodicalising, has filled up my autumn 
 pleasantly. It has been on the whole a changeful 
 season ; but there have been many glorious excep- 
 tional days, which I have enjoyed all the more that 
 they were exceptions. What a Divine day, for 
 instance, was last Sabbath ! It seemed one of the 
 
L E TTERS TO S YDNE Y D OBELL. 1 69 
 
 days of Heaven in its spotless serenity, its clear cool 
 and holy quiet. 
 
 I had a call from Smith some six weeks ago. He 
 has been delighted with his visit to Coxhorne, and 
 gave me very pleasing accounts of Mrs. Dobell, your- 
 self, and your inmate, Miss James. I once thought of 
 rallying him upon this last subject, so warm were his 
 eulogiums upon her. I have just finished a paper on 
 his poetry for the Eclectic, which, strange to say, 
 although the first to introduce him in extracts, has 
 never noticed his whole poem. I have, amid much 
 praise, given him some solid and seasonable counsel. 
 
 November, 1853. I am here in the north 
 among my darling little nieces and nephews, whose 
 society is my dearest pleasure, and have had your 
 note forwarded to me. I regret the delay of Balder. 
 I had promised to write a notice of it for Hogg's 
 January number, if it came at all in time. I had 
 besides promised myself a bonne bouche from it when 
 I returned ; but I must now have patience. 
 
 I saw Smith in Glasgow since, I think, I wrote you 
 last. He was on the wing for the Duke of Argyll's, 
 who had, very handsomely, invited him to spend some 
 days at his castle of Inveraray. He writes me since 
 that he has enjoyed himself. He is at present in 
 Ireland visiting Lord Dufferin, a friend of Mrs. 
 Norton's. I hope the Duke will do him some sub- 
 stantial good by getting a bank or Government office 
 for him. He has written about one thousand lines of 
 a new poem. I hope to see it soon in MS. 
 
 I had a note from Bailey two days ago. He is 
 superintending a new volume of poems by one Brad- 
 
i;o GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 bury. I had it under my eye last spring, but did not 
 admire it, except some individual lines. 
 
 Samuel Brown is back to Edinburgh, but continues 
 in very poor, precarious health. 
 
 I must close. Give my kind love to Mrs. Dobell 
 and your father and mother. 
 
 24.1/1 January ', 1854. I cannot yet fix the time for 
 being over [in Edinburgh] ; only I fear it won't be 
 next week. I shall let you know in due season. 
 
 Prepare for severe criticism. Your Balder has dis- 
 appointed many of your warmest admirers. It did 
 not me, because from the extracts you sent me I was 
 prepared for all its faults, although not prepared for 
 all its beauties. It has raised my opinion of your 
 genius which was, you are well aware, very high 
 before ; but I regret that it is not a higher step 
 towards that pedestal of popularity and power whence 
 you meant to preach Christianity to the young age. 
 God strengthen you for reaching it soon. 
 
 I have read the Athenceum. Its animus is evident, 
 its criticism contemptible in much, but not in this, 
 that it is a faithful daguerreotype of the prevailing 
 opinion about your poem, and you, like all who 
 appeal to the public, should know and profit by such 
 a deliverance, painful as it may be to flesh and blood. 
 In my criticism (written after a first reading the 
 book has been lent, and I have not yet had the 
 opportunity of a second), you will find a summary 
 of both sides, the scales of course, predominating in 
 the proper direction. I must, however, honestly say, 
 that had I seen Balder as a whole, ere it appeared, 
 I should have demurred to its publication, since as 
 
LETTERS TO SYDNEY DOBELL. 171 
 
 a piece of poetical power it is wondrous, but as an 
 act in the great drama of your genius it rather 
 hinders than helps the catastrophe. 
 
 i3//z May, 1854. Your kind little note was await- 
 ing me when I to-day returned sad and silent, 
 solitary and unutterably strange from my mother's 
 funeral. She was yesterday entombed among the 
 monumental hills of Comrie, and my feelings were, 
 strange to say, nearly as hard as that granite which 
 only the earthquake ever shakes. I could not weep 
 although my mind was bursting within with emotion. 
 I felt as if I were burying something besides my 
 mother in that grave ; but what was it ? Something 
 whispered in my heart " All except my twin Bold 
 Conceptions, and my love to Christ." These are the 
 very words which streamed through me. I scarcely 
 know what they meant ; and yet I think I do. 
 
 You know not long may you not know ! what 
 it is to see the spirit of a mother as it were imprisoned 
 in a cold clayey corpse, and yet seeming to smile up 
 as though it saw itself transfigured in that Heaven 
 above which is visible to it alone. You have seen 
 the cloud smiling long after the sun is set, and thus 
 doth the clay smile and shine after its sun of soul is 
 set to it for ever ? 
 
 I rose to-day from a short miserable sleep at four 
 morning, and came over dreary moors, relieved how- 
 ever, by the sight of the grand, sullen, tortured 
 Grampians on the north. The " morning was spread 
 upon the mountains," and I felt as if it were conspiring 
 in all its beams to write Resurgam on my mother's 
 grave which lay slumbering below them. The white 
 
i;2 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 church, too, beside the tomb appeared to become 
 whiter as with electric light, and the young foliage of 
 the woods behind, absolutely glared with yellow, 
 green, and gold. Yet the sight soothed me not. 
 I felt the impotence of Nature as I have seldom felt 
 it before, and that " at its best estate it is altogether 
 vanity," like everything else except Hope. 
 
 I have been all day in a dream not of the happiest 
 sort, although I have managed, besides a good deal 
 else, to write a kind of funeral sermon for my dear 
 mother. Our dear little lamb, Agnes Vallentine by 
 name, sprang into my arms when I arrived and did 
 all she could to fondle me back to consciousness and 
 peace. I was " poor dear Uncley that had been 
 burying my Mother." 
 
 Margaret, who has felt the blow nearly as much as 
 myself, unites in kind regards to yourself and your 
 ladies. 
 
 August, 1854. I regret I missed you at 
 Glasgow. Kossuth's appearance disappointed every- 
 body, and his speeches me.* He struck me rather as 
 a man of amazing agility than of great depth or true 
 poetic inspiration. Mazzini is a greater, although 
 not so good a man. The conversazione was a tissue 
 of solemn twaddle. 
 
 I feel this heat very oppressive, and my wife is 
 quite paralysed with it. I have not done much 
 accordingly for a week or two. If there be a paper 
 in the Eclectic on Balder it is not mine. I have not 
 had time to write one. I am to reprint my former 
 one with some additional remarks in the " Third 
 
 * This was Mr. Gilfillan's later judgment of Kossuth. 
 
LE TTERS TO S YDNE Y D OB ELL. \ 73 
 
 Gallery," which you have seen announced in Hogg as 
 preparing for publication. Fraser and Gorrie on it 
 were both good, Chambers poor, halting, not grace- 
 fully, between two opinions. 
 
 Oh for a breath of right mountain air ! I intend in 
 a fortnight going to Aberdeenshire for a few days, 
 and in a month or six weeks dashing over once more 
 amidst the glorious and terrible wildernesses of 
 Glencoe. 
 
 I sent a youth, Gordon, to you. Did he call ? He 
 has not sent me his poetry ; but my table is as usual 
 loaded with that of others. I have returned within 
 two months sixteen packets of poetry, some of them 
 in folio, and others are pressing in. Bigg's poem 
 seems decidedly making way. 
 
LETTERS TO THOMAS AIRD. 
 
 THOMAS AIRD was born in August, 1802, in 
 the parish of Bowden, Roxburghshire, under 
 the shadow of the Eildons, into one of those bright, 
 contented Scottish homes where the light of piety 
 burned with cheerful steady flame ; and from begin- 
 ning to end, religion governed his life. At the Univer- 
 sity of Edinburgh he made the acquaintance of Thomas 
 Carlyle, and the friendship continued. Designed for 
 the church, Aird found his diffidence an obstacle, and 
 preferred a literary life. His first venture, a tragedy 
 named Murtzoufle with some other poems, published 
 in 1826, made but little mark, though the volume 
 contained one of his tenderest pieces, " My Mother's 
 Grave." His next work, " Religious Characteristics," 
 a series of prose themes, brought him into notice. 
 It won high praise from Professor Wilson, and 
 gained for the author admission into Blackivood. 
 In 1835, after editing a paper in Edinburgh 
 for a short time, he removed to Dumfries. "The 
 newspaper," he said, "is the gospel of God's daily 
 providence working in man's world ; " and this 
 ideal he strove to fulfil in conducting the local 
 Herald. 
 
 In 1839 he published " Othuriel and other poems ; " 
 in 1845, "The Old Bachelor in the Old Scottish 
 Village;" and in 1848, with the full edition of his 
 
LETTERS TO THOMAS AIRD. 175 
 
 poems, "The Devil's Dream on Mount Aksbeck," 
 his imaginative climax. 
 
 A number of letters addressed by him to Mr. 
 Gilfillan will be found in the memoir prefixed to the last 
 edition of his poems, published in 1 878. They breathe 
 the spirit of genuine regard and cordial sympathy, 
 all the more notable inasmuch as the friends differed 
 on many points, religious and political. In November, 
 1845, no doubt referring to the publication of Gilfillan's 
 first " Gallery," Carlyle wrote to Aird : " I will attend 
 well to what you say about Gilfillan, and certainly, if 
 I can do him any good on such an occasion, it will be 
 a duty as well as a pleasure to me. My personal con- 
 nection with Reviews, &c., has altogether ceased for a 
 long while ; nor, indeed, is there any clear way of seek- 
 ing to give furtherance to a man of real merit, amid 
 the crowd of empty pretenders and of false judges that 
 we have at present. But it is the more incumbent on 
 one to do what is possible, and in that I will endeavour 
 not to fail as occasion serves." 
 
 In December, 1842, Aird wrote to Gilfillan, acknow- 
 ledging an article : " I am under renewed and special 
 obligations to you for * Honest Allan ' [Cunningham]. 
 As he has many friends here it will be cordially 
 received. The sketch is one of your richest. If 
 faulty, it is in its enormous exuberances of poetry. 
 The Sea, the giant of the young world, and the 
 Painter are glorious excrescences. Would half the 
 world could sin in such abundance ! And yet you 
 hit off Allan's characteristics well. I have sent a copy 
 to your friend Mrs. Carlyle. They were intimate 
 with Allan, and she will clip out your article and 
 place it with your portraiture of her own Thomas." 
 
 Again, in October, 1845, Mr. Aird writes : " Thanks 
 
i;6 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 to good, prim, narrow, strait Mr. Hogg, who, I daresay, 
 is frightened out of his wits by your audacities, I 
 have got two of the finest articles I ever had in our 
 paper. May the man live for ever in a snail-cup, with 
 that alms-basket of scraps of his for baiting mouse- 
 traps, if more of that large manna may but drop in 
 my hungry way. Your Tennyson is not so elaborate 
 as some of your former worthies ; but oh ! he is right 
 pleasant, profound, and yet airy and buoyant. 
 ' Gloomy grandeur ' is your characteristic, so said 
 Carlyle to me a few nights ago, partly in praise, 
 partly in blame. There are touches of it in your 
 Tennyson, but rightly used and finely relieved. . . . 
 Both Delta and Carlyle have told me lately that you 
 magnify trifles too much by overheated enthusiasm. 
 This is your great fault. Be composed, and I will 
 guarantee your picturesque powers won't fail you. 
 Effect dwells in a zone of quiet. Pardon this preach- 
 ment" 
 
 From a letter of Aird's, of 1st February, 1849, tne 
 following is extracted : " Manifold thanks for the 
 most vivid piece of etching ever burned in upon my 
 page. I have just softened a point or two of the 
 savage graphic, and now let the public up and at it ! 
 For myself I never enjoyed anything more heartily 
 so exuberantly vital is it with all sorts of life. I 
 could not refrain pardon me if I have done amiss 
 from cutting out from your second lecture a perfect 
 poem, set to the music of the spheres, and giving it in 
 the same number of our paper as a variety of your 
 power. I cut off the associations of Exeter Hall, and 
 one or two bits of mere lecturing cleverness. Look 
 at the thing as it now stands up to the firmament 
 in its majestic and immortal harmony. The piece 
 
LETTERS TO THOMAS AIRD. 177 
 
 was so vividly defined and unique on my own mind 
 that I was impelled to do as I have done." 
 
 These are specimens of the correspondence on 
 Aird's side. It continued till' the genial poet-editor 
 died in 1876. On the 25th April of that year he had 
 risen and read his usual portions of Scripture. With 
 him were his niece, Miss Smith, and Miss Thorburn, 
 with whom he conversed for a little in a composed 
 and cheerful manner, knowing that the end was near. 
 Then one of the ladies read to him an article of 
 Mr. Gilfillan's. She had just finished when the final 
 change began. In an hour he expired. 
 
 GlLFILLAN TO AlRD : 
 
 \Qth August, 1848. You ask me of my own doings. 
 I am in a good way among the Prophets [for " Bards 
 of the Bible"], and like the subject well. I think 
 that by blending modern literary criticism with that 
 of the Hebrew Bards, by thus moderating and re- 
 lieving my raptures of admiration, and by shunning 
 all sectarian points, I may make the book at once 
 catholic and interesting. 
 
 In this book on the Hebrews I intend collecting, 
 or rather am without intention collecting, the essence 
 of my sermonising for many past years ; and shall 
 avoid all thorny points, and give out the strength of 
 my early and later impressions of that highest voice 
 of Past, Present, or Future Poetry. I cannot, there- 
 fore, I conceive, be better employed than I am at 
 present. Ten years of further experience must, if 
 I live, and will be needed to qualify me for that 
 grander theme The Reconciliation of Man. Thanks, 
 nevertheless, for your friendly counsel. 
 
 I have been reading and writing on Sterling's 
 
 N 
 
1 78 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 Remains. Poor fellow ! what a typical character did 
 he unconsciously sustain, typical of most 'of the 
 young, ardent, honest, and baffled enquirers of the 
 day. Professor Blackie, of Aberdeen, has issued and 
 sent me a pamphlet on University Reform, very bold, 
 pithy, and, in my judgment, true. Emerson has sent 
 me the American edition of his Essays, wru'ch con- 
 tains some striking verses not in the English one. 
 From Dr. Croly I heard the other day, inclosing a 
 sermon on marriage, short, able, and stringent, though 
 I don't agree with all his sentiments. Binney and he 
 outvie each other in peppering me with pamphlets 
 and praise. What a tertium quid I be ! What I 
 value far more than the voice of newspapers, I have 
 received various private letters both from England 
 and Scotland anent my "Milton."* 
 
 2jtk October, 1848. What are you doing or pro- 
 jecting? I long for your poems. I wrote to Moxon, 
 offering him the second edition of the " Gallery " and 
 a new Gallery, but he declines, pleading bad times. 
 I have not yet tried any other. 
 
 I am working steadily and pleasurably at the 
 Hebrews. I have just finished Job to my own satis- 
 faction so far. I feel Isaiah approaching. What an 
 orb of light and flame ! 
 
 I have written two papers on Sterling in this part 
 of Hogg. I sent them to Carlyle, who has written 
 me a very noble note of warm approbation. I intend 
 beginning a paper on Longfellow for a Liverpool 
 bookseller (who is reprinting his poems), pro ten 
 guineas. 
 
 * Article in Taifs Magazine, 
 
LETTERS TO THOMAS AIRD. 179 
 
 I have refused almost all lecturing engagements 
 this season from Edinburgh, Manchester, &c. ; but 
 have been prevailed on to give one in London for the 
 Metropolitan Early Closing Association sometime in 
 December. I must pull up, as Croly and Alison are 
 among the list. 
 
 26th December , 1848. Here I am, safe from a very 
 pleasant little trip. I never enjoyed a journey more. 
 I saw all the persons I wished to see. I had two 
 forenoon hours of Croly, who was very kind and 
 possesses all the sturdy qualities I had given him 
 credit for. He honoured me by coming to my last 
 lecture. He is busy at a second Salathiel. Mary 
 Howitt wrote me to call, and I did. She is really a 
 most sensible and lady-like person, and has a delight- 
 ful family. I did not see her lord. I spent an hour 
 with Leigh Hunt. Poor fellow ! he is, I fear, break- 
 ing up or down. Our conversation took rather a 
 serious turn. I think he has good tendencies, though 
 his views seem weak and sentimentally wersh. He 
 told me some interesting stories of Shelley and 
 Hazlitt. I had a long night of four hours with 
 Carlyle, who was in good trim and high talk, He 
 dilated on Chalmers, Irving, and Brougham. Had 
 his lordship heard his picture of him, so terribly true 
 and graphic, and with such hell-stuffing of invective 
 in it, he had gone away and hanged himself straight- 
 way. Mrs. C. dropped out some capital things too. 
 Both were very cordial. I saw also, or rather met 
 with, Philips of " Bunyan," a good, weak man ; 
 Binney, an enlightened, talented, though somewhat 
 erratic being; Dr. Harris of " Mammon," &c., a capi- 
 
i8o GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 tal fellow, full of fun, intelligence, and without an 
 atom of cant ; Drs. Morrison, Fletcher, and Leifchild, 
 all good specimens of their different kinds. Bob 
 Montgomery wrote me can you believe it ? to come 
 and hear him preach, and afterwards go home and 
 sup with him. 
 
 I lectured to 2000 people in Exeter Hall. They 
 were very enthusiastic. My last lecture was not so 
 well attended owing to their raising the price, as well 
 as to the out-of-the-way ness of the chapel, but was 
 well received. I preached to a crowded and very 
 attentive audience in Binney's chapel on Sabbath 
 evening. 
 
 I saw Brown both coming and going. He is well 
 and busy. He has written a play on Galileo, which 
 you may perhaps soon see in Blackivood. I have not 
 seen it, but it is said to be magnificent. 
 
 I found waiting me an offer, through Troup, of the 
 Belfast English Literature Chair. I declined. I am 
 comfortable enough, now, where I am. Don't you 
 think I was right ? Were I ever to feel uneasy in my 
 position, other openings might occur.' 
 
 May, 1849. Thanks for the sweet and true 
 little poem you sent me. It is vraisemblable and 
 tender. 
 
 I am on the eve of going to Glasgow for a few 
 days, taking Comrie in my way back. The weather 
 promises beautifully. I preach for MacGill, who is 
 away to the Highlands. By the way, he was referring 
 lately with great delight to you and to that delightful 
 day at Glamis. He is preparing a life of his father- 
 in-law, Dr. Heugh, and has got a few Sabbaths' leisure 
 
LETTERS TO THOMAS AIRD. 181 
 
 from his people. He is doing extremely well as a 
 minister. 
 
 I am now fairly in among the Prophets. I wrote 
 Isaiah seven years ago. I read it lately to Brown, 
 who considered it the best thing I had ever done. 
 W. Anderson and Binney, who heard me preach it, 
 had the same opinion. I am now at Jeremiah, and 
 feel the hot, hurried breath of Ezekiel drawing near. 
 The book will be out by January, I think, at farthest. 
 Previously, Hogg publishes a second "Gallery," includ- 
 ing the best of my later sketches, about the size of the 
 first a small edition and afterwards brings out both 
 " Galleries " in a cheap form. 
 
 Did I not say how much I liked Brown's " Scott " ? 
 He wrote it in seven days ! What a wonderful writer 
 he might be were he giving up the furnace ! He is to 
 be married on the ist of June. This will give him 
 ballast. 
 
 ^rd September, 1849. I spent the forenoon of last 
 Wednesday with Carlyle. Erskine apprised me of his 
 being at Linlathen, and I went there. He, C., and 
 I walked down to the sea-side, where Carlyle and I 
 bathed. He seems in high health and good spirits, 
 and is, as usual, full of talk. We enjoyed the morn- 
 ing much. I suppose by this time he has gone 
 North. 
 
 I shall think of what you say anent the " Bards." 
 I am myself inclined to publishing them all at 
 once. 
 
 Carlyle had been at Glamis. I do not think he 
 cares much for scenery. He spoke with no enthu- 
 siasm about Glamis. 
 
1 82 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 igtk November, 1849. I ought to have answered 
 you ere this, but have been busy with many things. 
 My " Gallery " is to be issued in a fortnight or less. 
 You will get a copy, of course. Only two papers in 
 it are split new those on Bailey and Hunt. But 
 possibly you had not seen or read some of the Hogg 
 articles/ Contrast my 1845 anxieties with my com- 
 parative indifference now. I have done with repub- 
 lishing sketches for ever, whatever I may write. 
 
 Did I ever speak to you of one Sydney Yendys, a 
 Cheltenham youth of twenty-five ? He sent me lately 
 his completed poem, " The Roman," which I predict 
 will establish him as one of the most rising of our 
 poets. It is really a brilliant production, all " air and 
 fire," yet with deep, condensed, reflective single lines 
 and occasional slight touches, like the pressure of a 
 giant's fingers, which give assurance of a wondrous 
 premature manhood. It is sprinkled, too, with exqui- 
 site musical and tender lyrics. He is away to London 
 to get it published. I have the highest hopes of him. 
 He will make Tennyson look to his laurels. 
 
 I4/// January, 1850. I had not seen or heard of the 
 Athenceum onset. I have searched for it since, but in 
 vain. It will not, even if I see it, break my heart. 
 Such paper pellets have almost lost their power. 
 Besides, I throw them so often myself, that I cannot 
 complain if I am hit in return. Only I am never con- 
 sciously unjust or unfair. The only thing that annoys 
 me about this is that it was to Marston, at the A. 
 office, I sent the volume. Now, from the friendly 
 terms we were upon when he was here, I might have 
 expected common justice, if not friendly recognition. 
 
LETTERS TO THOMAS AIRD. 183 
 
 However, let us remember the two great texts, 
 "Cease from man," and "Wisdom is justified of her 
 children." 
 
 MacPhail on " Aytoun " refreshed me much on 
 Saturday. It is smashing and true. You see the 
 big boy blubbering under it like a beaten school- 
 boy. It is by neither Landreth nor Brown, I calcu- 
 late. It is liker MacCulloch of Denny, who did 
 " Notes or No Notes." However, I am only certain 
 on the negative side. 
 
 " Galileo " [by Dr. S. Brown] has glorious touches, 
 and contains the germ of great dramatic power, but 
 has not the full roundness of contour or richness of 
 colouring you would have expected. It is rather an 
 interesting experiment than a finished thing. He has 
 not burnt his fingers, although he has not succeeded 
 in " carrying a fire in his hand." I am writing an 
 article on it for the March Eclectic the leading one 
 it will be. De Quincey follows in April, I hope. I 
 have written the half of both. 
 
 I have two lectures next week one in Cupar-Fife, 
 the other in St. Andrews ; and then I close my lec- 
 turing career for ever, except now and then in Dundee. 
 It is an awful waste of time, strength, and nervous 
 energy. By the way, Brown lectures here in February, 
 when, of course, we shall have him with us. Would 
 you were with us too. 
 
 The " Bards " are rather hanging fire. I intend 
 soon taking a fierce fortnight entirely to the work 
 and fairly finishing it. I have but five chapters to do. 
 Yendys has been up in London trying to get his 
 poem out. He has seen Carlyle and Croly. He did 
 not take much to the latter, and was saddened by 
 Carlyle's hopeless gloom. He is doing a review of 
 
1 84 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 me for somewhere. You have no idea what a bril- 
 liant thing " The Roman " is. Shelley, at twenty-five, 
 had done nothing like it. I suspect he has failed in 
 his first application. But he will print it on his own 
 account. 
 
 qth March, 1850. Brown has got into a row with 
 the London Banner about a supposed infidel sentence 
 in his paper on me. I am fortunately not implica- 
 ted in the matter, and though efforts on both sides 
 have been made to draw me in, I intend to keep 
 aloof. Brown has been, I think, decidedly, however, 
 ill-used in the matter. I shall probably send you the 
 Banners in a few days. Campbell is one of your 
 hard-headed, Andrew Thomson kind of men, and 
 cannot appreciate a subtly poetic and philosophic 
 mind like Brown's. 
 
 I got a good deal of time last week to the Bards. 
 I am at the " Poetry of Jesus." By the way, Emer- 
 son's silence in his new book, which I have just read, 
 in reference to Him, is insulting, and must recoil with 
 vengeance on his own head. Otherwise the book is 
 exceedingly wise and beautiful. " It smiles, and it is 
 cold." 
 
 I am glad you have given poor a lift. I owed 
 
 him some separate grudges for acts of insolence and 
 folly, but forgot them all like a Christian, and walked 
 deftly over the belly of my conscience. I hope he 
 will do well. 
 
 I am somewhat tired. Yesterday I preached 
 thrice, and in the evening was up on Carmel with 
 Elijah watching the "man's hand," and am rather 
 fatigued with the ascent. 
 
LETTERS TO THOMAS AIRD. 185 
 
 P.S. I was glad to see your notice of Sydney 
 Yendys. Have you a spare paper containing it that 
 you could send me to transmit to him. Bailey has 
 sent me the "Angel World." It is far beneath the 
 level of Festus. 
 
 April, 1850. I sent you yesterday Yendys' noble 
 " Roman." Is it not worthy of the name ? I think 
 that since Byron's dramas we have had no such fiery 
 and vigorous verse. And yet there is no imitation, 
 although here and there I trace a resemblance. Tell 
 me what you think of the scene with the father, 
 mother and child, of the " Winter Night," the vision 
 of Romulus, and the scene in the dungeon, closing 
 with " 'Tis a hard saying, who can bear it ? " Here 
 is a poet of mettle and manhood, not of mystical 
 cant, once more among us, and only twenty-six. 
 
 By the way, if you wish to write him or send him a 
 notice, his address is S. Y. Dobell, Coxhorne House, 
 near Cheltenham. He was much gratified at your 
 little word about him, and will take a letter kindly. 
 I have sent another copy to Brown. You, he, and 
 myself are his selected Scottish three. 
 
 I am working occasionally at the Bards. The 
 putting off the publication has relieved and liberated 
 me, and I now go to it at glad intervals, often on 
 Sabbath evenings. 
 
 2Otk May, 1850. Samuel Brown has returned 
 home. He is better, but not quite well. There is 
 a mystery about his chymical experiments which 
 neither Nichol nor I can fathom. Yet we are loth 
 to relinquish our cherished belief in him. 
 
186 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 July y 1850. We were at Comrie last week. 
 I was jaded with heat and hard work, my wife ill with 
 a clinging summer cold. We have both returned 
 better, though she is still very delicate. ... I enjoyed 
 the felicity of bathing in some of my old favourite 
 pools. The weather was very hot, and the country a 
 perfect sunburnt beauty. Some fine showers, how- 
 ever, we had, and the thunder growled gloriously in 
 the distance over Loch Tay. 
 
 I am glad you like the Palladium. It has been 
 well received. The Sun is very laudatory. Yendys 
 rather overdoes his part so far as I am concerned ; 
 but then he is a prophet not a panegyrist. A noble 
 gifted spirit, certes : my only fear is that he too soon 
 commits his genius to the glorification of a creed, 
 peculiar, although Christian, which, he seems to have 
 unalterably formed. His paper is incomparably the 
 best in the number ; and with the exception of 
 Brown, I know of no rising man in the country 
 worthy of tying his shoe-latchets. Brown, by the 
 way, is preparing a paper for the British Association 
 on his discoveries. I hope to hear it on the spot. 
 
 Hogg, the publisher, has been here to-day for a few 
 hours. He has sold 700 of the " Second Gallery," 
 and brought me 40 therefor. So soon as 100 or 
 1 50 more are reached, he is to bring out a new edition 
 of the " First Gallery " in the shape of Chambers's 
 editions of Crabbe, &c., for 2s. 6d. I fancy he is 
 anxious to get the " Bards." I rather think I will 
 give him them, though it will be a sacrifice in more 
 ways than one. But I am not greedy of money, and 
 even to praise I am vastly more indifferent than 
 I was. . . . 
 
 I have got to Paul in the Bards. looking over the 
 
LETTERS TO THOMAS A1RD. 187 
 
 book, as I do often, from beginning to end, I think it 
 will be more of a whole than my first two. Coming 
 back, also, to my first burning impressions, it must be 
 a sincerity. 
 
 Christopher North, by the way, likes the Palladium 
 much, so he told one lately. The small creatures of 
 the Caledonian Mercury, Scottish Press, &c., have been 
 abusing it all, except its worst article. 
 
 I have at present the prospect of two or three 
 comparatively idle weeks. I intend (D. F.) during 
 them to indite a Robespierre for Hogg, and to finish 
 Paul. What a contrast of character and work. 
 
 2Oth August, 1850. I am happy to say that my 
 people last Wednesday unanimously raised my 
 stipend, without any request or hint on my part, 
 from i$o to ;iSo, and mean, as soon as possible, to 
 raise it further. This is cheering, and calls for thank- 
 fulness. They are at present very prosperous, more so 
 than for thirteen years. It is curious, they were 
 raising my stipend at the very moment that a large 
 number of Chartists in Bell St. Hall were trying to 
 howl me down for proposing a monument to Peel. 
 Of course I did not succumb, but treated them with 
 the contempt they deserved. They are a sad set. 
 
 I am writing a paper on Smibert's Clans for the 
 Eclectic, and beginning one on the "Great Poem 
 Mysteries, No. i Job," in the Palladium. I mean to 
 go down through Prometheus, Faust, Cain, Festus.. 
 
 September, 1850. Yendys does exaggerate a 
 little, doubtless, but it is an amiable quality, and will 
 modify mightily as he goes on. Remember he is only 
 
i88 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 beginning his first " Gallery," about the same age, too, 
 as when I commenced mine. But I don't think 
 galleryfying his forte. He is a poet, and also 
 strongest in rhyme. Its fetters clash in fire around, 
 and inspire, instead of retarding, his mind. As to 
 Jane Eyre he is right. I read it lately, and it is a 
 most delicious production so romantically true. But 
 he prophesies too much of the author. He will learn 
 better to value ifs and buts by-and-by. . .' . 
 
 i8/// November, 1850. The "Bards" are now fairly 
 off my hands. Perhaps you may get a copy this 
 week. It will be a handsome volume, and not too 
 long. I am writing a preface to " Specimens of 
 English Poets," published by Walker, who issued 
 Longfellow. I will send you a copy of it, as I am to 
 get a lot of spare ones. He has hampered me in room, 
 allowing me only sixteen pages. This has cramped 
 me somewhat, but it is a fair vidimus so far as it goes. 
 
 Wm. Smith is to have a paper on you in next 
 Palladium. I have promised No. 2 of the " Mysteries" 
 for January. The subject is a great one Prometheus 
 Bound and Unbound. I have got Blackie's 
 " ^Eschylus," and have been reading Prometheus for 
 the second time I read it eighteen years ago. It is 
 noble, but bare compared to Job. The introduction 
 of lo is a gross excrescence, carried at least so far as 
 it is. Depend on it, we overrate those Grecian fellows. 
 They are cultured babes beside the Hebrews the 
 unshorn giants. 
 
 December, 1850. I must thank you, however 
 
LETTERS TO THOMAS AIRD. 189 
 
 shortly, for your very kind notice of the " Bards." It 
 was that rather of a brother than a friend. 
 
 I am home from my journey [to England ; see 
 letter to Dobell] pleased, gratified, a gainer, but 
 terribly tired ill, and resolute never to take such a 
 protracted engagement again. On Friday I came 
 home. On Saturday morning I felt all sore and 
 knocked to pieces, and yet I had to preach three times 
 on Sabbath. I got through with much . pain and 
 difficulty, and have since been in the house. I had, 
 yestreen, a long, dreary night of pain and troubled 
 sleep, but am rather better to-day. Travelling 1000 
 miles, speaking nine nights, with but one resting night 
 among them, those everlasting bores of all lecturers, 
 dinners, suppers, breakfasts, all in parties, besides 
 sight-seeings, have shaken me as I have not been 
 shaken for years. I must lie fallow for a fort- 
 night. 
 
 I met with great kindness, in Bradford and 
 Newcastle especially I mean in public. In private 
 all places were alike pleasant. I made twenty-two 
 guineas clear, but have bought it rather dearly by 
 illness and utter exhaustion. 
 
 Hogg writes me the " Bards " are doing well. The 
 Morning Advertiser had a very abusive, but very 
 stupid, attack, mixed, however, with great praise, on 
 Saturday last. Brown and Craig both think it my 
 best approach to a "Work." Yendys does not like 
 "Job," but dotes on the Introduction, " Ezekiel," 
 and the " Destiny of the Bible." What think you of 
 this last? It is a broad blow in the face of our 
 present state and views as churches, and won't please 
 some people. But it was written in deepest sinr 
 oerity. 
 
190 GEORGE GILF1LLAN. 
 
 December, 1850. A good New Year to Sarah 
 and yourself! Mrs. Gilfillan joins cordially in the 
 best wishes of the season. 
 
 I am still hearing good news of the " Bards." Dr. 
 Eadie, my ancient opponent, writes me to-day in a 
 very friendly spirit. He is to notice it in the United 
 Presbyterian Magazine. Dr. Croly, too, and De 
 Quincey are both highly pleased. Dr. C. is to 
 review it somewhere. About 100 copies have gone 
 off in Dundee alone, and there are more demands. 
 
 Read Yendys this month in the front rank of the 
 Palladium on Newman, and tell me your opinion. 
 I think parts of it transcendent in thought as well as 
 in eloquence. He is a noble fellow, as profound as 
 brilliant, and may yet do his greatest things. He 
 aims at the epic. I don't think such things as 
 " Crazed," beautiful as it is, are suited for him. They 
 are rather rests than exercises of his genius. 
 
 Dr. J. Carlyle spent some hours here on Friday 
 last. He is a fine, knowing fellow, although his 
 resemblance to his brother in tone and talk is so 
 great as to be disagreeable at times. He has more 
 bonhomie, however. I was mortified at the way in 
 which he spoke of the "Roman." But both he and 
 Thomas have made up their minds that there shall be 
 no more poetry nor poets. If you see him soon, tell 
 him I am better. He seemed to think me worse than 
 I was. 
 
 I am impatient to get your objections to the " Bards " 
 in full tale. I think I now see the most of its weak 
 points pretty clearly, and can remedy some of them 
 easily enough. The supplementary chapter was 
 written too late for insertion in the body of the book, 
 and somewhat mars the effect. It was written to 
 
LETTERS TO THOMAS AIRD. 191 
 
 be out with it at once to fill up, and the most of it 
 in one Sabbath evening, after preaching twice. And 
 yet it is not the worst chapter in the work. Of course 
 it can easily be put in its proper place afterwards. 
 
 Wi July, 1851. Alas, poor Delta ! How little did 
 I dream when writing you last Friday that you were 
 watching the beginning of his end ! How strangely 
 sudden, and out of the ordinary course has been his 
 death ! And yet I believe that nothing save the 
 presence of his wife and children, which also he had, 
 could have comforted him more than to die beside 
 you, for there was no man he esteemed and loved 
 more. In his second and last letter to me he spoke 
 with much pleasure of having seen you in Dumfries a 
 day or two before, looking so well. 
 
 There was something strange about my feelings 
 lately toward Delta. I felt tenfold interest in him, 
 had written a paper on him in Hogg, another and 
 longer one in the Eclectic, which has not yet appeared, 
 and had carried his first letter about with me till it 
 was well-nigh torn, and shown it to everybody. I 
 had it in my pocket when I heard to-day of his death. 
 Nor was this from any new access of admiration for 
 his genius, but from some sudden sympathy I could 
 not well explain before, but can explain now. 
 
 Poor fellow ! to die at a distance from his home, 
 with a new flush of fame on his brow, in harness, his 
 last poem just published in Blackwood ; to take his 
 death-pang in your company, and on the banks of the 
 Nith 'twas a singular combination of circumstances. 
 How I regret that I never met with him. And yet it 
 is very pleasing for me to remember that we were on 
 
192 GEORGE GILF1LLAN. 
 
 terms of friendship and good-will ere he went his 
 eternal way. Ah ! if we could all realise the feelings 
 which follow death, how ready would we be before- 
 hand to disown our little differences, or even the 
 graver disturbances of friendship, and remember 
 nothing but that we had met and were soon to 
 part. 
 
 igtk August, 1851. I see you have got Croly's new 
 book. I have also had one sent by him. Is it not 
 noble in parts ? Read the " Furies " especially. It is 
 the very essence of ^Eschylus ; and how stately 
 classical and rich the prose interspersed ! The 
 neglect of such a man is a disgrace to literature, and 
 will be felt so one day. I hope to get you to call on 
 him with me when in London. 
 
 While Dobell was away I got a curious letter from 
 his father, mentioning some interesting particulars of 
 Sydney's boyhood. At seven he was in the custom 
 of extemporising poems, and could talk like an old 
 man about philosophical necessity. No prodigy like 
 this since Robert Hall. His father writes in a very 
 sensible and Christian spirit, although he actually says 
 that he is sure his son has " never yet done a thing he 
 knew to be wrong? Still he has fears for him. / fear 
 his constitution more than anything else. It is 
 evidently delicate, and his wife's is more so, and he 
 spends more than half of his time as her nurse. He 
 is often, too, the victim of heart complaint. 
 
 I have no news. My plans are shaping gradually 
 before me, and my book on " Christianity and the Age " 
 is begun. I hope to have a busy winter. I intend to 
 refuse all distant lecturing engagements. 
 
LETTERS TO THOMAS AIRD. 193 
 
 6th October^ 1851. I am now, or nearly, settled in 
 my winter quarters ; for I have still a journey to 
 Glasgow before me ere November. 
 
 I enjoyed the trip to London amazingly on the 
 whole. I saw all the great points of the Exhibition. 
 It is a sparkling, vivid, varied, wonderful, hardly a 
 great thing. I saw no men of mark save old Croly. 
 I heard him preach, and was glad to find his church 
 crowded. It was otherwise four years ago. I dined 
 with him and liked him much. He is more genial 
 than I had expected. By the way, he spoke highly of 
 you and your poetry. He is not in the habit of 
 speaking highly of many, especially of our moderns. 
 
 I heard also Henry Melville and was much pleased. 
 He preaches every Tuesday, in the city, to a good 
 audience. His sermon was sensible, not showy, and 
 delivered in an easy, manly style. 
 
 I am glad you are getting along with Delta. I 
 shall send you the only two letters I have of his when 
 I can fish them out of an immense bag full of such 
 things. 
 
 Did Carlyle mention having met Yendys at Malvern ? 
 I have not yet got any particulars of the interview. I 
 long for the life of Sterling. 
 
 2$rd October, 1851. I leave for Glasgow to-morrow. 
 I am a sort of necessary evil there once a-year at 
 some of their sacraments. I return by Comrie. I am 
 to be a week away. 
 
 I have as usual a great deal before me this winter. 
 In spite of resolutions " made and provided," I have 
 been drawn into some public engagements, none, how- 
 ever, at a great distance, except one lecture in Exeter 
 
 O 
 
194 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 Hall in February. It is for the Young Men's 
 Christian Association. 
 
 The British Anti-State-Church Association are also 
 at me for a volume. They pay for and print 
 occasionally publications in behalf of their cause. 
 Had I three times I might occupy them all ! 
 
 Did you see the Eclectic and notice a paper on 
 recent rjoetry, with a plea at the close for one A. 
 Smith ? This youth has sent me some really beauti- 
 ful poetry. He has less mind but more music than 
 Yendys. He is just twenty-one, and has for eleven 
 years been employed ten hours a-day in some com- 
 mercial employment* My plea for him has been 
 generally responded to by the press, and the extracts 
 from his volume, which is still in MS., commended. 
 I shall see him in Glasgow, and give him what counsel 
 and encouragement I can. 
 
 November, 1851. I was in Glasgow, lately, 
 and saw [Professor] Nichol. He has suffered terribly 
 since his wife's death, but is, he says, reviving. I saw 
 also my young poet, Smith. He is a modest, but 
 very sincere and simple-minded, rather delicate, youth. 
 I have written an article on him for the next Critic, 
 with copious extracts, and one entire and, to my mind, 
 most beautiful little poem, " The Garden and Child." 
 You will like it much. I know he is resigned to his 
 present fate, that of a situation in some shawl ware- 
 house, till something better occur. Nichol is interested 
 in him, and is to do what he can to get him on. He 
 
 * Alexander Smith was employed as a designer of sewed 
 muslins, not in a shawl warehouse as Mr. Gilfillan supposed. 
 
LETTERS TO THOMAS AIRD. 195 
 
 abhors literature as a profession, but would like to 
 rise in his own or some similar one. 
 
 I have had quite a campaign about Italy, Kossuth, 
 &c., having spoken on them in all directions : here, 
 Crieff, Arbroath, Brechin. Kossuth is a glorious 
 man, Worthy of the .old heroic golden-fleece days- 
 let the Tories and the Times say what they will ! 
 Just look at "his speaking. Brougham sinks to an ape 
 beside it. Such oriental grandeur of imagery and 
 language blended with such broad, calm, statesman- 
 like views, the genius of the East and West reconciled. 
 Depend on it, there has been no such man in politics 
 since Burke. And for the Times to class him with 
 O'Connell is mere brutal blackguardism. 
 
 What a pity Carlyle threw in amid the genialities 
 of his life of Sterling, those few rabid sentences of 
 infidelity ! He is getting, very properly, as you will 
 see, scourged for them everywhere. The Eclectic 
 comes out next month to the same tune. You need 
 not show it to Mrs. Aitken. 
 
 22nd December, 1851. You owe me a letter ; but 
 . I "must thank you in my own and Smith's name for 
 your noble and generous tribute to his rising genius. 
 It is a proud thought to me that his first letter intro- 
 duced him to me as a child of my own, before he knew 
 .what I thought of his poems. It was my papers in 
 Hogg which first made him read and love poetry. 
 Glasgow is in a stir about him ; and yet his letters 
 seem as quietly modest as ever. He has, what so 
 many of our aspiring geniuses want, common-Scotch- 
 sense, and is, I believe, as busy among his shawls as 
 ever. His friends are persuading him to publish, but 
 
196 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 he is first to re-write ; secondly, to interweave his 
 minor into his larger poem ; and thirdly, to give me 
 the correcting of the redacted whole. Two or three 
 publishers are waiting for his pleasure Cox of the 
 Critic, Bogue, &c. 
 
 Don't you love " The Garden and the Child ? " It 
 seems to me exquisitely true. It came on him he 
 says after seeing a beautiful little girl in the Trongate, 
 and he could not rest till he wrote it in two hours ! 
 
 28//z January, 1852. I get a public dinner to-day 
 at 4 P.M., from a number of my members, and have a 
 good deal to do before that. 
 
 On Monday I start for London, and lecture, as 
 aforesaid, on Tuesday. I shall be ten days away in 
 all. I am sorry to hear of Croly's illness. He was 
 very strong when I saw him last. 
 
 When I come back I take tooth and nail to the 
 Covenanters. Do you know of any books beyond the 
 common ones? If so, pray tell me next time you write. 
 
 22nd April, 1852. "Delta" has just come in. 
 Many thanks. I have already read all the memoir, 
 and am going over it again. It is very beautifully 
 and tenderly written, with too much of nothing, and 
 yet with everything one could wish in such a record. 
 The estimate of his poetry and the account of his 
 death are especially fine. He was really a lovely 
 character, and I shall go with double zest to a re- 
 reading of his poetry and to renewed criticism on his 
 works and character. The article will probably 
 appear in the Critic for the I5th of May. 
 
LETTERS TO THOMAS AIRD. 197 
 
 I have no news. I was sad at seeing Wilson's final 
 retreat. I suppose his next step will be into his 
 grave. 
 
 The " Covenanters " go on as fast as possible amid 
 my other multifarious duties. I have got another 
 month for writing them in. ... 
 
 4th June, 1852. The "Covenanters" go on. I am 
 fighting Bothwell over again, just now. I think you 
 will like my Magus Muir. I have craved another 
 month to finish, but it must be ready by the end of 
 August. 
 
 Of Nichol's sincere and warm friendship for me 
 I never had the slightest doubt. I only feared, from 
 the tone of his letter, that he had imbibed at second 
 hand some erroneous impressions. I am glad to 
 believe now that I was mistaken. He is a man whom 
 I love, and whose friendship, next to your own, is the 
 most valued on my list. 
 
 %tk November, 1852. I have no time for a letter. 
 My book [Martyrs, Heroes and Bards of the Scottish 
 Covenant] is out, is in its second thousand, and I can't 
 comprehend what the fellows mean by not having 
 sent copies to Dumfries. The Secretary has been 
 very ill, which may account for it. I have written off 
 to him on the subject, and directed him to send you 
 a copy. I am getting hitherto nothing but golden 
 opinions about it as my best, &c. You will judge for 
 yourself. 
 
 There is a talk of a new edition of the British Poets 
 to which I am to supply prefaces. It is not yet fixed 
 however. 
 
198 GEORGE GTLFILLAN. 
 
 My congregation is at present, thank God ! most 
 flourishing. They have raised my stipend three 
 successive years. 
 
 ^rd February, 1853.! have been troubled a good 
 deal with cold, and not so strong this winter, and 
 long for spring. Yet I never have been nearly so 
 busy. I have edited (in charity) lately, fwo works, 
 one of a deceased minister, the other of a poor poet 
 Nevay of Forfar> both of which are in the press ; and, 
 besides periodical work, &c., am now deep in Mil- 
 ton. Nichol is a brother of the Professor's, and seems 
 a pushing fellow. He is to give me i$o a-year for 
 the thing, and more if it prospers. It will involve a 
 good deal of mechanical drudgery, but not more than 
 I hope to manage. You will see fuller particulars 
 soon. 
 
 I was in England in November. Hogg gives all 
 the particulars. Bailey is a true, genuine man. By 
 the way he likes those of your poems he has seen 
 vastly, but desiderates a complete copy. Could you 
 send him one ? He would take it very kind. 
 
 I go to Hull next week. I won't be more than 
 four days away, but grudge the time terribly. It is 
 to introduce a young man from your district, called 
 Rome, to his congregation. 
 
 \6t/i May, 1853. I have little to say unless I were 
 wearying you with details of my own drudgeries. 
 I find editing these poets hard work. It is very 
 delightful no doubt to re-read your old favourites, but 
 how horrid to have to attend to every // and and, 
 
LETTERS TO THOMAS AIRD. 199 
 
 every colon and comma, and after all to find from 
 your publisher that you have neglected to notice this 
 or that other small individuality of blunder. I have 
 no objection to write prefaces ; but that constant irk- 
 some attention to trifles bothers me sadly. There, 
 I had fancied I had presented all John Milton as " one 
 entire and perfect chrysolite," when in walks a note 
 this morning from Nichol telling me that the Latin 
 poems are not correctly given, and it turns out that 
 two-thirds of the errors are those of some blundering 
 booby in Edinburgh who has compared my corrected 
 copy with a bad edition. I heartily wish that I had 
 promised to do nothing but prefix prefaces,. The 
 scheme is promising to do well, however. 
 
 <\th June, 1853. Comrie is uncommonly glorious 
 this season. I never saw the trees so very rich. My 
 mother is pretty well considering her age, 82, and has 
 all her faculties entire. I enjoyed myself much and 
 so did Margaret, although, since returning, she is 
 rather weakly. 
 
 I have sent a paper on De Quincey to the Critic. 
 I like his volume hugely. The second is to consist of 
 essays, and the third is to be the " Confessions." 
 
 I finished at Comrie a paper on Moore for the 
 Scottish Reviezv. I have taken a very different view 
 of him from your friend. How many a clever man 
 think of Hutton for instance knows no more of 
 poetry than a porker knows of the structure of the 
 starry scheme. 
 
 I hope Wight's scheme * will prosper. De Quincey 
 has promised him a paper. I have begun one on 
 
 * Hogg's Instructor, 3rd Series. 
 
200 GEORGE GILF1LLAN. 
 
 Burke for his first number, which promises well. 
 Yendys is, I believe, to do something. By the way, 
 he (Yendys) talks of being in Scotland in autumn. 
 I trust you will meet him. 
 
 My visit to Irvine is deferred till August. I 
 earnestly trust you will be able to meet me then 
 and there. Robertson will give you due notice. 
 
 I must close. I have written two discourses, 
 corrected a large proof of Thomson, and written this 
 note since 10 o'clock. It is now nearly half-past 12, 
 and I feel a little tired. 
 
 P.S. Smith's book is about sold 2000 copies 
 and Bogue has graciously given him 50 more than 
 the original sum which was 100. There has been 
 no such successful poetical hit since the days of Moore, 
 Byron, and Scott. He is at present in England 
 looking about him. I hope the London coteries 
 won't spoil him. 
 
 June, 1853. I am going to introduce a new 
 poet, one Bigg of Ulverston, in the Critic. He has 
 not quite so much pure poetry as Smith, but a vast 
 deal more culture, variety, and, I think, a deeper vein 
 of thought. 
 
 I have just finished " My Novel." Burley, the early 
 scenes in Fairfield's life, and Morgan, are capital ; but 
 L'Estrange is an absurdity from first to last; and 
 poor Randal, rascal as he is, is over ill-used. I think 
 L'Estrange the greater scoundrel of the two. It is 
 as a whole vastly inferior to the " Caxtons." Your 
 J. W. E. is a spirited chap. 
 
LETTERS TO THOMAS AIRD. 201 
 
 2\st November, 1853. Busy as usual. I have 
 written five papers since I returned from Glasgow. 
 I have done besides, what I think you '11 like, begun 
 again working steadily one day a-week at a large 
 work which I commenced two years ago on " Christ- 
 ianity and our Era." I have also thoughts of copying 
 out on the Sabbath evenings some of my best sermons 
 and making a volume of them. You advised me to 
 this long ago. 
 
 I %th January > 1854. " Balder" is a wonderful book, 
 but will not be popular, indeed seems written in utter 
 defiance of popular taste. A. Smith goes further than 
 us, and thinks it a total failure. I am sorry if it 
 should fail, since it protracts the time when fame was 
 to form the pedestal whence the author was to preach 
 Christianity to the young age. I have reviewed it in 
 Hogg, and advised him to write prose or an epic. I 
 don't think his genius dramatic. But what can be 
 grander than' " Chamouni "? It resembles some of 
 your own very best passages, and is ruggedly, 
 savagely, terribly sublime. He has not yet appeared 
 here, but comes by-and-by. A friend of mine has 
 met him in Edinburgh, and is quite charmed with 
 his manners. 
 
 nth February, 1854. Goldsmith, Collins, and T. 
 Warton are out. I am busy with Cowper's life. 'Tis 
 the most tragic tale in the world's broad page. I felt 
 positively relieved when I came to the close and got 
 him fairly under the turf. I wonder at nothing so 
 much as his constitution. Seventy years of torment ! 
 
202 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 What an idea, a man getting fat amid the flames of 
 hell ! Cowper all his life was healthy, often strong. 
 I admire his g"enius, too, more and more every time 
 I read him ; it was so simple, strong, rich, and above 
 all so healthy, considering his morbid constitution and 
 horrid delusions. 
 
 You would rejoice to learn of A. Smith's success. 
 Your friend William Macfarlane was of much service 
 to him in his canvass [for the Secretaryship]. 
 
 \Qth April, 1854. And so the old lion has gasped 
 his last ! How grieved would all of us have been, had 
 not his soul gone away first ! And still at best it is 
 a sad and solemn dispensation. 
 
 I liked your remarks on him exceedingly, with a 
 slight exception or two. The Critic folks wrote me 
 in great urgency for a paper on him, and I wrote 
 with great rapidity a rather lengthy memoir for their 
 first number. You will find that I have quoted the 
 most of your paper, and contested one point or so. 
 I have not at all repeated myself in it. 
 
 I wonder what really his religious views latterly 
 were. It was impossible for such a clear and power- 
 ful mind as his to rest satisfied with the miserable 
 pantheisms and Nature-worships of this drivelling 
 day ; but what his views of Christianity were seems 
 very uncertain. 
 
 Well ! his uncertainties are now past, and I trust 
 in God's light he now sees light clearly. Next to 
 Shakespeare, and perhaps Burns, he was the greatest 
 genius in point of width and natural force this 
 earth has ever seen. Peace, peace to his noble 
 dust ! 
 
LETTERS TO THOMAS AIRD. 203 
 
 You. will be grieved to hear that my good old 
 mother is very poorly. She is now entirely confined 
 to bed, and her toe, which has long troubled her, is 
 showing symptoms of mortification. God bless her ! 
 She is the best-conditioned being v I ever knew. I 
 never saw her angry. Her piety is the very breath 
 of her being. Her faculties not much cultivated 
 except by much, religious reading are naturally of 
 a superior order, and are still entire. How I valued 
 her weekly letters, so sensible and pious and motherly, 
 now ceased for ever. I look forward with a most 
 gloomy and desolate feeling to her departure. I 
 intend going next week and seeing her, it may be 
 for the last time. 
 
 After this I have little heart for news, and little to 
 tell. Hogg has sent me this moment a volume con- 
 taining both my " Galleries " in one, very handsome. 
 I shall order him to send you a copy. He wishes 
 me to collect a number of my papers into a third 
 volume. I have a request to do the same by an 
 American house, who will pay me a sum for it, if 
 I prefix a preface. The thing is being negotiated. 
 I have various other offers of work from London 
 publishers. 
 
 Have you read Whewell's "Plurality of Worlds"? 
 He has taken up a view I threw out in my " First 
 Gallery" (I don't think, to be sure, he ever saw or 
 heard of it), and based it on scientific arguments. I 
 have reviewed it at great length for the 'Eclectic. It 
 is a most interesting work, and so true. 
 
 25^/5 April, 1854. We found my mother calmly 
 sinking to her rest, quite sensible and full of her 
 
204 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 old kindness, sagacity, and even, at times, quiet 
 humour. There is no hope of her recovery, but she 
 was lingering on yesterday as late as one, afternoon, 
 and there was no immediate prospect of a change. 
 We bade her what shall probably be a last farewell 
 on Friday amidst very solemn circumstances. The 
 scene was affecting in the extreme. All her family 
 have been seeing her. I felt as I left Comrie a 
 feeling of loathing for everything I usually love, for 
 literature, fame, nature, for all but the grand realities 
 amidst which my mother was entering, and a wish 
 that I might retain the sentiment for ever. 
 
 I have not much heart after this to enter at large 
 on the subjects you start. "Butler" is heavy, but 
 we shall have more notes than usual, and certainly 
 Chaucer, Spenser, Surrey, &c., to whom you seem 
 to refer, would have been heavier far with their old 
 words and spelling. Our edition must be com- 
 plete, and is already so successful that it can stand 
 a single or even double failure. Next year we shall 
 open with a copyright edition of "Bowles," which 
 Nichol has purchased (with notes, &c.) from A. A. 
 Watts. 
 
 You don't like my anti-Popery spirit? Did you 
 ever read Milton's little tractate of " True Religion," 
 published two years ere his death ? What an eagle 
 eye he darts there into the very marrow of the evil 
 the gigantic curse of Christendom ; and how intensely 
 his hatred to it burns ! Two centuries have only 
 confirmed the oracular truth of his pamphlets. Protes- 
 tants have stultified themselves sadly by admitting 
 Popery to be a form of Christianity. 
 
 By the way, Bulwer has written me a very flattering 
 note about my paper on him, addressed to the " Author 
 
LETTERS TO THOMAS AIRD. 205 
 
 of the Paper." It would raise him in your estimation, 
 I mean the spirit it displays. 
 
 loth May, 1854. My poor dear mother is at length 
 at rest. She died on Monday night at half-past-ten. 
 Her latter end was peace. She had been for some 
 days comatose and only conscious at intervals. It is 
 an awful thing to have your last link to all past 
 generations cut off. Yet I rejoice with a deep and 
 solemn joy, as I think she has now joined her sainted 
 husband after twenty-eight years' separation, and is 
 happy with him and her Saviour. Now I can use the 
 words I have often quoted : 
 
 " Higher far my proud pretensions rise, 
 The son of parents passed into the skies." 
 
 I leave to-morrow for the funeral. I rely on your 
 kind sympathies and prayers. 
 
 May, 1854. I have been at Newtyle to-day 
 seeing Mr. Muir, and find your kind letter waiting me. 
 I thank you for all your affectionate sympathies and 
 sayings. I have been obliged to look away from my 
 mother's funeral and memory altogether since my 
 return, and have been working harder than ever to 
 drown or deaden sorrow. There is nothing for it but 
 that. And yet, think of turning from that Grampian 
 grave of peace, purity, and love, to correct " Hudi- 
 bras " that cold sneer of 500 pages in length. 
 
 'jth August, 1854. I don't think I am due you a 
 letter, but feel a sort of impulse to write you. I am 
 
206 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 sorry you can't come this season. What a pity you 
 don't see our scenery in its present exuberance of 
 glory ! I never saw crops like those in this neigh- 
 bourhood ; and although you seem to have had wet 
 weather, we have had three weeks of the finest 
 imaginable. 
 
 I am still terribly pestered with poets, good and 
 bad, male and female, quick and dead. I returned 
 within the last two months sixteen collections of 
 MS. poetry, some of them in folio, others as thick as 
 pulpit Bibles ; and more are pouring in. The worst 
 is, much in them is tolerably good, and yet, as a 
 whole, the thing is out of the question. I have not 
 the heart to cut them up. 
 
 October, 1854. [In Edinburgh] I called with 
 Hogg on poor old De Quincey who is at present 
 residing there. He is in wonderful preservation, and 
 talks away in his usual distinct and deliberate style. 
 I go over again next month and intend spending a 
 night with him. [Conversation usually went on. till 
 3 A.M.] He has annexed to his forthcoming edition 
 of " Murder considered as one of the Fine Arts," a 
 note giving an account of the murders perpetrated by 
 Williams in 1812, in the most powerful style of 
 description I ever read, for clear, distinct enunciation 
 of particulars, added to a general ghastly result of 
 horror. Of course, this was written the other day, 
 and shows that at seventy-four his powers are as 
 strong or stronger than ever. Wilson's death seems 
 to have touched him deeply. Your favourite, " The 
 Revolt of the Tartars," is also to- appear in the new 
 volume. 
 
LETTERS TO THOMAS AIRD. 207 
 
 Mrs. Gilfillan is at present well. We have had 
 flocks of bairns from the north but they have all 
 now crept home, poor, dear lambs ! to their winter 
 folds. 
 
 I am busy writing on old George Buchanan for the 
 Scottish Review. This has compelled me to refurbish 
 my Latin, in looking into his psalms, plays, and so 
 forth. He was really a good old fellow. 
 
 I have heard nothing of Yendys nor much of Smith 
 recently. Bigg has been cut up, I hear, in the 
 Athen&unii and is now another on the beastly bead- 
 roll of unfairness. He lives at present with his father, 
 a Wesleyan clergyman, at Ulverston. All I have 
 heard of him impresses me with great respect for him 
 as a man, as well as a poet. It is disgraceful to find 
 a poet, distinguished above all these young authors 
 by his Christian feeling, accused of profanity and 
 blasphemy. 
 
 You say nothing of the projected publication of 
 your own poetry. 
 
 2gtk January, 1855. I am glad to get a letter 
 written in such good spirits from you, and to learn 
 that your powers of locomotion are returned. A 
 crippled bee or bird is but an emblem of a walking 
 poet rheumatised. 
 
 You are mistaken about my not liking winter. 
 I long ago did not ; but, for some years have enjoyed 
 it, on the whole, better than summer or any of the 
 seasons except autumn. But, our autumns are now 
 so haunted with the demon of cholera that much of 
 their pleasure is gone. 
 
 Peter Bayne is a Free Church student, a manly 
 
208 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 promising fellow who has done good service in his 
 book against Carlylism. He is a man of talent, fancy, 
 immense industry, and culture, as you will see in his 
 volume. I anticipate much from him in this apolo- 
 getic vein which he has opened. 
 
 I was sure you would revel in Rogers. He rarely 
 attains to the highest eloquence in poetry ; but for 
 light yet linked logic, wit, and masterly ease, has no 
 superior. 
 
 I have been and am busy with Dryden. His plays 
 are unbelievably abominable, and so are many of his 
 prologues, which, alas ! we must give. But the 
 descriptions in " Palamon and Arcite," and the 
 " Flower and the Leaf," were they entirely his own, 
 would stamp him one of the greatest of poets. 
 I never had read the "Flower and the Leaf" before, 
 and seldom read anything with such delight. Its 
 purity as compared to Dryden's other poems is 
 wonderful, although for that he is indebted to his 
 master. And what a fine romantic aroma breathes 
 from it all ! 
 
 I owe that increased ease you speak of greatly to 
 the diligent and careful reading of Burke. I spend 
 an hour every Saturday evening in reading a portion 
 of his works. He is undoubtedly the greatest prose 
 writer, as a whole, in the language. You will find, 
 I think, when you read my "Christianity and our 
 Era," as well as that other book which shall as yet be 
 nameless, an advance in point of ease above the 
 " Third Gallery." 
 
 I rejoice sincerely in Tulloch's success ; nor do 
 I wonder at it, for he has a rare power of self-culture 
 and perseverance added to excellent talents, and, 
 under a somewhat careless exterior, has, I believe, a 
 
LETTERS TO THOMAS AIRD, 209 
 
 good genial heart. You put him, however, rather 
 high the other day, when you named him beside 
 Rogers. 
 
 There will be by-and-by a terrible front of apologies 
 for Christianity meeting the Sceptic. And high time 
 it is ! The young mind of the age is literally mad on 
 this subject. But in Bayne's book I see the first wave 
 of a reaction. Carlyle has a dreadful responsibility 
 >n his head. I would sooner be under the load of 
 Atlas. 
 
 April, 1855. I am nearly through with my 
 task of that Imaginary Biography I wrote you about, 
 and I have written 200 large pages of my " Christian- 
 ity and our Era." I read a large part of the auto- 
 biography to young Gorrie, who thinks it by far my 
 raciest and most interesting book. It contains 
 descriptions of scenery, conversations with celebrated 
 men (imaginary of course), incidents, poetry, sketches 
 of character ; and I have closed it with a history of 
 my religious opinions, which will contain some strong 
 hits at sceptical leaders. I think you will like the 
 book as a whole. 
 
 " Christianity and our Era," is about half written. 
 It is more elaborate than the other, but not so easy. 
 I hope, in God, it may do some good to these dis- 
 tracted and devil-ridden times. The longer I live 
 I am the more thoroughly persuaded of the truth of 
 our blessed faith, and more anxious to do some little 
 thing in its defence. Oh that I had as much of the 
 spirit and grace of Christianity as I have firmness of 
 conviction in its truth ! 
 
 p 
 
12 ro GEORGE GlLFILLAtt. 
 
 6th October, 1855. I have yours this moment. 
 Thanks for your critical strictures. Only, if you look 
 again to that sentence, you will find that I was 
 enumerating, not Churchill's intellectual qualities, but 
 the elements of which his poetry was composed. 
 And, certainly, passion and hatred were among the 
 principal. You are, I think wrong, too, in thinking 
 passion to include, in popular parlance, hatred. By 
 passions, in a loose and grand way, we mean, love, 
 anger, &c., the violent feelings, not the cool and con- 
 centrated like hatred. Nichol seldom praises ; but 
 he has warmly commended my Churchill. 
 
 I was in Edinburgh this week arranging with 
 Nichol next year's editions. We are to have Burns, 
 two volumes and a-half, and a half volume of his 
 minor contemporaries Macneill, A. Wilson, &c., two 
 volumes of Pope, and a volume of Border and other 
 Ballads. 
 
 October, 1855. Thanks for your new sugges- 
 tions, which I shall bear in view. I knew, of course, 
 that you did not mean that my pen should remain 
 idle until I had completed the redaction of former 
 doings. This winter, now that the " History of a 
 Man " is nearly finished, I intend, all but entirely, to 
 devote to " Christianity and our Era," which I intend 
 first very carefully to write out, and then to re-write, 
 so that I cannot expect to be through with it for 
 eighteen months. I find occasional writing for peri- 
 odicals a relief to the severe thought of the other, and 
 so has the writing of the " History " acted. I have 
 written it with more pleasure and ease than anything 
 in my life. 
 
LETTERS TO THOMAS AIRD. 211 
 
 I intend to go to London in first week of Novem- 
 ber. Mrs. Gilfillan goes so far, to her brother's in 
 Bucks. I go to Bristol from London, and thence to 
 Belfast. I shall be nearly three weeks away. I hope 
 to see Croly, and perhaps also Hunt and Bulwer and 
 some others in London. 
 
 I have been worked to death lately with preaching 
 evening and other sermons, have had cold, too, and 
 hope to be all the better of a trip. I take a run to 
 Comrie the week after next. 
 
 I hope your poems will soon see the light in a 
 worthy form. Let me hear about the probable time, 
 &c., ere I start, which I do on 5th of November. 
 
 2 $rd November, 1855. I am newly home, and find 
 my table literally littered with books, letters, &c., 
 waiting for my attention. I must drop you a note, 
 however, merely to say that Hall, Virtue, and Co. jump 
 at the publication of the " History of a Man," only 
 would like my name to it, in which point, however, 
 I won't agree with them. The matter will now go on 
 quant primum. 
 
 I enjoyed my Bristolians much, and found my 
 works, &c., better known than in Dundee. This, of 
 course, proves their sense ! 
 
 I saw Croly for nearly two hours. The old boy is 
 in famous preservation. I got more from him, I think, 
 than on any former occasion. He was asking, as 
 always, most kindly for you. 
 
 Bulwer invited me, per note, to visit him at Kneb- 
 worth, but I could not comply. Other literary men, 
 except good Dr. Price, saw I and sought I none. . . 
 
 How glad I am to be at home. I have not had 
 
212 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 much work when away, and find quantities of it wait- 
 ing here ; but I have been terribly knocked about 
 with railway travelling, change of beds, &c., and am 
 anxious for rest. I had a glorious peep of the out- 
 skirts of the Lake Country under a superb sunset last 
 evening on my way to Carlisle. How I longed to 
 have fled over and through them, and popped down 
 on Dumfries. 
 
 26tk February, 1856. I am glad that you design 
 us an early visit. Come, if you can, in May, with 
 the May flowers. 
 
 I got on flamingly, at least better than ever before 
 in Edinburgh : but oh ! lecturing is a small miserable 
 business. I am dragged into it ever and anon by 
 fellows from London, Edinburgh or Glasgow, who 
 pop in, post haste, and say they have travelled express 
 to secure you. It is difficult resisting such "soft 
 impeachments." You can say No in letters easily 
 enough, but not to moustached messengers steaming 
 from railways. 
 
 The "History" goes on. It is now two- thirds 
 printed. You were lucky in your " reader." Mine is 
 a cockney of the lowest (Thames) water, who queries 
 such an expression as " numerous prose," &c. 
 
 Nichol forwarded me three very gratifying notes 
 anent the poets from Brougham, Bulwer, and Croly, 
 to all of whom he had sent complete sets. All speak 
 in the highest terms of the edition, and Brougham, 
 promises to look over it critically and send any 
 suggestions. Croly closes his long letter with a fear- 
 ful philippic at the "Lake and the New Poets." 
 He says they are the "Puseyism of poetry." It is a 
 remarkably clever letter, but one-sided. 
 
LETTERS TO THOMAS AIRD. 213 
 
 JtJi April, 1856. Many thanks for your kind 
 strictures. I had intended closing the book much in 
 the way you speak of, but was hurried in the time of 
 writing the last chapter. I may, in case of another 
 edition, do what you say, and add another chapter or 
 two. Aytoun richly deserves all I say of him. A 
 more heartless dog does not exist ; and his power is 
 entirely mimetic, although I concede " Montrose" to 
 be nearly all you say. After you have read the book 
 carefully, tell me at once what you like best and 
 worsf. I like best all in the first chapter about my 
 father, Campbell's and Wilson's talk, the chapter on 
 Religious Progress and the Dream of Judgment. 
 I never had so much pleasure in writing anything, 
 except my " First Gallery " as the " Man/' I am 
 now at sterner work combating Maurice in " Christ- 
 ianity and our Era." 
 
 i6tk January, 1857. Since I wrote you last I have 
 got Virtue's account. He has sold 706 of the " Man," 
 and there are still 300 on hand. Of course the thing 
 has thus paid, and will ultimately bring in some 20 
 or 2$. I v was rather disappointed at first, but 
 .on reffectibn, considering the unprecedented and 
 unscrupulous abuse of the book by various hands, 
 and the non-adaptation of much in it to the English 
 market, am now tolerably satisfied. 
 
 Mrs. Samuel Brown wrote me last week for letters. 
 I spent three hours yesterday searching for them, but 
 could only find three or four at all fit for publication. 
 
 You remember Scott's account of his feelings in 
 reading old letters in his diary. It is the most pain- 
 fully, pleasurable of all avocations, the true joy of 
 
214 GEORGE G1LFILLAN. 
 
 grief, or grief of joy and mercy, made me weep like a 
 child yesterday. What stings, both of gladness and 
 of regret, leap up to your heart from those old 
 quivers of past existence ! In one point I think Scott 
 wrong. He speaks of letters that once made you 
 throb and thrill, as having become dead. I feel on 
 the contrary that if dead they undergo an instant and 
 miraculous resurrection. In lifting them up, you lift 
 up with them all the associations and feelings which 
 they excited in bygone time. To me at least every 
 emotion, however small, of joy or sorrow, pride or 
 shame, returns entire, as well as every accessory 
 incident of the period. But then Scott was looking 
 back along a much longer, and far more thickly 
 crowded vista when he wrote that memorable 
 passage. 
 
 igtk January, 1857. Since I wrote you, indeed 
 with your kind note of this morning, has come in 
 Brown's little book. It is a reprint of a life of his 
 father, and seems to contain a good deal of religious 
 and gratifying matter. It has been printed for 
 private circulation. If you get no copy of it let me 
 know, and I '11 send you a reading of this copy. 
 Mrs. Gilfillan had signified a wish to know something 
 of Samuel's state of mind, and Mrs. Brown has 
 replied with this volume. 
 
 Don't be afraid of my over-working myself. These 
 papers for periodicals cost me little labour, and 
 I write my more elaborate things at intervals. My 
 plan of life is arranged with almost geographical 
 minuteness. I rise at nine, go into the shower-bath, 
 breakfast, and read, set to work at half-past ten, stop 
 
LETTERS TO THOMAS AIRD. 215 
 
 at one, dine, go out and visit or walk till five, take 
 tea, write till nine, sup, read, and am in bed always 
 by eleven. My only regular beverages are tea and 
 malt liquor, chiefly table beer. Alcohol, in the shape 
 of whisky, I often do not taste for months, and I find 
 like you, that the less I take the better. I sleep eight 
 or nine hours, and have not had a headache for years. 
 In fine, I never was stronger or better, thank God ! 
 in my life, and am always best when working most 
 constantly. 
 
 March, 1857. I am newly home from St. 
 Andrews, where I had gone yesterday evening to 
 preach a public sermon, and find your note, which 
 though short is welcome. 
 
 The writer of the paper on Samuel Brown was 
 Dr. John Brown, his cousin. It is a fine paper. 
 Thinking with you, however, that something more 
 might be said, the spirit moved me to indite a rather 
 lengthy and genial paper on our poor, dear friend, for 
 Titan, which will appear, I presume, in May. I hope 
 it will gratify his wife and other friends. Its writing 
 was a fearfully pleasing task, one of those pleasures 
 vibrating between joy and torment, like honey dashed 
 with gall. Of his book I hear nothing further. My own 
 is within one chapter and a-half of being all corrected. 
 
 I wish you had seen St. Andrews Bay this morn- 
 ing ! What mighty billows bearing their foam like 
 the morning on their crests, and surging and seething 
 at such a rate ! 
 
 P.S. I sent a little paper on " Burke, as a 
 Historian," for your forthcoming annual, which 
 I hope reached you. 
 
216 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 *jth April, 1857. Thanks for your friendly note 
 anent "Christianity and Our Era," the first I have 
 received, although I have one or two oral opinions 
 quite as favourable before. I don't think you will 
 at the close of your perusal prefer any chapter for 
 calmness and completeness to those in the " Evi- 
 dences " and " Scepticism," which are at least more 
 immaculate than any of the rest In the two last in 
 the volume, I have given imagination full swing, and 
 these with young people and young poets are likely 
 to be favourites. The two you expect most from are 
 the best intellectually, but are likely to be most dis- 
 puted. 
 
 I don't know whether you will admit the charac- 
 teristic in this new work that I think I see to be its 
 peculiarity as compared to the " Bards " namely, 
 continuous and incessant thinking, in all the better 
 and more laboured passages at least. There are 
 more thoughts in one or two of its pages than in 
 chapters of the " Bards." Valeat quantum valere 
 potest ; and if God give it two or three "Sceptre 
 Souls " for its hire, it shall not have been written in 
 vain. 
 
 You like Part II. of "Scott." I am truly glad of 
 this, for I had made up my mind that it was the best 
 thing I had written for Nichol for three years, and 
 shall henceforth confide somewhat in my own com- 
 parative awards. 
 
 May, 1857. I suppose the book is doing well. 
 I have seen nearly a dozen notices, all more or less 
 friendly, and have letters from Croly, Dr. Anster, 
 John Cairns, Begg, and Young of the " Christfan Life/' 
 
LETTERS TO THOMAS AIRD. 217 
 
 all very kind. I was particularly pleased with Cairns' 
 note. He differs decidedly from the millenarian view, 
 but otherwise is very favourable, and, I have some 
 notion, may review it in the United Presbyterian 
 Magazine. 
 
 I am happy to hear that in this mechanical age so 
 many of your poems have gone off, and shall hail the 
 " Old Bachelor," who, I trust, will come forth with 
 additions to his wallet. 
 
 I like the Album* on the whole very well indeed. 
 Your " Recreations " are very fine, although all from 
 the Herald, I see. Carlyle is quaint as usual and 
 sardonically earnest, although he need not try to pass 
 off for another person, least of all for a Yankee doctor. 
 
 I am glad you saw Alexander Smith, who is a fine, 
 unpretending, anti-humbug fellow. Dobell's manners 
 are more ornate and elaborate ; but he is at bottom 
 a kind-hearted and generous being. 
 
 I am sorry Samuel's affair is delayed. The ancient 
 prestige of prejudice seems to fight with his very 
 dust, as 'I argue also from Hogg's reluctance to pub- 
 lish my tribute. [See next letterl\ 
 . . I have been rather fallowing for some time, always 
 writing a little, but more slowly than usual. I have 
 a paper in, I believe, the July Titan on. Miller's 
 " Rocks," and have written one for some future num- 
 ber on Boswell's queer " Letters." I am at present 
 dissecting "Edinburgh Dissected " for the Critic. It 
 is a curious and readable olla podrida, that book, by 
 the way. 
 
 Akenside is our next poet I believe your friend 
 
 * Dumfries Album, containing Carlyle on the Opera ; Gilfillan 
 on Burke ; Contributions by Professor Blackie, Ebsworth, &c. 
 
218 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 Dr. Brown had offered to give Nichol his life. This, 
 of course, the plan of our publication forbids. But 
 if he could give us a short estimate of him as a phy- 
 sician, a sort of abridgment of what he intended to 
 have done, I would gladly insert it at the close of my 
 life and criticism as his. Pray tell him of this. It 
 must, however, be brief, as the book will be rather 
 corpulent than otherwise. 
 
 2jth August, 1857. The Scottish Review is to 
 publish Samuel Brown, else I was to have sent it 
 you. I think you will like it. It appears in October. 
 
 I don't comprehend young Hogg. He asked me 
 to write on "Boswell," and accepted the paper at 
 once, and yet has not sent me a proof. He is ruining 
 Titan. That last number is a piece of soap-suddism 
 from beginning to end. He takes no advice, and is 
 wrapt up in his own self-sufficiency. I am very 
 much disposed to cut him. 
 
 I go north for a week on Saturday with Mrs. 
 Gilfillan. 
 
 I am busy chiefly with my people and the Poets. 
 Dr. Rogers wrote me a good, manly, kindly note 
 anent " Christianity." 
 
 October \ 1857. I have been at Comrie this 
 week. It is looking exquisitely lovely, having wrapt 
 its richest robe around it ere it falls into winter. 
 What fine dappling of light and shade ! What rich 
 bronze of withered fern on the hills ! What a glorious 
 chaos along the sides of the Lednock, of grey rocks, 
 blue and bickering streams, yellow ashes, and ever- 
 
LETTERS TO THOMAS AIRD. 219 
 
 green pines ! And how preternaturally distinct come 
 out the Grampians in the October light. Stuickna- 
 chroan and Ben Voirlich looked unearthly near and 
 unearthly distinct and lofty. 
 
 I wrote "Quarles" at Comrie, and am busy with 
 Crashaw. Thank God they were not scientific. 
 Crashaw is truly a divine poet, a Christian Shelley. 
 Quarles, too, is admirable. 
 
 ^th November, 1857. I had a pleasant little trip to 
 Edinburgh, going on Monday and returning yesterday. 
 
 I saw A. Smith in his office. He is well, and 
 defying the Athenceum and all its works. I advised 
 him to send you a copy of his City Poems, which, 
 I think, he means to do. Sydney Yendys is away to 
 the Continent in bad health. Smith has a prose 
 work, a half-novel, in petto. 
 
 I met Dr. Begg, who insisted on showing me 
 Hogg's new place which I was in quest of; and while 
 walking along we met Dr. Guthrie, to whom Begg 
 introduced me. He is a queer-looking, snuffy, cordial 
 man. I had never spoken to him before. He is just 
 " mine host of the candlestick " in Waverley, so far as 
 appearance goes. 
 
 igth November, 1857. I take a run to Liverpool 
 to lecture next week. 'Tis a sad bore ; but I was 
 bothered and badgered into it. I won't be over two 
 nights away. My subject is " The Comparative Influ- 
 ence of Paganism, Modern Infidelity, and Christianity 
 on Literature." It is almost entirely a new lecture, 
 and I hope will serve me in that capacity for a 
 
220 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 while. I can't, with all my efforts, entirely get rid 
 of lecturing. 
 
 2O/// April, 1858. I am glad your "Delta" has 
 done so well ; only, remember that cheap editions are 
 thorough failures in point of remuneration. Hogg 
 has found so to his cost, in my cheap " Galleries," 
 although the fourth edition of the Bards has sold 
 well, and " Christianity and our Era " is nearly 
 exhausted. He tells me that scarcely any cheap 
 .edition pays unless sold in enormous quantities. 
 
 Our church reopened on Sabbath with great eclat. 
 It was the Sacrament Sabbath, and this, along with 
 the novelty, secured us not only crowds all three 
 times, but excellent collections. It is a perfect gem 
 the finest now, they say, in Dundee. ' You would not 
 know it, everything is so handsome, light, chaste, and 
 gay if you can apply such a word to a .church. The 
 whole cost was 350. I trust that it will inaugurate 
 a new era of spiritual and mental improvement 
 with us. 
 
 1st July, 1858. -Burleigh is a singular fellow.; His 
 prose is manly and good, his correspondence exceed- 
 ingly vigorous and uniform, while his verse is most un- 
 equal and, as you say, provoking. Still, he has the real 
 stuff in him, and to poetic " faith " has added learned 
 "virtue." I have noticed his satire pretty fully in last 
 Critic. I am doing Prior for Nichol. It is, on the 
 whole, dreary work. "Alma "is nearly unreadable. 
 " Solomon " is cumbrous, but has admirable passages. 
 I am now working at Prior's Life. 
 
LETTERS TO THOMAS AIRD. 221 
 
 2nd August, 1858. I am busy, as usual. I have a 
 paper, in this Titan which I think you will like, and 
 two, I expect, in next Scottish Review. I am work- 
 ing gradually at the sermons, and am doing now and 
 then a little at a new production entitled " Life in 
 Letters "which means a life told in the form of 
 letters not unlike the "Man," but in a different 
 style, and not restricting myself to my own life at all. 
 Idb not yet See 'my way clearly through it, but like it 
 pretty well, so far as gone. 
 
 I have written Hall and Virtue about a new edition 
 of the "Man," but have not got their reply. 
 Burghley's poems are beginning to get on. I am 
 going to write a notice of them for the Morning 
 Chronicle. 
 
 2,2nd September, 1858. -I am just home from a 
 short run into Ayrshire. I was assisting a clergyman 
 in Kilmarnock, and, having Saturday at my own dis- 
 posal, I went to see W. Robertson at Irvine. He is 
 well, happy, dwelling in a most beautiful house fur- 
 nished in the Grecian taste, adored by his people, and 
 amusing his leisure by writing verses, chiefly religious. 
 He read me some of them, which seemed exceedingly 
 fine especially one entitled "The Dream of the 
 Foolish Virgin," and another, " Rachel by the Well." 
 He is, certainly, a wondrous little fellow. He gave 
 me some affecting particulars of his last interview 
 with Samuel Brown an interview in which there 
 were as many tears as words. I glanced over, at 
 Irvine, the first volume of Brown's remains. It is 
 imperfect and, in parts, obscure, but interesting to all 
 who knew him. 
 
222 GEORGE GILF1LLAN. 
 
 I spent Saturday with Robertson, preached in the 
 forenoon of Sabbath for him, and got a drive into 
 Kilmarnock, where I had work for afternoon and 
 evening. It was a heavenly day, and the country, 
 although not romantic, is beautiful, a succession of 
 wood-covered knolls and level fields, over which, from 
 the far south-east, looked in the blue, abrupt peak of 
 Loudon Hill, with all its Drumclog memories. I 
 preached to nearly 2000 people in the evening. 
 I returned via Glasgow on Monday, having enjoyed 
 my trip exceedingly. 
 
 There is a worthy, sturdy fellow in Kilmarnock, 
 named David Jamieson, an old college chum of mine 
 a minister of ours now who is bringing out, at fifty, 
 his first poem. He means, I think, to send you a 
 copy. It has many good lines, and a genial, juvenile 
 spirit. If you can say a good word for it, he will be 
 quite a proud and happy man. 
 
 I am busy with the Poets. There are to be four in 
 our December volume Penrose, Green, Dyer, and 
 Armstrong. This will give me work for three weeks 
 or so. Wyatt is off my hands, and appears in October. 
 Nichol speaks a little despondingly about the sale, 
 and thinks of closing in three years. He had an 
 enormous subscription list but the public are a fickle 
 generation, and the thing is so cheap that nothing 
 but a very large sale will pay. When it stops it will 
 be a material deduction from my income ; but some- 
 thing else may turn up. 
 
 2nd October , 1858. I hasten to transmit my deep 
 sympathy with you in your alarming accident. God 
 be thanked for your preservation. I trust you will 
 
LETTERS TO THOMAS AIRD. 223 
 
 steadily recover, and are awaiting your restoration 
 with patience. What a daily miracle our life is. 
 
 Jamieson writes me to-day quite delighted with 
 your note. He is a good fellow, and although his 
 book may not live long, its success and it is doing 
 well will cheer him. 
 
 Dickens was here " reading " last night. I did not 
 go ; but Mr. Cay having kindly presented my wife 
 with a ticket, she went, and was rather pleased. 
 I believe he does the small, self-degrading thing 
 well. 
 
 22nd November, 1858. I was grieved to see in the 
 papers a notice of your worthy father's death, grieved 
 for you, not for him, for he had become a shock of 
 corn fully ripe, and all his purposes on earth were 
 served. You have been privileged in having had him 
 so long. I lost my father when he was in full vigour, 
 and when I was a mere boy. There is something, 
 however, always very solemn and saddening, in the 
 death of one so near, and to whom we owe so much, 
 and, I doubt not, you grudge the grave even that 
 hoary head. 
 
 I saw James on his way home from the funeral. 
 He told me you were now nearly well. What a 
 mercy the death had not occurred while you were 
 prostrated ! 
 
 I have no news that can interest you. I have 
 received the second volume of Carlyle's Magnum. 
 It is, in parts, tediously minute, but contains some 
 very picturesque matter. I would not, however, class 
 it in power with the " French Revolution," but this is 
 partly owing to inferior interest in the subject. 
 
224 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 2Qth November, 1858. I had yours on Saturday, 
 and am glad you are resigned to the dispensation 
 that has come upon you. It is sad the thought of 
 leaving old Bowden for ever. 
 
 My " History of a Man," like your " Delta," is not 
 fully sold out. There are still 200 on hand, and so 
 a second edition is indefinitely postponed. These 
 are bad times for book writers. 
 
 Nichol is to close his series, so far as the old Poets 
 are concerned, in two years. Then are to come the 
 modern, such as Byron, Moore, &c., which will spin 
 it out for two or three years further. 
 
 I have some thoughts of publishing the first of my 
 intended volumes of " Alpha and Omega " the con- 
 secutive sermons I spoke of some time next year. 
 Do you like the thought of publishing one of them 
 before the other ? 
 
 I am preaching and periodicalising briskly. These 
 pay better than publishing separate volumes, else 
 I were long ago tired of the second ! I have been 
 doing Carlyle's " Frederick " for the Scottish Review ; 
 "Thorndale ; or, The Conflict of Opinions," for Titan, 
 and some smaller matters for the Critic, &c. 
 
 Are you to take any part in the Burns affair? 
 I was invited both to Glasgow and the Banks of 
 Doon, but declined both. I see no use for it, except 
 the opportunity it gives of infinite blether of speechi- 
 fication. Could we telegraph to Hades and tell the 
 Shade about it, it were a different story. 
 
 I expect Ebsworth in February. Our " Watt " 
 promises well this year. Dodds of London leads 
 off on the " Covenanters " to-night and then comes 
 Charles Mackay. I hope Ebsworth will have good 
 audiences. 
 
LETTERS TO THOMAS AIRD. 225 
 
 iQth December, 1858. Alas ! since I wrote, Death 
 has visited our little circle here as well as yours. A 
 cousin of Mrs. Gilfillan's, a youth of twenty-nine, John 
 Gordon by name, has died after a fortnight's illness. 
 He was a most amiable and excellent young man, and 
 is deeply regretted, and by none more than me. He 
 was for several years my kind companion, Fidus 
 Achates, in my little Highland tours. I allude to him, 
 both in " Glencoe " and in " Loch Awe." Since Agnes 
 Vallentine died, no death has so much impressed me. 
 He was a corn-merchant to trade, and his brother 
 is married to my niece. My wife is exceedingly 
 grieved too, and was very ill for some hours after his 
 death, but is now better. 
 
 " What nothings we are, and what nothings we 
 pursue." 
 
 2jth December, 1858. I cordially reciprocate good 
 New Year and Christmas wishes. How rapidly these 
 milestones are passing us as we move onwards ! And 
 now the Terminus continues to get darker and more 
 mysterious the nearer we approach it. Surely the 
 gloom, gathering around the gate of death to its 
 deepest, is an assurance that as in the natural world 
 there is a dawning beyond. 
 
 Thanks for your hints as to publication. I fear 
 Nichol won't be fond of detaching my papers from 
 the volumes, else I should be ready to act on your 
 idea, being convinced they would form, not my best, 
 but my most popular work. Of course, they are his, 
 the copyright being expressly reserved for him, and 
 their publication in a separate form might injure the 
 sale of the volumes. It is not the same as when 
 
 Q 
 
226 GEORGE &ILFILLAN, 
 
 articles are reprinted from a periodical. I was almost 
 frightened during a sleepless hour the other night to 
 calculate that they amount already to forty-three 
 lives Johnson's were fifty-two. 
 
 Spenser is our next poet glorious, but lazy and 
 tedious as too large and brimming a cup of nectar 
 might be in the drinking. I intend three papers in 
 the course of the five volumes 1st, an essay explain- 
 ing the Allegory ; 2nd, a life ; and 3rd, a paper on 
 his genius. I have got " Todd," and various other 
 helps, including Wilson's noble papers. 
 
 P.S. MacGill, now our Home Secretary [U.P. 
 Church], was here last week. He is the old mildly 
 intellectual and true fellow. We were recalling all 
 about our jaunt with you to Glamis. We went out 
 and spent a night with John Muir at Newtyle. 
 
 nth February, 1859. Your friend Ebsworth has 
 been with us. He is full of nice, fluent, discrimina- 
 tory, though somewhat dim and divisive talk. His 
 lecture was infinitely too good and subtle for his 
 audience specially his individual portraitures of 
 plays, which I thought the best I had ever heard. 
 His broader pictures of play-life, &c., were more 
 effective, but not nearly so good. 
 
 A wretched faction, who are fearfully annoyed at 
 the success of my Burns oration here, and hence at 
 me, are also, I hear, abusing him for no other reason 
 but that he has come out under (save the mark !) my 
 special patronage. No matter. I trust his next 
 lecture will be a triumph. 
 
 I have been reading Masson's cc Milton." Very 
 
LETTERS TO THOMAS AIRD. 227 
 
 able and researching ; a massive structure, but cold 
 and " uncrowned with Deity." More of it in the 
 Scottish Review. 
 
 ^tk April \ 1859. I took a little tour a fortnight 
 ago to Huntly, Keith, and Banff, at all which places 
 I lectured. I enjoyed my Banff audience much. It 
 was large and intelligent. Banff is a beautiful place, 
 situated in a nook up which the ocean thrusts its 
 narrow, foamy tongue with great boldness. By the 
 way, I was nearly killed at the Bridge. A young 
 man, named Sellar, was driving me in a gig from 
 Turriff to Banff. On emerging from some woodland, 
 and rounding the corner of the bridge, which is rather 
 awkward, a strong blast blowing down the river struck 
 us, and down went horse, gig, and all. We were 
 hurled with some violence on the road, but escaped 
 with a few contusions and torn trousers. Had the 
 horse been one yard farther on we would have been 
 hurled over the parapet, and so farewell Apollodorus. 
 But it was more mercifully ordered, and three hours 
 afterwards I was in the lecture-room. I had the most 
 gloomy and certain presentiment of some calamity all 
 the way from Dundee previously. 
 
 May, 1859. I send you by Burghley's desire 
 a copy of his new pamphlet. Do notice it. I may 
 be mistaken, but I think it is a right manly and 
 eloquent thing, almost worthy of the days when 
 Johnson and Burke used to write pamphlets. Mark 
 the closing chapter especially, and the singularly 
 clever preface. Try to interest Hannay in Burghley. 
 Depend on it, " we '11 a' be proud o' Robin yet." 
 
228 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 une, 1859. Burghley has not yet learned to 
 write easily, but I think his earnestness his great 
 quality. He is terribly, prophetically sincere, and 
 hence his utterance is sometimes choked in its own 
 fury. Carlyle has written him a letter, which I have 
 seen, of (for Carlyle) very warm encouragement. 
 
 We were at Comrie last week. It is looking 
 glorious. The foliage is exceedingly rich, although 
 I have seen the mountains better clothed with grass 
 and ferns at this season. I had a dip or two in old 
 Earn, and enjoyed it amazingly. 
 
 I have been doing " Jerrold " for Titan, " Novels 
 and Novel-writers " for Scottish Review, and various 
 other things. " Scripture Studies " are also progres- 
 sing. I have got as far as the deaths of Aaron and 
 Moses, both great themes ; nor has Ruskin, I think, 
 exhausted them. 
 
 What weather ! so splendid, but tantalising. At 
 Comrie everything is burnt up, but now and then 
 the ground was moistened by a golden mist, which 
 reminded me of the " smoke from the glory of God " 
 in the Revelation. The most heavenly ride I almost 
 ever had was on Tuesday on the coach from Crieff to 
 Comrie, through a six-mile avenue of lofty trees, and 
 with Ochtertyre, Lawers and other country seats peep- 
 ing through the foliage. And what a glare there was 
 in the dying eye of the sun ! 
 
 yd September, 1859. Along with your note Story's 
 book has entered. It was not I who did him in the 
 Critic. I shall carefully read his volume and write 
 him. He seems a modest and deserving man. 
 
 I was at Bridge of Allan preaching the other day. 
 
LETTERS TO THOMAS AIRD. 229 
 
 Johnston of " Freshfield " was there, and spoke to me. 
 He is an amiable and interesting young man. His 
 novel has a deal of lively and readable matter, but is 
 too sketchy and desperately dramatic. He entirely 
 fails in Havelock. I like Turley best. In Dickens' 
 hands he would have been quite a ridiculous gem. 
 
 I have read the " Idylls." You will see my mind 
 on them at length in next Scottish Review. " Elaine" 
 is a fine story, and the speech of the " much-enduring 
 King" to his strumpet spouse is very edifying, and 
 does not make you laugh but cry. I walk a medium 
 course in my criticism, between Ebsworth who is daft 
 about them, and Burghley who says there is only one 
 good line in the whole. Burghley is getting savage, 
 however, in his exclusiveness. I tell him that it is 
 because he won't do justice to others that others don't 
 do it to him, and he owns I am right, but that he 
 cannot help it. There is a strange strength in him, 
 but he is gnarled as well as strong. 
 
 Poor Hunt ! you must have seen him to love him 
 thoroughly. He has had a long tough battle with 
 this weary world, but is now at rest. Croly is now 
 alone. He and Hunt were ages. 
 
 This is glorious autumn weather. I don't tremble 
 like you at the early stubble, provided the weather 
 keeps up. Last night I had a delicious walk, half-way 
 to Broughty- Ferry, and a dip in the sea, which was 
 tide full. What Divine rays of light were fluttering in 
 the west, blending with wind-swept clouds. I had the 
 broad setting sun in my eyes while swimming, and 
 returned to write by what is the sweetest of all 
 sublunary lights, autumnal gas, save indeed autumnal 
 fire, which to me is more beautiful than even the stars. 
 And yet they were gorgeous last night, with the 
 
230 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 Aurora, like the milky- way gone mad, careering 
 through them. 
 
 2$t/i September, 1859. Mrs. Gilfillan and I left on 
 Tuesday week for Hawick. On Wednesday we went 
 with the Irvines to Newtown, Dryburgh, Melrose, 
 Abbotsford, and landed at Selkirk where we stopt all 
 night. I need not say how I enjoyed all this. The 
 day was heavenly, and the scenery of the Tweed was 
 worthy of its atmosphere. Dryburgh is certainly as 
 sweet a spot of earth and 
 
 "As enchanted 
 
 As e'er beneath the rising moon was haunted 
 By woman wailing for her demon lover." 
 
 How impressive to kneel and uncover before the 
 magic dust of Scott. I was much struck with a 
 gigantic yew which grew near, and might form a 
 crown for the head of death. How beautiful your 
 dear Eildons looked from the bank above the boat 
 which crosses the river. One thing I regretted, not 
 seeing your native Bowden. I had to shape it for 
 myself reposing at the foot of the triple hill. 
 
 The next day we drove up to St. Mary's Loch and 
 down by Ettrick. Every spot is poetry. Newark, 
 Park's ruined cottage standing by the wayside, 
 Dryhope, Mount Benger, Altrive, and Tibby's ; 
 Irvine and I found our way into Altrive, where old 
 " Scottie " still lives, a hale man of ninety-three. He 
 gave us capital milk and cheese, and showed us 
 Hogg's study, and told us divers things about the 
 shepherd, some of which I may use should I write an 
 account of the jaunt. I prefer the Loch o' the Lowes 
 
LETTERS TO THOMAS AIRD. 231 
 
 to St. Mary's. It seems more sweetly pastoral. St. 
 Mary's was in wrath that day, big-bellied with the wind, 
 an unusual case, and did not give its usual metaphor 
 of peace. We crossed the hill to Tushielaw, and 
 thence back to Selkirk, returning by train to Hawick. 
 
 Next day we drove to Minto House, through the 
 rich valley of the Teviot, and came back by Denholm, 
 where we saw the room of Leyden's birth, and by 
 Cavers, where we looked in by twilight at the old 
 church, now a school-room, where Chalmers preached 
 and Leyden used to study. 
 
 On Saturday, leaving Mrs. Gilfillan at Hawick, 
 I set off for Newcastle. I had a delightful glimpse 
 of Kelso on the way. I found the route to Hexham 
 exceedingly beautiful. I preached three times to 
 large audiences, and started early on Monday, my 
 heart heaving in the prospect of the lakes, but alas! 
 in vain. I did not regret, however, going to Carlisle, 
 as I saw the upper part of the Tyne valley, which is 
 very lovely, and the city of Carlisle, which is cleanly, 
 yet full of bustling life. . . . 
 
 P.S. I heard at Selkirk of Nichol's death. Poor 
 
 fellow 
 
 " How fast doth brother follow brother, 
 From sunshine to the sunless land." 
 
 22nd December i 1859. So soon as I have "Alpha" 
 off hands, and have given these promised lectures 
 at Galashiels, &c., my resolution holds to give up all 
 lecturing, all small notices of books, all reading of 
 author's MSS., and to devote myself, first, to the 
 pulpit more strenuously than ever, secondly, to the 
 
232 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 Poets, and thirdly, to a course of solid thought and 
 study preparatory to another and perhaps final trial 
 in the way of authorship a few years hence. I am 
 tired of these thousand trifling lectures and palavers of 
 all kinds. I lately lectured and preached eleven times 
 in eight days. 
 
 Poor De Quincey, the little dead lion, is getting his 
 kicks, I see, from the Athenaeum and Daily News. 
 I must defend him, one of these days, somewhere. 
 A kinder creature, with all his faults, did not breathe. 
 
 \6tk January, 1860. I start to-morrow for a brief 
 border-raid. I lecture at Galashiels to-morrow, next 
 evening at Melrose, and Thursday at Hawick, and 
 return on Friday. 
 
 Nichol sent me forty-three volumes last week for 
 the Specimens, a formidable assortment. I intend 
 setting tooth-and-nail to it when I return, and making 
 it, with the exception of my pulpit work, and a paper 
 now and then in the Scottish Review, my sole avoca- 
 tion this season. It will possibly extend to three 
 volumes. 
 
 2.1st January, 1860. I cannot refrain from telling 
 you how much I enjoyed the south. I had a most 
 cordial reception at all the three places publicly, and 
 in private was most hospitably entertained. I saw 
 your old, honest friend Pringle, your sisters and 
 mother, and the families of your two sisters. The 
 weather was wintry, but clear and good, although, 
 old Abbotsford looked bleak on Wednesday under the 
 shadow of the frost-bound hills ! 
 
LETTERS TO THOMAS AIKD. 233 
 
 Whom should I meet in the train at Galashiels but 
 my old friend William Tait? He is now, you are 
 aware, a laird at Priorbank. He was very cordial. 
 He talked in a feeling way of the loss of De Quincey, 
 and particularly of Nichol and Ferguson of Kelso. 
 He has lost Leigh Hunt, too. There is no small heart 
 in Tait. He has not seen his magazine for years. 
 
 \2tk March, 1 860. " Alpha " is getting printed, 
 and will appear in a month or so. Hogg writes 
 cheeringly of my " Bards," which is about to go into a 
 sixth edition. My hope of " Alpha " is founded on its 
 resemblance to the " Bards." 
 
 nth July, 1860. I don't know if I mentioned in 
 any of my notes my intention of taking a continental 
 trip this season. I have now fixed to start for Norway 
 next Tuesday from Newcastle. My companion is to 
 be James Gordon. We go by Hamburg and Copen- 
 hagen, and intend to be three or four weeks away. 
 We shall, I fear, be too late for the midnight sun ; but 
 the sunsets are finer when he is beneath the wave, and 
 the peaks and precipices are always the same. 
 
 20th November, 1860. I long to hear from you, and 
 shall therefore write, although I think you owe me a 
 letter. 
 
 I am newly home from Edinburgh. My Norway 
 lecture was received with downright enthusiasm. I 
 had a large and yet select audience, and gave them 
 eighty minutes of it. 
 
234 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 I saw Blackie and Alexander Smith. Both are 
 well. Smith is bringing out a new poem in spring. 
 He seems reconciled to his secretary's post, and very 
 snug and happy altogether. 
 
 I have just once heard from Ebsworth. I don't 
 know how he takes to Cambridge. 
 
 Nichol is to delay the " Modern Poets," owing, he 
 says, to difficulties about copyright. This snaps in 
 the meantime a golden bough of ^"150 a-year to me. 
 But it will give me more time for something else. 
 I saw Hogg for a minute in the lecture room. He 
 looks down in the mouth. 
 
 February, 1861. It is as I expected some 
 time past. The Crolys would willingly have me to 
 write their father's life, but are afraid of their Church 
 of Englandism being compromised. They speak, too, 
 of want of materials. I don't know whether they are 
 to have a life or no. They wrote Johnston, who 
 forwarded to me the purport of what they said. So 
 then be it I was certainly desirous of the job ; first, 
 because I was out of one at present ; and secondly, 
 because I really loved and admired Croly, and wished 
 to do my best for his memory. 
 
 2Otk April, 1 86 1. Saturday of the Sacrament 
 though it be, I cannot but thank you for your manly 
 and thoroughly true remarks in to-day's Herald on 
 " Revivals." I wish every newspaper in the land were 
 to copy these remarks so pat to the times. The 
 Revivalists, of course, won't profit by them, but the 
 public generally would. Between " Essays and 
 
LETTERS TO THOMAS AIRD. 235 
 
 Reviews " on the one hand, and the rant and 
 humbug Of religionists on the other, things are in a 
 sad pass, and both these extremes are strengthening 
 each other, and cutting off middle ground as fast as 
 they can. 
 
 I close my lecturing campaign for the season in 
 Glasgow City Hall on Thursday. I have stood it 
 admirably, although I have caught a slight cold and 
 hoarseness at present. 
 
 8t/i October, 1861. I was yesterday in the garden 
 wondering I never now heard from you. To-day 
 your letter walked in. I am sure I wrote you last. 
 
 I am rather standing back, as you guess, in the 
 literary world at present. I find quite enough to do 
 with my church which is now very large and indeed 
 overfull, and with my frequent little lecturing expedi- 
 tions. I mean, however, soon a volume of selections ; 
 and I am also meditating the plan of a larger new 
 work. 
 
 Gorrie is on the Daily Review. He wrote me 
 lately wanting me to write a paper a week for it at a 
 certain sum, but I declined. I send a paper now and 
 then to the Dial, Peter Bayne's London journal a 
 very manly honest journal it is. 
 
 Of Dobell I know nothing except that he is back 
 to Cheltenham. Bigg I hope to see soon. I have 
 promised to lecture in Ulverston on the 7th of Nov- 
 ember. Smith's poem is full of beauties, but too 
 much in the track of Tennyson. He is now for ever 
 I fear under-master in a school of poetry. 
 
 The weather has been very broken here, as well as 
 with you. Yet I have had a number of nice little 
 
236 GEORGE GIL FILL AN. 
 
 excursions, although chiefly on work. I was at Inver- 
 ness, including Culloden and the Fall of Foyers, in 
 July. In August I was at Greenock and went down 
 the Clyde to Arran, but the day spat misty rain and 
 I saw nothing. In September I was at Sunderland 
 and Kilmarnock, but on both occasions was on duty. 
 My nicest excursion was Monday week past to the 
 Trossachs. I left this at eight morning, traversed 220 
 miles, and was at Perth at half-past eleven that night. 
 The blue-black masses of Ben Ledi, the swollen river 
 Lubnaig, Ben Venue, the grand Ben A'an, the ghostly, 
 sweet dreaming Loch Achray, the sail up Loch 
 Katrine, the rush upon Loch Lomond by Inversnaid, 
 the half seen Alps of Arrochar and Ben Lomond 
 retiring amidst his night canopy of clouds, were all 
 grand. The weather was a deep but rainless 
 chiaro-oscuro. 
 
 Mrs. Gilfillan is in usual health and very busy. 
 There are three children with us at present, two at 
 school. These give her work. 
 
 I \th November, 1861. I am now back from my little 
 lake excursion which I enjoyed amazingly. I reached 
 Ulverston on Tuesday and found Bigg well. He is a 
 fine genial soul, and his wife is a nice, simple, warm- 
 hearted woman. His father lives next door, and he 
 has some brothers of a remarkable type of character. 
 On Wednesday we went up the lakes, saw Coniston, 
 Windermere, Easthwaite, Rydal Mere, and Grasmere. 
 Of course we went to Rydal Mount and Grasmere 
 churchyard, and took off our hats to that glorious 
 dust reposing there, and when we raised our heads 
 there shone out, as if new made, with startling sudden- 
 
LETTERS TO THOMAS AIRD. 237 
 
 ness and unearthly beauty, the new moon, the type of 
 resurrection and immortality. The scenery in its 
 combination of the bold and beautiful enchanted me, 
 and was in fact almost satiating. Five lakes in one 
 day was too deep a draught. 
 
 I lectured to a capital audience in Ulverston on 
 Thursday, went to Carlisle on Friday, lectured there 
 at night, left at six on Saturday morning, was here at 
 two, and preached twice yesterday. I never enjoyed 
 a little trip better. 
 
 Bigg speaks with rapture of his visit to Dumfries. 
 By the way I fear he is poor, although seemingly 
 contented. 
 
 jilt March, 1862. Here I am safe and sound at 
 my study fire answering a myriad letters, and whiles 
 glowering out at the gloomy day. 
 
 What a day yesterday was of all kinds of bad 
 weather. First there was heavy rain, then, as I 
 ascended toward Cumnock, snow, and in fine, in 
 Glasgow, a mixture of sleet, snow, and rain, in con- 
 fusion worse confounded. Worst of all I had no time 
 to dine, and barring a biscuit or two tasted nothing 
 till supper time. 
 
 I found our bairns and Mrs. Gilfillan well. The 
 two elder are delighted with your presents, and only 
 regretted you had not appended your name. After 
 all my little pet Agg, or as I call her Mittannus 
 Vallentine, will likely be first into the bowels of your 
 book. She runs through books like wild-fire. 
 
 I found a proof waiting me of my paper for next 
 Scottish Review on "British and American Literature," 
 the best thing I have done for long. It appears 
 in April. 
 
238 GEORGE GIL FILL AN. 
 
 I need not say how well I enjoyed Mountain Hall 
 with its quiet cracks and genial hospitalities. 
 
 6th October, 1862. I had yours on Saturday, but 
 was too busy preparing for my three times to reply. 
 I returned last week from a sojourn of eleven days in 
 England. I went first on public duty to Hartlepool, 
 and thence followed the Gulf Stream of the multitude 
 to the Exhibition. It is certainly a grand bewilder- 
 ing, tantalising spectacle. I was especially pleased 
 with the Picture Gallery, although it too is collected 
 far too much on the multitudinist principle. Yet it 
 was very delightful to float down the stream of the 
 crowd, as if between the banks of the Celestial river, 
 drinking in new beauty at every bend. I recognised 
 with great delight my old friend the Ramsdal Horn 
 painted by a native artist. Some of the historical 
 pieces are very great. There is a powerful head, the 
 most powerful modern head I ever saw on canvas, of 
 Daniel Webster. 
 
 I was eight days in London. I called on nobody 
 except a niece who is married there. My brother has 
 now left London. A friend and I took a lodging 
 together near the Strand, and went hither and thither 
 at our own sweet will. By the way I did make one 
 other call on our good friend Dr. John Macfarlane at 
 Clapham ; but he was from home. 
 
JOURNAL. 
 
JOURNAL. 
 
 December, 1862. Let me commence this jour- 
 nal upon Christmas day. This day is worthy of its 
 memories, being bright, calm, and, for the season, 
 mild. Many years ago I began to keep a journal ; 
 but I was then in my hot youth, and it degenerated 
 into a record of mere moods. Now, in my maturer 
 years, being within a few weeks of fifty, I intend to 
 give to this one a mellower and a more solid character. 
 I cannot say. indeed, that either my youthful ardour 
 or strength is lessened ; but I feel that something of 
 the effervescence is gone, and that I can now take a 
 calmer view, on the whole, of the world and of myself. 
 I do not mean to make this a diary, but simply now 
 and then, when the spirit moves me, and leisure 
 serves, to jot down thoughts that seem of interest or 
 importance. 
 
 It seems a blessed arrangement, although, of 
 course, it is confined to certain parts of the globe, 
 that Christmas and New Year's day occur in the 
 dead season of the year when days are short, skies 
 sad, the earth often covered with snow, and all things 
 tending to gloom and despondency. How pleasant a 
 friend's letter arriving on a dull, drizzly day ! And 
 our Great Friend dropt His letter of everlasting love 
 on this earth at its gloomiest hour, when the sun him- 
 self might have seemed weary of his services to this 
 
 241 R 
 
GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 poor planet, and shrinking away to the extremest 
 verge of the horizon from it. How sad to remember, 
 however, that that "weary winter sun " has returned 
 1862 times since Christ was born in Bethlehem and 
 sees so little improvement, and the waters of human 
 sin and misery so little abated. Shall it be always 
 thus ? Or, should we think so often about it, while we 
 might spend the time, thus gloomily wasted, in ener- 
 getic efforts to make the world a little better and 
 happier ? Alas ! our thoughts are not always in our 
 own power, and it does good, sometimes, to ponder on 
 melancholy themes ; and thus, 
 
 " Sadly spend our Christmas eve." 
 
 2jtk December. I spent Christmas afternoon and 
 evening at Coupar- Angus, in the house of the Rev. 
 D. Marshall. This gentleman has never been sketched, 
 so far as I remember. He is a man of no common 
 powers, and of very peculiar character. He is singu- 
 larly able and acute, without being either imaginative 
 or original or profound. He sees not only points, but 
 even long and linked chains of argument, with great 
 clearness, but his view is never very broad nor very 
 deep. His weapon is a scimitar, not a claymore. His 
 sense of logical blunders is strong almost to morbidity, 
 and a solecism in argument gives him the same feel- 
 ing of the ludicrous and the same intense delight 
 which others derive from jokes or puns. It is 
 extremely amusing to watch the expression of his 
 face while an adversary is speaking, and becoming 
 gradually bogged in blunders a delight like enthusi- 
 astic admiration mantles on his face, curls on his lips, 
 and sparkles in his grey eye. You could fancy him 
 
JOURNAL, 1862. 243 
 
 about to burst out into cheers, did you not know your 
 man, and the side he took in the question. When his 
 opponent has ceased, and he rises to reply, his smile 
 becomes grimmer in its character ; nor do you recog- 
 nise its former joyous aspect till he has spoken for a 
 considerable time, and approached the close of his 
 speech, when again, in all the lightning of triumph, it 
 is there, shining over the rent, torn, and scattered 
 ruins of his adversary's argument. The motion of his 
 mind and speech in debate is very peculiar, resembling 
 that of a certain species of brute destroyers, who 
 approach their prey at first by slow stages, alternat- 
 ing with brief trances of affected slumber, till in fine, 
 having gained a due distance, they rush on fast and 
 fiercely to devour it. So, the first impression in hear- 
 ing Marshall is that of disappointment. His accent 
 is the broadest Perthshire, his attitudes are awkward, 
 and his utterance slow and somewhat nasal ; but his 
 eye and the shrewdness of his countenance detain 
 you, and by-and-by, as he heats, and hurries on more 
 rapidly, he becomes, if not eloquent, savagely strong. 
 If he cannot sing the Indian's war-song, or dance his 
 poetic dance, he can wield his tomahawk. Mr. 
 Marshall, though a sensible, is a slow, dry, and 
 unimpressive preacher ; but in Presbyteries and 
 Synods he exerts great power, and uses it, in general, 
 with wisdom and with generosity. He is fond of and, 
 perhaps, too conscious of the merit connected with 
 taking the side of the down-trodden, the calumniated 
 and oppressed, the weak and helpless. I knew a man 
 in Edinburgh who did this too, but entirely from 
 vanity, not from either principle or good nature. He 
 thought his fine figure looked finer while standing 
 over and protecting the downcast. Marshall goes to 
 
244 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 work from different motives, chiefly, I imagine, from 
 a conviction that few men are much better than their 
 neighbours, and that defaulters are often punished 
 beyond their deserts, and find their bitterest enemies 
 in persons who are rather worse than themselves. A 
 bad opinion of human nature often leads to charity as 
 much as, or more than, a good one, and Marshall, 
 although a kind-hearted man at bottom, and very 
 agreeable in his own dwelling, looks at man with an 
 ultra-Calvinistic eye, and has learned Foster's dark 
 views as well as his slow, sarcastic vein and some- 
 thing of his cumbrous style without the hope of 
 universal restoration which, at last, formed a silver 
 lining to the sable garment Foster had all his life 
 worn. 
 
 Marshall is ageing prematurely. Some years below 
 sixty, he looks like a man of sixty-five. Not only is 
 his hair as white as snow, and his stature somewhat 
 stooped, but his memory is very considerably impaired, 
 and he has got into that lazy garrulity and endless 
 repetition which so plainly reveal the touch of eld, 
 although the shrewd, native fire peeps through ever 
 and anon, and a glance, a word, a sharp retort, show 
 that he is the old man, in one sense, and not the old 
 man, in another. I attribute this ageing not to study, 
 for, although a close and consecutive thinker, he has 
 never been a hard student, and, placed in the country 
 and cultivating a small farm, his circumstances have 
 been favourable to health ; but mainly to the want of 
 that elastic springiness of constitution so often con- 
 nected with more genial natures, which sometimes 
 preserves the reality of youth after its appearance is 
 gone. He has been rather soured, too, by his posi- 
 tion, which he justly deems beneath his powers ; and 
 
JOURNAL, 1862. 245 
 
 there is nothing like vitrolic acid for blanching the 
 hair. He speaks in a tone somewhat too bitter and con- 
 temptuous of certain celebrities in the church, whom 
 he evidently deems successful impostors, and talks 
 ominously of being " down upon " them some day. It 
 is of no use. They will practise and prosper, collect 
 crowds and moneys in their large cities, die, and be 
 forgotten ; he will fade sternly in his solitude, die, and 
 be forgotten too they, because their shallow nature 
 found its element in popular applause, an element 
 equally adapted to nourish their life and to decide 
 their oblivion ; and he, because, though a very able 
 and honest man, he has not adjusted his powers 
 before the looking-glass of fashion, and yet not had, 
 or not exerted powers, to render such adjustment 
 unnecessary. Disdaining to conform to, he has not 
 been able to overpower or fascinate his age in spite of 
 itself. 
 
 On Friday morning I returned home through the 
 beautiful valley of Strathmore. There had been 
 
 " A roaring in the wind all night," 
 
 mixed with dashes of rain. Seldom of late have 
 I enjoyed a solitary walk better than from Meigle 
 Station to Newtyle. I have always found in solitude 
 my highest pleasures or my severest mental agonies. 
 This day I was in a mood which recalled, if it did 
 not equal, some of the happiest hours of my life. 
 Through an avenue of trees enclosing the road the 
 sough of the wrestling blast was like thunder. I felt 
 almost literally lifted up on the wings of the wind, 
 and thought for a moment of the possibility of clear- 
 ing old Kilpurnie Hill striding on the storm. The 
 sere leaves were uttering their eerie oracles as they 
 
246 GEORGE GILF1LLAN. 
 
 now rustled in the blast and now dropt waveringly 
 on the ground. Distant pine-woods shone blue-black 
 in the winter sunshine. There was a fine sprinkling 
 of riddled snow on the Grampians, and the scene 
 altogether was one of dreary grandeur, touched 
 tenderly by the hand of belated and dying beauty. 
 It suggested a thousand thoughts, as does always to 
 me a high wind. Does not this discover a certain 
 mysterious relation between swift mental and swift 
 material motion ? How strangely constituted is man 
 that a bickering blaze of fire on the hearth, the sound 
 of a musical instrument, the shrieking of the blast, 
 the flickering of a gas flame, or the rushing of a 
 distant stream, can suggest thoughts, images, and 
 feelings which would never otherwise have arisen ! 
 I remember one of the most earnest passages I ever 
 wrote, a comparison of Carlyle and Shelley [see 
 article on Shelley in the First Gallery] came upon me 
 from a black heaven to the tune of a thunder-peal, 
 and was written in the glare of successive flashes of 
 lightning. Instead of such phenomena proving that 
 the soul of man is material, they seem to prove that 
 the Spirit of Nature is Divine, or at least is made of 
 the same stuff with the ethereal principle which 
 works within us. I often rejoice that my lot is cast 
 in a city so that my glimpses of nature, though com- 
 paratively few and short, are always fresh. I look at 
 her, not through broad bay-windows, but through 
 intense loop-holes. The other day, coming by the 
 train from Stirling, I had one of those glimpses of 
 glory. A strong blast, with probably 
 
 " In its breast a thunderbolt," 
 was blowing. In the north stood up a massive wall 
 
JOURNAL, 1862. 247 
 
 of gloomy cloud, over which suddenly shone out a 
 rainbow, bridging the beautiful valley of the Allan, 
 and resting on Abbey Craig, or, rather, on the new 
 Wallace Monument, which is beginning to rise upon 
 it. I have seen many rainbows of greater brilliance 
 and completeness, but never one so soft in its tints, 
 so melting in its loveliness, so tenderly ethereal. You 
 saw it in the very crisis of departure, in all the deli- 
 cacy of dissolution, 
 
 " Evanishing amid the storm." 
 
 I once saw a rainbow in more peculiar circumstances. 
 In July, 1843, I happened to look from my bedroom 
 window about three or four o'clock in the morning, 
 and was aware of a magnificent arch standing over 
 the valley of the Tay and the smokeless, soundless, 
 sleeping town, the sky the while being clear and 
 bright, with no cloud visible. It had an awful 
 apparitional, yet bewitching aspect ; and I retired to 
 bed repeating the words from " Lalla Rookh "- 
 
 " And tearless rainbows, such as span 
 The unclouded skies of Peristan." 
 
 One could imagine such a glory seen by his own eyes 
 alone, and question afterwards whether it had not 
 been entirely a dream. 
 
 December. From my excellent friend's, Mr. 
 Muir, Newtyle, I took away with me, to beguile the 
 journey homewards, a volume of Foster's " Reviews." 
 I began to glance at it with a certain feeling of sad- 
 ness, produced partly by old associations, although 
 the day was good, the storm being now lulled, and 
 that fine shadow, the half-moon, having arisen to 
 
248 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 look at the giant sun ere he set in fire. How she 
 seemed to shrink on her post of observation, as if she 
 had no business there, or none but that of hopeless, 
 insatiate love ! In reading Foster on the train, and 
 since, I began to perceive that while my admiration 
 of his genius continued, my sympathy with his feel- 
 ings and opinions had considerably lessened. There 
 are hours, and days, and months, ay, and sometimes 
 years in which every thinking man is a Foster. But 
 to be a Foster for a life-time, what a destiny ! To 
 have been a Foster for seventy-three years for what 
 ante-natal crime was he condemned to this ? A mis- 
 anthrope compelled to mingle with men ; a recluse, 
 instead of making his house the wilderness and the 
 barren land his dwelling, like the wild ass of Scrip- 
 ture, turned into a regular reviewer ! How sad, yet 
 curious, to notice how on every book, grave or gay, 
 sacred or profane, that comes across his path, he is 
 sure to cast the shadow of his own spirit ! And what 
 transformations to the worse do many noted characters 
 sustain at his hands ! Worthy Dr. Beattie, author of 
 the " Minstrel " and the " Essay on Truth," becomes 
 in Foster's view a theatre-haunting man of the world. 
 Hume is sent to hell at once (of course to be included 
 afterwards in that restoration which Foster believed 
 was to happen to all !), Paley (the Pigeon Paley of 
 George III.) is made out to be unsound in faith and 
 an equivocator in the matter of the Thirty-nine 
 Articles. That " mad wag," famous Sydney Smith, is 
 treated, on his clerical aspect mainly, as a popular 
 Tearmouth, a modern orator Henley although his 
 mental power is rather reluctantly conceded. Foster's 
 views of the Indian religions, too, are fanatically dis- 
 coloured. He wrote in the first heat of the mission- 
 
JOURNAL, 1863. 249 
 
 ary spirit, and had not learned to make those 
 allowances to which further thought and observation 
 ultimately led him. . . . 
 
 January, 1863. The year hitherto has been 
 dark, drizzly, and uncomfortably changeable. At a 
 little party where I dined yesterday, a gentleman 
 strongly urged on me that I was lost in Dundee and 
 should go to London, and predicted me great success 
 there. Another person maintained, on the contrary, 
 that Dundee, now a town of 100,000 inhabitants, 
 where he said my popularity had steadily increased 
 with the increase of the town, was my proper field. 
 To-day, looking at the subject calmly, it seems as if 
 much could be said on both sides. On the one hand, 
 I believe that my style of preaching, if I prepared 
 carefully, which, of course, I would do, would suit 
 London and its literary people better than Dundee, 
 especially as my doctrine is becoming wider and less 
 Calvinistic. In my studies and my writing I should 
 secure advantages debarred to a provincial man, in 
 libraries, literary society, the securing of proper pub- 
 lishers, &c. Dr. Croly used often to advise me to 
 this step, and said it was my living in the provinces 
 that prevented me from taking my proper place in 
 the literary world. I feel, too, a kind of fretting 
 when I think of some of those who are at present 
 the popular men in London, all preaching a gospel 
 more or less opposed, I think, to the gospel for the 
 times which I should study to preach. But then 
 there are other considerations. First, I am on the 
 verge of fifty, and this, although in my case securing 
 maturity and not diminishing strength or energy or 
 
250 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 fire, still tends to make me more conservative in feel- 
 ing, and less willing to change a position I have occu- 
 pied for nearly twenty-seven years. In the second 
 place, my isolation and pre-eminence here if I may 
 claim this without vanity have their advantages ; 
 and I have, besides, with all the work I do, more 
 leisure than I could possibly have in London. My 
 manners and habits, too, are better adapted for this 
 town than for the capital. My excellent wife, also, is 
 much better suited for the sphere she fills here with 
 so much usefulness and honour than for the other, 
 although, of course, she would command respect and 
 regard anywhere. On the whole, so long as I am 
 tolerably comfortable, and have a good congregation 
 and a decent competence, and am doing something 
 to educate the mind, particularly the young mind, of 
 the town, I shall probably continue here. How thank- 
 ful to God should I be for all His kindness to me in 
 this place, and how humble withal ! 
 
 It is sad sometimes for me to think that, although 
 not old, I have already outlived so many of my con- 
 temporaries and friends. My native village com- 
 panions, John Graham, Donald MacColl, and Peter 
 M'Nab, are all long since dead. Peter M'Laren yet 
 lives, but lives in Glasgow, and I have not seen him 
 for sixteen years. In Comrie, I have not now a 
 single intimate. The people there are either too old 
 or too young for me. I see none of those with whom 
 in early life I sported, with whom I climbed the glori- 
 ous hills, bathed in the lukewarm pools of the summer 
 of 1826, went "with shining face unwillingly to school," 
 or conversed in earnest though imperfect utterances 
 about the great dawning mysteries of existence, or 
 the wonders of literature beginning to rise around us 
 
JOURNAL, 1863. 251 
 
 like autumnal stars. Hence, much as I admire and 
 revel in the scenery of Comrie, there is no place where 
 I feel so melancholy or lonely at times as there. From 
 its bridge I see the beautiful burn called by courtesy 
 the river Earn, the simple church with the manse 
 under one roof, where my father preached for thirty- 
 six years, and where I was born ; but I see also in 
 the west the graves of both my parents. When I 
 enter Woodside Cottage I almost expect to meet the 
 bowed form of my mother, with her benevolent smile, 
 coming forth to welcome me. Her old chair at the 
 fireside seems yet filled with her figure, and from the 
 bed where she died I half hear still her most pathetic 
 parting address to her children. At Comrie alone, 
 too, after night has fallen, do I feel old superstitious 
 terrors shivering over me, and I tremble at going out 
 by myself, much as when I was a boy. 
 
 My college companions were never numerous, and 
 most of those I knew somewhat intimately are gone. 
 George Beveridge, whom I have sketched as B. G. in 
 the " History of a Man," was my most intimate and 
 congenial friend from fifteen to seventeen years of 
 age. He came from Stewarton, Ayrshire, and died 
 in 1835. How vividly I remember taking up a news- 
 paper in the Greenock Reading-Room, while I was 
 preaching in that town as a candidate, and reading 
 the notice " Died at Stewarton, Ayrshire, Mr. George 
 Beveridge, student in Divinity, aged 25." These few, 
 cold, meagre words touched a deep chord in my 
 heart ; for, although I could hardly be said to have 
 very warmly loved him, yet I had profited much from 
 his conversation, and had some very pleasing associa- 
 tions connected with him. During the session of 
 1829-30, disgusted, perhaps unreasonably, with Pro- 
 
252 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 fessor Ramsay, who then taught the Mathematical 
 Class, I threw it up and generally spent the vacated 
 hour in Beveridge's lodging, where we had for our 
 years and opportunities high talk de omnibus rebus. 
 I have, without any exaggeration, pictured him, soul 
 and body, in the " History." There can be no doubt 
 he would, had he lived, and had the stamina of his 
 constitution strengthened, have become a consider- 
 able man. How delighted I was in the autumn of 
 1834, in Glasgow, to meet him again for a short inter- 
 view or two. I remember our going together to a 
 circulating library and taking out Taits Magazine 
 (for September, I think, it was), containing De Quin- 
 cey's first paper on " Coleridge," whom we two had, 
 four years before, in our juvenile wisdom, and much 
 to the horror of our associates, who were poisoned by 
 the Edinburgh Review, pronounced the greatest mind 
 of the age. And now we found De Quincey calling 
 him the " most spacious and comprehensive intellect 
 that had yet, in his judgment, appeared among men." 
 The light of that autumn eve, shed upon the pages of 
 the article, which I greedily glanced at on the street, 
 seemed celestial. I read to Beveridge one day a 
 sermon which I had preached before Balmer, and 
 which he had rather severely criticised. He spoke 
 in its praise but measuredly, and seemed to think 
 that my style had altered for the worse from my 
 college days. I found that he had at the Divinity 
 Hall of the Established Church, which he was now 
 attending (although he had been originally a Seceder), 
 encountered one or two of the more remarkable men 
 I had met not long before in Edinburgh. 
 
 To recur to my own friends who are gone. Camp- 
 bell of Aberdour (see " History of a Man," under 
 
JOURNAL, 1863. 253 
 
 head of Alaster MacTavish), was for one session, 
 1834-35, my most intimate associate. We spent long 
 hours together by day and by night, I visited him 
 at his mother's house in Rothesay in the summer of 
 1835, and went with him to see the mansion of the 
 Earl of Bute. For nine years from that date I never 
 saw and scarcely heard of him, till one day in 1844 
 I met him at the quay in Dundee, an odd, ill-dressed 
 figure, with an old shabby brown great-coat. He had 
 become a probationer in the Established Church, and 
 had at the time very faint hopes of preferment. 
 I saw a good deal of him that year. Once, in par- 
 ticular, we went out to Newtyle, and climbed Kil- 
 purnie Hill where a storm of wind was blowing. 
 I was recovering then from a year or two of dreadful 
 mental misery, and his conversation did something to 
 help me out of it. He said that he had had similar 
 struggles, but had at last come to the most certain 
 conviction that he had a Father. When settled at 
 Aberdour he became a very useful and hard-working 
 pastor, although he had a number of enemies whose 
 opposition continued to the end and served to shorten 
 his days. In May, 1848, I spent a few days along 
 with (Principal) Tulloch and MacCulloch, now of 
 Aberdeen, at Aberdour. These were among the 
 happiest days in my life. The spring was just coming 
 out in all its freshness, and a lovelier spring and 
 autumn than those of 1848 never shone from heaven. 
 The woods which so thickly clustered near Aberdour 
 were in full beauty. The sea was near, and the 
 rocks impending over it and piercing the woodland, 
 suggested to me the scenery of " Guy Mannering." 
 We were all in the highest spirits, and how fast time 
 flew as we walked along the headlands or plunged 
 
254 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 into the flowery heart of the woods, or enjoyed after 
 dinner or supper the most delightful symposia ! 
 Campbell was no great preacher or writer ; but in 
 conversation he often displayed a world of wild 
 humour and fancy, his powers of exaggerative de- 
 scription were great, and his laugh was a very 
 phenomenon of contagious mirth. The last time 
 I saw him was at Dunfermline in 1852, in the com- 
 pany of another dear friend whom, also, I have never 
 seen since. It was a day of much enjoyment, and little 
 thought we that we were never more to meet Camp- 
 bell rests now in the bosom of his parish, having died 
 quite a young man, partly of consumption, and partly, 
 I fear, of a broken heart. His sister, Mary Campbell, 
 was and is a remarkable person, exceedingly clever, 
 active, and well informed. I saw her lately at 
 Rothesay ; and it was a melancholy pleasure to both 
 to talk of her lost brother. 
 
 The same year with Campbell, 1856, dropt away 
 the more brilliant Samuel Brown, and three years 
 afterwards Professor Nichol, the friendship of both of 
 whom I had made in manhood. Andrew Wylie, of 
 Orkney, the William Andrew of the "Man," had 
 perished some years before in New Zealand. George 
 Mackenzie, of Carnoustie, is another early friend who 
 is now dead. Thomas Nichol, of Pitrodie, died in 
 1845. Noble old Croly sank two years ago ; I had 
 no warmer friend than he. Yet let me be thankful 
 that amidst this wide wreck there still float some of 
 my earlier as well as later associates, such as George 
 Jeffrey, of Glasgow, his brother Robert, Hamilton 
 MacGill, James Borwick of Rathillet, Alexander 
 Rutherford, James Lindsay, David Cooke, Dundee, 
 William Robertson, Irvine, William Anderson of 
 
JOURNAL, 1863. 255 
 
 Glasgow, good benevolent William Logan of the same 
 city, Ebsworth, and, besides some others whom I need 
 not name last, not least Thomas Aird. For the 
 friendship of such men I feel deeply and daily more 
 and more grateful whether I regard the losses of 
 friends by death, the alienation of a few others, and 
 the number of literary and other enemies whom 
 I know I have. 
 
 \^th January, 1863. I got yesterday sent me per 
 post a lecture by John Cairns on " Rationalism, 
 Ritualism, and Pure Religion," or some such title, and 
 have read it with interest, attention, and with a good 
 deal of admiration of its ability, and, on the whole, of 
 its spirit. But I can see from it that he is not the 
 man to grapple with the scepticism of the age. He 
 has not sufficient sympathy with it ; he has not lived 
 in its atmosphere ; he has not visited its profoundest, 
 or tossed in its stormiest depths. Intellectually and 
 logically he understands it, as he understands most 
 other matters ; but sympathetically and experiment- 
 ally he does not. Even intellectually he does not 
 look at it in a sufficiently broad light. The true view 
 of modern doubt is that of a giant growth inevitable 
 to our present stage of progress. . . . 
 
 Sabbath, i^th January. I felt considerable pleasure 
 in preaching to-day. The church in the afternoon 
 was full and the audience attentive. My text was, 
 " The spirit of the Lord is upon us to preach the gos- 
 pel to the poor," &c. I said the Gospel contained an 
 announcement of good tidings, a message of mercy 
 
256 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 and healing, a jubilee note of deliverance and freedom, 
 a removal of spiritual darkness, and the proclamation 
 of full pardon and perfect reconciliation. Under the 
 head of the good news I alluded to Tennyson's 
 sentiment in the " Memoriam." In that pretty and 
 very popular, but not theologically profound poem, 
 the Poet Laureate describes an angel or glorified 
 spirit standing on the battlements of heaven, looking 
 down on earth's burning cradles, seas of blood, tides 
 of tears, sin-sodden cities, and saying as he pursues 
 his calm eternal round like a watchman of the skies : 
 " All is well." This I said was beautiful blasphemy. 
 That all things would yet be well I hoped. That all 
 things were tending toward a higher economy and a 
 better I believed, and that God was over-ruling evil 
 for good, and making the wrath of man to praise 
 Him I was certain. But that such horrible outbreaks 
 of passion and red seas of gore as the American war 
 revealed were " well," were, in other words, appointed 
 or approved by God, I utterly denied. And it was 
 this emasculated popular theology it did not much 
 matter whether it was called Pantheism or Hyper- 
 Calvinism which had produced a great deal of the 
 sympathy felt at present in Christian countries with 
 despotism, when that despotism was decent and 
 successful ; with war, when that war had a few 
 plausible pretexts and did not injure trade ; with 
 ignorance, when it served to uphold a false species of 
 piety ; with sin, when, like the famous coin of 
 Vespasian cpllected as a tax on ordure, it did not 
 "smell"; with slavery, when that slavery sought to 
 clothe its nakedness with the fig-leaves of texts from 
 the Pentateuch ; and with the devil himself when he 
 came disguised as an angel of light. If " Whatever 
 
JOURNAL, 1863. 257 
 
 is is right," be the text, Atheism must be the 
 inference. 
 
 I alluded also to Lincoln's Proclamation of Free- 
 dom, and said that I gloried that it had gone forth 
 on all the winds like the great blast of a jubilee 
 trumpet, startling the iron earth and the brazen 
 heaven of Dollar-deifying America, lighting up joy 
 in many a faded African eye and creating hope in 
 many a forlorn African heart, causing the tyrants of 
 Richmond to tremble and the psalms of Stonewall 
 Jackson and his men to quaver and sink in the midst 
 of their blasphemous music. Yet I expressed some 
 doubts as to its being so successful as many expected. 
 
 2\st January. To-day William Anderson, after a 
 short stay, has left for Glasgow. I have never, 
 I think, seen him more clearly, or in a more amiable 
 light. Although only a little beyond his grand 
 climacteric he is very deaf, and is almost entirely 
 insulated thereby from society. Yet, if you so far 
 awaken the "echo-cliff" of his ear, and start some 
 favourite theme, he monologises in a very delightful 
 way, now narrating some racy anecdote of the past, 
 now arguing out some knotty question, and now 
 deploring, while exposing, some one or other of the 
 evils and shams of the world. Not only is he 
 insulated by deafness,, but by original nature. I 
 have met more brilliant and more accomplished men, 
 but I never met with such a unique. I regard him 
 as, on the whole, the best and most original man in 
 our church, and as the last, except Aird, of the 
 giant race of Christian men of genius who, in 
 Scotland, adorned the earlier part of this century, 
 
 s 
 
258 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 such as Chalmers, Irving, Jameson of Methven. 
 Genius and evangelical religion have since gone 
 different ways. Yet it is possible that they may 
 meet again, both of them purified and exalted, under 
 the glorious roof of the Church of the future. 
 
 22nd January. I have a rather curt and snell note 
 from Burghley to-day. He seems angry at some 
 hints I have given him as to what I conceive to be 
 the unhealthy conservatism of his religious views. 
 In poetry and politics, though an able man, he has 
 failed to make any impression, and he has plunged 
 into the depths of enquiry, particularly in physiology 
 and the cognate sciences ; and when he reports 
 progress from thence the voice comes up like the cry 
 of a spirit in torment. . . . He has the profoundest 
 admiration for Carlyle, and seems all but ready to 
 follow that wild buffalo crashing his way farther and 
 farther into the forest. . . . His whole soul, however, 
 is given to the giants of the early ages of our 
 literature. He worships them partly because they 
 furnish a higher point of view, over-stepping and 
 dwindling our present writers, and partly from real 
 admiration of their strong, healthy genius. . . . 
 Through me he has become a great friend of 
 William Anderson, and how they pelt one another 
 through the post-office, though they have as yet 
 never met ! They resemble each other somewhat in 
 their bilious point of view, and in their two-thirds 
 sincere, one-third affected oddity. 
 
 2///z January. William Logan has sent my wife 
 to-day two photographs of himself. What a kind, 
 
JOURNAL, 1863. 259 
 
 sagacious, homely, delightful face that of the 
 benevolent being is ! I sometimes think I see more 
 of our Lord in it than in far comelier countenances. 
 I have seen it, especially when turned upon a child, 
 emit a smile quite heavenly. Mrs. Shelley has a 
 beautiful image in reference to Hazlitt, whom she 
 had not seen for a number of years : " He is so 
 changed that, but for his voice and smile, I should 
 not have known him. The smile brought tears to 
 my eyes. It was like lightning that assured you, in a 
 dark night, of the identity of a friend's ruined and 
 deserted abode." Logan's smile, on the other hand, 
 is a celestial light, giving assurance of the region 
 whence the noble soul has come, and to which it is to 
 return. Jameson of Methven's face, too, gleamed at 
 times with beautiful irradiations from within : from 
 within, and yet they seemed to have fallen from 
 above. We often mistake in this way. It is the 
 God-touched soul that erects the cloven tongue of 
 fire. . . . Logan's career has been a peculiar one. 
 He was a handloom weaver in Hamilton, then was 
 with a grocer in Glasgow. He has been a city 
 missionary in London, Bradford, Leeds, Rochdale, 
 Glasgow, and now keeps temperance dining-rooms in 
 the last-named city. Logan has plunged into 
 London, Edinburgh, and Glasgow brothels and 
 rescued this and the other victim from the horrible 
 pit. Some of his converts are now respectable wives 
 and mothers in Australia and elsewhere, and write 
 him letters glowing with gratitude. Some people 
 think him a pious simpleton. It is a great mistake. 
 He has a certain weakness and hero-worship, but his 
 judgment is generally sound, his instinctive percep- 
 tions are at once healthy and keen, and his views are 
 
260 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 wonderfully liberal. Holyoake calls upon him in 
 Glasgow, and is received as a brother. I am sure 
 Logan does more thus to create respect for religion 
 in that man's mind, than if all the religious periodi- 
 cals in the world were down upon him unceasingly 
 for a twelvemonth. 
 
 29^/2 January. What a day of storm and wind and 
 rain ! There are moods in which I have all my life 
 enjoyed windy weather. One of my early recollec- 
 tions is that of a long happy autumn forenoon, spent 
 in Comrie on the south side of a hedge, while a great 
 north wind was blowing, wafting the sere leaves 
 and purging the sky into the intensest of autumnal 
 blue. I was then about ten or eleven and my soul 
 was in a poetic ecstacy. With Zanga, " I love this 
 rocking of the battlements " and to feel my imagina- 
 tion shed like a leaf upon the storm. No music is so 
 enchanting as that of a wind at night without the 
 casement. I have often in the morning wondered 
 what was giving me such unusual exaltation of mind 
 till, on looking out, I found there was a mighty wind 
 abroad on which I was riding, unawares. ... I can 
 conceive no more inspiring day than one spent in 
 Ballochbuie forest during an autumnal tempest, seated 
 under some rock secure and listening to the deep 
 thunder of the wind through those giant pines, with 
 the voice of the stream pouring its wail through the 
 roaring solitude. . . . To-day the wind has stirred 
 but hardly cheered me. It has carried me away to 
 scenes of the past, but returning I am not happier. . . . 
 Happy, indeed, I never was, though I enjoy parts and 
 passages of life as intensely as any living man. Not 
 
JOURNAL, 1863. 261 
 
 only have I dark hours though not so dark, thank 
 God, as they once were but I have not within me 
 that deep inner fund of serene satisfaction, that golden 
 joy which many Christians profess at least to have. 
 This is no doubt partly my own fault as a very 
 imperfect man, partly the result of my peculiar 
 temperament, always moody and changeable. But 
 that is not all. The mystery of existence deepens its 
 burden with years, although my shoulders are now 
 broader and stronger to bear it. ... I often wonder 
 how lightly this burden presses upon many ! Among 
 the ministers I know there are not half-a-dozen who 
 appear to understand the very nature of the difficulty.* 
 Contented with their formulas, or fighting, poor fellows, 
 with their own narrow circumstances and other trials, 
 . . . they have just so much consciousness of our 
 present transitory and twilight state as to incite them 
 to suspicion and heresy-hunting. I am, I know, at 
 present, an object of this charitable and Christian 
 practice, but shall ask and hope to receive strength to 
 speak advisedly whatever truth there is in me. 
 
 Sabbatk, ist February, I preached to-day on the 
 words, " The peace of God which passeth all under- 
 standing." In the evening I began my lectures on 
 the parables of Christ with one on the prodigal son. 
 The church was crowded, the people consisting chiefly, 
 as at all my evening lectures, of masses of young men 
 and women -very attentive. I strongly insisted on 
 the parables being, as a whole, truth-possessed fictions. 
 
 * This cannot be said now of any large number of Scottish 
 clergy. The burden is in the air. 
 
262 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 A writer in The Warder had a small spiteful paper on 
 a former statement of mine to the same purpose, and 
 without naming it I, in effect, replied. I pointed 
 especially to one or two circumstances in the parable 
 of Dives and Lazarus such as Dives, in his 
 immaterial state, seeking water for his tongue and 
 being tormented in material flame as showing that 
 it was not a real account of the future state. I took 
 occasion, while speaking of the prodigal going away 
 with the portion of goods given him by the father, to 
 deny that man is utterly vile, worthless, and corrupt. 
 . . . He who calumniates human nature, who sees no 
 good, no worth, no moral duty therein, blasphemes 
 God the Maker, and Christ the Redeemer, and the 
 Holy Spirit the Comforter. 
 
 [In the week following he lectured on Modern 
 Scepticism and Colenso.] 
 
 yh February. I dined before lecture in the house 
 of a Free Churchman, and met three or four of the more 
 intelligent of that school, such as Mr. Henry Fergus- 
 son and Mr. Knight,* a young clergyman. Both have 
 extensive knowledge and culture, and the latter very 
 considerable metaphysical ingenuity : in neither do 
 I find any cant or formality. Yet the presence of 
 foregone conclusions showed itself now and then 
 visibly enough. Mr. Knight, for instance, while 
 talking of the Pentateuch, insisted on premising 
 miracle as a necessary postulate,^ just as Neander, in 
 
 * Professor Knight of St. Andrews, now. 
 t It should be observed that this conversation took place 
 thirty years ago. 
 
JOURNAL, 1863. 263 
 
 his " Life of Christ" premises the divinity as a necessary 
 postulate for considering the history. I think each a 
 plain begging of the question. . . . To suppose an 
 incessant stream of miracle running as an under and 
 opposing current to the tide of universal law is in the 
 last degree absurd and unfair. ... It takes tacitly for 
 granted the whole question as to the nature of miracle, 
 whether it be an infraction of law, or simply the out- 
 shining of a higher law within the other like, shall I 
 say? the soul of a man kindling and inspiring a dull 
 eye. 
 
 *]th February, This is Saturday evening, an evening 
 in which I generally try to reach a serene altitude of 
 mind and to feel the ante-past of the rest of the 
 morrow in my mind. I generally spend the hour 
 between eight and nine in reading, and the two 
 authors I go regularly through are Bunyan and 
 Burke Bunyan for spiritual benefit and Burke for 
 intellectual profit and pleasure, and both for imagina- 
 tive suggestion. How beautiful in their similarity 
 and dissimilarity, the two : the one, with that 
 sparkling eye ever seeing " the Way " plain as a rule 
 could make it, the other, profound, circumspective 
 genius of Ireland and India, contemplating all the 
 crooked paths of statecraft and the complicated 
 interests of nations with the calmest and most 
 commanding vision : yet both with hearts ever ready 
 to leap towards the new, the imaginative, the tender. 
 
 gt/i February. Mr. Knight has a letter signed 
 with his initials in to-day's Advertiser on Colenso. 
 
264 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 It is the first of a series, and is written in a fair 
 and manly spirit, though not, as I think, quite satis- 
 factory, for reasons stated above. 
 
 2Otk February. Disagreeable sour afternoon, that 
 of yesterday, the penalty of being too happy the 
 evening before. Truly, as Emerson has it, " Nothing 
 is given, all things are sold." Wrote a bit of " Night," 
 going over Night's poets Job, David, Homer and 
 ^Eschylus. I think it will please the initiated at least, 
 and vanity whispers that perhaps as a whole it will 
 perpetuate my name. 
 
 ist March. Preached to-day twice, having to lecture 
 in the evening, too, in continuation of The Prodigal. 
 In the forenoon, commencing a lecture on Kings, I 
 spoke strongly on the propriety of saying little at 
 present as to the difficulties of the Old Testament till 
 we had more light on the subject, as there is so much 
 in the book, unassailed, from which fruit can be derived. 
 In the afternoon I preached on "Arise, O God, 
 and let Thine enemies be scattered," inquiring, first, 
 how God can have any enemies, and resolving it into 
 the general difficulty as to the origin of moral evil ; 
 secondly, showing that by birth man could not possibly 
 be an enemy of God, but was become so by the evil 
 thing in his nature whatever that was finding the 
 law of. God contrary to it ; thirdly, classifying the 
 enemies of God as those who voluntarily denied His 
 existence voluntarily rejected His word refused 
 the offer of mercy in Christ cherished secret hatred 
 under the cover of a fair profession and showed it by 
 
JOURNAL, 1863. 265 
 
 their want of love to man, their malevolence and 
 falsehood. In the second part of the discourse I 
 spoke of God arising, first, every day in Nature, 
 second, in the progress of genuine science and phil- 
 osophy, thirdly, in the advance of Christian know- 
 ledge, unfolded by genuine philosophy, and fourthly, 
 in the great dawning of the future, predicted again 
 and again in the Word of God. 
 
 In the evening lectured to a very crowded house, 
 speaking toward the close, of the elder brother and 
 his jealousy of the younger as illustrated among us 
 now. 
 
 igth March. Glanced over a good part of my 
 "Covenanters" yesterday. I see in it the germ of 
 what should have been my best book, and regret that 
 I wrote it hastily and to order. It is better liked by 
 the general public than anything else I have done, 
 but I ought to have made it a standard work. Oh, 
 that vile haste of my temperament, how much it has 
 injured me as a man and an author ! 
 
 2Oth March. It is twenty-one years to-day since 
 our dear, dear Agnes Vallentine closed amid terrible 
 agonies and cruel tears her short earthly pilgrimage. 
 I have told her simple story in "The History of a 
 Man," and never did I write anything more sincerely 
 or with more burning sorrow. Now, how calmly 
 beautiful she looks through the lapse of years. I 
 remember her climbing my knee and crying, " My 
 dear Mr. Infillan ! " and once going hand in hand 
 with me through the fields when I was very dull and 
 
266 GEORGE GILFILLAN, 
 
 saying, " Oh, I maun try and comfort ye." On one 
 of my visits to her when she was dying, I spent a 
 night of wind and rain (what a tempest it was !) in 
 the house of old David Blackadder, an elder in 
 Brechin. He was a good man, a father to me and 
 some other ministers hospitable, sonsy, full of auld- 
 warld sagacity and auld-warld stories. 
 
 March. I go to lecture in Brechin this after- 
 noon, a town with which I have many pleasing 
 associations. One of the happiest little times I ever 
 had in that region was in September, 1860, after 
 I returned from Norway. One evening's walk along 
 the bank of the North Esk with my darlings the 
 Vallentine bairns, was peculiarly delightful. But the 
 most delicious hours were one forenoon alone, a mile 
 or two below Arnhall. My thoughts oscillated 
 between the mild beautiful scenery around, and the 
 bold and solemn grandeurs of Norway. I felt 
 perfectly happy. 
 
 Heard to my great grief that Langiewicks the hero 
 of Poland is a prisoner at Cracow. Poor Poland ! 
 Freedom must continue to shriek as thy heroes fall, 
 and Russia dances a Yahoo dance over murdered 
 liberties and martyred patriots. Lord God, how 
 long? Or is that old cry now silent under the altar? 
 No! 
 
 26th March. Went over to Edinburgh to speak at 
 the induction soiree of my good friend Andrew 
 Gardiner who is leaving Kincardine for Dean Street. 
 I like the man well, and would wish, if I can, to 
 
JOURNAL, 1863. 267 
 
 serve him. His wife has been an invaluable ally to 
 him. 
 
 Away from home I never get my usual quantity 
 of sleep. At home eight hours is my minimum. 
 
 ist April. Cloudy and snell, which makes you 
 think yourself and everybody else a fool. What 
 a comfortable conclusion ! And here comes in 
 Hogg's "statement," about my books. . . . "The 
 Bards " has in three years and a-half only brought 
 me 11, I os. 6d. . . . Well, my worthy father never 
 made ^50 all his life by his writings, and I have made 
 about twelve hundred.* So let me try and be satis- 
 fied. . . . But the worst of want of success in author- 
 ship is, that it damps your efforts in new projects. 
 What use, I feel now, of elaborating " Night " to lie 
 stinking in cellars ? What a lottery is literature ! 
 What an uncertain veering thing at the best, and 
 at what a disadvantage men are placed who, like me, 
 work in the provinces, single-handed, far from 
 libraries and the stimulus and guard of literary 
 society. Aird has felt this. But I won't pursue this 
 morbid track. 
 
 9/// April. I have had a little dispute with Bur- 
 ghley about the relative merits of Church of England 
 and Dissenting authors. I challenged him to show 
 such names in his church (living names) as Foster for 
 sublime and original meditation, Hall for classical 
 dignity, Chalmers for broad Christian influence and 
 
 * Chiefly by editing the Poets. 
 
268 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 overwhelming eloquence, Irving for demoniac force 
 and apostolic zeal, and Samuel Davidson for Scrip- 
 ture criticism. The English Church has only one 
 great author Robertson of Brighton and "he is 
 a Samaritan." . . . Burghley pours out a diatribe 
 against the names I have mentioned. . . . All con- 
 troversies of the kind become at last one-sided and 
 unfair, but I hold to my general statement. The 
 English Church is no longer what it was, the main 
 column of Protestantism. It is an old minster, with 
 the organ and the altar pieces in high preservation, 
 but undermined and deserted of life. 
 
 nth April, In to-day's Dumfries Herald some 
 of Macaulay's jottings on the fly-leaves of books, 
 discovered in some old volumes by James Hamil- 
 ton. 
 
 They are very characteristic ; decisive, sharp, dog- 
 matic, but strong and sensible. He characterises 
 Warburton well his tantalising half-gleams of truth, 
 his almost scholarship, his paradoxes coming forth 
 like pigs, fifteen to the litter, and many of them blind 
 for life. . . . By the way, I wonder Macaulay never 
 read "The Divine Legation" till he was nearly thirty- 
 five years of age. I read all I could get of it, a 
 volume or two, ere I was twenty, and have not seen 
 it since. Bartoline Saddletree was always saying, 
 " What gar my father no' send me to Utrecht ? " 
 I often exclaim, perhaps with a little more reason, 
 what a pity I had not early access to great libraries, 
 literary society, and other London and Cambridge 
 opportunities. 
 
JOURNAL, 1863. 269 
 
 April. I have been looking into Emerson's 
 " Conduct of Life." He shines in fractions, like bits 
 of broken glass. I did not take to him very much 
 when he was here in 1848. He was very pleasant 
 and amiable-seeming, but there was a deep in his 
 character as well as in his thought. I remember 
 Professor Nichol telling me, that, one evening in a 
 company in Liverpool, while Nichol was talking in 
 his usual frank, free, way to some gentlemen of the 
 party, he noticed Emerson fixing on him from a 
 corner two eyes, like those of a basilisk from a bush, 
 searching and soundless. I had precisely the same 
 feeling one night while talking with him in his bed- 
 room in this house. I was discoursing to him some- 
 what confidentially, the gas-light between us, when 
 I became suddenly aware of two eyes looking into 
 my very soul. It seemed as if the body had vanished, 
 and those strange serpent glittering eyes alone 
 remained ! . , . My good thoughtful wife asked him 
 privately if he had any objection to join in our family 
 worship. He said he had none and knelt with the 
 rest of us. I went to Perth through a deep snow- 
 storm to hear him lecture on Napoleon. The Fair 
 City did not much appreciate him. We supped after 
 lecture at a bailie's house, and nothing amused me 
 more than to see one or two straitlaced Presbyterians 
 watching the motions of Ralph Waldo as if he had 
 been a monster. They seemed astonished to find 
 him a mild and sober man. I parted with him at 
 the door of the hotel where he was to sleep, and have 
 not seen him since, nor heard from him, except a 
 month afterwards in a present of one of his books. 
 He has heard from me, and somewhat too fiercely, 
 I admit, though, at the time, most sincerely. 
 
270 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 I had a glorious dream-glimpse of Comrie last 
 night. I seemed seeing it from a distance, with 
 mellow gleams of autumn light shed through openings 
 in the clouds upon its woods, and hills, and spire. 
 In all my dreams of scenery I never saw anything so 
 vividly set in so celestial a radiance. 
 
 April. How comes it that our feelings on 
 awaking from sleep, are either of the blackest or the 
 brightest complexion ? What a sense of loneliness 
 and of insignificance comes over one sometimes on 
 waking in the early morning! what memories of 
 past follies and sins ! how many cares and mortifica- 
 tions return in exaggerated forms, and, though you 
 curse them, will not let you go. What a feeling of 
 the awful mystery of existence comes over you, and 
 how great appears your and all men's ignorance ! . . . 
 At other times awakening is one of the rarest of 
 enjoyments, and makes all things new ; everything 
 shines and sparkles around you, and you feel that 
 your heart, could you see it, would be shining and 
 sparkling too, the lost splendour returns to the grass, 
 and the glory to the flower, and joys that you had 
 left years behind thrill through your being again. 
 Some such awakings I remember having when I was 
 a boy in Comrie, and had fallen asleep among the 
 woods or in the hollows of the hills. How glorious 
 then looked the landscape almost intolerably 
 glorious. 
 
 i6th April. Wrote at "Night" in the evening 
 well, I think. Curious if this should prove my 
 
JOURNAL, 1863. 271 
 
 magnum opus. John Steel, the Scotsman, has been 
 urging me to write the life of Wallace. 'Twere a 
 grand theme, but would require immense research 
 and more time than I can command. 
 
 iqtk April. Communion. Preached the Action 
 sermon on " To whom shall we go ? Thou hast the 
 words of eternal life." I magnified Christ First, for 
 His moral teaching, supreme in its simple compre- 
 hensiveness, its depth, and its relation to His match- 
 less life ; secondly, for His revelation of the true 
 character of God as a Father ; thirdly, as the revealer 
 of the true and only Supernaturalism ; fourth, as the 
 Atoner for guilt ; and, fifth, as the unveiler of the 
 future. My brother with me, who preached well, 
 especially on Monday. Large attendances and com- 
 fortable day. 
 
 2$th April. Last night I spoke at the great anti- 
 slavery meeting. William Anderson came and made 
 a strange bizarre but telling speech. A scene 
 occurred during my remarks. I said that the Union 
 even if patched up to-morrow, would speedily fall to 
 pieces. A few persons raised a clamour at this, and 
 old Smith, the American Consul, rose on the platform 
 in a rage, and cried, shaking his staff, " The American 
 Union will last after all other governments are gone!" 
 I repeated the sentence three or four times in a storm 
 of mingled hisses and cheers, until I was allowed to 
 proceed uninterruptedly. Enjoyed a quiet crack with 
 Anderson till two in the morning. He is away home, 
 and I proceed this afternoon to spend a few days in 
 the north. 
 
272 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 May. Preached rather poorly to-day. I was 
 fearfully flat in the forenoon (I think with a cold) 
 though the subject was great the dedication of the 
 temple. Lectured at night to a considerable audience 
 with much more pleasure. 
 
 ... In concluding my remarks on the parable (the 
 Good Samaritan) I referred to my own position as a 
 Millenarian. There were moments, I admitted, when 
 the Pre-Millennial Advent seemed even to me a dream 
 too good news to be true. I had been, indeed, 
 always an outlying Millenarian, holding no connec- 
 tion and having little sympathy at other points with 
 sects and persons who held the doctrine. But there 
 were moments of deep despondency which nothing but 
 the hope of a future revelation could cheer, and when 
 I felt nothing for it being impartially sick of panthe- 
 istic speculation on the one side, and of superstitious 
 pietism on the other nothing for it but despair, sullen 
 and speechless as the lips of death, or a look upwards 
 of hope and a cry upwards of eager desire. " Come, 
 Lord Jesus, come quickly ! Thou and Thou alone 
 art able to open the book of this perplexed and 
 afflictive time, and to loose the seals thereof! " 
 
 6tk May. Weighed down for two days by a horrid 
 half-formed influenza. Tried to work at " Night " last 
 evening, but could not finish a single line. I have 
 read all Kinglake's first volume on the Crimean War. 
 What pictures of the magnificent old bear of the 
 north fretting amid his snows as if they were volcanic 
 fires, with insatiate ambition and religious zeal divid- 
 ing his heart between them, " touching a bell with his 
 hand " and there is a great war of Sir Stratford 
 
JOURNAL, 1863. 273 
 
 Canning, the cool, courteous, indomitable counter- 
 actor of the Czar, wrapping up his grimmest refusals 
 in butter and honey of Palmerston, the smiling 
 master of every situation, waltzing through wars, 
 always jaunty and cool, a very icicle hanging from 
 the eaves of Bellona's temple ! of Cobden and 
 Bright, self-gagged and obliged to mutter when they 
 should have been loud and eloquent of Louis 
 Napoleon, a French silk weaver, clad in his uncle's 
 great-coat and boots, with a daring in raising critical 
 moments like demons, and a helplessness in laying or 
 commanding them, with that low ambition which 
 stamps Louis the conscious parvenu, as it did old Nap 
 the conscious brigand. They are all admirably 
 executed, and yet Kinglake is hardly a forcible or 
 felicitous writer. His style is loose and rambling, but 
 his knowledge and insight are of no ordinary kind. 
 Had he the brilliant colours and sharp antitheses of 
 Macaulay, what a book he would have made of his 
 subject ! At the same time he gives you the impres- 
 sion of truthfulness as Macaulay never does. I long 
 for the second volume. 
 
 I think with him that Cobden and Bright have 
 injured their own principle by perpetually obtruding 
 it, and above all by connecting it with a society. So 
 have the Teetotallers ; but their society works. How 
 can a Peace Society work ? Teetotalism appeals to 
 individuals, and the appeal is intelligible, but what is 
 meant by joining the Peace Society ? Every Christian 
 and every man worthy of the name is a member 
 already of a Peace Society, the great simple rule of 
 which is, " As much as lieth in you live peaceably with 
 all men." . . . To separate any one part of virtue and 
 morals from the rest, and inculcate that as the whole 
 
 T 
 
274 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 duty of man, may seem at first to give a proper 
 prominence and additional power to that principle, 
 but this is in general short-lived and illusory, a 
 reaction follows, and then the special virtue falls back 
 into its own place, and the residuum of good done is 
 seldom more than the ordinary march of society and 
 religion would have led to. 
 
 *jth May. Two requests to-day, one to attend a 
 preliminary meeting of Thomas Aird's friends, who 
 are to get up a testimonial for him on his leaving the 
 Dumfries Herald for private life. I cannot be present, 
 but have written urging them, to make the gift worthy 
 at once of the town and of its most distinguished and 
 honoured citizen. Aird has been twenty-nine years 
 in Dumfries, growing in esteem every year, until now 
 he is indisputably the man and the quiet king of the 
 place. He is sixty last August, and has a notion of 
 spending the decade from sixty to seventy in a 
 Sabbatical manner. Chalmers had the same idea, but 
 he died when sixty-seven, and his last seven years 
 were the most restless and agitated of his career. I 
 earnestly trust that Aird's wish may be fulfilled. 
 Nervous anxiety, producing the curse of sleeplessness, 
 has been his great foe. 
 
 There is to be a great conversazione of the Working 
 Men's Club, in the Hanover Square Rooms, London, 
 on Monday, and to this, Lord Brougham, Lord 
 Lyttleton, and the Dean of Chichester invite me and 
 my lady. I have seen the day when this would have 
 made me proud, now it only tells me that I have a 
 fair share of reputation, and some friends. I have 
 respectfully declined. My wife, who claims some 
 
JOURNAL, 1863. 275 
 
 tenth cousinship with Lord Brougham, laughingly 
 says it is this that has brought the invitation. So be 
 it! 
 
 %th May. I must write no more at poetry till I am 
 quite well again. 
 
 Punch is hitting hard to-day at sensational 
 literature. Yet that, like all other varieties of litera- 
 ture, must be founded upon some age, fact, or 
 principle. Our age is getting tremendously active 
 and excited, and it craves an excited literature. 
 This, if not a healthy symptom, is, at least, true to the 
 character of the time. Where murders, seductions, 
 and fearful accidents are common, there will be not 
 only matter of fact records in the newspapers, but 
 aliases of them in novels. In the room where a 
 murder is committed, while the blood is flowing on 
 the floor the mirror on the wall is reflecting it. 
 Sensationalism in literature is no novelty. We find 
 it in Werther, French novelists, the Satanic poetry of 
 Byron, et cetera. The difference now is that it has 
 got down through new channels among lower ranks 
 of readers. Sensationalism in the pulpit is no novelty 
 either. There was a Whitfield and an Orator Henley, 
 and there has been a Chalmers and an Irving as there 
 is now a Spurgeon. In journalism, too, there have 
 been a Junius and a Cobbett before the days of a 
 Saturday Review. What is Punch itself but a 
 repertory of sensation jokes, which was preceded by 
 Joe Miller and by The Anti- Jacobin? The worst of 
 sensationalism is that it augurs a certain degeneracy. 
 . . . In religion it is revivalism, and what a pitiful 
 thing has the history of that been, on the whole ! 
 
276 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 Same day. There are at present in our churches a 
 number of half-developed, clever and cultivated men, 
 but none, perhaps, of whom any but their own familiar 
 friends expect much that is permanently great. If 
 I am wrong about John Cairns he has revenge in his 
 own power. Let him fill the ample round of the 
 Csesarean laurels already voted to him with the 
 Caesarean head ! Dr. Cunningham, who was a 
 singularly able and honest man, is gone without ful- 
 filling his destiny. Ere he could become the cowl to 
 Calvin he was taken away. Dr. W. Lindsay Alex- 
 ander can hardly now be called the coming man, since 
 he has been some thirty years before the public, the 
 facile princeps of the Congregational body in Scotland, 
 and ranking with the foremost of his church in 
 England. He is highly accomplished, in some depart- 
 ments even learned, a clear and animated writer, a 
 good speaker, kindling at times into fiery logic or 
 eloquent declamation. Yet he wants some of the 
 elements of greatness. His geniality as well as his 
 temper is doubtful. A great man may want the 
 latter witness Burke but cannot want the former. 
 Alexander has a deal of affectation about him, and is 
 only in part progressive, for ever sounding a retreat 
 after proclaiming an advance. As to the Establish- 
 ment, Robertson of the High Church I considerably 
 respect as a clear-brained, solid, well-cultured, and 
 worthy man, but have no hope in his deliverances, nor, 
 I suspect, has any one else. Caird [now Principal 
 Caird] besides being eloquent, is a very refined, lucid, 
 and candid thinker, but he dare not say in full what 
 he thinks. . . . The real want, after all, among our 
 Scottish and our English divines, too, is not talent 
 and learning, but genius, or else honesty. They have 
 
JOURNAL 1863, 277 
 
 either not the genius to see or not the honesty to 
 speak about the real evils and difficulties of the time, 
 and they trust too much in the power of multitudes 
 and money, the vis inertia of custom, and a hundred 
 other refuges of lies, instead of going boldly and 
 frankly forward and telling the world that its difficul- 
 ties and their difficulties are the same. 
 
 May. Preached twice to-day with animation 
 and some pleasure, although contradicted sorely by a 
 hoarseness. In the forenoon was rather enlarged 
 toward the close, speaking of the pleasure in the 
 fulfilment of a great purpose my subject " The 
 Temple of Solomon." I quoted Gibbon's delightful 
 account of his completion of " The Decline and Fall," 
 saying, however, that the position of a man who 
 submits cheerfully to the failure of a great design is 
 grander still. I closed by speaking of God's delight 
 when His plan of human salvation shall be finished, 
 and the immense majority of the human race shall be 
 brought home. 
 
 i6tk May. See the Synod's decision about the 
 union with the Free Church. They have leapt for- 
 ward to the appointment of a committee. This union 
 I have never liked. It does not proceed from any 
 desire for union in the majority of the members or 
 perhaps the ministers of either Church. . . . The 
 aggrandising and absorbing spirit is one of the worst 
 symptoms of our day. The parties had better go to 
 school to be taught some of the signs of the times. 
 
 Have felt depressed to-day. Mr. G. of Greenock 
 
278 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 called, and we had a little more talk. [They had met 
 an evening or two before at a private party.] He 
 thinks Dr. Caird pretty far gone in Mauricianism. I 
 don't know, and don't very much care. Mauricianism 
 is a mist, certainly, but it is a mountain mist, and 
 there may be a day behind it. Mr. G. had heard 
 Caird preach on the manna in the wilderness, and he 
 complained that Christ was never mentioned. Caird 
 probably shrinks from that vulgar typology which 
 abounds, and which, in its excess, has so perplexed 
 the meaning of the Old Testament. But as Christ 
 seems to apply the figure to Himself, we may apply 
 it too. 
 
 On reflection, Christ seems rather to contrast 
 Himself with the manna in the wilderness when 
 He says, " I am the bread of life." 
 
 I have read to-day the most of Kinglake's second 
 volume. It is somewhat too sensibly perfumed with 
 prejudice against the French. His account of the 
 battle of the Alma is Homer, but Homer in the 
 land of the lotos-eaters. He crawls and makes you 
 crawl with him up the heights. The battle seems to 
 last a century. And yet there are points of great 
 power, such as the fate of the tall Russian who was 
 the soul of his battalion, the arrival of Lord Raglan 
 at the top of the hill, and the charge of the Highland 
 Brigade. Raglan figures very strikingly, with his 
 quiet decision, his brief irresistible words, and his 
 armless sleeve wagging out victory. Since the days 
 of the gallant Widdrington heroes have been all the 
 more interesting for mutilation. Had Napoleon 
 limped on one leg he might have led the old guard 
 to a triumphal Waterloo. A head is almost the only 
 thing necessary to a general. 
 
JOURNAL, 1863. 279 
 
 ijth May. Mr. M. of Glasgow, a Wesleyan, 
 preached for me in the afternoon. He is a severe, 
 Puritan-looking man, with a sad, stern, half-squinting 
 eye. He is said to be a good scholar, and his sermon 
 from Ezekiel' i. 26 " On the likeness of the throne 
 there was the likeness of a man," was almost great 
 here and there, something in the style of Owen's 
 " Meditations." No fancy or foliage, but, to me at 
 least, almost riveting. 
 
 2Oth May. A rumour to-day of an armistice 
 between the American armies. Would it were true ! 
 The fight at Fredericksburg is appalling. Three days 
 of butchery, with the May sun looking on and the 
 May flowers soaking in gore. What a record the 
 private history of that hideous war must be when 
 written. Anderson told me a story of a little fellow 
 who, when he saw his brother returning mutilated, 
 nay mangled, burst into a passion of tears and almost 
 immediately expired. 
 
 2ist May. No news to-day of any certainty, 
 though there is a rumour that Hooker has surren- 
 dered. In "Old Mortality" Scott alludes to those 
 strange avant-coureurs reports of real events which 
 outstrip all the regular means of communication, and 
 seem as if carried by the birds of the air. Does a 
 strong presentiment, working on a mind or minds 
 anxiously concerned, and well acquainted with the 
 probabilities, lead to some prophetic utterance ? 
 Whatever the cause, the fact is certain. Scott does 
 not seek to explain, but says merely that such 
 
280 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 rumours, correct in the main point, though inaccurate 
 in detail, are not unlike the shadows of coming events 
 which occupy the mind of the Highland seer. 
 
 [The Journal records, from day to day, the news 
 of this terrible war, in which Mr. Gilfillan's sympathies 
 were not so engaged by the North as might have been 
 expected from his passionate and devoted service of 
 the emancipation cause. He did not see what is now 
 evident, that it was bound to become an emancipation 
 struggle as it went on. For Gilfillan, as for his friend 
 Aird, it was a struggle of independence chiefly, and 
 the lover of Kossuth and of Mazzini gave some 
 applause to the gallant spirit of the Southern States. 
 But, he adds, " I have no profound liking for either 
 party."] 
 
 2$tk May. Preached in the evening, yesterday, to 
 a good though not crowded house on the proposed 
 union,* which I opposed decidedly. 
 
 Stonewall Jackson is dead. He fevered with the 
 amputation of his wounded arm, and has, I dare say, 
 retreated reluctantly from a scene where he played 
 so peculiar a part. He was the Rupert-Cromwell of 
 the South, resembling Rupert in his fiery charge, and 
 Cromwell in his iron energy and religious enthusiasm. 
 He must be a great loss to the South, but the North 
 will not wear mourning for him. 
 
 26th May. Leave to-day for a few days in Comrie. 
 The weather is not yet very genial. I intend taking 
 
 * Ecclesiastical union in Scotland. 
 
JOURNAL, 1863. 281 
 
 this Journal and my poem with me, and doing a little 
 to both in that quiet valley and under those hills 
 standing stately in their everlasting musings. I have 
 often written best at Comrie the best portions of the 
 " Destiny of the Bible " in the " Bards " for example. 
 
 2Jth May. Comrie. Reached this last night. The 
 ride west from Crieff in the evening was charming, 
 though cold. The north-west sky was floating in paley 
 gold, and the contrast between it and the blue ethereal 
 evening hills and the fresh new foliage of the woods 
 was extremely fine. The road from CriefT to Comrie, 
 on the northern approach, runs through a nearly 
 uninterrupted avenue of trees. The village, as you 
 come to it from the east, has a sweetly sheltered look, 
 trees and woods clustering fondly round it on all 
 sides save the south, where the country is bare and 
 cold looking. The great Grampians look lovingly on, 
 walling in the whole. To-day is bleak and grey, but 
 cannot keep down the beautiful aspect of the place. 
 
 May. Returned from Comrie last evening. 
 It was on the whole a pleasant little run. I strayed 
 by my old rivers ; saw the pools I used to bathe in 
 when a boy ; dipped my feet in the bright green 
 blaeberry bushes which are just losing their delicate 
 blossom and have not yet gained their fruit, but are 
 this season peculiarly rich; and stared and better 
 stared at the fine, old mountains, although these have 
 not yet clothed themselves fully with the ferns and 
 grass of summer. Yesterday I had a drive to Loch 
 Earn, and seldom enjoyed the dear valley, which 
 
282 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 winds up to it, better. Aberuchill Castle still stands 
 white amidst its great, green trees and below its bold, 
 bleak mountains. Dalchonzie lurks still amid its 
 woods and still listens to the near voice of its faithful 
 bard, the Earn. Still under the shadow of the high, 
 precipitous, razor-ridged mountain of Dundurn cowers 
 the young Ochil, as I used to call it, the verdant 
 little hill of St. Fillans, looking at present exquisitely 
 lovely, so fresh is the green which flushes out at 
 every crevice of its rocks. And still Loch Earn 
 breaks blue into sight surrounded by its deep setting 
 of hills, gemmed with two small, meek islands, and, 
 as I saw it yesterday, touched by the north-west wind 
 into crested billows. I did not go far enough up the 
 loch to see Ben Voirlich, but had always the idea 
 that he was behind that screen of meaner hills. I saw 
 near Dunira one or two trees, of the ash species, 
 I think, with leaves so yellow that they seemed verit- 
 able leaves of gold. It was fine in returning eastward 
 to catch the first glimpse of Melville's Monument 
 looking west above its dark firs and suggesting the 
 memory of the marvellous view commanded from the 
 hill which is its pedestal. The ride by coach to 
 Crieff in the afternoon through the avenue of trees 
 was very pleasing, and the golden eagle of the 
 evening expanding its cloudless wings over Perth, 
 Kinfauns, the Tay, and the Carse of Gowrie, was 
 sublime. 
 
 Yet ere I left Strathearn disenchantment had 
 begun. I saw at Crieff the debate in the Free Church 
 Assembly on the Union. How ridiculous the hope 
 repeatedly expressed in the discussion that the union 
 of the two bodies would form an era in the history 
 of the Church and create a compact and invulnerable 
 
JOURNAL, 1863. 283 
 
 phalanx against the assaults of sceptics. Candlish 
 gives the new church its name the Free United 
 Church. He points out its future professors, includ- 
 ing all the present of both denominations, and John 
 Cairns besides. He settles for ever its theology, dis- 
 cipline, and worship. It is to be " Calvinistic, Pres- 
 byterian, Non-Erastian," and to have no novelties. 
 It is also to "nationalise" the Church. What a 
 pleasant, little programme he seems to have carried 
 in his pocket and suddenly produced. 
 
 2nd June. Resumed " Night " yestereve and wrote 
 nearly fifty lines. Have come now to characterise 
 old Young of the Night Thoughts "- 
 
 " The bard, what d'ye call him, that wore the black gown." 
 Must at him again in the evening. 
 
 7 P.M. Feel I cannot write poetry to-night. I am 
 not in a specially good trim. I have seen some in- 
 stances to-day of the selfishness and falsehood of 
 human nature which are almost incredible. . . . 
 I sometimes wonder, looking at the mad contest of 
 this world as a whole, that the Great Umpire has not 
 long ago dropt his warder as in the ancient tourna- 
 ments and brought the bloody and miserable scene 
 to a close. 
 
 I see Aird's dinner noticed in a paper to-day. 
 Sixty gentlemen sat down and they gave the dear 
 " Old Bachelor " a piece or pieces of plate. That 
 plate somehow jars on my feelings in reference to 
 such a man. 
 
284 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 une. Yesterday the morning was wet, but at 
 9 o'clock it cleared up and we started for the Den 
 of Airlie. It was altogether a delightful excursion. 
 The river Islay, a few miles above the old castle of 
 Airlie, enters a gorge or glen with uncommonly steep 
 and lofty banks covered generally with trees, and 
 through that it winds, now tormented by rocks, and 
 now gliding smoothly over a smooth channel for 
 about five or six miles when it gains the open coun- 
 try. The great charm of the whole glen lies in the 
 variety of its scenes and in the fine gradations by 
 which it rises from the beauty of the lower den, 
 through the boldness of the upper to the terrific 
 grandeur of the " Slugs." The only scene I ever saw 
 approaching it is one on the banks of the Findhorn 
 near Forres ; and that has nothing quite so grand as 
 the " Slugs." The castle itself is that " Bonnie House 
 o' Airlie " famous in song. 
 
 6tk June. John Cairns writes me to-day gravely 
 objecting to the introduction of the Union into the 
 pulpit and defending the Union. The letter is friendly 
 in its tone. In answer to it I take the ground of the 
 broader latitude I would give to the pulpit than he, 
 and tell him, in fine, that I think the Union would be 
 a heavy blow and great discouragement to the cause 
 of real, enlightened, truth-seeking, Catholic Christ- 
 ianity. 
 
 I see a report of Aird's dinner to-day in the Dum- 
 fries Herald. His speech is exceedingly fine ; modest, 
 tasteful, and full of quiet beauty ; only his allusion 
 to the labours required in a weekly paper makes one 
 smile. His have always been, in proportion to those 
 
JOURNAL, 1863. 285 
 
 of many other editors, exceedingly light. But he is 
 nervous, and a little work goes a great way with him. 
 His retreat altogether is a most dignified one. 
 
 gtk June. In reply to another letter from John 
 Cairns, in which he speaks of "preserving the vital 
 principles of Calvinism," I tell him that I am not 
 aware of any vital principles in Calvinism which are 
 not in many other isms included under the general 
 name of Christianity, and that I deplore the continued 
 identification of Calvinism with Christianity in Scot- 
 land. Perhaps we were not yet ripe for the revising 
 of our creeds ; but I did not expect much effectual 
 aid in this matter from the Union. I said that this 
 is a time for going forward, not backward, for pursu- 
 ing honest and profound inquiry, not for re-swearing 
 with half heart and in their entirety the dogmas of 
 the past. It is quite clear from his letters that 
 Cairns is in no way a progressionist. 
 
 loth June. A note from Gall & Inglis who have 
 bought the copyright of the "Covenanters" and wish 
 me to revise it a little for a new edition. I ought to 
 have secured that copyright for myself when it was 
 sold, with a view to a complete edition of my works. 
 I sometimes wish that I had never had anything to 
 do with publishers ; and yet, at one time, there was 
 nothing for me between ruin and becoming an author. 
 I may get into the new edition my introductory 
 chapter on history (omitted in the second edition), 
 one of the best things I ever wrote. 
 
 In the evening, which was warm and beautiful after 
 
286 GEORGE G1LF1LLAN. 
 
 a thunder-storm, wrote with considerable force and 
 pleasure at "Night." Am at present describing 
 Byron's " Night;" then I have Wordsworth's, Shelley's, 
 and perhaps Tennyson's, and Bailey's, and so through 
 with one book of my work. Feel rather dull and 
 hopeless to-day, but must not allow my mind to 
 submit to moods, and should not, perhaps, allow my 
 pen so often to record them. 
 
 Have just got and read Croly's posthumous book 
 on Job. It has interested and yet greatly disap- 
 pointed me. It is for one thing far too short, and as 
 an investigation of the many questions connected 
 with that most difficult book is extremely imperfect. 
 Of the high poetic glory of the book, where I thought 
 he would have shone, he says little or nothing, and 
 on the difficulties connected with the speech of the 
 Deity he is carefully silent. He is greatly too cavalier 
 in his treatment of other writers on the subject, and 
 is evidently not deep in its literature. His notion 
 that the book is a typal prophecy of the history of the 
 Jews is ingenious enough, but rests on little evidence. 
 The style, however, has all the clear energy of his 
 earlier days, although less of the metaphorical and 
 brilliant. No single fine passage, such as you might 
 have expected from the author of Salathiel, occurs 
 throughout. I greatly doubt if his son has consulted 
 his father's reputation in publishing this little work. 
 The biography is brief and, of course, highly laudatory; 
 too much so for my estimate at least, which was yet 
 high. I admired Croly greatly for his manhood and 
 manly sense, for his honesty, genius, and true Milesian 
 impetuosity of character. But I thought him hide- 
 bound in his political and religious views, with no 
 progressiveness as a thinker. Still withal I loved and 
 
JOURNAL, 1863. 287 
 
 honoured him, and he was far more generous to me 
 than most of my brethren in Scotland. He lived to 
 be eighty years of age and died as he wished to die 
 in a moment, bending not till he broke. (It was his 
 desire to fall asleep in his arm-chair and waken in 
 another world, and this was nearly his fate.) His 
 son writes with fluency and vigour, but I think errs 
 first in not giving some of his father's letters, which 
 were exceedingly racy, and in their free dashing force 
 gave you a high idea of his powers ; and secondly in 
 over-estimating his value as a theological author and 
 as a preacher. To prefer him as an orator to Curran 
 and Grattan is simply ridiculous. His sermons, 
 though clear and manly and often eloquent, were not 
 in the first style of the art He had astonishing 
 industry, no small genius, versatility almost unmatched, 
 prodigious force of character, profound though narrow 
 piety ; and how was he rewarded ? By public and 
 clerical neglect. Sir George Sinclair wrote me that 
 he had again and again tried to move various 
 admirers to take action in Croly's behalf, and had 
 always failed. Nevertheless he was highly re- 
 spected. 
 
 Going to hear him preach one Sabbath evening, 
 and speaking to him at the close, he said he would 
 have asked me to supper had it not been for some 
 domestic circumstance. Little did I guess what that 
 was, and I was amazed to hear it when I dined with 
 him two days afterwards. He had that Sabbath 
 buried his only daughter, a delightful girl of nine ; 
 and yet had preached twice and never displayed by 
 word or look or sign his feelings. .Nor was this 
 stoicism ; for his family all testify that he was a man 
 of warm heart, and his son relates that he was unable 
 
288 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 to preach for some time after. It was high principle 
 and self-command. 
 
 June. Read last evening and to-day a portion 
 of Coleridge [notes on Shakespeare]. It is, as I ex- 
 pected, a shower of scattered gems, some of them 
 very precious, but not many of them new. I hope to 
 say more of parts of it afterwards. Meanwhile he is very 
 unjust to his contemporaries, such as Southey, Scott, 
 and Campbell. He thinks " Kehama/' a work of great 
 talent and ingenuity, but not of genius. Well ! call it 
 what you choose, it wields a most potent spell over 
 the fancy, and the closing part is awfully and especially 
 sublime. Scott's rhymed romances are not great 
 poems, but they are so delightful that, in spite of 
 Coleridge, the delight will overflow into other ages as 
 it has already into all lands. But he specially under- 
 rates Campbell when he speaks of him as a mere 
 pretty and popular versifier. In exquisite morsels of 
 beauty (like crumbs from the table of Heaven !) no 
 poet, not Coleridge, nor Wordsworth, nor Shakespeare 
 has surpassed Campbell. In general classic elegance 
 and true taste he ranks with Horace and Virgil. 
 His pathos in "O'Connor's Child" is profound ; and 
 he has a certain sober yet enthusiastic sublimity, as in 
 "Lochiel's Warning," and "The Last Man," all his 
 own. His misfortune was that he did not, like Scott, 
 proceed after his early success to dig out new worlds 
 of creation from the depths of his mind ; but that 
 arose from causes with which poor Coleridge could 
 only too deeply sympathise. Bulwer, who knew 
 Campbell well, speaks lately in Blackivood with the 
 greatest admiration of his conversation as now and 
 
JOURNAL, 1863. 289 
 
 then, in favourable circumstances revealing the real 
 extent and riches of his mind. But he was sparing 
 and slow in turning his bullion into circulating gold ; 
 and hence the misapprehension so common as to the 
 limitations of his genius. 
 
 igthjune. Went to Auchtermuchty Fast yesterday 
 at 6 A.M. Hate these early risings in the raw morning. 
 Preached on the " Virgins " and " Beloved now are we 
 the sons of God." The day became beautiful. The 
 Lomond twins, after a short grand struggle with the 
 morning mist gained on it, and basked in noon-day sun- 
 shine, which also bathed beautifully the glad green fat 
 valley of the Eden with all its fields and groves. Met 
 my old friend George Jeffrey, of Glasgow, and brought 
 him with me here. We walked to Ladybank, four or 
 five miles, and had a long confidential conversation 
 about old friends and old times. George wears well, 
 is full of hearty laughter, genial converse, and that 
 kind of information which is got rather by travel and 
 much mingling with society than by reading. He 
 talked much in favour of the union, but did not con- 
 vince me. . . . He is a man I warmly love, and who 
 warmly loves me. He is a prodigious favourite with 
 all my family circle. To-day he has left. I go to- 
 morrow to Stirling to my brother's sacrament. 
 
 22nd June. Have come from Stirling. It was 
 rather a pleasant visit. Went in the evening of 
 Saturday to the Back Walk, and thence to the esplan- 
 ade of the Castle. What a deluge of glory fell from 
 that glowing west on the unrivalled landscape, the 
 
 U 
 
290 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 blue giants of the Highlands circling in Rob Ro/s 
 country, Ben Lomond and Ben Ledi throwing out their 
 forms boldly upon the valley, the bashful Ben Venue 
 retiring behind, the Alps of Arrochar diminished in 
 the far distance in the north-west into the likeness of 
 blue toys, and in the north-east Ben Voirlich and 
 Stuicknachroan looking as if they did not belong to 
 Monteith at all, but were bending eastward their 
 proud heads as if to say, " We are the guardians of 
 Strathearn, which our western brethren do not see." 
 On the other side were the links of Forth, turning and 
 winding, reluctant to leave a scene so fair, while the 
 green masses of the Ochils looked down calmly upon 
 the intervolved struggle. It was an enrapturing scene, 
 the loveliest of landscapes caught in its very brightest 
 moment, and painted by the sun in his fairest colours. 
 To-day has been windy and showery though warm. 
 Had no enjoyment and not much feeling of any kind 
 on the road homeward through heavy rain. 
 
 [On this occasion the old manuscript book with the 
 essay on the " Covenanters," of which we have heard, 
 was put into his hands.] 
 
 June. Wrote eighty lines of " Night " yestreen, 
 finishing the picture of Byron and commencing Shelley. 
 From my sermon on " Night " recently delivered, I 
 may put down something here. After some general 
 remarks on night as a season of darkness, sleep, 
 dreams, silence, I said it was also the season of a great 
 enduring and increasing Apocalypse the revelation 
 of the worlds and systems which fill immensity. 
 Night after night the stars come forth, smiling and 
 trembling in their loveliness, the everlasting brides- 
 
JOURNAL, 1863. 291 
 
 maids of the happy sky. And not only so, they are 
 multiplying to our sight as the ages roll on and the 
 powers of the telescope are being increased. Night 
 proclaims God's glory. Think how the variety and 
 depth of the Divine resources are attested by the 
 multitude of these orbs, and by the innumerable diver- 
 sities of their construction and constitution. Think 
 how His truth can be inferred from the regularity 
 with which they rise and set, come and go, pursue 
 their paths, " never resting, never hasting." If God's 
 servants have been so faithful, how faithful must their 
 Master be ! ... I spoke of the proof night gives of 
 the greatness of man. That man as to his soul is not 
 sprung from the ape, that he is made in the image of 
 God, that from God he has come and to God is 
 returning, and that his soul has the stamp of Divinity, 
 need no other evidence than night. Other animals 
 cower in terror below or look with lack-lustre eye up 
 to the heavens. Man admires them, loves them, 
 aspires to them, reads their history, discovers their 
 laws, sings their glory, and upon the stars as upon 
 unnumbered flaming altars presents his homage to 
 God. Nay, man is taught by night to feel his soul 
 so much greater than all the materialism of the 
 universe that he refuses to worship it either in part or 
 in whole, and will worship only the Great Spirit from 
 whom it has sprung. Let no one think that in saying 
 this I am unduly magnifying man. It is not man I 
 magnify at all, it is the soul of man which in its better 
 and higher nature is directly from God. Is it not 
 written, " There is a spirit in man, and the inspiration 
 of the Almighty giveth him understanding." And the 
 magnitude and power of that spirit are nowhere seen 
 to such advantage as in the mirror of midnight, and 
 
292 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 man has never achieved greater triumphs than in his 
 researches into the solemn mysteries and inexorable 
 laws of the starry heavens. 
 
 In conclusion I spoke of night as an emblem and 
 season of sin. Under its canopy walk abroad the 
 children of evil, not deterred by darkness, not frightened 
 by spectres, not solemnised by the heavy shadows, not 
 spiritualised and softened by the shining stars. Were 
 the canopy of night raised for but an hour by some 
 supernatural hand, what sights and sounds of iniquity 
 would be disclosed, and how would the moral beholders 
 shudder and turn away ! And there was a day coming 
 when it should be raised and the hidden things of 
 darkness brought to light. 
 
 And then I spoke of the night being far spent, and 
 the day being at hand. Our age was an age of doubt. 
 Many were doubting everything, all were doubting 
 something. But the morning twilight was, I trusted, 
 to be followed by the rising of a day the loveliest, 
 longest, and last, that should dawn on earth. 
 
 29//z June. See in the Glasgow Citizen extracts 
 from A. Smith's new book, " Dreamthorp." They 
 are clever, full of ingenious fancies, but want strength, 
 body, and earnestness. Yet the Citizen compares 
 him to Hazlitt and Lamb. His account of a lark 
 rising from the foot of a scaffold, where two men 
 were to be executed, is spoiled by affectation and 
 over-doing. His picture of the imaginary Dream- 
 thorp is very good. Smith has, undoubtedly, more 
 genius than J. Brown (of " Rab and His Friends "), 
 but neither of them will take a high, permanent rank- 
 as an essayist. Smith was best in his fresh, gushing, 
 
JOURNAL, 1863. 293 
 
 youthful poetry. What rare delight I had, in 1851, 
 perusing it in MS. Youth was, unquestionably, his 
 Helicon, and he is travelling away from it every day, 
 never, I think, to meet with a new fountain of equal 
 richness or lustre. 
 
 5//z July. Finished an article on Spinoza for the 
 Christian Spectator last Wednesday, and sent it off to 
 London. It will not please the strait-laced, but will 
 the thoughtful. Met some clerical brethren at Stir- 
 ling. Old Pringle, of Newcastle, and MacKerrow, of 
 Bridge of Teith, were there, the former a youth of 
 eighty-four. MacKerrow's power of humour is hardly 
 so strong as it used to be. 
 
 Finished this evening the book of my poem 
 entitled "The Poets of Night." I have omitted 
 Bailey and closed with Shelley, which, I think, is 
 worthy of the theme. Find the book to consist of 
 1210 lines, about the average size of the books in the 
 " Night Thoughts." 
 
 July. The Rev. David Groom, of Edinburgh, 
 has been here spending the day. He is a singularly 
 manly and agreeable person, somewhere, I fancy, 
 about fifty-three, but looks older. He has a great 
 deal of heart, a good, sound, but not wide intellect, 
 warm and healthy literary tastes, and a power of 
 vigorous, effective, and sometimes impassioned, preach- 
 ing. I heard him, twenty-seven years ago in Stirling, 
 on Justification, and formed then my opinion of him 
 as a first-rate preacher in his own style clear, deci- 
 sive, with a body of logic ending in a tail of practical 
 
294 GEORGE GILF1LLAN. 
 
 and piercing fire. I like him now best for his auld- 
 warld sympathies, his admiration of Strathearn divines 
 of the past, especially of Jameson, of Methven, and 
 his genial, manly manners. 
 
 Croom thinks that the Union is not at all popular 
 with the United Presbyterian laymen, and that among 
 them the chief resistance to it will be found. Lay- 
 men when out of, or perhaps sometimes most when 
 in, clerical surveillance, see matters pretty clearly, 
 and form tolerably sound deductions. Pity their 
 education in our body is so much neglected ! But 
 truth is a mighty and subtle element, piercing all 
 quarters. Blind-seeming often as heat, it is all-seeing 
 as light, and must one day be the only atmosphere 
 of thinking minds. And to dwell in the love of truth 
 is to dwell in truth. * The vestibule and the temple 
 are one. The love of truth is, in one sense, more 
 valuable than truth itself, because it is a moral 
 quality, an individual excellency. Yet, how rarely is 
 it met with ! Cuvier told the late Dr. Knox that, 
 among all the students who attended his classes and 
 demonstrations, a prodigious number, he remembered 
 only four or five who were actuated by a sincere 
 and profound love for truth. When you talk to some 
 persons of any one being consumed by a love of 
 truth, the response is a laugh. And yet we see every 
 day persons consumed by the love of man, by 
 benevolence ; and why not others by the love of 
 truth ? If ever man was, it was Arnold, and I think 
 some of his school, such as Stanley and Jowett, have 
 taken after him. Under the pressure of formulas and 
 the fear of popular opinion, the love of truth is 
 crushed, and this trampling down of a natural desire 
 is confounded with humility. The Scottish thinker 
 
JOURNAL, 1863. 295 
 
 " lets I dare not wait upon I would." He walks 
 under the grim shadow of his Confession as under a 
 thunder-cloud, ever looking up lest lightning should 
 break out from it and consume him. Worse still are 
 his solemn headshakings and awful whispered con- 
 demnations of all aberrations of thought. Hence the 
 poor, lame, mindless cast of our religious literature, in 
 which, instead of the exquisite elegance of Hall, the 
 grave, bold energy of Foster, the reverent daring of 
 Arnold, and the mixture of profound thought and 
 poetic beauty in Robertson of Brighton, you have 
 only such wretched pietistic drivel as these books, 
 " Heaven our Home " ; Guthrie's clever but overdone 
 pictorialisms ; Brown's heavy and lumbering com- 
 mentaries ; and Cunningham's strong but belated 
 apologies for the indefensible and panegyrics on the 
 dogmas of the past. Indeed, Scotland has hardly 
 produced any great religious writer, although it has 
 produced great preachers ; nor can it, or England 
 either, show one religious thinker to be compared to 
 Schleiermacher the German. . 
 
 July. Feel the heat to-day almost intolerable. 
 Nothing like it, they say, since 1842. That was a 
 miserable summer, on the whole, with me. I was 
 astray in mind and heart. Agnes Vallentine was 
 newly dead. My congregation was in poor plight, 
 my spirits dull in general. And yet, I have joyful 
 recollections connected with it, of victorious preach- 
 ings, of one or two half-inspired hours at my desk, 
 and, towards the close, of a delightful visit to Comrie, 
 and of intercourse with Samuel Brown, though I 
 remember writing to Aird that it had been the most 
 
296 GEORGE GILF1LLAN. 
 
 wretched summer I ever spent. What a benevolent 
 provision, in looking back upon the past, to find that 
 gloom has become gladness in the retrospect even 
 as a thunder-cloud looks beautiful as it floats away 
 and that the points of interest and enjoyment such 
 as a resplendent autumn eve, the writing of a passage 
 of my " Gallery," the sight of the Queen visiting her 
 northern capital and of the blazing beacons which 
 shone upon a hundred hills the evening before to 
 announce her approach ; a conversation with a gifted 
 man from Edinburgh, as we walked in the Magdalen 
 Green one heavenly October evening ; a vision I saw 
 at Milnathort ; a walk I had home from Pitrodie, 
 where poor Thomas Nicol was lying on that bed 
 from which he never rose ; the hearing the Alchymist 
 describe the annihilation of the universe in a lecture 
 at the Watt Institution ; a visit to the monument at 
 Comrie during the death of the autumn, perhaps the 
 loveliest autumn I ever beheld ; the visiting of the 
 Watt exhibition, and the sight of a picture, Christ and 
 the woman of Samaria, which moved and melted me 
 as picture never did before or since these, and a 
 number of other spots of light, stand out amidst the 
 darkness of the year and are for ever cherished in my 
 memory and heart. 
 
 i^th July. Wrote yesterday some fifty lines of 
 " Night" Summer and autumn evenings are, 
 I think, most propitious to poetry which aims at no 
 second flight. I continue to feel undiminished 
 enthusiasm for the subject. 
 
 No news from America to-day. The weather 
 rather cloudy and not quite so hot. Am going to 
 
JOURNAL, 1863. 297 
 
 West Ferry for a sea bath. Well do I remember, 
 some fifteen years ago, returning from bathing in the 
 sea, and finding a copy of " Festus " from the author 
 waiting me, and my gladness thereat. 
 
 Enjoyed my dip. The sky has become cloudier, 
 with a fresh pleasant easterly breeze, the yellow ray- 
 less sun, the very quintessence of heat, sailing behind 
 yet visible all through the clouds. I was struck with 
 the peculiar redness of the reflected light upon the 
 ocean and the house walls and doors. The feeling 
 this evening is nearly autumnal, the most delightful 
 feeling nature can bestow, suggesting 
 
 " Joy beyond the name of pleasure, 
 
 Deep self-possession and intense repose." 
 
 No demon would ever have dreamed of creating 
 spring or autumn. These are two perpetual pledges 
 of a happy futurity to mankind. 
 
 17/7* July. Have got a short note from Logan. 
 He seems environed in his quarrels with the League. 
 Glad to have heard from him. 
 
 This day bright but breezy. There have been two 
 frosty mornings, and all things portend an early 
 autumn and an abundant harvest. Visited eight or 
 nine families in Lochee yesterday. Saw my old 
 opponent Young of Ellon's " Sermons " lying in the 
 house of one of them. Remembered how savagely 
 I lashed it in 1849. It has a preface by Dr. Young, 
 of Perth, which I likened, I remember, to an old 
 prophet introducing his ass. This was rather severe. 
 Young [of Ellon] was a man of ability, but dark and 
 envious. His book, which was posthumous, did not 
 
298 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 sell, and hence I was amazed to see a copy of it in a 
 poor man's house in this neighbourhood. 
 
 uly. Preached twice to-day, in the forenoon 
 on Solomon's fall, in a quiet vein. In the afternoon 
 I was nearer the mark on the words, " When Christ 
 who is your life shall appear," &c. An old sermon, 
 as far back as 1839, but, as I do not always do with 
 old sermons, gave it with freshness and force. Spoke 
 of Christ as our Life, the Source of all life, animal, 
 spiritual, celestial ; of His first appearance ' the 
 source of life in a babe and dying on a cross ; of His 
 second coming, its when unknown, its Jiow unknown, 
 its consequences wonderful, " Ye shall appear with 
 Him in glory." I painted His appearance ; His brow 
 the placid marble. His eye the fiery flame, His form 
 the ideal grace and beauty, darkness that might be 
 felt behind Him, light ineffable and full of glory above 
 and around Him, and beneath Him devouring fire ; 
 but owned that all this was conjecture. We were to 
 appear with Him. It were much to appear with Him 
 in disgrace, darkness, and shame ; but we were to 
 appear with Him in glory. The primitive martyrs 
 appeared with Him in fire, the Waldenses in blood 
 what time the bloody Piedmontese threw mother 
 with infant down the rocks and the Covenanters in 
 wretched rags and poverty ; but the people of God 
 were to appear with Him in glory. 
 
 2Oth July. Heard from Aird this morning. He is 
 about to visit his native district. He greatly com- 
 mends Waddell's "Discourses" which I have not read 
 
JOURNAL, 1863. 299 
 
 in whole. From parts, however, I think Waddell is 
 far from a satisfying writer, and that his resources are 
 not equal to the position he has assumed. In reply, 
 I tell Aird about my poem on " Night," and speak of 
 it with considerable confidence. 
 
 21 st July. Newspapers filled with details of the 
 horrible butcheries in America. 
 
 Go out to Newtyle to-day for a few hours. Still no 
 proofs nor letters. Must learn to 
 " labour." 
 
 22nd July. Was delighted with Strathmore, 
 especially with Schiehallion. I never saw him stand 
 out more boldly. It seemed an alias of Atlas, a 
 pillar bearing up the blue arch of heaven. And what 
 a wave of green spread out below with thousands of 
 fringing woods. To-day has brought us some gentle 
 dropping rains. 
 
 Revs. H. MacGill and G. Jeffrey here last night. 
 I read them " Pilatus " and a good deal of " Night." 
 Both professed much pleasure, and think it my best 
 production. We had three good hours' discussion of 
 the Colenso question. I find them not dogmatic but 
 timid. I was sorry to differ from such lovable and 
 intelligent men. They want a new and sound theory 
 of inspiration in the first place construction to go 
 before demolition. I want demolition first and then 
 construction. Of course, if the demolisher works 
 under some constructive idea, he will more effectually 
 gain even his negative purpose. But even without 
 these he may do good. 
 
300 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 2$th July. Jeffrey left yesterday. He and I argued 
 rather much and warmly ; yet I like him better the 
 longer I know him. He is a most kindly man, per- 
 haps a little too much given, as he says, to weigh and 
 measure character instead of coming at it intuitively. 
 
 My brother tells me that there are two classes of 
 opinion about me among the ministers of our body, 
 some being very warm admirers, others bitter 
 opponents. The former class includes, besides my 
 personal friends, many of the younger and more pro- 
 gressive spirits. The others are many of the old and 
 soberly orthodox, who do not like the privilege 
 I claim of acting and speaking for myself. Well, be 
 it so. It is not possible to please all parties, and to 
 give offence is perhaps one severe condition of telling 
 truth. 
 
 The proof of "Spinoza" has just come in. It is 
 true, and moderately written ; but, as I said before, 
 won't please all parties or probably any. 
 
 26tk July. Preached twice, nervously animated in 
 the forenoon, quiet in the afternoon. Lectured on 
 the revolt of the Ten Tribes. I said that almost all 
 revolts were successful that of the Dutch, of the 
 Puritans, &c., and so probably would be that of the 
 Southern States. Ay, and so, hitherto, is that of 
 man against his Maker. In the afternoon I preached 
 on " It is good for a man to hope and quietly wait for 
 the salvation of the Lord," which I applied, first, to 
 affliction. I said the main duties under affliction 
 were the main cures for it, patience and hope ; and 
 how often I wished a shower of these two graces to 
 descend on our large infirmary in this town, and on 
 
JOURNAL, 1863. 301 
 
 the vast infirmary we call the earth. Secondly, to the 
 position of many worthy men in society, poor, 
 struggling, kept down, while quacks were coining 
 money, villains seizing power, and impudent pre- 
 tenders monopolising fame. Let such honest men, 
 however, persevere ; let them just go on and some 
 unseen path would open among the hills. If not 
 successful themselves, they might become successful 
 in their children. At all events life was short, and, 
 if good men, there were before them durable riches and 
 righteousness. Thirdly, to the case of friends who were 
 in the gall of bitterness. Men prayed and laboured 
 long for such, till they began to blame God and to give 
 up their efforts. God was not to be blamed. He does 
 not, cannot, speaking reverently, compel men to be 
 good against their will. Let us persevere in our efforts 
 and leave the result to Him. Fourthly, to the doubt 
 and darkness of the day. We were not to back out 
 from these into Popery, but to wait and hope, assured 
 that all the vitalities of our faith would endure. And 
 finally, to the prospects of the church. God would 
 yet build up Zion in His own time, and we must 
 wait, work, and hope. 
 
 2jtk July. Enjoyed much my ride to the Ferry 
 y ester-eve. As night advanced saw the Plough shin- 
 ing in the north-west heaven with great glory. That 
 as the signal of approaching autumn is always to me 
 an inspiring sight. Gave my sermon on the Congre- 
 gation of the Dead to a very crowded house. I shall 
 set down one or two passages. 
 
 " What is truth ? " said Pilate to Christ, and went 
 out without waiting a reply. There is another ques- 
 tion which, perhaps, had Pilate asked, he would have 
 
302 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 waited for an answer ; and that he could not have 
 asked of a more competent oracle than the Lord of 
 life the question, What is death ? What means that 
 strange, awful, and universal collapse in the animal 
 economy, nay, to all appearance in the spiritual 
 system too, which we call death ? What is death ? 
 I have asked over the grave ; but there was no reply 
 save the rattling of the earth upon the coffin lid. 
 I described the congregation of the dead as, first, a 
 vast congregation ; secondly, a scattered yet united 
 congregation ; thirdly, as silent ; fourthly, as bound 
 by an oath of secrecy to reveal nothing they know 
 within the sanctuary of death ; fifthly, a congregation 
 of varied character ; sixthly, an increasing congrega- 
 tion ; and seventhly, as one yet to be disturbed, 
 awakened, raised, and divided. 
 
 In conclusion, I said there was much in these 
 meditations among the tombs to induce sad and 
 melancholy thoughts. I often had felt that the sight 
 of a large multitude, at first a cheerful becomes by- 
 and-by a dreary spectacle. The same thought which 
 is said to have brought tears to the eyes of Xerxes 
 when he saw his millions of men and reflected that in 
 a few years they would be all no more, arises in a 
 minor degree and comes the more chillingly over you 
 when you remember that you must die with them. 
 The great mystery of being, too, appears then in a 
 magnified and darkened form. Why were men such 
 as these ever created ? Why was such an exquis- 
 ite machinery as man's body, and such a brilliant 
 energy as man's soul ever permitted to subserve mean 
 purposes, to be stained by selfishness and rotted by 
 sin, and at last to sink down in utter destruction. 
 Lord, what is man ? is an inquiry which arises with 
 
JOURNAL, 1863. 303 
 
 startling force. A sense, too, of personal insignificance 
 springs up ; salutary, perhaps, but not at all agreeable. 
 We ask, what are we among so many? And how 
 much more forcibly would such feelings oppress us 
 could we realise the countless millions included in the 
 congregation of the dead ! In such a case nothing 
 but the Christian hope, ay, and that hope infused 
 into our minds anew as by a strong breath from 
 heaven, could reassure and restore us. 
 
 July. Followed poor Dr. Glen's remains 
 to-day a portion of the way to the cemetery. He 
 was always a silent man, spoke in short sentences or 
 monosyllables, and his real thought came through his 
 eyes. He was devoted to his profession, and when 
 I saw the faces of the poor and of patients, many of 
 them bathed in tears, surrounding his hearse as it 
 moved away from the Infirmary, I said "That is 
 true fame." 
 
 t July. A day of tremendous heat, which has 
 made me slightly bilious. Let me try, however, how 
 I can deal with " Night." 
 
 But first let me record this little incident. The 
 Rev. Mr. M'Gregor, of Picton, Nova Scotia, son of 
 an old friend of my father's, called to-day. A pleas- 
 ant man he seems. Talking of Longfellow's " Evan- 
 geline," he questioned its truth, and asserted that the 
 Catholics so tenderly pictured there were deservedly 
 expelled for intriguing with the Jesuits. I referred to 
 Burke, who declares that they were extirpated for 
 "pretexts which no honest man could think worth 
 
304 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 one farthing ; " and who speaks of this " poor, inno- 
 cent, deserving people, whom our utter inability to 
 govern or to reconcile gave us no sort of right to 
 extirpate." I told him that Grosart of Kinross [now 
 Dr. Grosart of Blackburn] while in America collected 
 a quantity of documents on the subject, a list of 
 which he sent me in 1852-53, urging me to found a 
 history upon them. For this I had not time then, 
 and I had not heard of the matter since. M'Gregor 
 said that other documents had been recently dis- 
 covered setting the subject in a new light. I advised 
 him to write or speak to Grosart about it. I should 
 be loath to lose my belief not only in the worth but 
 in the credibility of that fine poem. 
 
 1st August. Another glorious day, with torrid 
 sunshine, but cool and fluctuating winds. I love 
 August. This day, three years ago, it came upon me 
 amidst the wilds of Norway, having just left, the day 
 before, the magnificent Romsdal valley. That wild 
 Horn still stands up before my imagination. 
 
 I have just repulsed a poor, wandering beggar, 
 evidently a wreck, somewhat too roughly. To be 
 sure he broke in on my Saturday evening privacy, 
 and, my wife being out, I had no money to give him. 
 Still, may God forgive me ! one has no right to add 
 roughness to refusal. That poor, old, forlorn, faded 
 certificate he showed me, if it awakened a thought of 
 justice, should have also awakened feelings of com- 
 passion and charity. A tall Pole called upon me a few 
 days ago, also begging, although covering it over with 
 the offer of some pamphlet in exchange. I gave him 
 a few shillings, which he accepted thankfully, and, 
 
JOURNAL, 1863. 305 
 
 unlike many in similar plight, without looking to see 
 how much. While I was out of the room, he rushed 
 instinctively to a piano and executed some masterly 
 measures. He told me he knew Garibaldi, and 
 expressed strong admiration of a photograph of him 
 which a sailor had brought me from Italy. 
 
 2nd August. This day, seventeen years ago, I saw 
 in the interval of public worship a veritable Oriental 
 whirlwind. It is described in the " Bards of the 
 Bible" (chapter on Job) to the letter. It was an 
 emblem, but too lively, of the then state of my mind, 
 and I beheld it " with a stern delight and strange.'* 
 I remember lecturing that evening on the Interpre- 
 ter's House in Bunyan. This day has not heat or 
 energy to create a storm of any kind. It is hot, but 
 the warmth is kissed away by the cool, easterly 
 breeze. 
 
 Lectured on the revolt of the Ten Tribes a second 
 time, and spoke of Jeroboam's caricature of the 
 Jerusalem service at Dan and Bethel. In the after- 
 noon I preached with great liberty on the words, 
 " Which is the earnest of our inheritance until the 
 redemption of the purchased possession." I said 
 first, there was an inheritance reserved for us ; 
 secondly, it was absolutely secure a possession ; 
 thirdly, it was purchased ; fourthly, it was not yet 
 fully redeemed ; and fifthly, we had in the Holy 
 Spirit of promise an earnest of it. Under the first 
 particular, I said that it was not a good thing in 
 general for men to be born to an inheritance. The 
 best inheritance of most men lay in their own right 
 hands. Nor would the Christian be better, but worse 
 
 X 
 
306 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 of his prospect, were it not that ere he can hope to 
 gain it he must gain qualifications for it in faith, 
 humility, and true manly holiness. And what was 
 it ? Paul said the truth in calling it " unutterable." 
 Scripture gave only a sketch or map, not a picture of 
 it. Here I alluded to a story Mr. M'Gregor (who 
 was in the church) had told me. His father in Picton 
 had a map of Scotland, and used, with tears in his eyes, 
 to point out to his children the place whereabouts lay 
 the dear loch of his childhood. So we had only a map 
 of our distant home, not a coloured picture. I said it 
 was purchased. God might have set us free, and not 
 made us rich. If you simply freed a colony of slaves 
 you just changed them into beggars, or, at least, into 
 poor, hard-working men. We paid 20,000,000 for 
 our slaves in 1834. Had we given them, besides, each a 
 farm or an estate it would have beggared Britain. But 
 Christ by His blood not only set us free, but endowed 
 us with boundless wealth. Again, of the "earnest," 
 I said it was small, indeed of heaven's light just a 
 mere chink of heaven's love just a mere spark of 
 heaven's peace just one leaf of the palm of heaven's 
 holiness just one shred of the fine linen robe of 
 heaven's harmony one note of the great song of 
 heaven's joy one drop of the river of pleasures of 
 heaven's glory one ray of the crown. But it was large 
 compared with all the joys and glories of this earth. 
 
 -$rd August Am reading Robinson Crusoe, first 
 time for many years. It is like coming home, after 
 long absence, to the house where you spent your 
 boyhood. How pleasing yet pensive the feeling ; the 
 delight, however, predominating. 
 
JOURNAL, 1863. 307 
 
 What a mercy that man in this world must work ! 
 Were he not working he would weep continually. 
 But working he forgets to weep, nay, wrings a stern 
 joy out of the universe and compels his severe step- 
 mother to bless him. 
 
 I saw the moon the other evening in a striking 
 light. She hung broad, round, and red in the south- 
 east, with a few thin flakes of dark cloud across her 
 disk, which served to bring out very strongly her 
 depth in the sky, her magnitude, and her glory. 
 And so it is, I thought, with the shadows resting 
 upon great men, upon great events, ay, and with 
 those which rest upon Thy countenance, O Great God, 
 that " hidest Thyself." They act as foils to, and they 
 increase the conception of transcendent excellence. 
 In my prayer yesterday afternoon I described an 
 altar erected even in heaven to the " Unknown God," 
 steaming up there to the infinite eternal darkness 
 which is the canopy above. Yet it is remarkable 
 that the same chapter in Isaiah which contains the 
 words, " Verily thou art a God that hidest Thyself," 
 contains the sentence, " Look unto me and be ye 
 saved all ye ends of the earth." Through the 
 darkness we catch glimpses of light that come from a 
 furnace of Divine love, which is the very heart of 
 God. The sun is light ; but we see from breaks in 
 the light that there is darkness within. God is 
 darkness ; but we see from breaks in the darkness 
 that there are light and love within. Yet, in one 
 sense, God shall always remain darkness, since the 
 Infinite can never reveal itself fully to the finite. 
 
 August, Wrote a few more lines of "Night" 
 
3o8 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 in the evening. Autumn eves are coming on and 
 should be propitious. It is long since Thomson cried, 
 
 " Inspiring autumn comes." 
 
 He rose on it like a fat partridge on a brisk 
 September breeze. 
 
 My great deficiency as a writer is in quiet, and the 
 husbanding of my thoughts and images. Nor am 
 I gaining this even in maturing life so steadily as 
 I could wish. What power lies often in a quiet 
 touch, a suggestive hint, a whisper ! I felt this while 
 reading to-day that wonderful picture in Robinson 
 Crusoe of the man's foot upon the shore. Had it 
 been a full-length impression of the Horned Devil it 
 would not have exerted a tithe of the power. It was 
 simply a man's footprint, not his own. It is a 
 Shakespearean touch, nay, I know not if Shakespeare 
 himself has any one thing so Shakespearean in all his 
 writings. From that foot what a gigantic structure 
 of fear and conjecture does the poor fellow's 
 imagination proceed to pile up ! What painter shall 
 give us his countenance when, as a last resort, he 
 measures the foot by his own and finds it longer? 
 His first feeling was that of stupefied surprise, this of 
 dreadful certainty. My place, if I have any, in the 
 future of literature will not be with the great simple 
 writers, such as Scott and Defoe, but with the profuse, 
 gorgeous, somewhat reckless ones, like Young, Burke, 
 Shelley, Hazlitt with them, although on a lower 
 shelf, and much further down than nature designed 
 me to be. This, I say (and Samuel Brown, who of 
 all men best understood my intellect, was of the 
 same opinion) with perfect frankness and fearless- 
 ness. 
 
JOURNAL, 1863. 309 
 
 5/// August. This day still hot, but with some 
 wind and passing clouds. I am to have a drive to 
 Carnoustie to-morrow with a few friends. 
 
 Called on my old door-keeper, James Macleod, 
 who is in a feeble state. He is a man of consider- 
 able intelligence, now above seventy, and frail in the 
 limbs, but otherwise pretty well preserved. He has 
 been reading Longfellow's poems and thinks he has 
 " lofty flichts." He asked if Longfellow had been a 
 Papist, and was astonished to learn that he was or 
 had once been a Unitarian. He gave me a present 
 of an old copy of Hunter's Horace, which he had 
 bought but found he could not read. 
 
 It is now nearly a year since a Mr. Appleton, a 
 brother-in-law of Longfellow, called on me with a 
 note from his celebrated relative. He was a pleasant 
 young man and had become, owing to the war solely, 
 a flaming abolitionist. I asked what ministers he 
 had heard in Edinburgh, and whether he had been to 
 Guthrie's chapel. "No, he had no interest in 
 Guthrie. He had gone to hear the two Edinburgh 
 clergymen at present most talked of in the States, 
 Dean Ramsay and A. K. H. B." 
 
 How envious the chance medleys of fame ! The 
 Nova Scotian, M'Gregor, had read Dodds' " Cove- 
 nanters," and was delighted to see and to hear him 
 speaking here the other evening, but he had never 
 heard of Aird, a vastly superior man. And so the 
 American had heard of, and longed to hear A. K. H. B., 
 and had a contempt for Guthrie, and probably knew 
 nothing about John Bruce. I prefaced an edition of 
 Longfellow in 1 849, and since then he has kept up a 
 friendly intercourse by occasional correspondence. 
 Professor Nichol met him when in America and 
 
3io GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 described him as a very kindly person. I wrote my 
 preface to Longfellow in the close of the delightful 
 autumn of 1848, and the memory of the reading for 
 and writing it is one of my most charming yet 
 pensive reminiscences. 
 
 Glanced over some of my papers in the Scottish 
 Review. I notice two of them as among the best 
 I ever did, namely : " Satire and Satirists," and 
 " Macaulay as a Historian." So Aird thought too. 
 What a mass of papers of mine lie in periodicals. 
 I have sometimes thought a selection of single 
 thoughts and images from them would be popular, the 
 rubbish being omitted " by special desire." 
 
 Jth August. Enjoyed the jaunt to Carnoustie very 
 considerably. The setting of the sun was very fine, 
 and as we rode home the coming out of the stars one 
 by one was exceedingly beautiful. The sky last night 
 was clear and almost cloudless. But this morning a 
 fine, still, rich shower has fallen, and nature is looking 
 quite bride-like. 
 
 %th August. Have weeded out some thirty lines 
 of "Night." I am determined in such an effort to 
 spare no pains for its polishing. 
 
 White wrote me yesterday. He says, " The Christ- 
 ian public here are a little mad about your paper on 
 Spinoza, but the Christian public here are very easily 
 put mad." Precisely as I expected. Mr. Cook is 
 astonished at this, as he thinks the paper cautious and 
 mild. But in London they are at present desperately 
 sensitive. They will neither go to the light nor let 
 
JOURNAL, 1863. 311 
 
 the light come to them. Unless light- comes to some 
 men as supernaturalism they will not accept it, and 
 they hiss it away. Christianity is in danger of 
 becoming what Foster denied it was in his time, " the 
 religion of weak minds." God forbid that this should 
 ever be the fate of my dear old mother faith ! 
 
 th August. Another day of great heat. Lectured 
 in the forenoon on Jeroboam's withered hand. In 
 the afternoon preached on, " If any man thirst let him 
 come." Spoke first of the strong desire in all hearts 
 for truth, peace, immortality, happiness ; secondly, of 
 the impossibility of gratifying this on earthly objects ; 
 thirdly, of the gratification provided in the gospel, not 
 full, but growing ; and fourthly, of the freeness and 
 amplitude of the offer. I said in the course of the 
 sermon that if we searched the Bible for information 
 on natural history and philosophy we should just find 
 the ideas of the age, neither more nor less. u Heaven's 
 joy is too large to enter any human heart at present ; 
 the heart would burst or shrivel up. Some churches 
 would not permit the full free doctrine of the atone- 
 ment to be preached, but ours, I trust, is different. 
 In proportion to the pain of any appetite is the 
 delight in its gratification ; and so the more earnest 
 we are in seeking after truth and spiritual happiness, 
 the greater ultimately will be our satisfaction." 
 
 Felt a little nervous in the forenoon, having scarcely 
 slept since four in the morning. These sleepless 
 mornings occur occasionally and are not pleasant. 
 Oh these tossings to and fro till the dawning of the 
 day, even though you are perfectly well ! What 
 miserable recollections and vexing thoughts come in 
 
312 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 crowds unbidden and will not depart. Each morning 
 is penal, and you feel yourself the Prometheus of the 
 pillow. I often repeat poetry, particularly verses like 
 Shelley's Cloud, with many recurring rhymes, to 
 soothe myself to slumber, but often in vain. 
 
 nth August. -Intend starting this evening for the 
 Highlands, returning by Wednesday week. We go 
 to Perth to-night, to Inverness to-morrow, thence to 
 Skye or Glencoe, and come back by Oban, Dalmally, 
 and Glasgow. The weather is promising, warm yet 
 breezy. The route offers grand attractions. 
 
 August. Returned last night at eight, having, 
 although with some drawbacks, enjoyed myself 
 exceedingly. We left this on the afternoon of 
 Tuesday the nth, and spent the night at Perth. 
 Early next morning we took rail for Pitlochry and 
 breakfasted there. Enjoyed a walk near that place 
 along the banks of the Garry. Mounted the High- 
 land coach and started for Inverness. The road is 
 dreary in some parts ; but the sight in the distance of 
 Laggan, the umquhile residence of Mrs. Grant, where 
 she wrote her " Letters from the Mountains " of the 
 Monadhliath range, where fell the almost supernatural 
 rains which brought on the Moray floods in 1829 
 (I remember being that day and night in Muthill, 
 Perthshire, and never saw such a scowling sky ere the 
 storm came on, or witnessed such a tempest of fire 
 and water afterwards) and of Belleville, where Ossian 
 MacPherson lived and has a monument erected to 
 him all this was interesting. But I found what was 
 
JOURNAL, 1863. 313 
 
 more attractive still, in the sight of the Cairngorm 
 range of mountains. It rises above a flat but forest- 
 clad region, like an island from the sea. Its tops are 
 not peaked, or shattered, or bold, but are folded up 
 and massed together, and have an air of proud 
 isolation and defiance, as if conscious that Ben Nevis 
 alone overtopped their highest hill, Ben Macdhui, and 
 were not quite satisfied that even he was superior. 
 Through their midst runs a magnificent opening or 
 gash indicating the path to Braemar, which must be 
 one of the wildest in Scotland. Ben Macdhui was 
 not visible, but I saw Cairngorm distinctly enough, 
 and thought on the lines of a forgotten poet : 
 
 " Where the eagle comes forth on the wings of the storm, 
 And her young ones are rocked on the high Cairngorm." 
 
 The forest region is Rothiemurchus ; and it is in it 
 Wilson lays the scene of the latter portion of his 
 glorious " Glance at Selby's Ornithology," with its fine 
 owerturn, " On, on, on, further into the forest." My 
 soul sprang through that gash to the Linn of Dee and 
 Lochnagar. The night became bitterly cold, and we 
 were all glad to reach the hotel in Inverness. In the 
 morning got to Dingwall and set out by coach for 
 Auchnasheen, an inn half way between Dingwall and 
 Loch Maree. Enjoyed this ride much. StrathpefTer 
 richly beautiful, and the rest of the road wild and 
 striking. Passed through a little wood of birches, 
 extremely fine. Saw some hovels upon the grounds 
 of the Earl of Ashburton, surely the most wretched 
 in the world. Every one of them was dilapidated and 
 seemed going to pieces. This wanted one of its 
 chimneys, another the half of its roof, a third seemed 
 sinking into the ground. Yet through every one of 
 
314 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 them a cheerful blue smoke was rising, and the faces 
 of the inhabitants at their doors were ruddy and 
 healthful, and we began to question if they were not 
 happier than the inmates of palaces. 
 
 At Auchnasheen we had the first glimpse of the 
 mountains of Loch Maree. One of them, Ben Eay, 
 has here a most imposing aspect, grand, collected in 
 his might, portly, and commanding. We passed Loch 
 Risque, the green banks of it faithfully given in the 
 mirror of its waters. At Kinlochewe the scene was 
 striking ; on the left was Ben Eay, with its sharp 
 ridges and precipices of a ghastly white ; farther on, 
 on the northern side of the lake, another mountain 
 began to assert his sovereignty and to claim our 
 unbounded admiration. This was Ben Sleogh or 
 Sligach, the real lord of the loch. He rises almost 
 sheer up from the water, and on the top assumes a 
 castellated form ; nature proudly anticipating and 
 surpassing art. A multitude of rocky spikes are 
 rounded into architectural unity about his summit. 
 Every step you traverse westward his aspect becomes 
 more sublime, till at last, amid the shadows of the 
 advancing eve, you might fancy him a visible god 
 so great is his soar, so independent his attitude, so 
 dignified his bearing. On the south rise fine wooded 
 cliffs, and below expands the loch, gemmed with 
 islands, and surmounted on the north-west by a wall 
 of perpendicular rock. But all these seem only the 
 accessories or foils to the mountain monarch. Yet 
 on his left he has rivals in those strange peaks sur- 
 rounding Loch Torridon, which look over on you 
 with startling suddenness, precipitous as the sky, 
 barren as the African desert, and wearing the sun's 
 last smile like glory gilding hopeless ruin. You 
 
JOURNAL, 1863. 315 
 
 cross the shoulder of a hill, and all is lost. But 
 other of the Torridon peaks become visible, and 
 when night falls and hides them you find yourself 
 descending a half-seen wooded gorge, with a stream 
 exasperating into a cataract and wailing through 
 the gloom. Farther down are thicker woods opening 
 upon the ocean, and you gain your timely inn at 
 the head of the Gairloch. 
 
 By steamer next day we came down to Portree, 
 lying in its little well-sheltered nook, and, going 
 ashore, had the satisfaction of spending one minute 
 on the soil of Skye. Through the Sound of Mull we 
 reached Oban, and thence went up to Balachulish. 
 The weather was showery, but now and then it 
 brightened. Once I saw the sunlight smiling on 
 the Black Rock of Glencoe, and again a little frag- 
 ment of a rainbow appeared in the opening of the 
 gorge, smiled and retreated, as if to say, " Follow me ! 
 follow me ! " Next day, accordingly, we did follow 
 the beautiful meteor into the ghostly valley. We had 
 seen Glencoe twice before, both times in sunshine. 
 But now we were to see it in mist, as gloomy Glencoe; 
 and fine was the spectacle, on the left hand of the 
 jagged needles of rock, scarcely seen, transpiercing 
 the clouds, and on the right of the Black Crag, with 
 its turban of mist above and Ossian's Cave below ; of 
 the Three Sisters vieing with each other in frowning 
 majesty ; of the Shepherd of the Glen, steep-rising 
 and bold, but with his far-seeing eye slightly shaded 
 with a gauzy veil. But we missed some of the peaks, 
 pinnacles, rocky walls, and snow-filled clefts which had 
 struck us under the brilliant sunshine of other years. 
 It seemed Glencoe abridged, mutilated, shorn, although 
 still unspeakably grand and awful. Whether in sun- 
 
316 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 shine or storm, Glencoe is always the " Only one " the 
 secluded, self-involved, solemn, silent valley. Green 
 covers the lower part of its cliffs, but it seems the 
 green of the grave. Its sounds are in league with 
 silence, its light is the ally of darkness. And yet the 
 feeling produced is not, as Macaulay would tell us, 
 terror ; it is pensiveness ; and if the glen be the 
 " valley of the shadow of death," it is death without 
 his sting, the everlasting slumber there, but the 
 horrors fled. 
 
 Leaving Glencoe is like leaving a separate world, 
 or coming down from a God-haunted Sinai. And 
 what a striking contrast between its towering heights 
 and the flat desolations which surround King's House. 
 Yet these, by their very magnitude, become sublime. 
 Infinite desolation affects you, as all infinitudes do, 
 with amazement and a dreary joy. We descended 
 Glenfalloch and were delighted with its green, soft 
 aspect and its bickering waterfalls. Yesterday morn- 
 ing we crossed the hills between Loch Lomond and 
 Loch Katrine, and so by the Trossachs to Callander. 
 We saw altogether, with the exception of Loch Awe 
 and Coruisk in Skye, the very finest scenes in all Scot- 
 land. 
 
 2.2nd August. Wrote yestreen some fifty or sixty 
 lines of " Night." Have gone over the Moon, Mars, 
 Bootes, the Great Bear, Saturn, and Jove. Have yet, 
 besides others, Orion, the Cross, and the Milky Way 
 to accomplish. 
 
 No hour in all my recent journey did I enjoy more 
 than a quiet walk to the Brig of Turk. It is to me a 
 most interesting spot. The river comes down from 
 
JOURNAL, 1863. 317 
 
 green and purple Glenfmlas, and below the bridge 
 flows on in a deep yet bright current, with the noble 
 Ben Venue looking down at it from the west. The 
 sun was bright, the hills serene, the stream pure and 
 lustrous. All was calm. I was alone, and my mus- 
 ings were pensively delightful. I remembered being 
 there in 1831, in the company of poor Donald MacCall, 
 a youth commemorated in the " History of a Man," 
 and long since dead. I seemed still to see his tight 
 little erect form, so full of Highland vis and conse- 
 quence, walking beside me. We spent a night at his 
 mother's, on the banks of Loch Lubnaig, and I remem- 
 ber describing to him, while in bed, in very poetic 
 mood, the character and fate of Judas, in a style I 
 could not now in conversation equal. Next morning 
 we climbed Ben Ledi, and were there at ten A.M.* 
 What a summer of delight and of seeming power 
 that of 1831 was ! The autumn, too, at the hall 
 in Glasgow was, on the whole, delightful. A purer 
 or a more enthusiastic youth did not then breathe. 
 But, by-and-by, I found that I could not live on 
 dreams. 
 
 August. It is exactly twenty-eight years 
 to-day since I preached my first sermon as a pro- 
 bationer in the School Wynd Church. I preached 
 that day, in the forenoon, on the Rich Man and 
 Lazarus, in the afternoon on " What is Man ? " and 
 in the evening on " Awake, O Sword ! against my 
 Shepherd." 
 
 * The rest of this journey is detailed in the " History of a 
 Man," p. 24. 
 
318 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 loth September, 1863. Since the 23rd of August 
 nothing very special has occurred ; yet there have 
 been things of some little interest to myself. Preached 
 on Sabbath the 3Oth in Edinburgh. Audiences 
 encouraging, forenoon crowded, afternoon overflow- 
 ing, evening inaccessible. My friend Gardiner had 
 to sit on the collection plate holding his wife on his 
 knee ; not an unpleasing position certainly. 
 
 To my great wonder found Craig still extant. He 
 looks pale, thin, with a long grey beard. He has 
 lots of letters of mine and of [Samuel] Brown's, and 
 is anxious, in case of his being taken off, that they 
 should be published entire. Poor fellow ! his presence 
 and talk brought up the past so vividly. He hinted 
 to me that although Brown's spirit had become more 
 childlike, his convictions were at the last the same as 
 they had ever been. Can believe this ; yet on some 
 accounts I regret Craig's statement. 
 
 Yesterday was the great day of the opening of the 
 Baxter Park. It was certainly a splendid sight. The 
 view from the platform of the gathering throngs under 
 the bright September day was very imposing. The 
 speeches, as usual on such occasions, were inaudible. 
 The provost's speech in the hall, when presenting the 
 freedom to Earl Russell, was in excellent taste and 
 gracefully given. Lord John wears well. I saw all 
 that was good in the history of Whiggery represented 
 in him, and honoured him accordingly. 
 
 nth September, 1863. Wrote at "Night" yestreen, 
 describing meteors, and that monster one especially 
 which in August, 1783, was seen by George Crabbe. 
 This, I think, I did well. 
 
JOURNAL, 1863. 319 
 
 A brother minister in town prayed, it is said, last 
 Sabbath, that the day of the opening of the park 
 might be a bad one. My prayer was " that it might 
 be sanctioned by God's sun, guarded by His grace, 
 and followed by His blessing." The antithesis between 
 the two prayers, the fine day following, is causing 
 some amusement in town. 
 
 \^th September^ 1863. I preached in the afternoon 
 shortly but with unusual freedom on the "Tree of 
 Life." Gardiner in the forenoon gave a good, practi- 
 cal and, toward the close, impressive sermon on the 
 words, " Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and to-day 
 and for ever." Enjoyed afterwards the ride to 
 Newtyle. A large audience. Preached on " Infant 
 Salvation." The Strath glorious. What a week, 
 nearly, of divine autumn days has been shining. It 
 recalls 1848. Gardiner away this evening. He is 
 really a fine fellow, with exuberant spirits and excel- 
 lent powers, although not quite up to the age. What 
 a field Edinburgh or Glasgow presents now for a real 
 Age-preacher. But where is he ? 
 
 i$th September, 1863. Was at Longforgan to-day 
 at the funeral of a child. The father's grief is great, 
 but he consoles himself by the hope of infant salvation. 
 He told me of a parent who had lost four, and whose 
 grief is aggravated by his belief that infants may be, 
 and probably are, lost for ever. Met a curious speci- 
 men, a man, eighty-nine years of age, who appears 
 seldom to have had one thought above the clods, 
 to which he is now reluctantly bending. Dr. R. 
 
320 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 was once pressing him about his soul, when he broke 
 in and said : " Eh, man ! when I was young we used 
 to sit drinking till it was three in the morning. It 
 was fine fun." R. gave him up in despair. 
 
 i6tk September, 1863. I have got and read part of 
 a synopsis of Renan in Public Opinion. It is very 
 much as I expected, a resume in a pictorial and 
 biographical shape of all the Rationalistic objections 
 to Christ's character as the " Son of God," although 
 admitting Him to be a son of God. 
 
 A startling part is his brief compendium of the 
 evidence against the genuineness of John's Gospel. 
 I do not know if any one has ever fully grappled 
 with the question as to how and by whom the 
 speeches and parables of Christ were preserved. 
 Mark and Luke undoubtedly had them at second- 
 hand ; and in John, Christ's style and manner are 
 most marvellously changed. Perhaps the alteration 
 of plan and view attributed to Christ by Renan may 
 to some extent account for the change. But the 
 difficulty is that the last words of Christ in John are 
 intensely spiritual, while those in the Synoptists are 
 as unquestionably Chiliastic. My present 'notion is 
 that a sublime genius, considerably far down in the 
 Christian era, bearing the relation to Christ that Plato 
 did to Socrates, although not probably Christ's personal 
 disciple, finding that the Chiliastic promises were 
 slow of being realised, went back to the first pro- 
 gramme of Christ, and upon these and floating 
 traditions and the growing Platonic spirit and specu- 
 lations of his age, founded an independent gospel. 
 But I cannot say that my mind is on these, or a 
 
JOURNAL, 1863. 321 
 
 hundred similar points, at all made up. It is possible 
 that John may have furnished one of his followers 
 with some facts and traits for the gospel. There is 
 a sad uncertainty over the whole subject, and dogma- 
 tism on either side is but a name for blustering doubt. 
 Renan writes in a tolerably good spirit, and the 
 burning of his book in many places on the Continent 
 is simply disgraceful, and tells of the cowardly 
 Jesuitism which passes there for Christianity. The 
 reducing, however, by Colenso, Renan, and others, 
 of Scripture to a kind of palimpsest with continual 
 erasures, alterations, interlineations, additions, and 
 suppressions made in the course of ages, tends greatly 
 to lower its aggregate value and veracity. Perhaps, 
 after we get rid of the merely human element, the 
 Divine truth and poetic beauty will shine forth in 
 greater glory. 
 
 The weather is truly autumnal now ; and the fire 
 rekindled on the hearth "like a reappearing star" 
 has a delightful effect. 
 
 ijth September, 1863. Finished the second book 
 of " Night." It is shorter, and perhaps not quite so 
 interesting as the seventh on the " Poets of Night," 
 but does not, I think, fall beneath the mark. Glanced 
 yesterday at Kingsley's " Miscellanies." His judg- 
 ments on Byron and Shelley as poets are most unjust. 
 Tennyson is his idol. He talks of Shelley being 
 "girlish," &c., which was not the case. Childlike is 
 a far truer epithet. He was to the end an impassioned 
 and inspired child, and this is perhaps as good as 
 " muscular Christian." Again, what Kingsley says 
 about his exquisite lines written in dejection at 
 
 Y 
 
322 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 Naples, is absolutely contemptible. Altogether, I 
 begin to think Kingsley destitute of true taste, a 
 very narrow pre-Raffaelite. I believe he prefers 
 "Auld Robin Gray" to the sixth Book, ay, even 
 the close of the sixth Book of " Paradise Lost." I 
 remember Masson trying to bolster him up as superior 
 to Scott in description, very unsuccessfully. Kingsley 
 strips truth of all the illusions of distance, and leaves 
 it naked ; Scott knows that the blue given by the 
 evening air to the mountain is a portion of its true 
 appearance, and as true and everlasting as the grey 
 granite it turns out to be on a nearer approach. 
 
 September^ 1863. Felt yesterday forenoon, 
 while writing, more of the "joy of harvest," the old, 
 autumnal inspiration, than any time this season or for 
 several seasons past. What a golden feeling were it 
 but to last ! But a thousand circumstances spring up 
 like weeds and choke the grain, especially in a man of 
 such various moods as I. 
 
 igth September > 1863. Dined at the Ferry yester- 
 day. Rather pleasant party. Mr. H. [Howatt ?] and 
 some others were sounding me about the Union and 
 urging me to join it. Others, of the Independents, 
 were taking a different view, and hinting that I might 
 do worse than join them. We shall see. 
 
 Have just heard after a long silence from Burleigh. 
 He must be a good fellow, as he sends me his annual 
 present, a box of Portuguese plums and onions. 
 "They're a' guid that gi'es." How different from 
 others I could name who have succeeded, partly through 
 me. And perhaps this, so strange is human nature, 
 
JOURNAL, 1863. 323 
 
 accounts for the difference. Men above the ladder 
 often kick it down ; men on it do not, and cannot. 
 
 2Otk September, 1863. Lectured to-day, opening 
 the great bay of Elijah's history. It is a magnificent 
 episode in the Book of Kings. I quoted Renan, who 
 says that if Elijah had come out in France he would 
 never have got the length of the outer gate of the 
 Tuileries, and added that if in England he would have 
 been put in prison ere he got an audience of the 
 Queen. In the afternoon preached on " The harvest is 
 plenteous." Speaking of the heathen world I said 
 I did not regard it as a vast unmitigated scene of 
 perdition. It is rather an enormous, very ill-taught, 
 Ragged School. 
 
 2ist September 1863. Read all Chalmers' "Astro- 
 nomical Discourses" after supper yestreen, partly with a 
 view for " Night." My impressions of it are confirmed. 
 Its worst passages hurry on nearly as much as its best. 
 Though only of noisy mud, they constitute a cataract 
 of that element, and are irresistible. Altogether, it is a 
 curiosity among books, and as such, secure of immor- 
 tality. 
 
 Browning, of Tillicoultry (a remarkable man I may 
 describe afterwards), once flattered me very highly by 
 saying that the only three volumes he ever read at a 
 sitting were my " First Gallery," Paterson's prize 
 essay on Athens, and Chalmers' "Astronomical 
 Discourses." 
 
 22nd September, 1863. Wrote at "Night" glow- 
 ingly and with ease, some fifty lines. I am just now 
 
324 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 on the discoveries of Galileo. While reading 
 Chalmers was struck with his Babylonish dialect, and 
 then began to remember how many Scotch writers 
 have the same taint. Think of Carlyle, Sir John 
 Leslie, Irving, Allan Cunningham, Wilson, Aird, 
 G. G. ! Not one of these has a style approaching the 
 classical ; all indulge in splendida vitia, and are rather 
 faulty in construction. 
 
 Only Scott, Jeffrey, and Campbell can be called 
 pure writers. Lockhart is not, though he sins less 
 than the rest. Hence the non-acceptance of many of 
 our writers in England. The reason I suspect lies in 
 the hybrid of Scotch and English which our conversa- 
 tion used to be, in the neglect of early training in 
 English composition which was once the great fault 
 of Scottish colleges and schools, and perhaps in the 
 perfervtdum ingenium Scotorum. Up to the first 
 third of this century, our Scottish authors were in 
 reality echoes of the English, with the exception of 
 Burns. The torrent of the Scottish mind has only of 
 late burst out in power, and wherever there is young 
 power there is efflorescence and a degree of turbu- 
 lence. With the exception of Scott, however, such 
 barbarians and Scythians as Chalmers, Irving, Carlyle, 
 Wilson, and Burns, are the greatest men we have had. 
 
 September, 1863. Slept soundly last night, 
 with a thousand queer dreams, however. What a 
 strange thing is a dream. " Every man carries 
 within him a madman," and every night that madman 
 comes out. During dreams all men without exception 
 are fatuous, and the world is a vast sleeping asylum. 
 Shakespeare has just closed his " King Lear"; he falls 
 
JOURNAL, 1863. 325 
 
 asleep and straightway raves as madly as his dis- 
 crowned creation. And yet how useful this is to all 
 brains. It carries off the waste steam ; it is a safety 
 valve to the nonsense that is fermenting in all minds. 
 Still it is an awful thought. Thou shudderest at 
 madness as at the greatest calamity ; and yet thou 
 hast only to shut thine eyes and thou art madder than 
 Hamlet. 
 
 This day, which began with heavy, close, windless 
 rain, "a day among the dockans," has cleared up beauti- 
 fully, and a wind has arisen to dry the wet leaves, 
 which are withering fast. I hope to be in a better 
 mood for verse to-night than yestreen. 
 
 September, 1863. Could not write a word last 
 night of poetry, but worked instead at a lecture I am 
 to give at Sunderland. Feel very much depressed on 
 various accounts, and am no better but worse to-day, 
 
 though the day is fine. 
 
 " Can such things be, 
 And overcome us like a summer's cloud, 
 Without our special wonder?" 
 
 Am asked to-day to lecture at Dublin. Shall 
 perpend. Would rather like to see that superb city. 
 
 Autumn is so much my favourite season, that 
 I grudge every bad day, every rainy hour of it, and 
 feel as if I were specially robbed. Yet autumn has 
 often been poisoned to me by some untoward thing 
 or other. Sometimes cholera, as in 1853 and 1854, 
 and 1849, has been in the land. Sometimes, as in 
 1841 and 1856, wet weather has monopolised the 
 best of the season. Sometimes, as in 1842, 1843, 
 and 1848, my soul and heart were so miserably 
 wrong that though I did intensely enjoy the 
 
326 GEORGE GILFILLAN, 
 
 autumn, the joy was morbid, dashed often with 
 profound wretchedness, and looks now like a bye-gone 
 sin. I remember with greatest gusto one or two fine 
 days at the Burn and Arnhall in August, and one or 
 two delightful October noons and afternoons at dear 
 old Comrie. I think after death I '11 haunt these 
 spots, at least in autumn. 
 
 2$th September, 1863. Have got to-day the last 
 proof of the new edition of the " Covenanters," with 
 my early essay* as an appendix. Perused and 
 corrected the proof of the essay with interest. The 
 sentences are rather long and there is occasionally a 
 want of decisiveness in thought and style, still it 
 reads better in print than I had expected. My view 
 of Scott, however, is very much changed, I mean as 
 to his spirit and Christianity. 
 
 September, 1863. Came home last night from 
 Sunderland. Enjoyed my visit much. Preached 
 thrice on Sabbath to capital audiences, and on 
 Monday lectured in Rees' church to a great ticket- 
 admitted crowd on the Dangers of Great Britain. 
 I met old Everett again, the author of the " Fly- 
 sheets," the Lucifer of the Methodists who drew " one- 
 third part of the hosts of heaven after him." 
 Seventy-nine years of age, he is still preaching every 
 Sabbath, and had travelled 200 miles to be present 
 at my lecture. He is genial, serene, intelligent, 
 with a smile now and then, which bespeaks the 
 satirist, crossing his sagacious face which is not 
 
 * See page 37. 
 
JOURNAL, 1863. 327 
 
 unlike the portraits of Crabbe ; and he bids you 
 good-bye with the old fatherly words, "God bless 
 you ! " He knew Ebenezer Elliott, Montgomery, and 
 Southey. He says Elliott was not at all satisfied with 
 his Unitarian creed but had not fully found his way 
 to any other. Southey even was rather willing to 
 believe Christianity than a Christian. 
 
 I came home by the new Waverley Route. 
 
 \st October, 1863. There has been some skyey 
 blunder, and instead of October, November is here. 
 What a dull, dripping, dismal day ! My spirits are 
 accordingly a little flat. Wrote from fifty to sixty 
 lines of " Night " yestreen. Whether I be successful 
 in drawing out the poetry of the stars, what an 
 immense amount of poetical element there is in them. 
 
 Read at Sunderland, a little of Hood's Own. His 
 recollections of his early Dundee life are, to me, very 
 interesting. His account of his literary contempo- 
 raries is amusing, although his sympathies with 
 Charles Lamb lead him to give him a dispropor- 
 tionate place. His picture of Coleridge with his 
 white hair, fat ruddy full face, his mode of 
 conversation, and his queer digs at orthodox popular 
 notions, as when he says that many people after 
 death expect to get wings and become a kind of 
 celestial poultry is very characteristic. Poor S. T. C. ! 
 What a fine fellow he had been in his latter days, 
 although always too self-indulgent a kind of 
 Bacchus-Apollo-Plato. Coleridge was wealthy in 
 thoughts and images and extempore speculations, 
 but had, I think, no great leading idea to possess, 
 unify, and permanently inspire him. Here he differed 
 
328 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 from Spinoza, Swedenborg, Kant, and Fichte. His 
 proper medium should have been a philosophic poem 
 glorifying some old belief, such as Lucretius did for 
 the Epicurean theory of things. He had, undoubtedly, 
 power to create an artistic unity. Witness his 
 " Ancient Mariner." It is not a large, but it is a true 
 whole, artistically, as well as a wondrous poem. 
 
 2nd October. Wrote, yestreen, fifty more lines, 
 rather good, I think, on the lost planet between Mars 
 and Jupiter, and on the aerolites. 
 
 I find Parker [Rev. John Parker] has made .40 by 
 my raid on Sunderland. Good for him ! 
 
 This day twenty-one years ago I preached my 
 sermon on Hades which made such a row. It had 
 the effect of filling my evening lectures and making 
 me better known. I had previously passed here only 
 for that "vile voluntary, Gilfillan." The presbytery 
 and Eadie behaved rather shabbily in the matter. 
 However, it is past. I preached some far better 
 evening lectures that winter, including one on 
 Infant Salvation, and one on the Fall. It was a 
 terrible winter, that ! 
 
 $tk October. Lectured to a crowded house on the 
 Tares of the Field. 
 
 Am reading Jeremiah at present at family worship. 
 What richness of metaphor and of feeling; what 
 heart-broken eloquence ; what a noble, weeping, 
 wrestling, divine soul he was ! His tears came down 
 large, electric, like the first drops of a thunder-cloud. 
 He is not so picturesque, but he is fully as eloquent 
 
JOURNAL, 1863. 329 
 
 as Isaiah. He has no passage so powerful as some 
 in that prophet : but he is as a whole not inferior. 
 He is the Demosthenes of sorrow, and often, too, of 
 Phillippic fire with all his vehemence and intensity, 
 but with far more poetry. 
 
 Wi October. Have just read Brougham's speech at 
 the opening of the Association for Social Science. 
 There is one passage in it worthy of his very best days, 
 that on the Americans. What a man he has been 
 and is ! Eighty-five years of age, in body a mummy, 
 and yet speaking with such clear good sense, 
 comprehension and power. He is a living proof of 
 immortality. What a pity Burke, with his far grander 
 and deeper soul, had not lived as long. In that case 
 he might have been alive and talking Ante-diluvian 
 wisdom till at least 1813. Brougham's name will not 
 in future ages rank so high as Burke's, by firmaments ; 
 but assuredly the statesmen of his own day seem 
 pigmies in comparison with him. 
 
 The weather is genuine November still east 
 winds, heavy mists, and that strange nameless sinking 
 of the spirits which has always made November 
 weather abhorrent to me as to so many. 
 
 loth October. To-day an old portrait of Byron's 
 Zuleika that I have had twenty-seven years, and 
 bought because I, then a young lover, thought it like 
 my betrothed, is broken in house-cleaning, and I feel 
 as if I had lost a friend. It was the only picture 
 I had that I valued, except one of Puck presented to 
 me by poor David Scott. 
 
330 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 P.S. False alarm ! It is only, I find, the glass 
 that is broken, not the picture itself. Hurrah ! 
 
 [Note. This Zuleika picture, seen casually in 
 Edinburgh, and bought as a gift to Margaret 
 Vallentine, hung in the study, and was put to a 
 special use. Every sermon, as soon as written, was 
 placed behind the picture till required. The practice 
 was invariable. Even when a sermon was finished 
 only half-an-hour before the time for its delivery, it 
 was placed behind the Zuleika. Hence the alarm. 
 This habit was not the only one which Gilfillan kept 
 almost superstitiously. Touching the twig of a cer- 
 tain bush in the garden every time he went out was 
 another.] 
 
 \2th October. Lectured last night in Temple Lane 
 Church on " The Desire of all Nations shall Come ; " 
 house overflowing. Depressed when returning, and 
 contrasted my theory of Christ with that of Renan, 
 remembering that he believed his quite as strongly as 
 I mine. Da Domine Lucem. 
 
 October. Bad, dull, wet day unfortunate for 
 the statue inauguration [statue of Prince Consort] at 
 Aberdeen. Her Majesty has hitherto been so for- 
 tunate in her weather. But, I declare, it is beginning 
 to brighten. 
 
 A gentleman calling yesterday said that to his cer- 
 tain knowledge Henry Cockburn used to say that 
 Lord Brougham was " the greatest liar that Provi- 
 dence ever permitted to enter the world." I know 
 
JOURNAL, 1863. 331 
 
 the Whigs generally thought him a false and vindic- 
 tive man. . . . Lyndhurst, another of these great old 
 savages and satyrs, is gone to his account. I did not 
 know before that he had been an intimate of Volney 
 and had travelled in America with him. Although he 
 became, or seemed to become, a Conservative in 
 politics, he was always, I suspect, a Volneyist in 
 religion. He was, however, a kind patron to my 
 friend Croly. 
 
 October. John Clark [Rev. John Clark, Aber- 
 nethy] preached well to-day (the Fast-day here), 
 knacky, evangelical, and well-delivered. Like the 
 most of ministers, he dreads the Broad Church party. 
 Now, without fraternising fully with that party as it 
 exists in any of our churches, I honour it for seeking 
 at least to preserve Christianity by removing those 
 weak elements which have gradually encrusted them- 
 selves around it, and giving its Divine part fair play- 
 If they depress it somewhat too much from its con- 
 ventional place, they at the same time elevate other 
 systems a little, and thereby tend to balance matters. 
 A church dating from Arnold and watered by the 
 heart's blood of Frederick Robertson must have some 
 great truth within it, a truth which Maurice cannot 
 extract. 
 
 I don't think new views are as yet in general 
 making better men just because they are new, 
 crude, half-formed, and, with the public in Scotland, 
 unpopular ; and those who hold them are exposed to 
 a suspicion which too often fulfils its own prophecy. 
 But I am certain that sooner or later Wisdom will be 
 justified of her children, and the larger religion will 
 
332 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 make the race humbler, more charitable, better and 
 higher. 
 
 \6tk October. Beecher is still palavering away. 
 Logan writes to-day in his praise. I have told him 
 in reply that I have no sympathy and pretend to 
 have none with his progress, that I think his speeches 
 replete with Yankee vulgarity, often sophistical and 
 often unchristian, that his idea of reaching the liberty 
 of the slaves through a sea of blood was, thank God, 
 as chimerical as it was inhuman, and that I wondered 
 a Glasgow audience would regard with favour such 
 blood-soaked rubbish. 
 
 20th October. F. H., J. G., and John Muir were at 
 dinner yesterday along with MacSwaine [from Auch- 
 termuchty]. It was a very pleasant occasion. 
 Paterson of Stonehouse called. He is a manly 
 fellow, very tall, with a great deal of good sense and 
 fun blended. He was talking rapturously of his 
 name-father, Henry Angus of Aberdeen. Allan of 
 Arbroath came to tea, and we had a good deal of 
 fun. To-day is beautiful. The Presbytery is meet- 
 ing. Go to Forfar in the evening to Mr. Wright's 
 ordination soiree. 
 
 October. Spoke at the Working Men's Col- 
 lege meeting on the elevation of the working classes. 
 The object, I fear, won't be attained in a hurry. 
 
 Was at Perth Fast yesterday. It was a glorious 
 autumn day, and the sight of the Carse of Cowrie 
 
JOURNAL, 1863. 333 
 
 and Kinnoul Hill in their gorgeous decay was delight- 
 ful. Don't like Perth public audiences, and still less 
 Perth private critics. ... It has never yet numbered 
 a powerful age-influencing mind among its ministers 
 or citizens. Young was nearest to that character, 
 but was injured to some extent by timidity of tem- 
 perament and the appearance of undue policy of con- 
 duct. In reality he was a good, honest, and friendly 
 man. 
 
 Another magnificent day. The weather has taken 
 a decided turn for the better. Happy those who can 
 take refuge from the cares and vexations of this 
 carking life, and from the society of that poor, false 
 worm called Man, in thy bosom, O mighty Mother ! 
 ever most beautiful in thy decay, and find in it, what 
 I, alas ! have never yet found, full satisfaction, a happy 
 and conscious immersion, as though the river entering 
 the ocean knew and rejoiced in becoming a portion of 
 the mighty Deep ! 
 
 October. Came home this morning at I A.M. 
 from Liverpool. Enjoyed everything except the 
 returning journey. At Kendal it blew a perfect 
 hurricane. On the Border old Boreas gave us a 
 most unkindly welcome, with all the might of his 
 snellest and most husbanded breath. Was bitterly 
 cold when I came home ; but a good fire and good 
 food revived me. Have to-day been dashing off 
 letters ; shall record afterwards my impressions of 
 the journey. 
 
 October. Lectured at Liverpool to a very 
 
334 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 respectable house, and was well received. Slept at 
 Mr. Graham's,* who is a superior man, well read, 
 thoughtful, and with a good fancy, within a few 
 inches of being a great man. Saw old Crichton, who 
 is rather prematurely feeble, but has been a fine and 
 fine-looking man. Went to Manchester, and called 
 on Alexander Ireland, of the Examiner, whom I met 
 once before in 1847. He has literary tastes of the 
 keenest, extensive literary acquaintance, a very large 
 and well-selected library, and yet has the sense 
 not to write. He took me to dine with him at 
 Bowdon. His daughter presided very pleasantly. 
 A young lady from Penrith there too, called 
 Nicholson, comely and very highly accomplished, 
 in languages especially, yet frank and modest. 
 {Marginal postcript Afterwards Mrs. Ireland, as 
 I predicted in my own heart at the time.] Mr. 
 Ireland showed me on two shelves of his library 
 every scrap of Hazlitt's writing he has been able 
 to collect. He is a hero-worshipper of the first 
 water. 
 
 Lectured to a crowded house in M'Kerrow's school- 
 room. Audience enthusiastic. Met at the close a 
 number of friends, admirers, &c. Slept at Dr. 
 M'Kerrow's. He is a man of great energy, some- 
 what past his best, has a large share in the Man- 
 chester Examiner and is very intelligent, rather 
 commanding, and not a little imperious. To me 
 he was very kind. He spoke a good deal of the 
 late Dr. MacCall, whom he knew well, and eulogised 
 highly as a " prince in Israel," of whom his published 
 sermons give no idea. Lunched in " The Shades " 
 
 * Afterwards Professor Graham. 
 
JOURNAL, 1863. 335 
 
 with Ireland and M'Kerrow and started for home at 
 twenty minutes past two. 
 
 Wrote a few more lines of " Night " yestreen. 
 Had a letter from Aird, who advises me to work 
 the poem slowly and to beware of slovenliness. 
 I have thanked him and given him some idea of 
 the plan of the poem. 
 
 2nd November. Lectured yesterday in the evening 
 on "The Lost Sheep." Church very crowded. Before 
 sermon a gentleman called at the vestry and was 
 introduced as the Rev. W. Knibb Lea, missionary 
 from China, nephew of the famous William Knibb. 
 Him I once heard in Edinburgh and remember well. 
 At first Mr. Knibb appeared quite a common-place 
 missionary, but kindled as he went on into a great 
 natural orator, his blood running fire, and his whole 
 nature transfigured into incarnate eloquence. 
 
 6th November. Lectured at Tillicoultry on Wednes- 
 day. Had a very full audience. Much pensive 
 thought going and returning. Thought of my visit 
 fourteen years ago, of old Browning then alive, with 
 his burly head, his strong racy riotous talk, his 
 exhaustless animal spirits, his fierce but transient 
 tropical thunderstorms of passion, his peculiar career 
 as a thinker, having passed through almost as many 
 phases of thought as Blanco White. Thought also of 
 my early admiration for him and of the week or 
 nearly so I once spent in his house. Visited several 
 persons on my return and then went to dine at 
 Westfield. Knight was there ; he is a great worshipper 
 
336 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 of Carlyle, Ruskin, and Robert Browning, is in taste 
 fond of the transcendental and in creed eclectic. I got 
 rather strong in pulling down a bit his idols. I denied 
 altogether Carlyle's originality as a thinker, denounced 
 his barren negationism and maintained that he kept 
 his admirers no more than the autumn oak its leaves. 
 I admitted that Browning had pages and poems of 
 beauty intense and original, shining amid a grievous 
 and wilful darkness. I said Ruskin's strength was 
 that of disease ; he was just a sublime fever. 
 Carlyleism was only a spiked shell after all, its spikes 
 turned inwardly, and it pierced rather than protected 
 those who were for a season within it. 
 
 Visited a woman yesterday who had been complain- 
 ing of deafness. She said she had received great 
 benefit from a "shock of Calvinism" (galvanism, of 
 course). I told Mr. Knight that I was sure it had 
 never come from either him or me. Funny little 
 malapropisms do occur. Some time ago, a man 
 describing one who had been stunned in a railway 
 accident, said, "Ye see, sir, when he had recovered 
 his conscientiousness." I do not know if the strongest 
 shock of " Calvinism " could now bring the world as a 
 whole, especially the American world, to its "con- 
 scientiousness." 
 
 \2th November. Left for Stockton on Saturday at 
 6 A.M., a dismal dark morning. Arrived about 7 P.M. 
 Lived with an Aberdonian named Fowler, a sensible, 
 solid, yet kindly man, his wife a tall, good-looking 
 Englishwoman. Saw some pleasant, intelligent men, 
 especially one named Blair, a hero-worshipper, who 
 knew Samuel Brown, and who, when he read at 
 
JOURNAL, 1863. 337 
 
 Haddington my first " Gallery " proposed a pilgrimage 
 to Dundee to hear me preach. He is now a flourish- 
 ing engineer. 
 
 i$tk November. Went down to a conversazione at 
 9 P.M. yesterday and gave my word for Poland to 
 a most receptive and applausive audience. Heard 
 Spence telling some good stories and giving some good 
 advices, not in the best way perhaps, but bluffly and 
 rather genially. Wilson of the Free Church followed. 
 He never speaks well unless he has some hard-headed 
 subject to grapple with. I like him for his sturdiness. 
 Johnstone, Hanna's successor, was, of course, in the 
 chair. He is a pale and thoughtful youth, not unlike 
 what M'Cheyne was when he came here, but of the 
 broad school, intelligently and prudently. He does 
 not seem very strong in body. How many lads come 
 to the pulpit spent and dying waves ! 
 
 Hamilton, who came as house surgeon in room of 
 Glen in the infirmary, died this morning of fever. 
 The event occurring so soon after Glen's death has 
 excited unusual consternation and sorrow. He was 
 doing remarkably well. 
 
 Preach to-morrow on the words " Ever with the 
 Lord." Have written with earnestness and energy ; 
 but, ah me ! how difficult to realise its sentiments. 
 
 Got, through W. Anderson, a book from his 
 colleague Alexander Macleod,* entitled "European 
 Life." Like what I have read of it much. It is 
 learned, thoughtful, liberal, and eloquent. Perhaps it 
 attempts to grasp too much in one rather small volume. 
 
 * Afterwards Dr. Macleod, of Birkenhead. 
 
 Z 
 
GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 Macleod is not so unique or powerful as Anderson, 
 but a more modern thinker, with a better style and 
 much more fancy, literature, and imagination. Must 
 read and review the book carefully. 
 
 i6tk November. William Leng discoursed sweetly 
 of my "Covenanters " to-day. In one thing he errs. 
 He speaks as if I were not sufficiently appreciated in 
 Dundee. It may be so ; but assuredly no one draws 
 such audiences, or receives more public attention. I 
 am glad he notices the appendix containing my early 
 essay as the most remarkable feature of the book. 
 
 I have written a short notice of that extraordinary 
 woman Janet Hamilton's poems for the Dundee 
 Advertiser. There is nothing in them extremely 
 good, but the marvel lies in an old woman of no 
 education, -who can hardly write, inditing so many 
 fair and well-composed things, possessing so much 
 good sense, correctness, taste, and fluency of expression. 
 She is very independent in her judgments, altogether 
 an honour to her class. 
 
 Saw a woman to-day who had lost her son at sea. 
 She had had a strong presentiment he was never to 
 return. Her daughter had a dream about him of a 
 strange and terrific kind on the very night of his 
 death, had jotted down the date and found it to 
 correspond. Our nerves in certain conditions seem to 
 become electric wires running to and fro throughout 
 the whole earth. What Morell calls the " prevision of 
 souls" seems an ascertained truth. 
 
 2ist November. Went to Alexandria on Wednes- 
 day afternoon. Had a miserably long, dull, and 
 
JOURNAL, 1863. 339 
 
 tedious ride from Stirling to Balloch, thirty miles in 
 about four hours! Lectured to a large audience in 
 the public hall. The vale of Leven (Smollett's 
 Leven) must have been beautiful ere the public works 
 polluted it, a fine transit from Loch Lomond to the 
 Clyde. Went to Dumbarton ; met my old friend 
 Halley [Rev. William M. Halley], a fellow of infinite 
 jest. Came home yesterday and, after a few hours, 
 started for Arbroath. Met an Established clergy- 
 man called Lowe, from Loch Lee. He had read 
 a paper in which I express a sort of wish to be 
 buried in the romantic sepulchre adjacent to Loch 
 Lee where Ross, author of the " Fortunate Shep- 
 herdess," reposes. 
 
 26th November. Came home to-day from Edin- 
 burgh and Hamilton. Went by Perth to Glasgow 
 on Tuesday afternoon. It was a lovely day for the 
 season. One-half of the sun was rendered in the 
 smooth Tay with his rays concentrated into a pillar 
 seeking the deepest depths of the river. I had often 
 heard of such effects, but never had seen them so 
 fully before. At Glasgow a beautiful moon shone 
 out. Lectured to an excellent audience at Hamilton. 
 Dr. Anderson had his gig waiting for me at the 
 close. Rode through that beautiful road to Bothwell 
 and saw the famous bridge by moonlight. Found all 
 my notions about it contradicted. A mile from 
 Uddingston a dark figure appeared on the side of 
 the road. It was Anderson ! We picked him up 
 and drove him home in the back of his own convey- 
 ance. I enjoyed the night, 'or rather morning, with 
 him (it was nearly 3 A.M. ere we separated) very 
 
340 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 much. We talked of many matters, differing fre- 
 quently, but never quarrelling. Travelled in the 
 morning to Edinburgh, the road in a great measure 
 new to me. Passing Mid-Calder, I remembered old 
 days when I was a student there in 1833. Gave to 
 them the tribute of a long, deep sigh. Met Gardiner 
 at Morton's at dinner. In the evening came the 
 soiree. 
 
 2nd December. Returned from my jaunt to-day at 
 1. 20 and found all well. Pleasant, although somewhat 
 laborious, journey. I reached Glasgow at a quarter 
 past six ; met good Logan, who gave me tea at his 
 coffee-house, then went to Clydeview, Partick, where 
 I found my brother a little better in mind although 
 not in memory. In the morning (Sabbath) went to 
 Bath Street in the forenoon and found a hall, which 
 holds some 600, quite full. Preached on " the Desire 
 of all Nations shall Come." Thereafter went to 
 Anderson's vestry where I met him and, for a few 
 minutes, Macleod. In the afternoon found myself in 
 Anderson's pulpit with an immense multitude crowd- 
 ing the large church. Gave them my discourse on 
 " Night." Went to tea with Logan. In the evening 
 Bath Street was literally besieged. I had great 
 liberty, pleasure, and perspiration. Lectured next 
 day at Stirling to a decent audience on " Norway." 
 Went yesterday to Alloa and had a capital meeting. 
 
 ^rd December. When in Stirling glanced slightly 
 at R. W. Hamilton's life. Struck by seeing a note 
 from Logan (my own Logan) to Hamilton's wife 
 
JOURNAL, 1863. 341 
 
 describing the Doctor's preachings in Glasgow on a par- 
 ticular Sabbath in 1843. Logan had known Hamilton 
 when a missionary in Leeds. Glanced at Hamilton's 
 speculations on future punishment. Heavy, lumber- 
 ing, half-human sophistry they seemed, and the 
 recollection of them gave me some melancholy 
 reflections on yesterday's homeward way. He drivels 
 perpetually about God's moral character and moral 
 law as if there could be any fear for them arising 
 from the education and felicity of His creatures, as 
 if God were a petty magistrate, not a Divine Power, 
 the Everlasting Principle of love and progress. Ham- 
 ilton's style is about the worst in the language, never 
 more rapid than a John Lambert or a FalstafF at the 
 gallop. He pays you an enormous sum in successive 
 single sovereigns, and you get as tired of them at last 
 as if they were farthings. Yet his thought and feel- 
 ing and fancy are those of a man of genius. 
 
 4th December. Weather still bitterly cold. Logan 
 has sent me a hat "in acknowledgment of good 
 derived from the * Bards ' ! " I am now nearly from 
 top to toe a walking Loganism spectacles, plaid, 
 stick, and hat. 
 
 Masson has, I understand, noticed my " Covenan- 
 ters " favourably in the Reader. This is kind, or at 
 all events manly, as I, in my review of his " Milton," 
 did not specially spare its faults. By-the-way, his 
 recent paper on Kidd of Aberdeen is an admirable 
 one. Rare character, Kidd. He had immense power 
 always and, latterly, reverence in Aberdeen. No one 
 could there strive against him and prosper. One 
 Spence, an Independent, a man of considerable talent, 
 
342 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 having ventured to oppose him in reference to the 
 Apocrypha question, Kidd boasted that he would 
 " blow the body oot o' Aberdeen ; " and he did so. 
 Nor did Spence look behind him till he found himself 
 in the south of England. Once, as MacDonald of 
 Ferintosh was beginning his sermon in the evening, 
 Kidd, who had come in from the vestry, listened a 
 while, was delighted, clapped his hands and bawled 
 out: "Well done, MacDonald, haud at the sinners 
 of Aberdeen." Altogether one of the men-mastodons 
 who are now extinct, composed of great power, great 
 eccentricity, and no little solid worth. 
 
 6th December. A cold, windy, what we Scotch 
 sometimes call " vicious," day. Lectured in the fore- 
 noon on " Elijah in the wilderness." In the afternoon 
 preached on " He that increaseth knowledge," &c. 
 Said that in all knowledge, from the learning of the 
 first letter of the alphabet to the deepest philological 
 researches, from the first stroke of the pencil to the 
 chef-cFceuvre of the artist, from the first schoolboy 
 copy to the great and enduring work, all accessions 
 of knowledge and the power accompanying it give 
 pleasure, pure, without remorse, and that could not 
 bear repetition. But, secondly, knowledge had its 
 drawbacks. The more we know, the more we know 
 our ignorance ; the more also we know of the dark- 
 ness and mystery which envelop all knowledge. 
 Again, the more we know of God, the more we feel 
 our distance from Him. The more we know of our- 
 selves, the more wonderful and unsearchable we seem. 
 We know ourselves only by reflection, and how little 
 are we able to answer such questions as What are 
 
JOURNAL, 1863. 343 
 
 we? Whence have we come? What is death? 
 Whence that poison of sin that pollutes our nature? 
 Lastly, knowledge does not satisfy the cravings and 
 aspirations of the human heart, and it is attended by 
 penalties both of body and mind. Secular knowledge 
 is thus shallow, and even sacred has its drawbacks. 
 Not the very best Christian can say positively that 
 his creed in all its extent is true; and in proportion 
 as he feels the truth of his creed must be his sorrow 
 for the condition of the vast numbers who do not. 
 
 %th December. Have got a cheap edition of Pearson 
 on Infidelity sent me with a preface by Cairns. 
 The preface is very disappointing, very sermonising. 
 He classes all men as infidels who doubt his particular 
 version of religion, and has no sympathy with the 
 attempt to eliminate the human from the Divine in 
 Scripture. His attempt to bolster up Old Testament 
 morality to the level of Christian is very helpless. 
 Cairns from his knowledge and piety should have 
 stood in the foremost rank of the Broad Church ; as 
 it is, his position is ludicrously unlike himself. 
 
 loth December. Went to Falkirk on Tuesday and 
 lectured to an enthusiastic audience. Returned on 
 Wednesday, spent precisely two hours in Dundee, 
 dined, went to a funeral, and started for Leven. What 
 a beautiful winter morning light, like an after-shine of 
 early autumn, lay yesterday on the dim deep Ochils, 
 on the Wallace monument, and the cottages and 
 houses of Bridge of Allan, and on Allan Water 
 swollen with rain, and wailing, but most musically, to: 
 
344 GEORGE GILF1LLAN. 
 
 the sere leaves and rugged rocky banks around and 
 above it! But the great northern mountains were 
 invisible, veiled as with a covering of blue half air 
 and half mist. 
 
 1 1 th December. What a horrid day of the worst 
 November type, thick, rainy, foggy, cold ! Have been 
 transcribing all forenoon, always dull work ; and 
 I never felt it so dull as to-day. 
 
 Am disgusted with Samuel Davidson [his introduc- 
 tion to the Old Testament] the longer I read. His 
 critical canons and conclusions may be right, are 
 generally right, I think ; but not a bit of soul, 
 inspiration, genuine sympathy with the Hebrew 
 genius, or with any lofty thing at all has he ! 
 
 12th December. This day bright and very windy. 
 Rather brisker in feeling. Had rather a pleasant 
 little sederunt with two young preachers, Hay and 
 Miller. 
 
 Finished a discourse for St. Andrew's Church to- 
 morrow evening on " Christ the Great Teacher," my 
 April " action sermon," with some remarks in addition 
 appropriate to the times, and especially to that brutal 
 pugilistic business. 
 
 Another gorgeous sky, all bronze deepening into 
 blood, with a wild, windy look, and the slightest, 
 thinnest, most delicate seeming of new moons, violet 
 coloured, all but capsized on the Red Sea around. 
 
 I4//Z December. Lectured yesterday to a very large 
 audience in St. Andrew's Church. 
 
JOURNAL, 1863. 345 
 
 This day beautiful. Married two couples this 
 morning and one since. Am reading Motley [Dutch 
 Republic]. He is a very ingenious, masterly, and 
 picturesque historian. Read a good speech of Walter 
 Smith's on the American question. Agree with much 
 of it ; but his idea of a crusade against slavery is 
 absurd. What if any nation, previous to 1834, had 
 invaded us for the purpose of compelling us to 
 suppress slavery in the West Indies? Smith is 
 evidently a noble man, thoughtful, conscientious, 
 above partyisms and clamours of every kind. 
 
 \6th December. Dined with Rev. R. Logan and 
 his nephew yesterday the nephew a fine rattling 
 fellow with a good scientific head. Have got 
 WaddelPs " Strictures on Renan " sent me to-day. It 
 seems fairly and candidly written, and, I think, very 
 much from my own point of view. Have again 
 ordered Renan. 
 
 i%tk December. Have at last got, and read one half 
 of Renan. It is a fascinating book. This I expected ; 
 but it is also a profound and philosophical book, 
 although his theory often breaks down, and there is a 
 good deal of inconsistency in parts of it. Worst of 
 all there is, here and there, a tendency to insinuate 
 something against Christ's morale, like a frog-foot 
 peeping stealthily through, which I thoroughly hate. 
 Nothing can be sweeter than his descriptions of the 
 Nazarene scenery and the early days of Christ. 
 There is a little sentimentalism here and there, as in 
 that address to the shade of his sister ; but there is 
 
346 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 something more and higher than mere sentiment- 
 alism. 
 
 Go to Rathillet sacrament to-morrow forenoon, and 
 to a soiree at Arbroath on Monday. 
 
 22nd December. Enjoyed my run to Rathillet. 
 J. B. [Rev. J. Borwick], a shrewd, peculiar, somewhat 
 waggish man, with a keen piercing eye and a con- 
 siderable knowledge of human nature, not devoid of 
 enthusiasm and literary sympathies. He delivers his 
 sermons with a good deal of graceful energy, is well 
 read altogether an influential and prominent man 
 in his sphere. He was one of my earliest acquaint- 
 ances in Edinburgh. Rathillet is rather a sweet nook 
 and, towards the west and Norman Law, beautiful. 
 Kilmany, Chalmers' original parish, is close at hand. 
 Rode in to Cupar, the road hilly, but full of striking 
 points. Went to Arbroath in the evening. Felt a 
 little jaded, but got into energy as I went on. Howatt 
 had a smart speech on the newspaper press. I spoke 
 on Capital Punishments, substance of an article 
 I wrote for Meliora about a year ago. This day hard 
 frost, but brilliant as June. Finished at Rathillet 
 the reading of Renan. He is certainly an earnest, 
 even if mistaken, man. But I cannot realise his 
 Christ. And I see some feeble points in his history 
 of Him. His account of the raising of Lazarus is 
 positively contemptible. There is a melancholy tone 
 in the book which makes it sound like the dirge of 
 Jesus. 
 
 December. The frost has yielded to high 
 winds during the night. The day is fresh and blowy. 
 
JOURNAL, 1863. 347 
 
 Go to Kinclaven in the afternoon, and return by 
 Newtyle to-morrow. Wrote forty lines of " Night " 
 yestreen with considerable gusto theme, the Dark 
 Stars, the poetry of which I have tried to extract, not 
 I think unsuccessfully. 
 
 What a wonderful expedition, I had almost called 
 it flight, to the Nile, that of Speke ! One thinks of 
 the thousand baffled conjectures and researches after 
 that " Sacred River," of Bruce's premature tears of 
 joy in the discovery, and of the mystical grandeur 
 wrapt around the sources of a stream which seemed, 
 like the Milky Way, to flow from an eternal spring. 
 And now to find the " Father of Waters " issuing 
 from a large peaceful lake, not from some aerial 
 mountain or fabulous fountain-head. Thus, all great, 
 permanent, useful power, has its source in, and derives 
 its strength from, peace. 
 
 December. A year to-day since I commenced 
 this journal. It has grown into rather a rich repertory 
 of significant and insignificant scraps, and I have 
 formed quite an affection for it. 
 
 Enjoyed my visit to Kinclaven. D. Y. [David 
 Young] is a fine fellow, full of endless anecdote and 
 talk. The scenery around Ardler and Meigle looked 
 beautiful in the still bright winter day. The pines 
 seemed serenely glad, the stubble had a golden hue, 
 and the few remaining red leaves seemed dreaming, 
 
 " Some of autumn past, 
 And some of spring approaching fast." 
 
 Thackeray died yesterday morning in his bed, only 
 fifty-two. He was a minor scourge of God, the 
 Attila of fashionable life. He lashed flesh and bone 
 
348 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 alike to ribbands. His blows were all aimed at vital 
 parts, the head and the heart. He must be herding 
 somewhere near Swift, Juvenal, and Junius in the 
 other world. 
 
 The Punjaub is up. I am amazed at the notion 
 that the Indians should take our rule as a provi- 
 dential necessity, and as better than their own could 
 be. So, I suppose, should the Scotch have done in 
 Wallace's days. The Indians cannot be expected to 
 see matters with our eyes, and perhaps may prefer 
 their own wild freedom to our gold-chained bondage. 
 
 2*jth December. Lectured last night to children. 
 A crowded house. Was simple and earnest subject, 
 " The first Christmas, and how it was celebrated." 
 Dwelt on Christ as the great model to children. 
 Christ is indeed our last bulwark, and yet His history 
 is encumbered with difficulties so enormous that 
 there must be an inner tower to flee to (as in that 
 Abimelech story) in His doctrine, influence, &c. 
 
 December. This year has been to me a year 
 of no particular interest, except in the writing of this 
 Journal and of " Night ; " otherwise rather a dull year. 
 Yet I have had great reason for thankfulness that no 
 black shadow of any kind has rested on its history, 
 and that health and many other blessings have been 
 preserved. Let me go on to meet the future with 
 a resolute and manly spirit. It must have trials ; it 
 may bring triumphs and joys. Let me be ready for 
 all and sundry. My deepest source of anxiety is 
 about the present state of religious belief, which 
 
JOURNAL, 1864. 349 
 
 seems all crumbling to pieces, and nothing at once 
 new and solid arising in its room. The state of 
 the Continent, too, is alarming. As to America, we 
 must now look on with stationary disgust and 
 wonder. 
 
 Marry some seven or eight couples to-night, the 
 usual penalty of Hogmanay. 
 
 ist January, 1864. Pleasant coming in of the 
 New-Year with Mrs. Gilfillan and the dear youngsters, 
 Marien, Mittannus (Agnes), and Willy V., Davie and 
 Ned S. Married the seven couples, and Willy, acting 
 as clerk, took them down. 
 
 To-day, like most New- Year days, is heavy-laden 
 and lowering. Go to the usual meeting of children 
 in the church, thence to a funeral, and thence to 
 dinner at Westfield. 
 
 2nd January. A note this morning from William 
 Scott, Glasgow, anent my remarks on Thackeray. 
 He speaks highly of his heart. I reply that I had 
 only stated the general impression, and it seemed in 
 entire keeping with the facts of his history. It was 
 but natural that a man, who when he was close on 
 middle-age had still his reputation and fortune to 
 make, who had associated at one time with the 
 lower ranks of London literary life, till by a happy 
 hit he obtained a first-rate reputation, should be 
 soured and half savagised, and so undoubtedly he was. 
 Some parts of his " Georges " were diabolical, as bad 
 as Byron. Scott is exactly of my opinion about 
 America. He writes in a manly style. 
 
350 GEORGE GILF1LLAN. 
 
 Morton sends me his " Family Circle." It looks 
 well and is well arranged. 
 
 ^rd January. Lectured on the calling of Elisha ; 
 defended the dignity of labour ; spoke of God's 
 hidden ones ; contrasted Elijah's spirit with that of 
 Christ. In the afternoon preached on " The time is 
 short." Spoke 1st, of length of time when we 
 thought how much work might be done in it, suffer- 
 ing endured, good and evil responsibility contracted ; 
 2nd, of its shortness compared to God's existence, to 
 the past eternity, to the age of the earth, to the 
 boundless extent of the universe, and to the coming 
 eternity. Closed with practical thoughts in reference 
 to our duty to time, to intensify, to weigh, to 
 recognise it as a portion of eternity and to prepare 
 for its close. Alluded in the course to a calculation 
 I had seen (in Colenso, by the way) as to the distance 
 of the stars from us, and from each other. By the 
 swiftest railway we could reach the moon in three 
 hundred days and the sun in three hundred and 
 thirty years, but if we could reach the sun in a day, 
 it would require 550 years of such days to pass from 
 the sun to the nearest fixed star. The Pleiades, 
 I said, seemed to kiss each other like seven rosebuds 
 on one stalk, and yet there were immensities between 
 them. No solitude like that of a star. 
 
 %th January. Better than yesterday, but not quite 
 well. Still a slight bar of bile over my eyebrows. 
 The day gloomy with thick hoar-frost. No letters. 
 Nothing but rumours of war on the Continent. Hart 
 
JOURNAL, 1864. 35.1 
 
 has a clever article on the subject in to-day's Argus. 
 Garibaldi seems " straining upon the slip "for Venice 
 and Rome. Kossuth is lifting up his trumpet call to 
 the Magyars. There has been found out a conspiracy 
 against Louis Napoleon's life in Paris. Four men 
 armed with lethal weapons, gunpowder, &c., have 
 been arrested. It is generally understood that the 
 first shot will awaken all the guns on the Continent. 
 We are surely nearing some deep and desperate 
 crisis in the world's history, one of those " days of the 
 Lord " in the periodicity of which Arnold believed, if 
 not that "great day of God Almighty " of which John 
 speaks. 
 
 Read on at Humboldt after supper, not always 
 very intelligible to me for want of mathematical 
 knowledge, but giving some striking views and 
 suggestions. How fine that fact recorded of Coper- 
 nicus, that one of his greatest griefs on his deathbed 
 was that he had never seen the planet Mercury. One 
 remembers Jean Paul's expression, " I never saw nor 
 hope to see the ocean ; but the great ocean of eternity 
 I shall not fail to see." There is in astronomy great 
 grandeur, but it is a cold and dreary grandeur like that 
 of a scene in Nova Zembla. Those stars may be fire, 
 but we are too far away from them to feel their warmth. 
 Their multitudes dazzle, their periods confound us. 
 Their silence seems ghost-like, and the idea of the 
 infinite they give us is that of infinite incomprehensi- 
 bility, rather than of boundless benevolence. The 
 astronomer and the poet admire more than love them, 
 and the vast majority of men do not care for them 
 one rush. The smile of a child or a maiden touches 
 every heart, the lapse of a summer stream is music in 
 every ear, while Venus is welcomed with a cold cry of 
 
352 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 admiration, and the roll of spheres, even if we heard 
 them moving, would be to us no melody, any more 
 than the sound of a palace gate when shut in our face. 
 The study of the stars quickens at first, but ultimately 
 sinks and overwhelms the mind. 
 
 6 P.M. Went out and saw several sick persons, and 
 since tea have sketched my forenoon lecture and am 
 a little livelier and better. A little duty blended with 
 a walk are the best tonics. Wrote a few lines /of the 
 poem this morning and must have at it again. A 
 good-natured friend I met in the train quoted a man 
 as saying about me, " I would like that man for his 
 own sake dead." This might mean either that he 
 thought my work was over, or that I might hope for 
 a better reward for it hereafter. It was not a very 
 friendly speech, but we must bear with such judg- 
 ments and hope they do not express a general 
 opinion. And the true way is to do one's duty 
 diligently, honestly, and bravely, careless of opinion 
 whether general or special, and leave the results to 
 God. 
 
 ^th January. Storm still continues. Had a good 
 spell of " Night " yestreen, some sixty lines. Letter 
 from Logan who is well. Have begun my sermon on 
 " I will give you rest." 
 
 A lecture by Landels of London on Edward Irving. 
 He is a brilliant elocutionist, I believe, and rhetorician. 
 I see he quotes a passage or two from my " First 
 Gallery." I hear Carlyle is projecting a life of Irving, 
 being dissatisfied with Mrs. Oliphant's. I very much 
 wish he would. After the usual deductions it would 
 
JOURNAL, 1864. 353 
 
 be a noble work, but would, I dare say, like that of 
 Sterling commit him with the religious world. 
 
 How thoroughly I am now out of the literary 
 world. I once wrote in some five or six periodicals ; 
 I now write in none. I once reviewed books continu- 
 ally ; I now very seldom do. I once had a new work 
 out at least once a year ; I have now been guiltless of 
 a book for nearly four years. Many, I suppose, think 
 me effete ; others, written down ; others prematurely 
 old ; others, taken to tickling the ears of the ground- 
 lings, &c. And yet I never felt my mind stronger 
 than while writing parts of this journal and " Night," 
 and perhaps one or both of these, not to speak of my 
 projected " Lives of the Poets," may yet make the 
 world amend its conclusions. 
 
 How many men reputed great, have been, on the 
 whole and in comparison with their fame, abortive 
 authors. Such were Coleridge, Chalmers, and Irving, 
 and such are Candlish, John Bruce, and Thomas 
 Aird. My books on the other hand, should I complete 
 them as I intend, will be at least a pretty fair and full 
 revelation of me as I have been, although not perhaps 
 as I might have been. 
 
 7 P.M. Have finished the sermon on " Rest," and 
 read Landels.* He has glow without much point or 
 force, discovers an excellent spirit, great command of 
 language, and has one racy passage about the manner 
 in which the " venerable owls of that day (night ?) 
 dealt with this dangerous and sky-seeking eagle who 
 would not utter the stereotyped tu-whit, tu-whoo of 
 the orthodox owl fraternity." I am not quite pleased 
 
 * Dr. William Landels, now of Edinburgh. 
 
 2 A 
 
354 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 with his sentiments about Irving and the Tongues. 
 I don't blame Irving greatly in the matter ; but 
 I rather think he rushed too hastily to his judgments 
 and allowed his preconceived desires to influence his 
 opinions and even eyesight ; drew near to the fire 
 that he might be burnt and was burnt accordingly. 
 Landels errs, too, in his sympathy with Irving's 
 notion of a modern missionary. Find a missionary 
 of our day on wings, in the enthusiasm of the 
 apostles, and you may spare your moneys; but 
 where, as now, the wings are clipped or gone, salaries 
 are absolutely necessary. Irving's high tone might 
 have suited an age of Peter the Hermits or Francis 
 Xaviers. But there are few of this class now. We 
 now know as well as ever the superiority of the Gospel 
 to heathen systems, but we know it in a more 
 measured form, value the Gospel more for its gradual 
 educational and civilising influences, and care com- 
 paratively little for such a wild, fire-eyed rush to save 
 victims from eternal destruction as Irving seems at 
 one time to have identified with missionary zeal and 
 enterprise. 
 
 \Qth January. Seldom felt more wretched than last 
 evening after writing the above bile, I think, clouding 
 the prospect. Woke at six with the same feeling. 
 
 In the afternoon preached on "Rest." Spoke 1st, 
 of restlessness, describing that of the fever-stricken, of 
 the guilty, of the maniac, of the restless inquirer, 
 of the man seeking the salvation of his soul ; 2nd, of 
 false rest, that of the sleeper on the top of a mast, 
 of a man resting on the verge of a precipice, of a 
 man falling asleep and dying amid the snow, and 
 
JOURNAL, 1864. 355 
 
 finding parallels for these in those who trust in 
 wealth, honour, mere outward religious profession, 
 &c.; srdly, of the rest Christ promises and gives; and 
 4thly, of the pledges he has given for it ist, the 
 Sabbath ; and 2ndly, the Sacrament of the Lord's 
 Supper. Compared the latter to the inscription, 
 " Rest, and be thankful/' in Glencroe. The height 
 on which it was placed commanded two views one 
 behind, the other before. Concluded by saying 
 something to sorrowing believers and to doubting 
 and uncertain communicants. 
 
 \2th January. Have got and read Maurice's letter 
 in the Spectator on eternal punishment. It is clearer 
 than his wont, and very earnest and solemn in its 
 tone. I partly agree with it, so far as to think that 
 the doctrine of eternal damnation stated in its crude 
 form makes God a monster. I can as yet get no 
 farther than that it is not His purpose to give any of 
 His creatures eternal death unless death means 
 annihilation, or on the supposition of their for ever 
 and ever refusing any terms of submission or recon- 
 ciliation. 
 
 The scheme for a series of lectures in answer to 
 Renan seems at an end. Burns has backed out of it, 
 and, I presume, some of the rest were cool. My 
 objection was partly that, as there were so many 
 points of view, there could be no harmony. The 
 lectures might be brilliant fragments, but would not 
 form an effective and useful whole. In our present 
 perplexities no such whole indeed is possible, conceiv- 
 able, or perhaps desirable. Let us " wait " ere we 
 thus " labour." 
 
356 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 i^th January. I am now writing at II A.M. by 
 gas-light, a thing I cannot remember doing before. 
 Worthy Mr. Lamb, of Errol, dined here yesterday, a 
 fine, genial, well-preserved man of seventy-seven. He 
 gets a jubilee feast on the I2th of April, to which 
 I have promised to go. He will then have been fifty 
 years a minister. Lamb has a fine mind, a good taste 
 and style, a large and liberal mind. In the evening 
 came Knight and Bell, and we had a pleasant little 
 crack. 
 
 i6th January. Went to-day to present W. Leng 
 [now Sir W. Christopher Leng], on behalf of the 
 Advertiser staff, with the "Encyclopaedia Britannica." 
 I did my best. W. Leng spoke feelingly and in good 
 taste, particularly in reference to his brother [John 
 Leng, now M.P. for Dundee]. The brothers seemed 
 satisfied ; the officials were really happy. I felt a 
 little excited and somewhat pleased on the whole. 
 
 \th January. Terrible surmises from Paris. A 
 coup d'etat feared, and then up goes Louis Nap into 
 the air and success to his flight to chaos ! But who 
 is to come after him ? There 's the rub. 
 
 The National Review has some very admirable 
 articles one on German philosophy from the pen of 
 Martineau who writes in rather a desponding tone. 
 He sees the chief result of German philosophy to be 
 as yet negative and thinks the Bible in process of 
 decomposition ; still he thinks nothingness better 
 than rottenness, and expresses hope that better times 
 may turn up ! It is to me meanwhile a terrible 
 
JOURNAL, 1864. 357 
 
 thought that on both philosophy and religion there 
 rests in capital letters the word DOUBT, and that there 
 is a likelihood of this deepening for a considerable 
 time to come. Jerusalem is at present compassed 
 with armies, and perhaps its redemption may be so 
 much the more near. Should Martineau's fears prove 
 true, and no blessed hope arrive, where is our refuge ? 
 It must be, I think, in the moral nature of man that 
 true infinity, that morality that is in man, which 
 creates religion and crowns itself with revelation, being 
 itself a reflection of the moral nature of God. Should 
 this fail, 
 
 " The pillared firmament is rottenness." 
 
 But fail it cannot. Never let it be forgotten that 
 the earliest utterance of Christ is His sermon on the 
 Mount. 
 
 igth January. Another gloomy, wretched day. 
 Glad I have not to travel till to-morrow, when I go 
 to preach in Manchester, having to start at seven 
 morning. French affairs threatening, and so are 
 Danish too this morning. One is tempted to say 
 with Andrew Skurliewhitter in "Nigel," " More blood 
 more blood ! " Ay, there must be, and to the horse- 
 bridles. All things are reaching toward that war of 
 opinion which Canning foresaw and which shall 
 terminate when ? Not perhaps till He comes whose 
 right it is. 
 
 Surely Christ will yet do more for the world ! No 
 doubt, apart from those He saves, the principles He 
 has implanted in the world have been most beneficial. 
 But over what a limited area as yet ! " He must 
 reign till He has put all enemies under His feet." 
 
GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 22nd January. Left at seven A.M. Morning dark 
 but brightened up beautifully at Stirling. At Carlisle 
 it began to rain and rained heavily till I reached 
 Manchester. Young Mr. Sidebottom met me at the 
 train and drove me to his house. He is a pleasant 
 young man and has been a great traveller on the 
 Continent, in Greece, Syria, &c. His wife is a very 
 fine woman, with grace in her carriage, and heart and 
 soul in her eye. Met Parker [the Rev. Joseph Parker] 
 at tea there. He is a tall, dark, striking looking 
 man, frank, hurried in speech, and, I believe a 
 rough, ready, powerful preacher. His church is 
 the finest in Manchester and he is very proud of 
 it. I think him fierce, impulsive, but with heart and 
 pluck. On his vestry wall is a portrait of his dis- 
 tinguished predecessor, Dr. MacCall, who looks a 
 nobleman, stately yet mild, with high intellect also 
 expressed. The night was wet and the audience not 
 so large on that account. It was respectable, however, 
 and very attentive, made up a good deal of ministers, 
 students from the college, &c. I read them " What is 
 man?" calmly, and it seemed to tell. Yesterday 
 called on MacKerrow and Ireland and had a little 
 talk. Left at 2.20 and reached this at 12.30. Found 
 M. with Marien and Mittannus [Mrs. Gilfillan with 
 her two nieces] waiting. Rejoiced the two latter by 
 giving them a collection of songs and " Gulliver's 
 Travels " I had bought for them in Manchester. Have 
 been writing letters all morning. Wrote sixty or 
 seventy lines of " Night " on Tuesday evening. 
 
 2%th January. Lectured rather drily to-day on 
 Elijah and Ahab meeting in the vineyard of Naboth. 
 
JOURNAL, 1864. 359 
 
 In the afternoon on the " Prisoners of Hope." Spoke, 
 1st, of all men being prisoners bound by passions, 
 appetites, difficulties, sins, &c., although like the lions 
 in the Pilgrim's Progress the chains are not seen. 
 Men differed principally in the weight of their chains, 
 and the varieties of their woe. 2nd, of Hope. That 
 little word hope was the entire gulf between earth and 
 hell. Yet might not Dante be a driveler after all, in 
 saying, " He that enters here must leave hope behind 
 him." A hell with hope renewed at times to be for 
 ever disappointed, rainbows rising, but the storm 
 never coming to a close that were a hell indeed. 
 3rdly, spoke of the ground of hope, the stronghold 
 the love of God authentically revealed in Christ ; 
 4thly, of the duty of turning to Christ ; and 
 5thly, of the completeness of liberation at the 
 resurrection, and not till then. Quoted in the course 
 of the sermon Sterne's picture of a captive (about the 
 most pathetic thing in the English language). Renan 
 has a curious query at p. 208 of his volume, "who 
 knows if the highest term of progress after millions of 
 ages may not evoke the absolute conscience of the 
 universe, and in this conscience the awakening of all 
 that has lived ? A sleep of a million of years is not 
 longer than that of an hour." I wrote on the 22nd of 
 December the following lines in " Night," somewhat 
 coincident with the sentiment quoted. The stars are 
 supposed to sing : 
 
 We move to skies so bright and warm with God 
 That happiness shall drop like dew from heaven, 
 That the dead dust of body -buried man 
 Shall burst its cerements and be raised again, 
 And Nature, Angels, God and man be one, 
 Melted into one sea of endless peace, 
 Communion conscious, and fruition high. 
 
360 GEORGE G1LFILLAN. 
 
 Be it so! Amen! But, alas, "we know in part and 
 prophesy in part." 
 
 26th January. Went to Broughty- Ferry, and at 
 the close of D. Scroggie's lecture made some remarks 
 on the lecturing mania of the day. All classes were 
 lecturing, ministers, elders, editors, farmers, and even 
 ladies, not content with their old prescriptive right to 
 lecture within curtains and at unseasonable hours, had 
 taken to lecturing on the boards and at seasonable 
 hours. It was a curious fact or fatality, and we must 
 make the best of it. 
 
 Gumming is getting it to-day from the Saturday 
 Review. He does in many points deserve it. I am 
 sick of all prophecy-mongers, and so will the public 
 become more and more when they begin to under- 
 stand really what prophecy is, how uncertain in its 
 vaticinations, how certain in its moral foundations. 
 Cumming's power over the country is a disgrace to it, 
 though of course all the really intelligent and thought- 
 ful care nothing for him. I was once bit, not by 
 Gumming, but by the common notions about pro- 
 phecy ; but Coleridge and others have taught me a 
 little more sense. 
 
 This day cold and cloudy. Go in the afternoon to 
 Montrose to lecture, and expect W. Vallentine to 
 drive me out to Arnhall where I intend to spend 
 Wednesday. 
 
 2gth January. Lectured in Montrose. Guildhall 
 overflowing. After it supped with Mr. Burns, 
 Established minister there, a fine, genial, independent 
 fellow, with good powers, very popular at present. 
 
JOURNAL, 1864. 361 
 
 Had a pleasant moonlight ride to Arnhall and found 
 all well. Enjoyed a quiet walk with James Vallentine 
 through the woods, which looked serenely beautiful in 
 a fine clear winter noon. Came home and dined, and 
 then off to Linlithgow. What a glorious evening sky 
 bent over the Comrie hills, with clouds of richest 
 amber, and gleams of the yellowest gold lightening 
 on the imperial foreheads of Ben Voirlich and Ben 
 Ledi ! Lectured to a large audience in the United 
 Presbyterian Church. Slept at Mr. Watson, the 
 Procurator Fiscal's, a pleasant elderly man who surely 
 must wear everlasting white gloves on the bench, so 
 mild is he, and who, if he did condemn a criminal, 
 would do so in such tones that the poor fellow would 
 think he was acquitting him. The view from his 
 house is fine Linlithgow with its lake, canal, and fine 
 undulating country below, and the Ochils and 
 Campsie hills in the distance. The sky in the late 
 evening was most dazzlingly clear. Orion seemed 
 one gem, and the stars of the plough dropping like 
 full ripe fruit from heaven. Reached home at 1.30, 
 very cold. Have written a few letters, and my 
 forenoon's lecture. 
 
 Picked up Macmillan for February. Masson, while 
 speaking feelingly of Thorn of Inverury, ignores 
 altogether the efforts Dundee (magna pars fui) made 
 for his widow and family, and the monument that it 
 erected over his remains. 
 
 30/7* January. This is my birthday, I am to-day 
 fifty- one. 
 
 " Eheu ! fugaceS) Postume, Postume, 
 Labunturanni" 
 
362 GEORGE GILFH.LAN. 
 
 I am not so miserable on birthdays as, like Swift, 
 to read Job's curse on the day he was born ; but 
 they always make me grave if not sad. 
 
 Read last night a capital paper in Macmillan, on 
 India. It is written with a masterly pen, and cor- 
 roborates all I said at the time of the Indian Mutiny. 
 Let us never say a word about the barbarity of the 
 Sepoys after our monstrous reprisals. The only 
 crime latterly inquired into was the possession of a 
 buck skin. Campbell's awful line is yet only half 
 accomplished : 
 
 "And blood for blood shall India's plains bedew.'' 
 
 January. Preached twice to-day. Lectured 
 in the forenoon on Ahab preparing to go to Ramoth- 
 Gilead. In conclusion spoke of the preciousness of 
 peace. It never seemed so precious as when leaving 
 us, just as a landscape never seemed so lovely as a 
 few minutes before a storm came on to bury it in 
 darkness. I prayed God to avert the omen from our 
 land. I spoke of the lust of ambition found chiefly 
 among those in whom every other lust was deadened, 
 and of its pernicious consequences. I said that 
 hitherto falsehood and the teachers of falsehood were 
 in the majority. Falsehood was a great raging 
 storm covering earth and sea, the teachers of truth a 
 few sea-birds wailing out a feeble protest against it. 
 But truth was immortal and would prevail. 
 
 In the afternoon preached on " Many crowns." 
 Christ had, first, the crown of thorns. Itself and its 
 shame were gone ; but its memory and glory remain 
 on His brow. Second, the crown of heaven which 
 He received immediately after His ascension, and, 
 
JOURNAL, 1864. 363 
 
 oh wonderful ! forty-three days after His passion. 
 Third, the crown of hell. Christ was the Lord of 
 darkness as well as of light. He ruled hell with His 
 justice, mercy, sympathy, discrimination, and power. 
 Fourth, the crown of His church the matrimonial 
 crown. Woe to those popes and kings, who sought 
 to wrest it from His forehead and put it on their own. 
 Fifth, the crown of earth. This not His as yet, but 
 it would and must be. Would Victoria endure that 
 a paltry island like Wight or Skye should hold out 
 against her arms and disown her authority? This 
 was the exact position of the earth. But was it not 
 a poor crown, that of this world ? No ! the earth was 
 Christ's birth-place, life -place, death -place, burial- 
 place, rendered dear to Him by many associations, 
 and He valued its crown more than all the rest. 
 Even as a rich man returns from abroad and, not 
 satisfied with all his possessions there, must purchase 
 at whatever expense his ancestral croft and dwelling, 
 so Christ and this world. Sixth, the crown of the 
 universe. Seventh, that of the sinner's heart. This 
 was Christ's great ambition " Son, daughter, give me 
 thine heart." And even amidst the storms and 
 terrible grandeurs of the second advent He will be 
 still seeking this object. It is not said Behold, the 
 Lord of hosts cometh ; or, behold, Jehovah the avenger 
 cometh ; but, " Behold, the Bridegroom cometh," to 
 wed and glorify His bride, the Church. 
 
 1st February. Fuller details of that shocking 
 catastrophe in Chili. Two thousand women burnt. 
 What a holocaust in honour of the immaculate con- 
 ception of the Virgin ! What a theme the whole 
 
364 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 horrid transaction in its mingled elements of " burn- 
 ing instead of beauty," loveliness and love exchanged 
 in one frightful instant for torture, in its colossal 
 maryrdom of beauty and virgin innocence for the 
 pen of him who drew the ship-wreck in " Don Juan." 
 Blake, the painter, might have made a powerful 
 picture entitled a flight of female souls from Santiago, 
 contrasting with the blackened and disfigured corpses 
 the lovely faces of the spiritual bodies, saddened by 
 what they are leaving, but sweetly smiling in the 
 prospect of their everlasting happiness. 
 
 Motley continues interesting, but is very melancholy 
 reading. What wretched characters, full of the gros- 
 sest inconsistencies, reminding you of Christian 
 cannibals, baptized devils, abound such as Philip 
 and Don Carlos and what bloody transactions and 
 brutalities of all kinds ! Piety and faith reel like 
 twigs in a tempest as one reads these things and 
 remembers that they are fair examples of the history 
 of humanity and exist still. Yet against the black- 
 ness there stand out some clear and noble figures 
 such as William the Silent. Even Alva, though a 
 fiend, is a "superior fiend," a giant among the 
 pigmies of hell. 
 
 2nd February. The Austro-Prussian army has 
 crossed the Eider. The question now is, Will Britain 
 be involved ? I hope not ; yet if her interference 
 could be of service in rousing the Continent against 
 its oppressors, and precipitating the deliverance of 
 Hungary, Poland, and Venetia, I should rejoice, or 
 at least, not grieve or remonstrate. Had a dream 
 this morning which transported me back many years, 
 
JOURNAL, 1864. 365 
 
 deliciously reminding me of some of the happiest 
 days I ever spent. How strange the feeling in the 
 morning of the impression of a dream, remaining even 
 after the dream is gone, or when it is only half- 
 remembered. Ere fully departing, it seems to linger 
 like a load on your brain, heart, and very eyebrows, 
 and perhaps noon is reached ere it 
 
 " Fade into the light of common day." 
 
 How delightful, how real the intercourse in dreams 
 with friends, either long dead or at least removed 
 from you, whom you know you shall never meet on 
 earth. One remembers the lines of Campbell : 
 
 "In the dreaming land 
 
 Shouldst thou to-morrow with thy mother meet, 
 Go, tell her spirit that the white man's hand 
 Hath plucked the thorns of sorrow from thy feet." 
 
 How tantalising to awake from a beautiful dream, 
 probably at its intensest moment of delight, and to 
 find nothing, or agony instead. How provoking to 
 forget a delightful dream ; and how horrible a succes- 
 sion of evil dreams, to dip in and out and in again in 
 an inky ocean of misery, till, when morning comes, it 
 seems to have come too late, and to bring no relief 
 on its wings. 
 
 To-day stormy, and cold winds wildly whistling. 
 Go to Muir's soiree at Newtyle in the evening. 
 Curious fact : many ministers and others deplore my 
 doing so much, frittering away my time, &c., and yet 
 they have no objections that I should fritter it in 
 their service. Tis a queer thing, human nature ; and 
 I, probably, in the same circumstances, would do 
 the same. 
 
366 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 Dr. Taylor, of Glasgow [the Rev. James Taylor, 
 LL.D., author of " Pictorial History of Scotland "], 
 called, and cracked for nearly an hour this forenoon. 
 Glib talker, with a spice of humour, with evidently 
 great memory and powers of observation. 
 
 February. Wrote before going to Newtyle 
 some lines of " Night " describing the solution of the 
 great nebula in Orion. Found John Muir presiding 
 over a good meeting. I gave the " Dangers," with a 
 bit about the Santiago matter. David Young, of 
 Kinclaven, gave a long, rambling, funny speech on 
 the Tongue. Came home at ten o'clock. The hills 
 around Newtyle, and the plains, too, were covered 
 this morning with snow, and looked new and wildly 
 beautiful. What a Divine disguise of nature snow is ! 
 How beautiful upon the mountains its feet of softness 
 and silence ! How the loveliness in it contends with 
 and triumphs over its dreary and repulsive cold, and 
 makes it one of the most poetical of things. 
 
 Have been glancing at "Balder." I had not 
 opened it for ten years. It is a monstrous produc- 
 tion, full of power, but the power contorted as in the 
 wildest pictures of David Scott ; the anatomy of feel- 
 ing, wonderful in its minuteness, but weak also from 
 the same cause, the subjective decidedly paramount 
 throughout, the story painfully unpleasing and 
 obscure as well, the best passages dragged in to 
 glorify the poem instead of rising naturally from it. 
 Dobell is unquestionably a man of high genius, and 
 of a very generous character ; I believe, a very good 
 man. But he will not live by all he has yet done 
 in poetry. 
 
JOURNAL, 1864. 367 
 
 $th February. Dined at Mr. Smith's, Broughty 
 Ferry, yesterday. Mr. Ronald, Saltcoats, there, a 
 fine genial, shrewd, old man, universally respected in 
 our body. Met in the evening Middleton, Super- 
 intendent of Schools. He is not in such force as 
 I have seen him, having been threatened with paraly- 
 sis of the limbs. He is a very intelligent, clever, and 
 conversable man. 
 
 The Queen's Speech is absolutely empty, wersh, 
 revealing a Government given over to beggary, fed 
 and feeding us on husks, not knowing one bit more 
 than a blind pilot whither it is bound. 
 
 Jth February. Lectured to-day on Micaiah's pro- 
 phecy, and preached on, " The Lord shall be One, and 
 His name One." Said ist, God is already One in 
 essence, in purpose, in character, in glory, in the One 
 Mediator ; 2nd, He would yet appear more gloriously 
 One; 3rd, He would possess One government. There 
 is only, so far as we know, one spot in the universe 
 which resists Him, the earth ; and only one spot in 
 that spot, the heart of man, and that spot must be 
 subdued ; 4th, His name is to be One. It is not so 
 at present. He has many names Seeva, Allah, 
 Jehovah, and Jehovah- Jesus. No human means 
 would ever make all nations accept only one of them. 
 The Hindus, and Mussulmen, and Jews are as obsti- 
 nately attached as ever to their own Gods. But it 
 would be done in God's own time and way. Lec- 
 tured in the evening on the Mustard Seed and the 
 Leaven. 
 
368 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 \2th February. Have returned from my journey to 
 Galashiels, Lauder and Haddington. Did not set out 
 till Tuesday at 6 A.M. The morning dark. Saw, 
 however, at Leuchars the morning star, very red on 
 account of the thickish atmosphere, but full and 
 plump, and then about Kinghorn the great sun rose 
 right out of the German Ocean. Reached Galashiels 
 at 1 1 A.M. Drove at 2 P.M., to Bridgeheugh, where 
 was a little party. Enjoyed it much. The most inter- 
 esting person was old Mrs. Aird, Thomas's mother, a 
 woman of eighty-five, yet full of life, sense, and observa- 
 tion, attentive to all that is going on, dropping, ever 
 and anon, a shrewd observation which seems the more 
 oracular, that it comes from a frame shaken with 
 palsy. She is indeed Thomas's mother. Lectured 
 to a full hall, and, I think, an appreciative audience. 
 Next day went to Lauder, crossing the snow-covered 
 moor from Stow. Excellent meeting. Came on to 
 Edinburgh on Thursday forenoon and went to 
 Haddington in the evening. Had a good house, but 
 a slight hiss at a particular point about the Free and 
 United Presbyterian Church Union. Saw old Mrs. 
 Brown, and her daughter Violet. , Felt a good deal 
 about old times and poor Samuel. Mr. Whitelaw, of 
 Athelstaneford, drove me out to his manse after 
 lecture. He is a good, rather queer man, with con- 
 siderable knowledge, fine sympathies and large 
 ambition. He took me to see Blair's monument in 
 the centre of the village. It is a simple, solid structure, 
 like the poem it commemorates. I like Whitelaw. 
 Came home via Perth at 5.15 P.M., and was met at 
 the door by dear Mittannus. 
 
JOURNAL, 1864. 3 6 9 
 
 i t>th February. Had a letter to-day from an Oxford 
 student named Frederick William Orde Ward, thank- 
 ing me for my " History of a Man," which, he says, 
 has made an era in his life both intellectually and 
 morally. That book, so unpopular in Scotland, has 
 thus done good service at a distance. This youth met 
 with it in the Isle of Wight. I think and always 
 have thought that the world will find it after many days. 
 
 17 'th February. Went north on Monday to Laurence- 
 kirk and lectured on " Sign's of the Times " to a very 
 crowded hall with as much energy and effect as I ever 
 exerted anywhere I think. Enjoyed Beechwood 
 House with the dear little Mags, Davies, Looneys, 
 and Chatties exceedingly. Drove over on Tuesday 
 to Bogmuir, and lectured at Fettercairn on Norway 
 with somewhat less eclat. Colonel Maclnroy was in 
 the chair, a manly, soldier-like, business fellow, greatly 
 respected in that quarter. Sir Thomas Gladstone 
 spoke to me very civilly at the close. But I feel it a 
 kind of shame that the opinion of such people, or 
 their indifference should give me one moment's con- 
 sideration at this time of day. Went to Arnhall at 
 night and enjoyed it as usual. Saw in the north 
 memorials of the savage storm of Saturday. Reached 
 home at four, and go to-night to a " curling supper " 
 at Westfield. It is not exactly to my taste, but never 
 mind. 
 
 February. The supper and subsequents were 
 enjoyable, with some drawbacks. These things never 
 look wholly well on reflection. Far better a quiet 
 crack and laugh by the dear fireside. 
 
 2B 
 
370 GEORGE GILF1LLAN. 
 
 igtk February. Another hen-pie last night. Did 
 not see much of it as I went down town to a meeting ; 
 but the little I did see was rather pleasant. E. B., a 
 gentle and interesting person, lost her husband twelve 
 years ago by a flash of lightning and carries still in 
 her eye and bearing the traces of that great sorrow. 
 What a dread act of appropriation is that of the 
 lightning when it " licks up the life of a man " and 
 returns remorseless to the cloud. 
 
 There has been snow during the night. I go to- 
 morrow to Sunderland, to preach anniversaries. This 
 will be the third time there within two years. A year 
 to-day since I began " Night." Spent the evening at 
 J. G.'s whose marriage anniversary it was. While at 
 Westfield, glanced at Raleigh of London's volume of 
 sermons, entitled " Quiet Resting Places." There is 
 richness in the illustration and sweetness in the style ; 
 the tone is semi-poetical, semi-practical ; the subjects 
 all interesting, some of them sensational. The whole 
 is pleasant and should be profitable reading, but there 
 is little evidence of profound thought or peculiar 
 experience. He skims over the mysteries of things 
 with the light-glancing wing of a swallow, and never 
 runs the risk of being drowned while searching the 
 depths. He always seems to satisfy himself, and the 
 man who does that seldom satisfies others. Yet he 
 is a good and to a considerable extent an able and 
 eloquent man. 
 
 February. Returned from my expedition. 
 Got to Sunderland by half-past eight, Saturday. 
 Preached three times next day to good audiences ; 
 lectured to a large and highly intelligent audience on 
 
JOURNAL, 1864. 371 
 
 Monday, James Everett in the chair. Went to South 
 Shields on Tuesday and lectured there to a tolerable 
 audience. People kind. Saw a glorious sky on 
 Saturday. 
 
 yd March. The report of the Committee on the 
 Free and U.P. Church Union is published to-day. 
 They agree in giving the magistrate certain vague 
 powers over the Sabbath and the fixing of fast-days, 
 but differ materially about his power in endowing 
 religion. This, I trust, will form a sufficient bulwark 
 to keep them apart. 
 
 March. Kind letter from Logan to-day. Tells 
 me an interesting story of Dr. Anderson. Some 
 preachers were sneering at my " History of a Man." 
 Anderson quietly took down the book, and read the 
 account of my mother till he burst into tears, and 
 then said : " Till ye can appreciate that, far less equal 
 it, ye should hold your tongues ! " Well done, good 
 brave Willy ! 
 
 5//z March. What a queer dream I had this 
 morning about Professor Nichol and Samuel Brown. 
 What a fine dark mountain lake I saw, with white 
 bubbles on it, like as I thought I said to Nichol 
 " like specks of spate on a river " ! Began my paper 
 on " Chalmers and Arnold," but only wrote a few 
 sentences. Must go at it tooth and nail on Tuesday. 
 I intend considering their diversity of power and 
 unity of purpose, their difference of culture, their 
 
372 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 mission to intensify and liberalise Christianity, their 
 power over the young mind of the age, and the 
 energy the unmeasuredness of their life ; shall 
 speak of their relation to the Church, non-partyish, 
 progressive, reverent yet daring, and close with some 
 remarks on our present state, similar to those in my 
 Sabbath evening sermon. 
 
 " Night " has for some time been thrown aside. 
 
 You can read nothing of Robertson [F. W.j without 
 some pleasure and profit, but they are publishing too 
 much of him, as they do of all celebrated men. He 
 is very helpless on regeneration and the Trinity. The 
 latter he tries to illustrate by material images, such 
 as three rays of light mingling in one as if any 
 material thing could do aught but caricature spiritual 
 mysteries and as if the man who, after such an 
 analogy, supposed himself to understand the Trinity 
 were not a fool ! As to regeneration, he justly scouts 
 the identification of it with baptism, and also its 
 necessary suddenness, but lays too much stress upon 
 the command he supposes it. to give to the spirit 
 over the body (not to the spirit over the spirit). . . . 
 His view of regeneration is altogether shallow, one- 
 sided, and unworthy of him. 
 
 Wi March. Supped last night at Mr. Knight's. 
 Small party ; only B., J. G., and myself. Conversation 
 less controversial and more agreeable than on former 
 occasions [owing, in part, to good resolutions framed 
 by G. G. beforehand]. Both these young divines are 
 remarkably well read, better than I and my contem- 
 poraries were at their time of life. Training has 
 greatly improved, especially in theological directions. 
 
JOURNAL, 1864. 373 
 
 As a youth I read ravenously in general literature, 
 but not so systematically as I ought in philosophy 
 or theology. Knight is highly cultured and imagina- 
 tive ; B. has a strong and logical mind. We talked 
 about Cause and Effect, Monism, &c., till one in the 
 morning. I made some stand for Monism against 
 Dualism ; but really it is not easy attacking or 
 defending either of them. I can conceive the body 
 existing without the soul, as a clod ; I cannot con- 
 ceive the soul existing without body at all ; but is 
 my conception a certain test of fact ? Surely a 
 separate soul may exist? Yet there are moments 
 when you seem to feel yourself an integer soul and 
 body intensely one. 
 
 Qtk March. The day is bright but cold. I feel 
 no inclination to write, though I have a great deal 
 to do ere I complete " Chalmers and Arnold " to 
 my mind. To-day the world seems an unutterable 
 weariness. These varying moods what a curse they 
 have been to my existence ! To-day, however, my 
 feeling comes mainly from bile. 
 
 I feel painfully this morning how little I have done 
 to purpose and how much more I could have done. 
 Whether from profession, carelessness, or peculiarity 
 of opinions, or want of due culture, or of tact, or of 
 properly concentrating myself, my position is not 
 what it ought to have been by this time ; and, worse 
 still, I have no hope, or little, of materially making 
 it better. I feel reluctant now to shift my ground, 
 and altogether I do not look on the state of my 
 affairs with a very bright eye. However, God help 
 me to labour on. If I surfer myself to lose heart and 
 
374 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 to become indolent, it's all up. Besides, there is 
 always something to encourage me. 
 
 I \th March. Was asked yesterday to give a lecture 
 in Newcastle at the Shakespeare celebration, but owing 
 to my previous engagement here, declined. . . . Islay 
 Burns was, by the casting vote of the Moderator, 
 recommended by the Dundee Presbytery the other 
 day to be theological professor in Glasgow. There 
 are, however, prejudices against him as rather too 
 liberal and advanced. 
 
 1 2tk March. Went to St. Andrews yesterday and 
 lectured to a very crowded house. Enjoyed Dr. Park 
 very much. He is aesthetical, cultured, and genial. 
 His niece, a sister of Allan Park Paton of Greenock, 
 is a most accomplished person. She is intimate with 
 Dinah Muloch, and knows Alexander Smith and the 
 Dobells. They were exceedingly hospitable and kind. 
 Saw one or two of the professors. One Campbell, 
 recently come to the Greek chair, seems a fine fellow. 
 He lectures next week on Shakespeare and Milton. 
 We had a good deal of literary talk. Dr. Park is 
 a great admirer of Shelley, and has even set some 
 of his lyrics, such as the " Hymn to Pan," to music. 
 He was talking of Tulloch, Ferrier, and others. 
 
 A spirited paper to-day in the Advertiser exposing 
 the Oxford Convocation for their shabby conduct to 
 Jowett. They have refused to raise his salary as 
 professor of Greek from 4.0 to 400. It has been 
 done chiefly by the "conies" of the Evangelical 
 Party. We have plenty of the same silly sort in 
 
JOURNAL, 1864. 375 
 
 Scotland. How freely one breathes in an atmo- 
 sphere like that of last night's society, so full of 
 intelligence, liberality, and genial feeling. 
 
 l6tk March. Returned this afternoon from Mussel- 
 burgh and Dalkeith. I left on Monday at I P.M., and 
 had a calm passage. G. B. met me at Edinburgh. 
 Still the old kind fellow, with all his faults. Lectured 
 at Musselburgh ; the night wet and windy, but the 
 audience good. Went to sup at Dr. Scott's, the son- 
 in-law of Delta. Delta's daughter is a delightful 
 person, tall, sweet-looking, simple, an unconscious 
 angel. All her father in her shines. Her husband is 
 a fine fellow. Went yesterday to Inveresk Church 
 and saw the fine view commanded by it of the Firth, 
 the Pentlands, the Ochils, Arthur's Seat, and the level 
 lands surrounding Musselburgh. The .day was one 
 cold but beautiful smile. Went on to Dalkeith and 
 lectured to a large audience in the Corn Exchange 
 Hall. Altogether a pleasant visit. 
 
 igth March. Finished my lecture on "Chalmers 
 and Arnold " the other night. Valeat quantum. 
 
 Yesterday went and gave my speech to the chim- 
 ney-sweeps, about seventy in number, who cut rather 
 a respectable figure. They received it very well. 
 
 Have written the half of a sermon on " The voice 
 of the Lord is on the waters," with a passing allusion 
 to the Sheffield catastrophe. 
 
 Went in the afternoon for a drive with F. H. as far 
 as Inchture. The wind was easterly, but the ride, on 
 the whole, pleasant. Some interesting and painful 
 
376 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 reminiscences connected with that road. Used to go 
 it often to Pitrodie in the old Tom Nicol days. [See 
 " History of a Man," under Nicholas Thorn.] Had 
 not traversed the road for seventeen years. Every- 
 thing new and yet unchanged. What terrible things 
 strong memories are ! long and life-lasting multiples 
 of existence. 
 
 2Oth March. Preached yesterday on "The voice 
 of the Lord upon the waters " namely, the sea, the 
 rivers, earth's revolutions and wars, men's opinions, 
 the future crisis. Church very full. Speaking of 
 opinions, described them as four winds blowing upon 
 the great sea. 1st, Those who cling to every " if" and 
 " and " of the past ; 2nd, those who would destroy it 
 as a whole ; 3rd, those who expected a new revelation 
 of a supernatural kind ; and, 4th, those who were 
 eclectics, wishing to unite the merits of all systems 
 into a new whole. 
 
 March. Twenty-eight years to-day since 
 I was ordained here. How long yet short it looks. 
 Awoke to-day remembering some passages of my 
 past life which were peculiarly pleasant ; and 
 
 " Sick of the present, I turned to the past ; " 
 
 and yet not for worlds would I live over even some 
 of the dearest passages of the past again. 
 
 Have been annoyed at times of late by a feeling of 
 hopelessness about myself, and others, and things in 
 general. Hopelessness is worse than despair. Despair 
 hurries to a crisis and reaction. Hopelessness sits 
 
JOURNAL, 1864. 377 
 
 still on your shoulder, like the shadow of that 
 " Raven " of Poe's, and will neither go nor darken 
 deeper. What is the use of this waste of splendour, 
 this superfluity of glory, shining on worms ? Grant 
 the utmost breadth and depth of hell, as commonly 
 conceived for punishing sin and redressing griev- 
 ances it only makes the matter worse, it only 
 secures the normal continuance and increase of sin 
 and evil, it turns redress into revenge, it excites 
 sympathy for sin, it turns God's triumph into an act 
 of supreme selfishness, and makes human misery 
 yield the largest (so far as we know) share of His 
 revenue of glory. But these thoughts are too dark 
 and terrific to be dwelt on long. Good is ; and let us 
 hope that Good shall yet reign. 
 
 March.' Returned from my Glasgow and 
 Comrie jaunt. I reached Glasgow at 6.15 on Satur- 
 day, and drove to the Jeffreys.' Found M. [Mrs. 
 Gilfillan] there before me. Pleasant evening. Preached 
 twice in Regent Street Church. Many recollections 
 of old times. I had sat there when a boy-student 
 under Dr. Heugh. I saw the old seat, and could 
 fancy myself in my red gown vibrating towards it. 
 Preached to large audiences ; and, especially in the 
 afternoon, with uncommon force and freedom for me. 
 Got from two or three individuals of influence an offer 
 of the place, but put them off without committing 
 myself. Went to Logan's with Mrs. Gilfillan to tea. 
 He is recovering from an accident, but still confined 
 to the house. Lectured in Jeffrey's to a vast throng, 
 hundreds going away. Subject, " Heaven and earth 
 shaken." On Monday went out to Clydeview and 
 
378 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 saw my brother. Met R. Jeffrey at 3 P.M., lunched, 
 and off to Comrie. The valley was looking wintry, 
 but grand. Spoke at Crieff at a centenary soiree, 
 which passed off well. Altogether an interesting 
 journey. 
 
 $rd April. Did some thirty lines of " Night " on 
 Friday subject, " The Centre of the Universe." 
 Preached to-day, in the afternoon on, "We preach 
 Christ." ist, A whole Christ; 2nd, a personal Christ ; 
 3rd, a crucified Christ ; 4th, a Christ against whom 
 there were prejudices ; 5th, a coming Christ and a 
 coming Christianity. Lectured in the evening in 
 continuation of " The Sower." Audience very large. 
 In conclusion, speaking of the reasonableness of 
 religion, quoted a noble passage from Chalmers' 
 " Astronomical Discourses." 
 
 gth April. This is a beautiful day, bright, and 
 with that fine spring softness of feeling, and warmth 
 of breeze, which used to be so delightful. How 
 enthusiastically I used to quote the words of Emerson 
 about spring bringing 
 
 " Life's sunshine and desire ; 
 And from mount and meadow 
 Breathes aromatic fire." 
 
 But now much of this is gone, perhaps never to 
 return. 
 
 Poor Alaric A. Watts is dead. I knew him by 
 correspondence, and he was a warm friend of mine. 
 He was an elegant poet, a man of fine taste, long the 
 
JOURNAL, 1864. 379 
 
 editor of the Literary Souvenir, altogether, a capital 
 specimen of his class latterly, I fear, poor. 
 
 nth April. Returned to-day from Aberdeen. 
 Enjoyed my visit very much, on the whole, although 
 I felt spiritless all my northern way. George 
 Jamieson met me at the train and drove me to his 
 house. He is an acute, sagacious, well-read man. 
 His niece, Miss Gray, is a superior person, comely in 
 look, frank in manner, with decidedly literary tastes. 
 On Saturday evening preached to a very large audi- 
 ence for a Saturday, and on Sabbath evening to a 
 crowd. Felt a good deal about old times, remember- 
 ing 1837, when I assisted old Mr. Templeton, now in 
 his grave, and Sedgewick, now in Nova Scotia. That 
 was a delightful little time. I spent six days with 
 Sedgewick, and saw all in and about Aberdeen, its 
 fine streets and houses of serene and unchangeable 
 granite ; its colleges, rivers, sea-shore, and that 
 " Balgownie's brig's black wa' " over which, when a 
 boy, Byron used to lean, with a strange childish 
 delight. One or two of the elders of that time are 
 still alive, fine hale octogenarians, and they gave me 
 a most cordial welcome. I greatly admire, and even 
 love, the city, and could wander about its streets and 
 rivers continually. 
 
 13/7* April. Went yesterday to the jubilee soiree 
 of Mr. Lamb of Errol. Did not go till the evening, 
 and enjoyed a delicious solitary walk from the station 
 to the village. The young moon was lifting up her 
 horns high in heaven ; the evening was serene ; the 
 
380 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 clouds amber ; and the sun setting in the most 
 dazzling and pointed glory. I felt loath to quit such 
 a temple, even for Errol Established Church, where 
 erst Caird thundered musically, and where I found a 
 large audience assembled to do honour to my worthy 
 friend. Old Mr. Young, of Logiealmond, was finish- 
 ing his speech. What a wonderful veteran he is ! 
 settled sixty-four years, some eighty-seven of age, and 
 still hale, fresh, with a ringing voice, animated action, 
 and a youthful aspect altogether astonishing. I 
 stared, and thought In thirty-seven years, if I live, 
 I shall be as old, but will I be as strong and fresh ? 
 Not likely. I seemed almost to see my father, 
 Young's old friend and companion, risen from the 
 death of thirty-eight years. Then followed various 
 handsome presentations and little speeches, including 
 my own of fifteen minutes. After soiree came supper 
 in Lamb's manse ; and then we Dundonians started 
 for the midnight mail. Enjoyed the walk and talk 
 up the Carse and in the train very much Drs. 
 Robson, Eadie, and MacEwen were there. Howatt 
 was very pleasant on the road home. 
 
 April. Communion yesterday, Dr. R. Jeffrey 
 assisting. Never, I think, did I preach better. For 
 the day, its large attendance, and the attention given, 
 Laus Deo. Dr. Jeffrey preached with energy last 
 night, but I preferred his lecture to-day on Christ's 
 walking on the sea, which was plain, pointed, and 
 striking. 
 
 22nd April. Not very much has occurred since 
 
JOURNAL, 1864. 381 
 
 I made the last entry. The Jeffreys went home on 
 Wednesday, greatly pleased, I think, with their visit 
 We had a supper party last night. Read them a 
 good deal of " Night " Pilatus, et cetera which they 
 professed to like vastly. . . . Have begun my speech 
 on Shakespeare for the Tercentenary. Have another 
 to give on the same subject in Blairgowrie, on 
 Wednesday, to undertake which I have been almost 
 forced. 
 
 24/7/5 April. Lectured to-day on Elisha and the 
 minstrel. Described him sitting in his tent, the three 
 kings bending before him, he not taking the trouble 
 to rise till, the minstrel playing, he sprang to his feet 
 and was attired 
 
 " In sudden brightness, like a man inspired." 
 
 In afternoon, preached on "My sheep follow Me" 
 ist, by preferring Christ to every other teacher, while 
 admitting the merits of others ; 2nd, believing Christ's 
 veracity as well as His other virtues ; 3rd, trusting in 
 His death ; 4th, obeying His law ; 5th, imitating His 
 example ; and 6th, persevering to the very end. Was 
 rather short but, perhaps, impressive enough. Re- 
 deliver my lecture on " Chalmers and Arnold," in 
 James' Church to-night. Good story about Rev. 
 
 , for whose behalf I gave it in Edinburgh. 
 Some time before it was delivered, he asked a friend 
 of mine very earnestly, sotto voce, " By the way, can 
 you tell me who Arnold was ? " I fear a good many 
 of my audience to-night will be in a similar predica- 
 ment. 
 
 Gave my lecture. House crowded. 
 
382 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 2%tk April. The Shakespearean celebration, on the 
 26th, passed off well. There was a large, though not 
 crowded, attendance a good specimen, I think, of the 
 intelligence of Dundee. Went yesterday to Blair- 
 gowrie to a smaller edition of the same. Read an old 
 lecture on Shakespeare, with fully more effect than 
 the speech in Dundee. 
 
 F. H. drove Helen and me out and in, and we 
 enjoyed the drive. Went up last night to the old 
 church of Blairgowrie, which stands on an eminence, 
 commanding a fine view of the windings of the 
 Ericht, the village, the wood-embosomed houses, the 
 scattered clumps of trees, the swelling braes, as yet, 
 however, red and bare. The view in the grey morn- 
 ing to-day, coming down the glen from D. S.'s house, 
 also delightful ; and so the ride homeward, along the 
 hill toward Newtyle, with the great strath, shorn, how- 
 ever, by mist of its mountains, spread map-like 
 below. 
 
 The Synod of Angus and Mearns has recommended 
 Burns by a large majority. Murray Mitchell's speech 
 is from his point of view able and good. 
 
 April. Another bright day, half-frost, half-fire 
 kind of a day. Logan is enamoured of my Shakespeare 
 speech and sends me Hedderwick's in exchange, 
 which, like himself, is genial, catholic, classical. 
 
 I have this week read " Cymbeline." It is not the 
 happiest effort of Shakespeare's genius and betrays, I 
 am tempted to think, here and there an inferior hand. 
 But there is all the lavish wealth of thought and 
 imagery ; there are the inimitable touches of nature ; 
 there are the fine sketches of mountain life ; and there 
 
JOURNAL, 1864. 383 
 
 is, best of all, the scene in the bed-chamber of Imogen. 
 Never was such a delicate matter so delicately handled, 
 not even in Tennyson's " Godiva," or Keats' " Eve of 
 St. Agnes." Shakespeare must have witnessed a 
 similar scene with his own eyes. How generous he is 
 too, to lachimo at the close. He spares his life, nay, 
 seems to accept his repentance. On the other hand, 
 the story is clumsy, the plot contemptible, the king a 
 noodle, and the vision of Posthumus fantastic and 
 uninteresting. 
 
 2nd May. Hedderwick has a nice little paper in 
 the Glasgow Citizen on the "Conversion of the Clergy 
 to Shakespeare," in which he kindly alludes to me. 
 Curious dialogue here the other day : " Were you at 
 the Tercentenary ? " " No ; I don't wish to encourage 
 a licentious writer like Shakespeare." " Did you ever 
 read him ? " " Never." " What then is your ground 
 for thinking him licentious?" "Oh! it's the general 
 opinion ! " And so, I dare say, it is with the humbugs 
 of the age. 
 
 Read a good deal of Renan over yesterday. He is 
 not the shallow declaimer or mere describer that many 
 give him out to be. He is full of principles of 
 sagacious philosophy, with a singularly clear and 
 candid view of the particular period ; and his enthu- 
 siasm for Christ is very ardent arid sincere. 
 
 Yesterday, though a lively day with me throughout 
 in the pulpit, was dull in private, not miserable but 
 quietly sad. How well I remember this day (o'f the 
 week) eighteen years ago, the undue and fey-like 
 elation of the forenoon, the miserable failure of the 
 evening. What a strange, wild summer that of 1846 
 
384 GEORGE GILFJLLAN. 
 
 was ! Some passages of it came back on me yester- 
 day with a painful yet pleasing vividness. When at 
 Blairgowrie lately I remembered with great distinct- 
 ness my visit there in October of that year, my walk 
 up from Coupar- Angus on Saturday in the lull of a 
 tempest which had been raging all night, the road 
 covered with broken branches and fallen trees ; then 
 the heavenly quiet of the Sabbath morning shining on 
 the gorgeous leaves of autumnal decay ; my walk 
 down that beautiful valley of the Ericht in the evening, 
 with the golden light gleaming on the golden trees, 
 and the new moon rising so sweetly, and to me so 
 hopefully in the south-east ; my ride in the coach to 
 Coupar-Angus on the Monday, a strong frost having 
 come and suspended large icicles, like glorious ear- 
 drops, to the houses' eaves, and my solitary walk the 
 next day via the beautiful Kirk of Liff from Newtyle 
 to Dundee, carrying the little volume of Washington 
 Irving I had bought at Blairgowrie with me and read- 
 ing it on the road. I had newly recovered from a fit of 
 half-maddening misery; and the excursion gave me the 
 feelings of one just out of a fever. I felt that happi- 
 ness was again possible to me, which, a week before, I 
 had doubted. The week after I went over to a gather- 
 ing in Edinburgh which I called the Great Philoso- 
 phic Feed [banquet of the Philosophical Society], 
 where Macaulay, Whately, Wilson, and a whole host 
 of celebrities were to be present to feed and to roar. 
 How well I remember all the particulars of that queer 
 journey ! I went on to Edinburgh with my good dear 
 brother-in-law, George Vallentine, now in Australia, 
 and dined in Samuel Brown's, where, sooth to say, I 
 was not in the best tune or temper. I troked about 
 Edinburgh for a day or two till the feed came off, and 
 
JOURNAL, 1864. 385 
 
 can remember going into a coffee-house with Tom 
 Knox [Dr. Thomas Knox], then my special crony, 
 and reading him part of my second " Foster," one half 
 of which I had just written. Went to the feed and 
 was close to Brown when he was put down [his speech 
 being distasteful to the company]. The speaking 
 was, for the men, poor Macaulay's big-mouthed talk, 
 Whately's clumsy and carelessly given commonplace, 
 Wilson's twaddle, with none of his peculiar power, the 
 rest beneath notice except Brown, whose speech 
 promised to be splendid. I had read it, by the way, 
 in the morning in proof, garnished by the printer with 
 " loud cheers/' " the learned gentleman sat down 
 amidst universal cheers ! " This was exceedingly 
 rich. I was unutterably miserable when Brown was 
 getting such treatment, and intensely indignant after- 
 wards. I went down on Friday morning to Granton 
 to go home, but having suddenly changed my mind, 
 I strode along the shore to Leith, went into a coffee- 
 room, ordered pen, ink and paper, and in three or four 
 hours dashed off a short pamphlet attacking the 
 meeting in the most savage style, and commenting 
 with special severity on the treatment of Brown. 
 This I carried up to his lodgings and read to him at 
 tea. We thought of publishing it separately, but 
 changed our minds, and it was ultimately sent to Aird 
 who printed some portions of it in the Dumfries 
 Herald. It was one of my very best things. With 
 what savage satisfaction I wrote it, notwithstanding 
 the noise in the place. Next day I came home flat 
 as a flounder, and had the queerest feeling of nervous- 
 ness on the following Sabbath. Yet I got on well. 
 Then came a calm to my misery, and in that chiaro- 
 sciiro I finished " Foster," counting it half-inspired. 
 
 2 C 
 
386 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 It was the late flower of that most melancholy and 
 chequered year the year, however, to which my 
 memory most frequently recurs. 
 
 A terrible snow-storm came early in 18 and 
 during it I wrote in a fierce unhappy spirit, first, 
 my paper on Crabbe, which seems hot and fiery, 
 but of which I might say with Milton that 
 
 " The ground burns frore, 
 And cold performs the effect of fire ; " 
 
 and, second, a paper for Macphail on Dr. , which 
 
 was not printed. All this while, I was writing papers 
 in Tait, Hogg's Instructor, &c., and beginning to 
 entertain the project of the " Bards of the Bible," 
 reading the while some stiff thoughtful books, such 
 as " Brown's Philosophy," and with hope still rising 
 before me like a fiery column, "the dark side not 
 yet turned." 
 
 6th May. Have knocked off three or four bad 
 poets by letter. One young man, a member of my 
 own church, has a prose thing on Craighall with 
 touches of fancy which show promise. I wish I had 
 preserved a complete list of all the books and MSS. 
 sent me since 1846 when I became known as a critic, 
 with brief notes of their authors' character, &c. It 
 were a queer, motley collection, a regular Noah's ark 
 of all kinds of clean and unclean animals eagles, 
 lions, owls, asses, serpents, and a few vermin for 
 variety. I have this week to write a preface to my 
 friend Whitelaw [of Athelstaneford's] book. 
 
THE LAST TWENTY-FIVE YEARS. 
 
 387 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 PROGRESS OF THOUGHT. 
 
 SUMMING up the impressions of the year 1854, 
 Mr. Gilfillan says : " It was a disastrous year 
 to me on the whole. My good old mother died on 
 the 8th of May ; my congregation was disturbed ; 
 and Aytoun and his allies commenced a furious battery 
 of abuse and detraction. The same year I published 
 a third ' Gallery.' " The first of these events is dwelt 
 upon in terms of the deepest filial sorrow in the 
 letters of the time to Mr. Dobell and Mr. Aird. 
 The third matter requires some explanation. The 
 " battery " was opened in Aytoun's satirical tragedy 
 of " Firmilian," and in Blackwood's Magazine where 
 opportunity was found for an attack on Mr. Gilfillan 
 as chief advocate of the new poets. " Firmilian," 
 long kept under lock and key by Professor Wilson, 
 was produced during his last over-clouded days, and 
 the pages of allusive and certainly not brilliant banter 
 thrown into Blackwood were no doubt intended to 
 second the passage in " Firmilian " where Mr. Gilfillan 
 figures as Apollodorus and his literary life is drama- 
 tically quenched. It was to this attack Mr. D. G. 
 Rosetti referred in a letter to Mr. Hall Caine : 
 " Gilfillan was a much better man intellectually 
 
 389 
 
390 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 and morally than Aytoun, who tried to do for 
 him." * 
 
 Aytoun succeeded in his main object ; he raised 
 the laugh of the polite world, and it was felt keenly 
 as we know from many of Gilfillan's letters ; but we 
 also know that the worst attacks cost him little more 
 than a night's sleep, and that he felt the ecclesiastical 
 far more than the literary conflict. As a minister in 
 Dundee, he fought his way to a great success ; as a 
 minister in the church of his fathers he would fain 
 have had a position of trust and regard. The resolu- 
 tion against him of influential religious persons was 
 what hurt most the warm heart of Mr. Gilfillan. 
 
 On both sides he wins the verdict now. The 
 intellectual and moral power of which Mr. Rosetti 
 speaks raises Gilfillan's name high in the Scottish 
 Church and places him, as a literary man, far above 
 most of those whose writings appeared with his in the 
 periodicals of the day. Open one of the Eclectic or 
 Critic volumes and presently you are asking in 
 astonishment, what pen is this, what voice breaks with 
 such force out of the ranks ? As Dr. Vaughan said in 
 his admirable review cf the Second Gallery, " Gilfillan's 
 ideas no sooner become his than they pass into 
 sensible species ; you hear them and see them. . . . 
 His force is manifestly dependent on his freedom." 
 To the young man, the unconventional man, it was 
 new life to see one ranging the field like that ; to 
 the conventional he seemed far too hot for literature, 
 far too free for religion. But who of the former 
 class could help turning first to Gilfillan's papers 
 
 * "Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rosetti," by T. Hall 
 Caine, p. 195. 
 
PROGRESS OF THOUGHT. 391 
 
 in any magazine, even when such a writer as 
 " Atticus," more comprehensive, more trained, ap- 
 peared side by side with him ? The fire, the glow, 
 the life, are all his. 
 
 The personal dispute with Aytoun is of the past. 
 The larger point of quarrel, however, enters deeply 
 into the life of the Scottish people. And it cannot 
 be doubted that Gilfillan's fervent little volume on the 
 Covenanters helped to stir afresh the old spirit which 
 Aytoun scorned. It was his most popular work. 
 Simply written, and with a whole heart, by one who 
 could boast that he was descended from a martyr of 
 Dunottar, it went straight to the soul of the country. 
 Published towards the close of 1852, it was in its fifth 
 thousand in 1853, a d went on selling for a score of 
 years. Against the persecutors its verdict is stern, 
 sternest of all against Graham of Claverhouse ; and 
 Aytoun, as his eulogist, is not spared. " Claverhouse 
 lies in the church of Blair- Athol, but we do not think 
 that Aytoun's ' Burial March ' has consecrated his 
 tomb or drawn many pilgrims to weep over it. ' The 
 memory of the wicked shall rot ; ' and over the grave 
 of Clavers, as over that of every hard-hearted man, 
 the crown of crime seems to sit shadowy on the turf, 
 and the feet of devils may be fancied to dance above 
 the sod that covers him. Shall we substitute for the 
 empty grandiloquence of Pitcairn's epitaph the follow- 
 ing true and simple words, which a thousand ghosts 
 might rise from the moors to attest? ' Here lies one 
 who believed not in God but in his sword not in man 
 but in his banner who, as it was said of Caesar, that 
 he went with sobriety to the ruin of his country, shed 
 the blood of his fellowmen as coolly as if he had been 
 shedding water who never trembled nor blushed when 
 
392 GEORGE GILFILLAN, 
 
 alive, but who would have blushed had he foreseen 
 what fooleries of admiration were to be perpetrated 
 by his partisans that Pitcairn was to compose his 
 epitaph, and Aytoun to chant his funeral ode.' " 
 
 The publication of Nichol's edition of the " Poets " 
 began in 1853, an d terminated in 1860, when forty- 
 eight volumes had been issued. The series included 
 all the masters, from Chaucer to the modern period, 
 and had wide circulation and acceptance. From 
 first to last Mr. Gilfillan acted as editor. To the 
 works or examples of each author he prefixed a 
 short biography, adding, in many cases, a separate 
 essay on the genius of the poet. Some volumes 
 contain three distinct articles. The labour, though 
 congenial, was great, and often done under condi- 
 tions that were in no small degree disconcerting. 
 Remote from libraries, Mr. Gilfillan had to be con- 
 tented with sources of information that could not be 
 thoroughly tested. It is therefore not wonderful that 
 the biographical sketches are sometimes imperfect. 
 The critical dissertations, however, have the same 
 power and perception that mark the " Literary 
 Portraits." 
 
 The edition opened with Milton, whose life is 
 sketched in some three-and-twenty pages, in a lucid, 
 though by no means striking, way. After this came 
 Thomson, Herbert, Young, and Goldsmith ; and the 
 sequence of the succeeding volumes will be found in 
 the list of publications at the close of the present 
 work. Among the last was Swift, the notice of whom 
 is praised by Rosetti for its great force and eloquence. 
 From the essay on the " Genius and Poetry of Robert 
 Burns " the following sentences may be taken : 
 
PROGRESS OF THOUGHT. 393 
 
 " Not the least remarkable of the characteristics of 
 the songs of Burns is their variety of subject and of 
 mood. The whole heart of Scottish life is reflected 
 in them, as well as the poet's own entire history. 
 Scottish love and courtship, domestic felicity and 
 infelicity, jealousies and rivalships, humours, eccen- 
 tricities and sorrows, virtues and vices, loyalty to 
 King George and loyalty to King James, the scenery 
 of both Highlands and Lowlands, all the seasons of 
 the year and all the divisions of the day, the joys 
 which surround the cradle, the mirth which rings 
 about the marriage, and the grief that weeps by the 
 deathbed and the grave, beauty and deformity, the 
 hopes, disappointments, raptures, and despairs of his 
 own bosom, are all included in the Shakespearean 
 songs of Burns, who has, in these more than in any 
 of his writings, discovered the vast width of his 
 sympathies. . . . The great objection to his poetry 
 is, after all, the same which we brought against his 
 life it has no pervading purpose and no consecrat- 
 ing moral. It is neither entirely * of the earth, earthy,' 
 nor is it thoroughly ethereal. The author's mind acts 
 simply as a mirror, reflecting now the grossest, now 
 the most beautiful objects now the dunghill before 
 his own door, and now the evening star of his Mary 
 in the orange west now the petty pandemonium of 
 a ' Poosie Nansie's,' and now the little heaven of a 
 pious rustic's fireside. . . . We close this estimate of 
 Burns by simply expressing again feelings of deepest 
 sorrow and pitying love. . . . We have wished to 
 blend pity and blame in severe and equal proportions 
 as the true libation over his dust." The article on 
 Burns in the " Gallery " may be mentioned as a clear, 
 calm piece of critical portraiture. 
 
394 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 The task of editing the " Poets " once begun, 
 Gilfillan held on strenuously to the end. Along with 
 his labour as a pastor this editorship might have 
 been supposed enough for any man, and perhaps 
 ought to have satisfied his appetite for work. But 
 it scarcely absorbed a half of his intellectual vigour. 
 His "Fatherhood of God" was published in .1854; 
 his "History of a Man" in 1856; his "Christianity 
 and our Era" in 1857; and in 1860 "Alpha and 
 Omega," a collection of Scripture studies filling two 
 volumes. In addition to all these were his contribu- 
 tions to magazines Hogg's Instructor, third series ; 
 Titan, which followed in 1856; the Eclectic; the 
 Critic; and the Scottish Review, a quarterly, in 
 almost every number of which he was heard from 
 January, 1853, to its close. For industry this 
 period of Gilfillan's life rivals the most productive 
 in any literary career. And his books and articles 
 were read. While the attacks upon him had their 
 effect, and whispers of this and that rebuff were 
 relished in certain circles, he kept his hold on the 
 awakening mind of the country. "You shall send 
 ' Abijah ' to Gilfillan," said a friend to a young poetess 
 in England in 1854. "I stared," she says, "gasped, 
 protested Gilfillan, who lashed the Athenczum the 
 other day for the review of ' Balder ' in such a terrible 
 style, that every stroke makes even a spectator 
 writhe." But his was the one coveted verdict, and 
 the poem went, with hosts of others, to have kind 
 notice in due course. 
 
 At this time Mr. Gilfillan was in constant corre- 
 spondence with Mr. J. Stanyan Bigg of Ulverston, 
 whom he had encouraged to publish the poem " Night 
 and the Soul." His friendly pen was also moving on 
 
PROGRESS OF THOUGHT. 395 
 
 behalf of Mr. Gerald Massey, another of those who 
 partly owed to him their hearing in the literary world. 
 In a letter to Mr. Bigg, of 25th May, 1854, Mr. Gilfillan 
 says : " Your poem must work its way. You will find 
 my review in next Hogg pretty long, favourable, and 
 honest. I am glad Landor has written you in so 
 generous a spirit. I have it in contemplation to write 
 for the Eclectic a review of you, ' Balder,' and Massey. 
 That Review, however, has lately changed proprietors 
 and editor, which may delay its appearance a little. 
 Poor Aytoun I He seems in a sad quandary with me, 
 Smith, and * Balder.' Your poem will add fuel to his 
 fire of fury. 'Tis a low, vulgar, spiteful, although 
 rather amusing and cleverish paper. . . . Such things 
 do immense mischief to the magazine, and none at 
 all to the assailed authors. A few such onsets on 
 ' Night and the Soul ' would do it much good. 
 
 "The critics of London are verily a peculiar people, 
 redeemed from insignificance partly by their multi- 
 tude and principally by their malignity. . . . The 
 
 men of the are as wee as they are wicked. 
 
 Heaven help literature, say I, if such are to be 
 acknowledged its potentates. But their power is 
 nearly over. 
 
 "You must in your next poem give us more 
 incident, and compress a good deal. I have given 
 you some good advices on that score in Hogg." 
 
 To the same correspondent he writes in the follow- 
 ing August : " I have had your letter forwarded me. 
 The review in the Eclectic is not mine. It is favour- 
 able, but not very suggestive or discriminating. Still 
 you might be better of seeing it. Authors are always 
 better of seeing all reviews, unless the helplessly 
 puffatory or malignantly abusive." 
 
396 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 Returning to Mr. Gilfillan's own books. The next 
 in order, " The Grand Discovery ; or, the Fatherhood 
 of God," is a small volume, an expanded sermon. 
 With some faults of style and argument it is, on the 
 whole, calmly reasoned, and takes a comprehensive 
 view of the subject. " God elects in sovereignty, and 
 sovereignty means not acting from mere caprice, or 
 in opposition to justice, but ' giving none account of 
 any of His matters' at present; acting with the 
 dignity and reticence of a monarch who does not 
 choose to reveal his secrets save at the time and in 
 the manner he sees fit, but whose character is enough 
 to show that his secrets are all holy secrets, and his 
 mysteries mysteries of godliness." 
 
 The "Third Gallery of Literary Portraits," which 
 appeared in 1854, was made up as follows : 
 
 1. A File of French Revolutionists (from Hogg's 
 Instructor] : Mirabeau ; Marat, Robespierre, and 
 Danton ; Vergniaud ; Napoleon. 
 
 2. A Constellation of Sacred Authors : Edward 
 Irving (a second paper); Isaac Taylor ; Robert Hall ; 
 Hamilton, of Leeds ; Jameson, of Methven ; Dr. 
 Chalmers. 
 
 3. A Cluster of New Poets : Yendys ; Smith ; 
 Bigg ; Massey. 
 
 4. Modern Critics : Hazlitt and Hallam ; Jeffrey 
 and Coleridge ; Delta ; Spalding ; Thackeray (from 
 Scottish Review) ; Macaulay (from Critic of three 
 years before). 
 
 5. Miscellaneous Sketches: Carlyle and Sterling 
 (from Eclectic}', Emerson ; Neale and Bunyan ; Edmund 
 Burke; Poe; Bul\ver(from Scottish Review}', Disraeli ; 
 Smibert and the Highlands ; Wilson ; Rogers ; ^Eschy- 
 lus (from Palladium} ; Shakespeare (from Macphaif). 
 
PROGRESS OF THOUGHT. 397 
 
 An edition of seven hundred and fifty copies of 
 this " Third Gallery " was published to begin ; and 
 the last edition of the " Galleries," which followed in 
 1857, comprehended the whole in two volumes. In 
 this final redaction certain papers of the first and 
 second series were omitted, and the articles were 
 rearranged so as to come under five divisions : 
 Poets, French Revolutionists, Novelists, Critics and 
 Miscellaneous Writers, and Sacred Authors. The 
 omissions deserve notice. The article on Thomas 
 Carlyle in the first " Gallery " is entirely dropped. 
 The two articles on Emerson in the first and second 
 series are suppressed, and a new paper inserted, so 
 stringent in tone, that it may be called an attack. 
 It was manifestly impossible, in view of the publica- 
 tion of " Christianity and our Era," to allow the early 
 eulogies of Carlyle and Emerson, guarded though 
 they were at many points, to reappear. With these 
 exceptions, however, all the important papers were 
 given. 
 
 "The History of a Man" is the next work that 
 calls for special notice. Mr. Gilfillan hoped great 
 things for it, and it proved his great disappointment. 
 Issued by Messrs. Arthur Hall, Virtue & Co., of 
 London, in March, 1856, the book began its career 
 with peculiar disadvantages, affecting Scottish and 
 also English readers. It was to the publishers, 
 Hogg, and Nichol, Scotland had learned to look for 
 Gilfillan's work. For English readers, again, the 
 book was too Scottish in its prevailing notes ; and, 
 while it had great merits and power, it had salient 
 faults. It is, on the whole, clearly an autobiography 
 no one could suppose it a fiction and yet there 
 are fictitious elements that would puzzle any reader. 
 
398 GEORGE G1LF1LLAN. 
 
 Real names, pseudonyms, and initials are introduced, 
 the real names mostly those of well-known men, the 
 fictitious either impenetrable or so transparent that 
 the disguise is useless. The geography, too, is a con- 
 fusion. But, chiefly, there was this fault, that to any- 
 one at all acquainted with the author's history, some 
 of the conversations were improbable, and others 
 manifestly impossible. Mr. Gilfillan prided himself on 
 these conversations, which he always believed would 
 be taken as imaginary. They were partly in the style 
 of the Nodes Ambrosiance, though quite without 
 coarseness, partly adventured upon under cover of 
 Lander's. But, although clever, and in places even 
 brilliant, they lack interest. Few people minded 
 what Carlyle might be supposed to have said under 
 certain circumstances when so much of his own 
 inimitable work was at hand. Wilson and Chalmers 
 were more easily imitated, yet the verisimilitude 
 does not satisfy. Now-a-days the popular novel 
 serves up the real under cover of fiction ; but 
 readers need not trouble themselves about identifica- 
 tion ; the character answers the purpose of the tale, 
 although the original is either not known or not 
 sought under the mask. The " History of a Man " is 
 not a novel ; it has no plot ; and the conversations 
 are mere exercises in imitation ; they have no bear- 
 ing on the progress of the book. 
 
 Again, the small mysteries of dashes and inverted 
 initials were baffling, and discovery brought little or 
 no reward, at anyrate to the English reader. A great 
 mystery is enjoyed ; but these little riddles, which 
 cannot be guessed, only tire and irritate one. At the 
 same time the book has a singular power diffused 
 throughout. It opens with several chapters of auto- 
 
PROGRESS OF THOUGHT. 399 
 
 biography, which, when the thin veil is removed, are 
 worthy to take rank with any work of the kind in our 
 language. The writing is free and strong, full of 
 truth, and equally of imagination. As we read, we 
 see the " remote laddie " on his way through the 
 mystical world of books, and dreaming his dreams 
 among the hills. As a literary confession it deserves 
 to be much better known than it ever has been. 
 Throughout the volume, too, there are many portions, 
 subsidiary histories, portraiture of scenes and men, 
 that glow with imagination, and are lighted up with 
 the finest moral discernment. Perhaps the whole has 
 a latent tone of accidie ; some of the sketches are too 
 daring in their sarcasm, and the want of story leads 
 to a want of the softer emotions. As the author 
 might have expected, the free treatment of some men 
 and the stinging criticism of others produced an 
 unfavourable impression on many minds. For various 
 reasons, therefore, the admirable work expended on 
 the " History " brought little gain of any kind to Mr. 
 Gilfillan. He was cheered now and then by tidings 
 of good it had done ; but he never saw it come to 
 what he believed its proper place, as a companion to 
 " Sartor Resartus." He made an experiment with 
 this work, and forgot certain conditions essential to 
 success. Nevertheless, it remains his own unique 
 memorial. 
 
 Many extracts, already given, show the nature of 
 the book ; one portion, however, that which treats of 
 his later religious opinions, has not, as yet, been used. 
 A passage from this chapter must be given as an 
 important piece of autobiography. 
 
 " In my deepest and darkest hour I clung to the 
 doctrine of the God-Man, the Word incarnate in the 
 
400 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 Man of Galilee ; nay, methought His beautiful, bend- 
 ing, compassionate form became larger and brighter 
 from the surrounding gloom ; and I was tempted to 
 cry, ' If there be no other God, Thou, Jesus, at least, 
 art Divine ; and to whom can I go but to Thee, for 
 Thou hast the words of eternal life ! ' And to 
 intensify this affection, there arose to my heart at this 
 time, like a new star bursting on the midnight, the 
 ancient hope of the Church that 'blessed hope of 
 the glorious appearing of the great God and our 
 Saviour, Jesus Christ.' I had previously despised 
 this as a dream and wondered, with a great admira- 
 tion, how a man like Edward Irving ever yielded his 
 giant arms to such gossamer chains. One night, 
 however, in my absence, a humble millenarian mis- 
 sionary called at my dwelling and left, with my 
 dearest relative, some little tracts on the subject. 
 These on my return I read, sooth to say, with no 
 great admiration and with no credence. I began to 
 revolve the subject in my mind, and the result, at last, 
 was a very decided hope in the pre-millennial advent. 
 ' One clear star the seaman saves,' and for a long time 
 I had only this star in my cloud -drifting sky. 
 Unable to answer many of the objections or objurga- 
 tions of Carlyle and Emerson, I said to myself, ' He 
 shall, one day, answer them.' Unable to see clearly 
 the relations of reconcilement between science, litera- 
 ture, philosophy, and religion, I cried, HE shall, one 
 day, form the bright synthesis between these tran- 
 scendent things. My faltering Faith began to lean for 
 support upon her younger and fairer sister, Hope. 
 
 " One day, while wrapped in deep and silent misery, 
 I was relieved by a friend sitting in the room beside 
 me, murmuring to herself, in soliloquy, ' The Saviour 
 
PROGRESS OP THOUGHT. 
 
 is coming soon' I felt as if an oracle had opened its 
 lips beside me ; and although twelve years have 
 elapsed, and He is not yet here, I am as confident as 
 ever that, as surely ' as Tabor is among the moun- 
 tains and Carmel by the sea, so He shall come, saith 
 the Lord of Hosts.' ... I felt that the present 
 shapes of Christianity were sustained in life partly by 
 galvanic action and effort. There was no prospect of 
 a new cultus arising. . . . But here was a thought, 
 suggested by Christianity itself, of a new and final 
 evolution of its power, which was to explain its mys- 
 teries, strengthen its weak points, give it a glorious 
 incarnation on earth in Universal Man, and bring its 
 structure to a golden spire-like point. This com- 
 mended itself to my imagination as well as reason, 
 ' detained me before the Lord/ shed new life and fire 
 into my flagging ministrations, and was often a secret 
 solace to my own sick and weary heart." 
 
 We have here the theory of belief which Mr. 
 Gilfillan was working out in " Christianity and our 
 Era " simultaneously with the progress of his " History 
 of a Man." Now this religious idea seized him, 
 became his life, fanned the fire of literary expression, 
 and drove his pen. The problem of human redemp- 
 tion burdened his spirit, and he bent himself to the 
 solution with a labour that no other work cost him. 
 " Christianity and our Era " is written in grim 
 earnest. 
 
 He first surveys the attitude Christianity holds to 
 the chief intellectual agencies at work in the age, and 
 finds opposition, apparently irreconcilable, at almost 
 every point. In reference, moreover, to science, litera- 
 ture, morality, political development, social progress, 
 and philosophy, he says, Christianity " has lost much 
 
 2 D 
 
GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 of its influence, and, although not a timorous and 
 spurned slave, is not, certainly, a commanding mis- 
 tress, a queen in the centre of the house." Turning 
 next to the causes of the decline of Christianity, he 
 finds them, first, in the absence from the world of the 
 Author of our faith ; secondly, in the superstition 
 which followed Christ's departure, and the prevailing 
 absence of a sound belief in the Second Advent. The 
 Church, he says, is to blame for the Apostasy, and he 
 adds, " it is our firm impression that this hope of 
 Christ's coming, renewed in the Church, must keep 
 the remains of faith and fervour glowing till they be 
 kindled into an ever-burning flame by the arrival of 
 Christ." A review of the present state of the evidences 
 of Christianity, leads to the conclusion that the evi- 
 dences themselves are very strong ; still, it is not only 
 desirable, but likely, in accordance with some of God's 
 former dealings with mankind, that a new element 
 may be introduced, " a new fact evolved, which may 
 have the effect of ending the great controversy, over- 
 powering foes, and deepening to demonstration the 
 faith of those who already believe." 
 
 Dealing with substitutes for Christianity, Mr. 
 Gilfillan begins by considering modern Materialism 
 and Pantheism, singling out for special attack a book 
 called " The Divine Drama of History and Civilisa- 
 tion." He then passes to Deism, Positivism, and 
 Theistic Spiritualism, the last represented by Theo- 
 dore Parker and F. W. Newman. But the force of 
 attack is reserved for " Carlylism," against which 
 point after point is raised. " It rejects Christianity 
 without fully accepting Atheism ; it halts awkwardly 
 between two opinions ; it gives no satisfaction to the 
 mind of its votary. To Carlyle himself it seems to be 
 
PROGRESS OF THOUGHT. 403 
 
 the poisoned shirt of Nessus ; and his groanings 
 under it are becoming less melodious and more 
 terrible every year. To what new species of denial it 
 is tending we cannot say ; but that there are lower 
 deeps before it we are certain. Those of its votaries 
 who will not be repelled and disgusted back from it 
 into the arms of Christianity, will find themselves 
 committed to a course of thought of the most wither- 
 ing and weakening description, and will, perforce, 
 become spiritual savages, without barbaric strength 
 and health naked, homeless wanderers through the 
 wildernesses of nature." 
 
 The causes of Scepticism are next fully considered, 
 and the chapter concludes by calling men to study 
 Christianity " in the seats of its true power in the 
 lives of its humble votaries, in the private history of 
 Christian families, in the Uncle Toms and little Evas 
 who are still left amongst us. Let them be assured of 
 this, that whatever be their feelings to Christianity, 
 Christianity loves them, feels for them, has joys to 
 give them, which nothing else in the universe can ; 
 alone can meet their sense of sin, or appease their 
 awakened conscience ; and looks with a broad, 
 benignant eye upon the human race in general. . . . 
 Scarce one sceptic-leader in the present day is worthy 
 to untie the shoe-latchet of Coleridge in point of 
 genius, or of Hall in point of excellence ; but the 
 merest tyro in the school may enter on the enjoyment 
 of the same mercy, and the same humble hope, by 
 the simple instant act of accepting the religion of 
 Jesus Christ." 
 
 Occupying the " Debatable Land between Natural- 
 ism and Christianity," the writer finds Popery "a 
 miracle of fraud," Puseyism, Unitarianism, " false 
 
404 GEORGE GILF1LLAN. 
 
 Evangelicalism," and " Mauricism." The spirit of 
 those whom he calls false Evangelicals he contrasts 
 with " the manlier mould, healthier spirit, and larger 
 and more liberal form of religion which distinguished 
 such men as Luther, Knox, Robert Hall and Thomas 
 Chalmers. To these men religion was a glad and a 
 genial thing ; it was a blessed light shining across the 
 universe ; it was a broad amnesty ; it was a heaven- 
 sent summons to smile." Against Maurice's theory of 
 Christianity there is a long and eager argument. It 
 is described as a system of accommodation, a system 
 which would leave us most of our theological names 
 while robbing us of most of our theological things 
 " would leave the labels but take away the medicines 
 in the rooms of the Great Physician, or substitute for 
 them the pharmacopoeia of human philosophy." 
 Finally in this chapter the ideas of Swedenborg are 
 reviewed. 
 
 From modern plans for the increase of the power 
 of Christianity the book passes in its ninth chapter to 
 the argument for a supernatural interference on behalf 
 of Christianity ; and with this the volume goes on to 
 its conclusion the signs of the Second Advent, a 
 picture of its results. 
 
 On the whole the impression left is that of thorough- 
 ness, of stringent thinking, a full heart, a determination 
 to clear the ground of all that to the author appears 
 hollow in modern systems and theories, so that the 
 one remedy in which faith is placed may be seen and 
 received in its full virtue. Mr. Gilfillan felt the 
 writing of this book to be his great intellectual and 
 spiritual effort, and even those who read without 
 being convinced must own the power of the plea. 
 Yet for persons who neither begin nor end with the 
 
PROGRESS OF THOUGHT. 405 
 
 faith of a pre-millennial advent of Christ, the work is 
 a troubling of the waters of thought without the 
 coming of the angel. The criticism tells ; yet it 
 inspires the reader with a feeling of sadness rather 
 than exultation while the falsehood of the falsest 
 system is laid bare. It has the air of genius, not of 
 mastery. The sweep is broad ; the conclusion seems 
 narrow ; though the Christ looked for is a great Christ, 
 a glorious Redeemer. A waste of ruin is made and 
 we stand sorrowful amidst the desolation even when 
 we believe with the author that He is coming who 
 shall make all things new. 
 
 In his " History of a Man " Gilfillan had made 
 separation between himself and the literary world 
 the world at least of the reviews and magazines, of 
 Aytoun, Macaulay, Thackeray and the rest. " Christ- 
 ianity and our Era " made the division deep, and, so 
 far as literary judgment was concerned, complete. 
 He could no longer be known as one desiring to 
 stand on the same ground or earn the same applause 
 as men whose ambition was purely literary. And 
 this he himself clearly perceived, as the journal shows. 
 He chose his position deliberately, after a wide survey 
 of life, and took his stand with the consequences in 
 view. Was he wise in his way of separating himself, 
 in the points insisted on ? The answer can scarcely 
 be given in these pages. It is clear, however, that the 
 decision to which he came implied a failure to effect 
 the reconciliation which had been the pole-star of his 
 life. Literature still attracted him ; but his reliance 
 on the personal advent meant that no longer for him 
 could thought be the instrument of reconciliation. 
 He changed his venue from the solution of the 
 intellectual-religious life to the solution of providence 
 
406 GEORGE GILFILLAN, 
 
 and that, for the time, proved hopelessly beyond 
 him. At the last he virtually acknowledged literature 
 the mere amusement of the race, and civilisation its 
 abortive struggle for a redemption, the sufficient 
 factors of which have not entered as yet into human 
 history. Of this failure in thought he was at least 
 partly aware with the result that no great attempt 
 was made after 1857 in the field of literature in which 
 he gained his first laurels. His work on the poets 
 came to an end. He went on writing with fulness 
 and power ; nay, his later work has often a classic 
 ease, eloquence, and depth unknown to the earlier. 
 His style on the whole improved. He wrote a life of 
 Sir Walter Scott, a life of his friend Anderson, at the 
 very end a life of Burns ; the last with a sense of 
 difficulty and pressure due probably to the disease 
 which carried him off. He also composed his poem 
 on "Night." But the Journal shows where his thoughts 
 were, shows that he could write no history of British 
 poetry from the heart. It was not " Firmilian," nor 
 any other attack from the same quarter that drove 
 him out of the field. He felt a higher attraction and 
 yet, yielding to it, following the vision of a great 
 possibility, he seemed always to see " an end of all 
 perfection." 
 
 Contrast Carlyle with Gilfillan and it will be found 
 that both were, one time or other, at the same parting 
 of the ways. Carlyle refused the Christian ministry, 
 refused the distinctively religious culture, and went 
 out into the open, where he found as his final and 
 largest task the Voltaire-Frederick drama a thing 
 far inferior to his powers. Gilfillan clung to religion, 
 and wrought at theological problems which became 
 ever more engrossing and perplexing. If we judge 
 
PROGRESS OF THOUGHT. 407 
 
 between life and life, who can deny that Gilfillan's 
 was the nobler choice ? It was made under the force 
 of spiritual instincts, and therefore partly unawares. 
 He thought that with his reconciliation unreached 
 he might still serve literature as well as religion ; and 
 his attempts, especially in the labour that went to 
 " Night " were eager and even great. But from the 
 way chosen there was no turning back ; he failed for 
 Christ, and did well. 
 
 The question may still be asked whether he found 
 in later days the harmony of the intellectual and 
 the religious life which appeared so far away when he 
 wrote " Christianity and our Era." It may be further 
 asked whether the discord between the actual and 
 the ideal, between human life and the Divine plan 
 that is the question of Providence came to any other 
 solution than the Second Advent of Christ. Did he 
 adhere to that promised relief of the troubled world 
 and the mind perplexed ? The only reply now 
 possible is that this was Gilfillan's life-long theme. 
 Almost from the beginning of his career as a thinker 
 he had announced his design to write on " Reconcilia- 
 tion": by 1 874 he congratulated himself that his task 
 was in some sort done. It was, however, in the form 
 of a fictitious biography a form not well suited to 
 him, which had, moreover, the disadvantage that it 
 left the point of philosophic and vital reconcilement 
 unstated so far as his own faith was concerned. Of 
 that book a mere fragment now remains, the two last 
 chapters. There are in these some passages strange, 
 yearning, almost oracular in tone ; and one it is right 
 to quote. 
 
 " There are moments," says the author, " when the 
 mind seems to pass from tumult and strife into those 
 
408 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 1 Regions calm of mild and serene air' 
 
 where the eternal are. Such moments are those of 
 reconciliation begun. And when they 'multiply as 
 life goes on, the more thorough does reconciliation 
 become. The feeling extends not only to all that is 
 pleasurable in our lot and the lot of the world, but to 
 much that is dark, disagreeable and evil, partly indeed 
 because it is to pass away, partly also because it is the 
 will of the great God that it should have been. It 
 includes reconciliation to the thought that possibly 
 some of those evils may never altogether pass away, 
 although against the eternal and increasing and 
 unmitigated continuance of others the reconciled man 
 must rebel. It includes in it a growing humility of 
 spirit which is not the sullen submission of dotage or 
 of death, but points to the reservoir of peace gradually 
 forming in the inmost bosom and communicating 
 with that ocean of perfect rest the man expects to 
 reach hereafter. In Wordsworth's language, this 
 'noisy life' is becoming 'a moment in the being of 
 the eternal silence/ a silent moment. It includes in 
 it a willingness to be, think, or do whatever God 
 manifestly wills him to be, think, or do, but accom- 
 panied by a profound conviction that God will never 
 call on him to think or do or be anything but what 
 shall seem, sooner or later and all circumstances 
 considered, to his own conscience, to the God within 
 the breast, right and good. It includes in it submission 
 to fate, not as arbitrary will, but as wisdom, absolute, 
 although hidden in its reasons and purposes. It says, 
 although in a somewhat different sense from Pope, 
 ' Whatever is, is right/ and whatever has been, has 
 been right, and whatever shall be, shall be right, if 
 not in itself, yet in the grand scale of the universal 
 
PROGRESS OF THOUGHT. 409 
 
 plan. It does not simply look to God with awful 
 respect but with filial affection. If it cannot prove 
 Him to be a Father it can take for granted that He 
 is ; and if it does not see all His ways falling like 
 tributaries into the central lake of His love, it believes 
 that they are all struggling, winding and pursuing 
 their course underground towards it as their true home 
 and resting-place. It believes that many of the 
 fearful phenomena of the present system are fraught 
 with good, are the masks of a merciful and gracious 
 face, shadows in a splendid picture, and that, in 
 Tennyson's language 
 
 " ' Every cloud that spreads above 
 And veileth love, itself is love.' 
 
 " Balfour had sometimes stood by agonised death- 
 beds, or beside the couches of lingering disease, or 
 beside Rachels weeping for their children, or beside 
 mourners watching in silence their beloved ones sink- 
 ing into the grave ; and he had admired the loyalty 
 to God which distinguished those weeping ones. No 
 blasphemy, no murmuring, no sullen desperation, no 
 looks cast up to heaven 
 
 . . . " ' With that frantic air 
 Which seemed to ask if a God were there,' 
 
 but, on the contrary, deep -hearted submission, a 
 resolute determination to believe it was all for the 
 best a determination which all the sophistry of hell 
 could not have shaken, and with gratitude for the 
 tears God was giving to consecrate and carry away 
 sorrow. He stood and saw this, and he felt their 
 reconciliation stealing into his own heart. 
 
 " He felt, too, that reconciliation implied reconcilia- 
 tion to mystery as one of the necessary elements of 
 
4 io GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 the infinitude, as indeed the very shadow of God. 
 The mystery connected with God may be the 
 inevitable condition of our progress and the means 
 of securing for our spirits a perpetual, ever-retreating 
 horizon ; for our eyes a boundless prospect, with 
 shadows and clouds not resting on but retiring from 
 it as we advance ; for our hearts the promise of an 
 everlasting hope never reaching full fruition, always 
 expecting something new ; and for our energies con- 
 stant exercise as they are called, sometimes or often, 
 to contend with new difficulties which may be per- 
 mitted if only to intensify the enjoyment of the 
 prevailing rest. The monk in his cell is miserable, 
 and Stylites stands on his pillar more visibly and 
 conspicuously wretched than other men. So long as 
 we move through varied scenery and varied experi- 
 ences we move through an atmosphere of joy. To pass 
 
 " ' O'er many a frozen, many a fiery Alp,' 
 which Milton describes as the solace of hell, may be 
 not the least exhilarating of the joys of heaven. No 
 lazy lubber-land of perpetual sunshine, no constant 
 resting on velvet lawns to look at drooping roses, 
 and feel warm winds blowing odours from gardens 
 of frankincense ; but often rough rocks to pierce, 
 steep precipices to climb, black forests to thread, 
 gulfs seemingly shoreless and vexed by hurrying 
 blasts to swim, endless vicissitudes of effort and 
 repose, of trial and triumph, but also endless 
 advance, with the watchwords, ' Onward ! Upward ! ' 
 this may be the real Elysium of the future. The 
 poet's ideal may then be fulfilled, 
 
 " ' For when the power of imparting good 
 Is equal to the will, the human soul 
 Requires no other heaven ' 
 
PROGRESS OF THOUGHT. 411 
 
 or if not thoroughly fulfilled, then increasingly pur- 
 sued. Saints are to be conceived, not standing fixed 
 in niches, like their images in cathedrals, but follow- 
 ing the Lamb whithersoever He goeth." 
 
 The paradox of this passage stands confessed ; 
 and it may be declared that still reconciliation is 
 needed. Yet the paradox appears as the highest 
 point of harmony the adventurous mind could reach. 
 In the practical region, on the other hand, patient, 
 lowly, Christian beneficence is presented as the solu- 
 tion of all the difficulties of our troubled life. In that 
 is blessedness : it brings the consciousness of availing 
 effort, the assured approval of man and of God. 
 
 We cannot now make out how Mr. Gilfillan stated 
 the question to which he thus replies. The numerous 
 extracts from "Reconciliation" printed in the "Sketches, 
 Literary and Theological," edited by Frank Henderson, 
 Esq. (Edinburgh: David Douglas, 1881), give almost 
 no indication of the main line of thought, and casual 
 hints are not to be trusted. It is likely, however, that 
 the poem " Night " a setting in pictorial form of most 
 of the important studies, thoughts, perplexities, and 
 dreams of the later period supplies better than any- 
 thing that remains the clue to Mr. Gilfillan's final 
 belief. To this composition he gave more time and 
 care than to anything else of literary nature. Verse 
 was a new exercise to him, and not altogether easy 
 at first ; but he found more facility as he went on. 
 The Journal shows that he regarded his work with 
 increasing confidence as the close came within view ; 
 and if sometimes, in a hopeful mood, feeling his mind 
 as strong as ever while engaged upon the poem, he 
 believed it would give him his place in the literary 
 world, who can blame him ? 
 
412 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 Allowing for a slight constraint of form, the poem 
 begins boldly ; and in the course of the first book 
 there is a fine setting of the atomic theory, learned, 
 doubtless, from Samuel Brown : 
 
 " In dance and song began the Universe, 
 Though small the dance and tiny was the song 
 As that of insects on the evening breeze, 
 A fairy dance for microscopic eyes ; 
 For microscopic ears a fairy song ; 
 Yet graceful as the motion of two sprites 
 Wedded, and footing out their measure fine. 
 In song and dance began the Universe, 
 And from that mazy motion ne'er has swerved, 
 And in that song persisteth ever still, 
 With richer cadence and more powerful swell 
 Audible only to the ear of God, 
 Visible only to His searching eye, 
 But beautiful and real as God Himself." 
 
 The facts of Astronomy furnish matter for several 
 of the books. Then " Night " is regarded in its rela- 
 tion to human life as a joy and a terror. The seventh 
 book on " The Poets of Night " is that, perhaps, in 
 which the best work is to be found. The picture of 
 Glencoe and the tale of the massacre, which is put as 
 a prophecy into the mouth of Ossian, are worthy of 
 the subjects. Here, as a poet, Gilfillan found exercise 
 for that love of " gloomy grandeur " which Carlyle 
 long before had called his great characteristic. 
 
 The last book, " Night Lost in Day," is in prophetic 
 strain, and seems to set forth, at the close, the author's 
 hope for the world. The work of Christ is thus 
 described : 
 
 " The Prince of Life of old majestic went 
 And calm into the room where slumbered death, 
 Young death, in likeness of a lovely maid, 
 With groans and mournful music sounding near. 
 
PROGRESS OF THOUGHT. 413 
 
 He drowns the music, turns the minstrels out, 
 And stands serene above the smiling corpse- 
 Smiling, as conscious of His presence there. 
 And lo ! His look and tread have vanquished death, 
 Before His word and touch of power are given : 
 First on it He breathes beauty, and then life. 
 And so the hope of immortality, 
 Brought by His advent to this cold, sad earth, 
 Has gilded, though not oped, the gloomy grave ; 
 Has softened, though not slain, the tyrant stern ; 
 Has hushed the wailings, if not healed the woes, 
 And brought forth loveliness, if not yet light." 
 
 The picture of the world's long waiting for Christ, 
 first figured in the slow progress of the night with its 
 constellations, till the morning star appears, is a fine 
 conception ; it ends in a vision of the purified univer- 
 sal Church to which Christianity has returned. 
 
 " The kingdoms of the world 
 Are now the kingdoms of the Lord and Christ, 
 And finished is the mystery of God." 
 
 Looking still further forth into the history of the 
 human race, the poet throws his final hope into a 
 " Dialogue among the Stars." One sees this Earth in 
 its remoteness and trouble, with Doom lying upon it 
 a drifting wreck, freighted with the lost. 
 
 " All the old sorrows of the earth are there, 
 With one dread element besides Despair. 
 And yet, at times, when shine some glimmering hopes, 
 
 Crossing their weary spirits, they repair 
 To the red summits of their mountain tops 
 
 And look across the dark and laden air, 
 And wait the rising of some joyful day 
 In which their griefs and pains shall pass away. 
 It never dawns . . ." 
 
 The lamentation proceeds ; a change takes place ; 
 the second star is at length heard. 
 
4 I4 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 " O, brother Star, what sight is this 1 see ? 
 The lost world rolling into distant space, 
 Dissolving like a cloud as it doth flee, 
 
 So that no more mine eye can find its place. 
 Most strange, if hell at last has past away 
 And left behind it universal day." 
 
 In his preface, Mr. Gilfillan distinctly says, that 
 "certain subjects in the poem, such as universal 
 restoration, or rather destructionism, are used entirely 
 for their poetical capabilities." We are left, therefore, 
 at the close, with something of a peradventure ; still, 
 with Faith and Hope fixed in glorious power over the 
 decay of symbols, the strife of existence, and the 
 terrors of sin and death. 
 
 Leaving this, however, we may turn to another 
 line of thought a more personal one which carries 
 the solution of the great question somewhat farther. 
 In a letter to Mr. J. Stanyan Bigg, of 3Oth June, 1857, 
 Mr. Gilfillan says that he admits, in part, the charge 
 of souredness, but regards the feeling, so far as he has 
 it, as an augury that he has some truth in him yet 
 unuttered. " I feel in myself the buddings of a great 
 truth, not absolutely new, else it were absolutely false, 
 but, I think, including all being in its sweep and 
 forming a unity, as the Bible and all good men and 
 books do, out of ' ruin reconciled.' " Proceeding to 
 speak of his circumstances and trials, he says, " I 
 have, you may be sure, something to cheer me under 
 that systematic abuse and slander from which no one, 
 since Hazlitt and Shelley, has suffered more. I have 
 a good congregation, the ear of the town, an admir- 
 able wife, a decent, though not a rich, competence, a 
 determined spirit, a firm belief in Christ as the * Com- 
 ing One/ and a most thorough and growing disgust 
 
PROG&ESS OP THOUGHT. 415 
 
 at a world which I do not scruple to call ' the Devil's,' 
 although, praise be to God ! I do not add his and 
 his alone." 
 
 The note of pessimism here, we have found also in 
 " Christianity and Our Era." But it was by no means 
 dominant. The activities of his calling saved him, 
 and more than saved him, from misanthropy ; and his 
 mood became less gloomy as life advanced. Never, 
 in any sense, buoyant, defeated in his attempts to 
 utter the idea that dimly rose before the mind, he 
 enjoyed a growing sense of power within the limits to 
 which work and habit more or less confined him. 
 The Journal shows that his outlook, after the publi- 
 cation of the book just named, did not contract, but 
 rather took a wider sweep. The result was, on one 
 side, more impatience of the bonds in which religious 
 opinion was held, with a change in his own views on 
 subjects like Inspiration and Revelation ; and, on the 
 other side, by-and-by, greater faith in what brave 
 human souls might achieve under the Divine guid- 
 ance. Writing again to Mr. Stanyan Bigg, in July, 
 1862, he says : 
 
 " I have now both your notes. The first contains 
 some valuable glimpses and hints of thought. I am 
 not sure if you leave a sufficiently broad margin for 
 Reason, and if you do not appear to forget what it is 
 a Revelation from God, of an imperfect but real and 
 fundamental character. It is, as really as Scripture, 
 from the inspiration of God, and Scripture must be, 
 to some extent, tried by its verdict. Reason, in looking 
 to Scripture, must expect something new, but nothing 
 absurd ; something above its sphere, but nothing con- 
 tradictory to it ; and must have very strong evidences 
 of its coming from God in a special sense at all. 
 
416 GEORGE GlLFlLLAN. 
 
 "For Reason to deny the possibility of another 
 Revelation were a suicidal assertion, since it is a reve- 
 lation itself and were an assertion as ridiculous as if 
 instinct in the bee were to deny the possibility of 
 reason in the man. But Reason, nevertheless, within 
 its own sphere, has its stern rights and makes its un- 
 alterable demands. It must, first of all, reject all 
 absurdities and contradictions, as what no amount of 
 evidence can prove. Were the doctrine of the Trinity, 
 for instance, what the Unitarians call it the belief 
 that a Being can be three and one in the same sense 
 then Reason must reject it as certainly as the asser- 
 tion that two and two make five. But we know that 
 is not the true version of Trinitarianism. And sup- 
 pose Reason does discover contradictions in a pro- 
 fessed revelation, it must next look to their connection 
 with it, how far they are essential and how far acci- 
 dental. If essential, it must reject the revelation ; if 
 only accidental, it may receive cum grano. Next, 
 Reason must inquire how much of new there is in the 
 Revelation, how much may have come from human 
 sources, and how much bears the immediate stamp of 
 God ; and to the last alone will it apply the term 
 Revelation in strictness, while it may gladly admit 
 that the connection of the old with the new gives it an 
 additional sanction. 
 
 " Next, Reason must, although with great caution, 
 compare the Revelation with previous well-weighed 
 conclusions as to the character of God, and as to the 
 special call for it in the circumstances of mankind. 
 And, in fine, Reason must severely but candidly 
 examine the evidences of a new Revelation, the 
 bias of the witnesses, their educational advantages 
 or the reverse, their temperament, the means and 
 
PROGRESS OF THOUGHT. 417 
 
 rate of progression in the new faith, its effects on 
 morals, the permanence of its power, the agreement 
 of its external and internal proofs, the net result of 
 the difficulties and objections as balanced by the 
 cumulative probabilities of genuineness ; and which 
 theory of the case solves most of the difficulties or 
 has fewest to solve. In all this she does not step out 
 of her province ; and in all this, I believe that Christ- 
 ianity, truly seen, can answer all the requirements of 
 Reason." 
 
 The advance from the position of " Christianity 
 and our Era," will at once appear ; and if we turn to 
 an article on F. W. Robertson of Brighton, printed in 
 Mr. Gilfillan's " Remoter Stars in the Church Sky," 
 1867, we find, along with a broadening outlook, a 
 growing hope for the potency of Christian faith and 
 truth as forces in the human mind. Robertson, he 
 says, " looked upon Christianity, not as a narrow 
 collection of bristling points, but as an expansive, all- 
 sided, and progressive system if a system indeed it 
 can be called, and not rather a Divine element of 
 spiritual insight and of spiritual life, ready to 
 coalesce with all things that are true and lovely and 
 of good report, wherever it meets them on its immortal 
 journey. And of the relations of science and philoso- 
 phy to religion, Robertson appears to have had views 
 as just as they were liberal. He thought they were 
 powers or orbs, shall we call them ? which, when 
 kept within their own spheres, were amicable and 
 bound by beautiful harmonies." 
 
 It appears that despite all his vaticinations of 
 disaster, Gilfillan found in Robertson one whose 
 appearance and wide acceptance as a teacher were 
 full of hope for the Church, a hope at which he for 
 
 2 E 
 
418 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 his part was not slow to grasp. His suggestion of it 
 here may be taken in close connection with the letter 
 to Mr. Bigg. Another possibility one inwrought 
 with providence shed light upon the troubles of the 
 race. 
 
 Among correspondents of the period there were 
 some who must have very considerably affected 
 Mr. Gilfillan's mind ; and it will not be out of place 
 to give here two extracts showing the kind of men 
 with whom he exchanged thought One is from the 
 letter of a gentleman, frequently mentioned in the 
 journal, whose strong originality often ran in 
 unexpected directions, matching Gilfillan in vigour 
 of expression, and surpassing him, perhaps, in 
 strenuous criticism of life. Referring apparently to 
 the " Essays and Reviews " the writer says : 
 
 " Do not think that any heterodoxy with a reason 
 to back it can shock me. I am heterodox in every 
 thing. But I must tell you the ' Essays ' do not 
 appear to me fair statements of perplexity, but, on 
 the contrary, a dogmatism on the part of sceptics 
 which is truly absurd Pyrrhonism growing insolent 
 and assuming the magisterial air of ' It is,' * It is not,' 
 which is ridiculous in a professed doubter. How 
 infinitely humbler is Montaigne's motto, ' Que sais 
 je ? " how infinitely more consistent ! 
 
 "You say we should never be 'bigots.' I care 
 nothing what I am called. If I arrive at an opinion 
 which is called bigotry, patience, I must bear it till 
 I see reason to alter my verdict. I will not be 
 warned off my own property by some other man's 
 mad bull ; but just pop a round lead into his cranium. 
 I find in the Bible a good deal about everlasting 
 torment ; and the meaning of the Greek, after all the 
 
PROGRESS OF THOUGHT. 419 
 
 Maurician glozing, remains for ever and ever, where 
 the worm dieth not ; and if there is a place of this 
 nature it is intended to receive somebody. I don't 
 presume to specify whom ; but no maudlin humanity, 
 no impotence of reason to justify to fools like myself 
 God's eternal benevolence, shall deter me from assert- 
 ing that somebody is destined for Hell, and that, there- 
 fore, all will not be saved. 
 
 " Original sin is blotted out by Christ's coming, 
 and other sins too, when repented of ; but when 
 unrepented of God only knows (I know nothing), 
 but He seems to say, * Hell is for them.' Now, till 
 He seems not to say it, I must e'en accept His word, 
 bitter and irreconcileable though it may seem to my 
 contemptible faculty. I cannot take Christ as a 
 sweet unction and reject His word, by which alone 
 I know of Him. Certainly, without finessing, no 
 man can doubt of awful punishment to the wicked. 
 It is the part of a fool to mitigate its horrors when, 
 with all its terrors, it scarcely deters men from sin 
 simply to take an objection out of the mouths of 
 scoffers when they say that we worship Moloch as 
 our God Jehovah." 
 
 Such was one vigorous representation. From 
 another correspondent of greater philosophical power 
 came the following : 
 
 " Let me thank you for sending me the Dundee 
 Advertiser, containing your hearty article on Robert- 
 son of Brighton. I find I am too ignorant of that 
 noble fellow, and must take the earliest opportunity 
 I can of obtaining a more satisfactory knowledge of 
 him. The course you indicate him to have entered 
 on is quite that which strikes me as the right one in 
 these days. The negative of 'enlightenment' has 
 
420 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 alone obtained since the time of Voltaire and before 
 it. Men have only said ' No ' since then ; ' this is 
 unreasonable/ and ' that is unreasonable.' But this 
 no has been but a multitude of individual noes ; there 
 has been no result but a Babel of individuals, each for 
 himself. It is this anarchy that is the hopeless thing ; 
 for there is no consensus in it, no universal. The true 
 thing to do now seems to be the affirmative. The sun 
 is old and undoubtedly spotted. It is only madden- 
 ing, however, for each of us to go on pointing out 
 that only, in his own way denouncing and lamenting. 
 If there is the negative of old age and spots, there is 
 also the affirmative of some heat and some light yet 
 indeed the only heat, the only light we can now 
 get let us then unite in the affirmative of that. So 
 we shall be together again together in tacit admis- 
 sion as well of the age and the* spots, but all almost 
 removing these by the light of the affirmative we 
 throw back on them. That is the sort of spirit of 
 what I think the right way of it, and it seems to have 
 been pretty much Robertson's idea too." 
 
 Closing this chapter another extract may be 
 allowed, from one of many letters addressed to Mr. 
 Gilfillan by the father of F. W. Robertson. Dating 
 from Cheltenham, 29th December, 1869, Captain 
 Robertson speaks of having sent to a gentleman a 
 set of papers containing memorials of his son, and 
 proceeds : 
 
 " In his very touching letter of thanks he said that 
 among the papers he had collected relating to my 
 son were a few sheets he had torn out of a small 
 book he had purchased at a book-stall in London. 
 They were headed 'Last not least the late Rev. 
 
PROGRESS OF THOUGHT. 421 
 
 Frederick W. Robertson of Brighton.' I then wrote 
 to this gentleman to ascertain the title of the book 
 from whence the leaves had been extracted, as well 
 as the name of the publisher. On this he could give 
 me no information, as he took no heed of these points, 
 having left the rest of the book at the stall. Fortun- 
 ately the names of the printers, Butler and Tanner, 
 were at the last page ; so, as a dernier resort, I wrote 
 to them. To my delight I received a reply from 
 one of them dated ' Frome ' not only saying the 
 writer highly reverenced F. W. R., but telling me the 
 title of the book ' Remoter Stars in the Church Sky ' 
 the author the Rev. George Gilfillan. 
 
 " Little did I think when I read ' Last not least/- 
 which brought tears into my eyes, that you my friend, 
 yes, my friend I may indeed say, were the writer. 
 I have written to the publishers for two copies of the 
 book." 
 
 Captain Robertson closes with these words " Now, 
 let me say, may you and yours be participators in 
 the blessings of the event which at this time of the 
 year we commemorate ! A cold day is not conducive 
 to improve the handwriting of one in his eighty- 
 second year." 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 PUBLIC LIFE, 1862-78. 
 
 OF the many public appearances of Mr. Gilfillan 
 in Dundee, during the period now to be con- 
 sidered, one may have special record. On the i6th 
 September, 1862, a meeting was held to express 
 sympathy with Garibaldi, and protest against the 
 continued occupation of Rome by the French army. 
 The object of the gathering and the warm greeting 
 of the large audience roused Mr. Gilfillan's enthusiasm. 
 In the course of his address, moving one of the 
 resolutions, he said : " I am rather happy that the 
 motion put into my hands does not commit me to 
 speak directly upon the subject of Garibaldi himself, 
 I have said my say upon him already, and, besides, 
 I really can hardly trust myself in speaking on a 
 theme on which a Dundee journalist has recently 
 called me an enthusiast. Frankly, sir, I plead guilty 
 to the charge, and I glory in the name. I am an 
 enthusiast in the cause of Garibaldi, and in the cause 
 of Italian liberty, and in the cause of Italian unity, 
 and in some other causes besides, and I should despise 
 myself if I were not. Nor do I envy those who can 
 talk of the wounded hero without one word of genial 
 appreciation, of generous sympathy, of kindly com- 
 passion, and who often seem willing to wound and 
 422 
 
PUBLIC LIFE, 1862-1878. 423 
 
 yet afraid to strike him. . . . The big tear starts to 
 the eye of the Italian when he thinks of Rome, and 
 it is partly the tear of pride, as he remembers what 
 Rome once was, and partly of sorrow, as he remembers 
 what Rome is now. Through that tear he beholds 
 the city of the Caesars, the excellency of beauty and 
 the excellency of power, with its mighty masses of 
 buildings, its five millions of inhabitants, its imme- 
 morial temples, its forum the temple of a greater god 
 than Jove, its broad ways leading to every quarter of 
 the globe, its humming streets, its yellow Tiber, its 
 stern Tarpeian rock, like the image of Justice or the 
 sword of Damocles hanging over the proud city, its 
 porticos, its gardens, its baths, its bridges, its seven 
 hills, its Capitol, and its Coliseum these, and the 
 great fact underlying all these, that it was liberty 
 that laid the foundation and reared the superstructure 
 of the whole this is the prospect through one lens. 
 And what through the other ? It is that of a stand- 
 ing and magnificent ruin, with a few priests and 
 painters creeping through the silent streets and 
 under the vast old buildings and works of art, as if 
 afraid of the sound of their own footsteps, or of the 
 shadows of genius and power still hovering there 
 with a declining population, a putrid faith, a bad 
 government, a climate poisoned from the marshes in 
 the neighbourhood, an old man as false as he is feeble, 
 who once promised to be the morning star of Italian 
 freedom, but is now the mere dreg and dropt jelly 
 of his former prestige the Pope, namely presiding 
 over it with a guard of French soldiers, those pious, 
 moral, Christian men, defending the last fortress of 
 the antiquated superstition and with another man 
 of sin in the distance, hating popery at bottom as he 
 
424 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 does hell pains, believing and loving nothing in this 
 universe but himself, and yet from policy and self- 
 love maintaining in spite of promises, remonstrances, 
 and stings of his own conscience (if conscience he 
 has), the empire of the Pope, and, shall I add, of the 
 Devil in Rome. Behold the contrast between Rome 
 in the present and Rome in the past ; and can you 
 wonder though the Italian patriot should weep tears 
 of pride and sorrow, yea, of blood and fire as he com- 
 pares the two ? 
 
 " ' Italy should be, and shall be one ; and it should 
 be and shall be one by having one head, and that 
 head its natural head Rome.' This was the idea 
 and programme of Garibaldi. . . . And why should 
 it be thought a thing incredible that Italy should be 
 free, and that Italy should be one ? . . . I express my 
 unbounded confidence in the success of the great 
 cause of Italian freedom. I augur this from nothing 
 more than from the enthusiasm for Garibaldi which is 
 pervading the land, and which is speaking out in such 
 meetings as this to-night. . . . Should they shed his 
 blood, it will cry, like the blood of Abel, from the 
 dust; it will take one of the loftiest parts in the awful 
 chorus of the souls under the altar, crying to the ear 
 of the Eternal, night and day, * How long, O Lord, 
 holy and true, dost Thou not judge and avenge our 
 blood on them that dwell on the earth?' Should 
 they imprison him for a lengthened period, his 
 dungeon shall become a hallowed and consecrated 
 spot, and shall shine with a light bedimming all the 
 splendours of Versailles and all the time-honoured 
 glories of the Vatican. . . . But, whatever becomes of 
 him, the cause of Italian freedom is secure ; secure in 
 the purpose of God ; secure in the determination of 
 
PUBLIC LIFE, 1862-1878. 425 
 
 man ; secure through the very persecutions and 
 bloodshed by which it has been tried, and proved, 
 and watered." 
 
 These fragments of a notable oration show in what 
 way Gilfillan took hold of his subject, his foresight, 
 too, and the energy of his address. Often, as those 
 who stood beside him on platforms testify, his voice 
 rang out, thus clear and strong, for liberty, humanity, 
 and truth. 
 
 On the occasion of the Shakespeare Celebration in 
 1864, of the Scott Centenary in August, 1871, and 
 frequently at Burns' anniversary meetings, Gilfillan 
 was the chief orator in Dundee and elsewhere, his 
 literary enthusiasm taking no shame to be associated 
 with that of the multitude, ruder and less discriminat- 
 ing than his own. By many his frequent appearance 
 on platforms for such purposes was considered deroga- 
 tory to his position not only as a Christian minister, 
 but as a literary man. He did not see it so. The 
 Scottish, humane soul of him, trustful in the good, 
 that it would overcome the evil, trustful in the liberat- 
 ing power of thought, found ample room in the 
 Christian cultured life for sympathies and ardours 
 like these. 
 
 In 1864, Gilfillan records in a letter to Aird the 
 continuance of his labour as a critic. " I spent a night 
 lately," he says (/th May), in "burning or returning 
 some hundred MSS. and books which had accumulated 
 in my hands." The burning was a drastic remedy, not 
 unnecessary on occasions. Some manuscripts which 
 had not been disposed of at the time of his death 
 remain still, for which no other fate could possibly be 
 decreed. Yet it was only in peculiar circumstances, 
 as when posthumous manuscripts were sent by foolish 
 
426 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 admirers, he used the trial of fire. On the same day 
 that he disposed of the hundred there was sent him, 
 he says, " a mammoth MS. that might have contained 
 the memoirs of Melchizedek, of some 1500 folio 
 pages." 
 
 A projected trip to Switzerland had to be ex- 
 changed in 1864 for a visit to the Highlands ; and in 
 October he had a lecturing tour which led him 
 through the north-east of Ireland to Dimgannon, 
 Derry, Belfast, and Dublin. He could now say 
 that from lecturing and preaching tours he returned 
 refreshed, and that his houses were almost always 
 bumpers. One year, 1865, he is at Moffat taking the 
 place of the Dean of Carlisle, who has been unable to 
 close a course, then at Newcastle, Sunderland, 
 Haddington, Glasgow, Brechin. Another year, 1873, 
 he is at Whitby in April, Inverness in May, Long- 
 town and Newcastle in September, Sunderland in 
 October, Hamilton in November ; and these are only 
 the longer of the journeys he undertook. 
 
 Meanwhile his own congregation was flourishing. 
 On the loth May, 1865, he wrote to his friend, the 
 Rev. John Muir, Newtyle : "Great night in School 
 Wynd on Sabbath. I did manage to get in by the 
 back door, and there was a great fluctuating sea of 
 faces and forms. I kept calm, however, and read my 
 lecture with firmness and effect. The Scotsman has- 
 given the most of it, I see." From time to time the 
 members of his church signified their attachment to 
 him by increasing his stipend, though it never rose 
 above 350 per annum. 
 
 For tea-meeting or " soiree " addresses Mr. Gilfillan 
 was much in request in Dundee and throughout 
 Scotland. And it was not for ordinary reasons. He 
 
PUBLIC LIFE, 1862-1878. 427 
 
 gave to each gathering of the kind an oration which, 
 even when brief, stimulated thought, revived old 
 memories, carried hope into a great future, bore a 
 burden of severe condemnation of public iniquity, or 
 rose high in eulogy of some hero of the day. 
 
 A fellow-minister of a younger generation, who 
 knew Gilfillan well, speaks of the singular skill he 
 had in making the great literary names of the earlier 
 century potent with the multitude. A church "soiree" 
 is not the most keenly intellectual assembly in the 
 world, yet on such an occasion Gilfillan would appear 
 before the miscellaneous audience, and instead of 
 giving the usual anecdotes or reduced sermon, he 
 would start off with a reference to Shelley, a quota- 
 tion from Coleridge, a resume of any magazine article 
 he was writing. And remote as the topic might be, 
 he never failed to secure attention. Coleridge, Foster, 
 Shelley, and De Quincey were introduced with a 
 grand persuasion that nothing which concerned them 
 could be indifferent to a thinking being. Such confi- 
 dence brings its reward, and no one has exercised it 
 so largely as Gilfillan. By his own proper genius he 
 did what Hazlitt, with far more technique, far greater 
 stores of material, never thought of doing. Many in 
 Dundee and elsewhere found new interest in life stirred 
 within them by those orations to the people. 
 
 Somewhat different from the ordinary " soiree " was 
 that which celebrated the induction of some young 
 minister, or the jubilee of a veteran of the pulpit. 
 At these meetings the past that stood out clear in 
 Mr. Gilfillan's recollection generally formed the sub- 
 stance of the speech. At Crieff, for instance, on the 
 settlement in the United Presbyterian Church there, 
 in 1870, of the Rev. J. C. Inglis, Mr. Gilfillan recalled 
 
428 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 the ministers of Strathearn whom he had known. In 
 the course of his address he said : " One of William 
 Hazlitt's most suggestive essays is entitled ' Reasons 
 for Preferring the Past to the Future.' There are 
 minds, I believe, which always, and there are moods 
 in which all minds do this. The future is always dark 
 at least always uncertain but the past is a fixed 
 object of retrospect, and is for ever beautiful in that 
 
 " ' Light which never was on sea or land,' 
 
 the divine light of distance. My earliest recollections 
 of CriefT are all pleasurable. As I never had any 
 tasks to learn there, my feelings when I visited it as 
 a boy were all of a holiday complexion. My grand- 
 father the Rev. James Barlas died before I was 
 born, but I, of course, heard a great deal about him. 
 He was licensed to preach when only nineteen, and 
 I have heard that once when he was mounting the 
 pulpit, an old woman, sitting in the lattern " [Anglice, 
 lectern], " amazed at his juvenile appearance, called 
 out : ' Laddie, whaur are ye gaen ? ' ' Mr. Gilfillan 
 went on to speak of his grandmother, whose " serene 
 and smiling countenance " he could remember, and 
 of the preaching on sacramental occasions at Crieff 
 one " tent-preaching " especially which he fully 
 described. Then the thought of Comrie carried 
 memory up the strath. " I remember at similar 
 scenes in Comrie such men as Dr. Pringle of Perth, 
 with his tall, majestic presence, his stature unbent 
 under the burden of more than seventy years, and 
 his homely but striking sentiment his son-in-law the 
 gifted Jameson of Methven, with his beautiful vein 
 of blended piety and genius, his odd but original 
 delivery, his plain but pleasing features sometimes 
 
PUBLIC LIFE, 1862-1878. 429 
 
 lighted up with a strange loveliness not of the earth, 
 as if a stray gleam from other worlds had fallen upon 
 them, his apostolic meekness, and his burning fire of 
 genius honest Mr. Aird of Rattray, with his profound 
 and oftentimes highly-finished discourses most awk- 
 wardly rendered in his address, and so obscure at 
 times that some one proposed as a motto on a book 
 of his the words of the psalm, ' Darkness he sent, and 
 made it dark.' My own venerable father, who never 
 seemed more in his element than when preaching 
 under the blue canopy of a Scottish summer heaven, 
 and to whom children as well as bearded men listened 
 with the intensest interest. Andrew Scott, with his 
 clear, sharp intellect and logical power. Balfour of 
 Lethendy, with his strong and stalwart form, 
 his grand rolling voice, and his clear, robust, and 
 masculine sense. Young of Logiealmond, with his 
 natural eloquence, imposing appearance, and fine, 
 mellow, flute-like tones of voice. Clark, late of 
 Dalreoch, a man with no little Irish fire and fancy, 
 some of whose solemn and striking sentences, heard 
 amidst the closing shadows of a sacramental eve, are 
 still ringing in my ears ; and, not to mention men 
 still living, such as Mr. Ramsay and Dr. Marshall, the 
 mild and amiable James Mitchell of Comrie, whom 
 nothing but a weak system, nervous temperament, and 
 early death prevented from taking as high a place as 
 a sermon writer as my friend John Ker of Glasgow 
 has done, the two resembling each other considerably 
 in refined sentiment and classical diction. Dr. Young 
 of Perth was another of these worthies, but I never 
 had the good fortune to hear him either at CriefT or 
 Comrie, though I heard him elsewhere with great 
 admiration. I never hear such good preaching now- 
 
430 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 a-days first, no doubt, because I, like so many 
 ministers, seldom hear preaching at all ; I am so often 
 at it myself; and secondly, because in early youth 
 there is a charm in hearing sermons, as well as in 
 reading books, which fades away and never fully 
 returns. . . . Well, those days are gone, those lumin- 
 aries set. The times are changed, and we are changed 
 with them. And far indeed am I from wishing to 
 crush the present race under the feet of the men of 
 the past. Although the essential truths remain the 
 same, yet in many minor matters the tastes and feel- 
 ings and culture of the young race are to be consulted. 
 And this, I am certain, would be the feeling of those 
 admirable men I have been describing some of 
 whom were as noted for their liberality as for their 
 abilities were they alive now, and could they unite 
 the experience of the past with the richer, wider lights 
 which the present is pouring on all who have eyes to 
 see, understanding to comprehend, and hearts to feel 
 the signs of our times, the characteristics and the 
 tendencies of our ' wondrous mother age.' " 
 
 A former co-presbyter, Dr. Baxter, now of Kirk- 
 caldy, speaking of those " soiree " addresses, says that 
 Gilfillan could be humorous, but the funny was not 
 his forte, and he commonly shunned it. Regard- 
 ing one public appearance, the same correspondent 
 adds, " Mr. Gilfillan can hardly have meant mirth, 
 when, at a meeting called for the purpose of planting 
 drinking-troughs for horses all over the town, he 
 treated the audience to a laudatory review of his 
 friend, Dr. Samuel Brown's poem on Galileo. The 
 address did sound queer. Only it was from him, and 
 that seemed enough to those who were satisfied to 
 have his countenance." 
 
PUBLIC LIFE, 1862-1878. 431 
 
 Dr. Baxter tells how, when a company was in the 
 parlour and brisk conversation was going on, " Mr. 
 Gilfillan would beg liberty to sit aside for half-an-hour 
 in their presence, that some paragraphs might be 
 added to a paper which had to be finished immediately. 
 He would then dash off the fragment and, inclosing it 
 for postage, join us again as if no interruption had 
 broken the vein of his thoughts." He speaks also of 
 the Friday evening re-unions in the manse, which 
 came as prized opportunities of mental quickening to 
 a number of young men in Dundee. Literary, 
 political, and theological discussion was the fare, and 
 Mr. Gilfillan often monologised on some favourite 
 topic. 
 
 In 1866 Mr. Gilfillan undertook some work for the 
 Pulpit Analyst, then conducted by Dr. Joseph Parker. 
 Two notable papers were contributed, one on F. W. 
 Robertson, the other on " Ecce Homo." The follow- 
 ing year he wrote for the same periodical a series of 
 sketches which were gathered into the volume, 
 " Remoter Stars in the Church Sky." They recur to 
 some old subjects, such as his father, and Jameson of 
 Methven, but are for the rest on new themes, includ- 
 ing the Rev. John Morell Mackenzie, the Rev. James 
 Everett, and the Rev. Alexander Stewart of Cromarty. 
 Less exuberant than his early sketches, written, as he 
 himself acknowledges, with some constraint, they are 
 good specimens of biography, all the better perhaps 
 for their chastened style. The poem " Night " had 
 appeared in 1867. An offer of fifty guineas for the 
 copyright, made by a gentleman in Dundee was 
 refused. "If the book failed, it was too much," Mr. 
 Gilfillan said, " and if it succeeded, too little." The 
 reception it met was on the whole pleasing, although 
 
432 GEORGE G1LFILLAN. 
 
 the old hostility made itself felt. He was in the way 
 of saying that he had as much for it as Milton had 
 for his " Paradise Lost." To complete the enumera- 
 tion of his works, it may be added that " Modern 
 Christian Heroes" appeared in 1869, the "Life of 
 Sir Walter Scott" in the close of 1870, the " Life of 
 Dr. William Anderson" in 1873, and the "Life of 
 Burns " in the National Edition of his works, the issue 
 of which began in 1876. 
 
 Among Mr. Gilfillan's correspondents of this period 
 was the Rev. George Jacque, Auchterarder, whose 
 poem, " The Clouds," he had read and praised at the 
 time of its publication. Writing to Mr. Jacque, 
 after having read part of his " Ruins of Hope," Mr. 
 Gilfillan said : " I snatch at length a moment to 
 write you anent the ' Ruins of Hope.' It has, I think, 
 the materials of a good popular poem, although the 
 type of it is rather of an antiquated cast, just as my 
 ' Night ' also was. The miscellaneous poem is not 
 now much in request. Unfinished as it is, no com- 
 plete criticism can be expected. It contains a great 
 many excellent passages and single pointed and strik- 
 ing lines. Your incidental pictures of scenery, and 
 especially of sky scenery, are always good. . . . 
 Above all, I like your lyrics, in which kind of poetry 
 you greatly excel." 
 
 On the 1 2th April, 1870, he wrote again to the 
 same correspondent : " I herewith return * Ruins,' 
 and wish you all success in their redaction. They 
 have much genuine stuff in them. I had the pleasure 
 of lecturing last week in Queen Street Hall, immedi- 
 ately under the room where the Edinburgh Presbytery 
 poured for some five hours, I suppose, their vials on my 
 devoted head. I stood under the shadow of them for 
 
PUBLIC LIFE, 1862-1878. 433 
 
 an hour and ten minutes, and felt no bad effects. I 
 am now disposed to turn from the clergy, and seek 
 my sympathisers more among the intelligent laity, 
 who, if they do not pour vials and dream dreams, 
 discern better the signs of their time. ... I have had 
 the busiest winter I remember ; have preached three 
 times almost every Sabbath from November, and am 
 just beginning to breathe freely. But you are right, 
 monotony and idleness would soon put me in pan- 
 demonium." . . . 
 
 The reference in this letter to the Presbytery of 
 Edinburgh requires explanation. At a meeting of 
 that Court, held on 4th January, 1870, notice was 
 given of a motion which proposed to take Mr. 
 Gilfillan to task for some statements he had made in 
 a lecture, calling in question the correctness of the 
 Church standards. At the close of his forenoon ser- 
 vice, on the following Sabbath, Mr. Gilfillan entered 
 pretty fully into the matter, in the way of explana- 
 tion and defence. Letters, meanwhile, passed between 
 him and several members of the Edinburgh Presby- 
 tery who desired to bring the matter to an issue 
 without delay. Mr. Gilfillan, however, resented the 
 interference of another presbytery than that to which 
 he was directly responsible, and refused to come to 
 terms. On ist February, after a long discussion, it 
 was decided in Edinburgh to remit to the Dundee 
 Presbytery the statements complained of, and, 
 towards the close of the month, the matter was con- 
 sidered in this Court. In the course of the discussion 
 Mr. Gilfillan read a paper, in which he disclaimed 
 having any deep quarrel with the standards of the 
 Church, and expressed regret for his occasional use of 
 language which had been thought unguarded. A 
 
 2 F 
 
434 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 resolution accepting the statement as satisfactory, 
 and declaring further procedure unnecessary, was 
 unanimously adopted by the Presbytery. 
 
 Writing publicly in reference to this matter, in 
 October of the same year, Gilfillan gave his own 
 account of what was called his recantation. "The 
 three points on which I stated myself opposed to the 
 Confession were 1st, The creation of the world in 
 six days ; 2nd, eternal reprobation ; 3rd, the damna- 
 tion of infants. . . . Towards the close of the sede- 
 runt of Presbytery, the question was asked whether 
 I had no more objections to the Confession of Faith 
 than those I had stated. I said at once, No ; mean- 
 ing by this, as any sensible man would see at once, 
 that these were the only three to which I publicly 
 objected, and had singled out, accordingly, for special 
 opposition. If any thought that my reply to their 
 question implied any more, I have simply to say they 
 were mistaken." The whole matter was revived, in 
 1877, by remarks Mr. Gilfillan made in regard to a 
 case then before the Church. Writing on this occasion 
 he said : " My position now is that of one waiting, 
 and I wait, along with a good many others, to see the 
 result of the revision of the Confession ; and this, 
 I have reason to hope, will be so far satisfactory to 
 the liberal party. I might have preferred the removal 
 of our standards altogether, and the substitution of 
 a short summary of general principles ; but, failing 
 this, an honest and searching revision is a great 
 boon ; and that, whatever might be the intention 
 of some who yielded to the proposal for the Com- 
 mittee, is now likely to be given us. If I be 
 prosecuted it must be for having strongly advo- 
 cated what has now been conceded, the fact that 
 
PUBLIC LIFE, 1862-1878. 435 
 
 our Confession is not infallible and requires to be 
 revised." 
 
 The only point deserving special notice is the 
 objection Mr. Gilfillan took to " eternal reprobation." 
 He meant to refuse belief in what appeared to be the 
 teaching of the Confession that, from eternity and to 
 eternity, some were arbitrarily decreed to reprobation. 
 Speaking in December, 1877, he said, " He believed 
 that God was bringing on the Church strong means of 
 humiliation, teaching her that she must come down 
 from some of those proud, dogmatic claims which she 
 had so long held, which she had derived from Popery, 
 and which she was disposed to hold with firm grasp 
 still. God was telling her that she must come down 
 from those claims ; she must abandon her false posi- 
 tion upon those giddy heights ; she must humble her- 
 self by reducing her articles of faith, and by laying 
 more stress on the spirit of the Gospel than upon 
 mere dogmas. God was saying to Christianity what 
 Christ said to His disciples of old, ' Except thou 
 become a little child, go down into thy cradle again, 
 thou shalt not enter into the kingdom of heaven ' in 
 other words, thou shalt in no wise, and by no manner 
 of means, gain that glorious and everlasting triumph 
 which is otherwise before thee." 
 
 Turning to other matters, we find him, in the course 
 of a letter to Thomas Aird, of 26th November, 1870, 
 writing as follows : " I went, in the close of the 
 autumn, almost straight from Hawick to John o' 
 Groats. I dined at Thurso Castle with Sir Tolle- 
 mache Sinclair, and was glad to see a portrait of old 
 Sir George in the dining-room. He used to write me 
 now and then. I liked a man who could love Carlyle, 
 Dr. Croly, and even G. G. Did you notice a book 
 
436 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 called ' Peasant Life in the North of Scotland ' praised 
 in Blackwood ? I had got a copy c from the author ' 
 anonymously when it appeared, and find him to be 
 the Procurator- Fiscal of Wick, Malcolm M'Lennan, a 
 man of fine intelligence and keen eye for Scottish 
 lower life, almost a Gait, and with vivid literary 
 taste." 
 
 From a visit to the Continent, in the early summer 
 of 1872, when he travelled through Switzerland, and 
 spent some time in Paris, Mr. Gilfillan returned by 
 way of Boulogne to London. Thence, after visiting a 
 brother-in-law in Buckinghamshire, and seeing Cam- 
 bridge, he went north to Newcastle, and had some 
 days with his friend, Mr. Frank Carr. This gentle- 
 man was his companion in one of his visits to the 
 Lake country, when they had what Mr. Carr calls " a 
 jocund and heroic time." In his work, " Hesperides," 
 published under the pseudonym of Lancelot-Cross 
 (Triibner, 1883), there is a sketch of Gilfillan as 
 " Chrysostom," a memorial of the friendship, warm 
 and discriminative. He says, " What nights we had 
 in Egypt ! I glance back at the earliest. Burke had 
 our admiration ; Robertson of Brighton, tears and 
 praises ; Arnold had grateful thoughts ; Hugh 
 Miller, sorrowful sympathy ; Tom Jones found a wel- 
 come ; Aurora Leigh was saluted. . . . Often had we 
 such Attic feasts 'when one fine thought called 
 forth another ; those rare seasons when the soul 
 expands with full freedom, and man feels himself 
 brought near to man ' all seasoned with heart-felt 
 glee ; and frequently with strong humour too. I may 
 say of him, as Walpole said of Gray, however little 
 was displayed in his writings, * humour was his native 
 and original turn.' . . . He was for the world, but 
 
PUBLIC LIFE, 1862-1878. 437 
 
 for Scotland first. To his time he presented the 
 religious poetic mind, the large-hearted disciple of 
 literature ; one of those whose active Christianity 
 appears to most persons to be the fervour of heresi- 
 archs. As to myself, he was a direct influence, not 
 lightly felt, in all that pertains to sympathy with the 
 labours and trials of genius ; in regions of religious 
 and poetic thought ; in times of close intercourse with 
 Nature." 
 
 In a letter of I2th May, 1873, addressed to Mr. 
 Aird, the following occurs : " I am glad you like my 
 life of Anderson. Logan is pouring in letters of a 
 similar kind, all very gratifying, especially those from 
 Anderson's personal friends who seem all pleased. 
 I had a good deal of time with Carruthers [Dr. 
 Carruthers of Inverness], a long walk with him on 
 Saturday, and to-day he came with me as far as 
 Kingussie. He is in fine feather, editing a new 
 edition of Chambers's Encyclopaedia, and otherwise 
 busy very well for an old man of seventy-four." 
 To Mr. Aird also he wrote in August, 1874, " Have 
 you noticed that poor Dobell is dead. I saw it 
 almost accidentally in a newspaper paragraph to-day. 
 His death has reopened many sluices of memory 
 to me and affected me much. Nichol, S. Brown, 
 A. Smith, Bigg, and Yendys, have all been cut down 
 at, or ere, or scarcely past the prime of life. There 
 are other aspirants now, but none like these." Again, 
 on 22nd December, 1875, Gilfillan writes to Aird 
 " I drop a hasty note to say that Mr. Anderson 
 (' Surfaceman ') will likely call on you about the New 
 Year. You will be greatly interested in his simple 
 manners and appearance an unspoiled Burns in 
 these respects and with not a little of the real mens 
 
438 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 divinior. Of course, you know his poetry and his 
 remarkable history. ... I saw your name at Carlyle's 
 testimonial. I was not asked, else I would have put 
 down my name cheerfully. He, in many respects, 
 deserves it all, and, I suspect, poor old man, needs it 
 all now." The letter from which this extract is taken 
 was among the last Gilfillan sent to his friend Aird. 
 
 To the Rev. Dr. Blair, Dunblane, whose friendship 
 Gilfillan greatly valued, he wrote in June, 1874, with 
 reference to a memoir of his brother, Dr. James 
 Gilfillan of Stirling who had just passed away. Sum- 
 ming up the brief notes of his brother's life for Dr. 
 Blair's use, Mr. Gilfillan said : " You know all about 
 his principal work on the Sabbath. I don't know if 
 you are aware that he learned Dutch in order to 
 obtain some information about the Sabbath and its 
 literature. I may mention that, though James's man- 
 ner seemed a little cold and his own style measured, 
 if not a little tame, I never knew a man more enthusi- 
 astic in his appreciation of what he thought genius in 
 others such as Chalmers, Professor Young, Jameson 
 of Methven, and Dr. Ferrier of Paisley. His literary 
 tastes were keen as well as refined. He was very 
 much an aesthetic man, fond of music, a good singer, 
 and passionately fond of scenery. His discharge of 
 every variety of duty was, as you know, exemplary 
 and punctual." On the publication of the memoir, 
 Mr. Gilfillan wrote to Dr. Blair (4th September, 1874), 
 " I have warmly to thank you, in my own name and 
 that of all our family, for your very kind and gener- 
 ous, as well as very pleasing and picturesque memoir 
 of my brother. It is highly gratifying to all of us, and 
 must be so also to his widow and his many friends in 
 his old congregation and elsewhere." 
 
PUBLIC LIFE, 1862-1878. 43*9 
 
 Among friends of the later period were the Rev. 
 David Beatt, Aberdeen, and the Rev. J. C. Inglis, 
 Crieff, both, while students, members of his congrega- 
 tion. The Rev. Robert Muir, once of Hawick, the 
 Rev. Peter Rutherford, Glasgow, the Rev. D. R. 
 Williamson, Kirkmaiden, and the Rev. A. Crighton 
 Alexander, London, besides those in his own pres- 
 bytery and others already named, were specially 
 intimate with Mr. Gilfillan. Mr. Rutherford con- 
 tributed to the Homilist a notice of his life, and Dr. 
 Blair to the United Presbyterian Magazine. 
 
 Early associated with public movements in Dundee, 
 and rewarded from time to time not only with thanks, 
 but with substantial tokens of gratitude, Mr. Gilfillan 
 laid the city under great obligation by his efforts on 
 behalf of the Free Library, which' is now a flourishing 
 and important means of literary culture. On the 
 22nd March, 1866, he delivered in Bell Street Church, 
 an earnest appeal in favour of the proposal to establish 
 it. He was also a member of the first Free Library 
 Committee, and gave much help in selecting the books 
 that were procured at the opening of the institution. 
 The chief recognition of this and all his other services 
 to the city took the form of a public testimonial which 
 was presented to him on the 5th October, 1876. With 
 a very tasteful cabinet bearing an inscription, Provost 
 Robertson, in name of the subscribers, made over to 
 Mr. Gilfillan a cheque for 1000, the understanding 
 having been come to, at Mr. and Mrs. Gilfillan's own 
 desire, that after their death the interest of the money 
 should be devoted to educational scholarship's. In 
 the course of his address of thanks, Mr. Gilfillan made 
 special reference to the energy of the provost and of 
 John Henderson, Esq., John Leng, Esq., and W. D. 
 
440 GEORGE GILF1LLAN. 
 
 Latto, Esq., as members of the committee. He also 
 said : <: The public causes to which I claim being of 
 some service in this town and elsewhere are the 
 voluntary cause, in the beginning of my career ; the 
 anti-slavery cause afterwards ; the cause of the 
 diffusion of general knowledge, specially as connected 
 with the Watt Institution and other societies here ; 
 and, latterly, and in my judgment best of all, the 
 course of liberal and progressive thought. These are 
 the leading landmarks in my career. I mention them 
 in no spirit of egotism or self-glorification. I am as 
 aware of my faults and failures as is my bitterest 
 enemy, and am ready to acknowledge them. I have 
 spoken this not in self-defence ; for I am not here on 
 my trial. I am here, on the contrary, in the centre 
 of those who have proved themselves my friends, and 
 who are so in spite of their full knowledge of my 
 imperfections, and are disposed to take me as I am. 
 I claim only this, not as a favour, but as a right, 
 that you credit me in every step I have taken with 
 common I will not say uncommon honesty. I said 
 many years ago in my pulpit ' I want no epitaph 
 on my grave but this Here lies an honest man.' " 
 
 The testimonial was subscribed to by many 
 thousands in all parts of the world, and gratified 
 him chiefly by associating with his name a trust for 
 the aid of deserving scholars, the sons and daughters 
 of poor parents in Scotland. It may be added here 
 that since Mr. Gilfillan's death a large building for 
 worship and other uses bearing the name of the 
 " Gilfillan Memorial " has been erected by the congre- 
 gation under the ministry of the Rev. David Macrae, 
 many of the members of which were connected with 
 the School Wynd Church during Mr. Gilfillan's life. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE CLOSE CHARACTERISTICS. 
 
 THE stories about Mr. Gilfillan are a large 
 collection and are, on the whole, not legendary 
 in substance though some of them have gathered a 
 little foliage. He had personal peculiarities which 
 led naturally to anecdotes. His indifference to social 
 usage, his nai've confidence in every one who seemed 
 a friend, his loud, boyish denunciation of a public 
 opponent or a disliked scheme, the odd abruptness of 
 his manner at one time and the royal superiority of it 
 at another, his habit of free largesse to all applicants 
 and as free satire on whatsoever excited his contempt, 
 the mingling of rustic simplicity and pure intellectual 
 daring that marked him, the fine old-world stateliness 
 of the outward man with the picturesque singularity 
 of the chosen dress : in all and every point there was 
 the full measure of character allowable to a man of 
 genius. The interest of anecdotal matter, however, is 
 confined pretty much to those who knew Mr. Gilfillan, 
 and they are well acquainted with it, or easily can be. 
 The Rev. David Macrae's little book is a lively and 
 pictorial summary of the personal items, given along 
 with a particular view of Mr. Gilfillan's theological 
 championship. There are others of the lighter sort 
 in private circulation. The way he would suddenly 
 
 441 
 
442 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 explode, at a soiree or any other gathering, with a 
 " Toots ! the man 's an idiot," and seizing hat and 
 stick march out ; the way he wrote his letters a 
 meander of curious but not so very illegible aphorisms 
 or declamations on a split sheet of note-paper ; the 
 way he kept letters and papers, in a huge bag that 
 used to be emptied on the floor when something was 
 wanted ; his self-will in certain small matters, and his 
 submission to friends and to wife in the crises which 
 his own vehemence provoked ; his utterance of 
 all the sentiments which most persons of station and 
 influence learn to consume in private, and along with 
 this, a deep fund of magnanimity which has never 
 had proper recognition though it was not the least 
 marked of his traits : here is abounding material for 
 anecdotage, and no doubt it will long linger about his 
 memory. Mr. Gilfillan became, as they say, an 
 institution of the city in which he spent his life. He 
 twisted his blue comforter round his neck and " went 
 down town " to visit or speak, to walk along the shore, 
 or merely to get shaved ; and whatever the errand, it 
 was among his own people, who knew him. During 
 his time, Dundee was a homely and friendly town ; 
 the merchants and manufacturers knew each other, 
 and there was much simple hospitality and mutual 
 acquaintance. Through nieces and nephews, through 
 his congregation, and chiefly through his own public 
 work and fame, Mr. Gilfillan became a leading citizen. 
 His dwelling was in a side street near to main 
 arteries of business and in the centre of the town, 
 which still held itself together in close quarters 
 between the Law and the river and kept a more 
 homogeneous modest existence than it does now. 
 Paradise Manse was as well known as the famous 
 
THE CLOSE CHARACTERISTICS. 443 
 
 house in Cheyne Row,and dispensed a freer hospitality. 
 Gilfillan trod with full right "the plainstanes" of 
 Dundee High Street, and every one knew him. He 
 went with all the air of a chief newly come down from 
 the glens, but any child could thrust a little hand 
 upon him and claim the attention of the minister : 
 there was always something simple in the broad port 
 and the thrown-back head. 
 
 Many of the stories relate to his alter ego as much 
 as to himself. She was even more at home in the 
 commercial city than he was, for in her nature all the 
 main elements of the Teutonic race showed themselves. 
 For once the woman knew more of the world the 
 work-a-day practical world than the man did, had 
 more humour of the shrewd, incisive sort, understood 
 the bearings of things better. He was not fit to be 
 trusted with money and he agreed that, as a rule, he 
 should carry none about him. He was at times 
 hardly fit to be trusted with pen and ink, and he 
 allowed her to say when the demonic element had 
 run away with him, and the prudent Teutonic bridle 
 must be thrown over it. Perhaps it was the most 
 real marriage ever made of like to unlike, agreeing 
 in difference and it is certainly unique in literary 
 history. They differed in opinion, temperament, and 
 habit, and made no disguise. Neither took the same 
 view of life as the other ; each remained individual to 
 the last : but it was a union of heart and conscience, 
 and when the end came the survivor said " I felt as 
 if I had been thrown against a stone wall, and knew 
 nothing but the stun." 
 
 Though she greatly influenced his life she could 
 not make him other than he was ; nor could he, who 
 influenced so many, win her out of her native 
 
444 GEORGE GILF2LLAN. 
 
 entrenchments ; yet the same people loved them 
 both, and admired her sagacious orderliness as much 
 as his intellectual freedom and force. The life they 
 lived together did honour to them both, and to the 
 Puritanism out of which they both sprang. 
 
 Of the closing months interesting records are 
 found in letters to Mr. William Allan, Sunderland, 
 with whom he kept up close correspondence to the 
 last. Writing on the 2Oth May, 1878, Mr. Gilfillan 
 says : " This has been the saddest spring I almost 
 ever experienced. The death of my brother-in-law, 
 James Vallentine, a dear friend as well as brother, 
 the east winds, and the Synod have been a complica- 
 tion of troubles which have awfully depressed me. 
 ' Oh that I had wings like a dove ! ' I do mean to 
 retire from this kind of life to literary leisure by-and- 
 by ; but I won't go off immediately : it would gratify 
 some too much and grieve others. Still I am heavy- 
 laden just now. Burns is moving very slowly, 
 although my part of it is about done." From 
 Stonehaven, on the i6th July, he again wrote to Mr. 
 Allan : " I am here for a holiday. There is good 
 bathing ground, and the scenery around is rocky, 
 bold, yet beautiful. I am busy, or have been busy 
 not only with Burns, but with an Orkney poet, John 
 Malcolm, long dead, of whom I have written a 
 longish life and criticism since I came here. He 
 might have been almost my grandfather ; but I am 
 his spiritual father now. My title is Pater PoetarumT 
 The last letter bears date 7th August, 1878 : " I fear 
 the tour won't work. My wife frowns on it ; my 
 nephew cannot get away; and my publisher to-day 
 threatens me with a speedy profusion of proofs. 
 I write in torture. I awoke this morning with 
 
THE CLOSE CHARACTERISTICS. 445 
 
 severe pains in my arms, and breast, and sides, and 
 have them still. . . . Well, we can't be always well ; 
 and I have been unusually so. The weather is probably 
 the cause of my illness." The tour was one in which 
 Mr. Allan was to have been a companion. The week 
 proposed for it brought the call to another journey. 
 
 The end fell sudden and soon, with singular drama 
 of its own. For more than forty years a strenuous 
 round of labour and a yet more strenuous circle of 
 human thought had been filled. A full measure 
 of life had been experienced all that goes to a 
 man's hope, and endeavour, and agony in poetic 
 passion, labouring personality, strong affections, 
 ambitious aspirations ; in social toil and love, in 
 " remote " and unassisted travail. The height had 
 been trodden in strange fierce rapture, the deep 
 sounded in black hours of lonely torment. Few 
 have known more of what the heart can traverse and 
 dread on its dim and perilous way, or what it can 
 arrogate to itself in wild sweet journeys, and swift 
 flights out of time and sense. Few have more 
 passionately urged the question that is answered in 
 one brief word and in one only. To the world 
 generally it seemed that Gilfillan was settling into 
 the ripe October season, the Sturm und Drang all 
 over, the eldern time of interest in young lives and 
 young marriages come on, with full relish for all the 
 old debates and enthusiasms, but a calmer will, a 
 steadier pulse. And to some extent it was so. He 
 travelled and tasted the joy of new mountain-lands, 
 comparing them with the old ; he had a host of 
 friends and enough money for all wants. Outwardly, 
 there was every indication of health and mental 
 verve, and a green old age. Only a few noted the 
 
446 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 intangible shadow that began to lie upon lip and 
 brow, and no one but himself suspected that the last 
 journey might have to be taken soon. People heard 
 him preach, and the old heat was there ready to leap 
 at a spark ; they met him in the street, and as one 
 said who saw him two days before the final one, " he 
 was as jovial as ever under his wide awake." The 
 Synod of the Church had been in controversy that 
 year with Dr. Ferguson one of its deepest thinkers 
 and Gilfillan, roused in his lair, had given forth 
 indignation, sympathy, scathing. 
 
 It was the last storm ; perhaps it hastened the 
 hush. He showed signs occasionally of illness and of 
 that pathetic desire to be gentle and patient which 
 has warning in it. On the eighth day of August he 
 allowed a medical gentleman to be sent for and to 
 examine the heart. Some disease was found, but 
 nothing that might not continue sub-acute for a 
 while. He was not forbidden to preach, and on the 
 following Sunday he filled his own pulpit as usual ; 
 and yet not as usual, for the whole afternoon service 
 was, in effect, a farewell. All his life he had been 
 sensitive to omens and quick to accept premonitions. 
 Whether the doctor's verdict had been to any extent 
 foreseen we do not know ; it was accepted as the 
 beginning of the end. The previous Sabbath morn- 
 ing, too, a Dundee gentleman well known to Mr. 
 Gilfillan, was drowned while bathing before breakfast 
 on the Broughty-Ferry beach. This event was 
 supposed to be the cause of the afternoon sermon 
 seven days later, which brought the hearers into a 
 strange solemnity of feeling and made it seem after- 
 wards the preacher's own funeral sermon. The whole 
 discourse was upon sudden death ; no word of it 
 
THE CLOSE CHARACTERISTICS. 447 
 
 written, or but the merest outline ; the text that old 
 lament in Job : " Man cometh forth as a flower and is 
 cut down ; he fleeth also as a shadow and continueth 
 not." He spoke, in his old rich way, of the glory of 
 the summer and of " the golden sea of grain covering 
 the glens and straths of Scotland," mingling with his 
 picture an almost lurid warning that " the bright day 
 brings forth the adder." He surveyed the world and 
 saw the angel of death stooping over the harvest 
 fields, the cities and the sea, and then he glorified the 
 swift stroke that so easily parted the servant of God 
 from earthly chain and lingering unanswered 
 question. The name of Arnold of Rugby came in ; 
 last of the many he had loved to introduce to the 
 multitude. The hymns, it was noticed, were all in 
 accord, " Sun of my soul " closing the service ; and by 
 Mr. Gilfillan's own direction the organ played " The 
 Dead March in Saul," while the people dispersed and 
 he went down from the pulpit which, more than any 
 chair of literary fame and influence, had been to him 
 the centre and sanction of life. 
 
 On Tuesday one of the dear bright nieces Mittan- 
 nus was to be married from Arnhall, and Mr. and 
 Mrs. Gilfillan went as far as Brechin on the Monday 
 afternoon. He was quite cheerful and his best self ; 
 no one immediately anxious about him. He loved 
 Esk-side we know, and the Vallentines. It was just 
 forty-three years since he found " Margaret " and 
 fixed himself on her for life. The evening was 
 cheerful, all going gaily as a marriage bell. Then, 
 early on Tuesday morning came the fatal touch 
 keen pain, sudden alarm, the rousing of the household, 
 the call for help, the question and answer ; " I am 
 dying, doctor ? " " Yes, you are dying ; " and the man 
 
448 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 replied, " The will of the Lord be done." With that, 
 Gilfillan went forth. In a few minutes the fight with 
 time and sense was past, the soul clove its way to the 
 freedom so passionately sought. " Christ is with 
 you," his wife had said, during the short hour that 
 yet, to him, seemed a long pain. " Yes," he answered, 
 " I believe in God, in Christ." 
 
 So he had his wish : to go quickly, and in the 
 neighbourhood of a loved spot : " If I had my choice," 
 he once wrote, " of a spot to die at, it would be the 
 neighbourhood of the Burn ; and were disembodied 
 spirits permitted, in Byron's fine thought, to choose 
 some particular scene for a sanctuary, mine should be 
 found by the side of those dark rolling waters, those 
 shadow-like bridges, and those clustering woods." 
 
 Not for long had the news of a death sent so keen 
 a thrill through Scotland as the electric wires carried 
 that Tuesday afternoon, the I3th day of August, 1878. 
 Men saw it on placards, were told it by others, and 
 felt that a vivid interest had suddenly dropped from 
 their lives, from the general atmosphere. " Gilfillan 
 is dead ! " newly out of his pulpit, in all the stately 
 force of unimpaired manhood ; he seemed to have 
 fallen there, upon the familiar street, and a hush went 
 through the town. Every one knew his face, most 
 had some sense of his warm and honest heart, many 
 had felt the original flavour of him and the colour 
 which he drew out of and threw around existence. It 
 was the same wherever he was known, among the 
 ranks of those to whom his writings had conveyed a 
 secret and an inspiration. 
 
 They chose his grave in a fit place, one of the 
 finest spots of that hill-cemetery, west of the city, 
 which commands all the line of the strath from the 
 
7 HE CLOSE CHARACTERISTICS. 449 
 
 opening of the Earn valley, to the river mouth and the 
 sea. A public funeral is not the highest tribute of 
 respect, perhaps, but this one was simple, spontaneous, 
 and most moving. On Saturday, just on the closing 
 of the factories, they carried the remains to rest, the 
 congregation, the Town Council, the Chamber of 
 Commerce, the trade companies, and other public 
 bodies following, and the general population crowding, 
 silently and sadly, the long line of road by which the 
 procession went from " George's Chapel," under the 
 shadow of Dundee's Old Steeple to the Hill of Balgay. 
 There were more than a thousand in the funeral train : 
 it was that of a distinguished citizen, mourned by all 
 classes, and most of all by the multitude to whom the 
 fame of the literary man is far less than that of the 
 Christian preacher and friend. 
 
 It is quite impossible, in our closing space, to give 
 selections from the mass of memorial notices. They 
 are very interesting, and show the strong grip of 
 Gilfillan's manhood upon other men, young ministers 
 and writers, old friends in all ranks of society, even 
 opponents now startled into some justice. The 
 press gave innumerable recollections of him, and 
 they cover the various aspects of his life. A little 
 book issued from the office of the Dundee Advertiser 
 contains many of these, two by Mr. Landreth, with an 
 account of the closing scenes, and a report of Mr. 
 Gilfillan's last sermon taken from notes made by a 
 member of the congregation. One private letter we 
 are permitted to quote, by the kindness of the 
 honoured writer, Dr. Hutchison Stirling, whose judg- 
 ment is above question. Writing to Mrs. Gilfillan on 
 2Oth August, Dr. Stirling conveys to her a message 
 from Mr. Charles A. Ward, the "Burghley" of the 
 
 2 G 
 
456 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 journal and one of the few friends of her husband not 
 also a correspondent of hers. Dr. Stirling continues: 
 
 " Mr. Ward's letter, I need hardly say, found me in 
 his own case, and his hesitating wish, uniting with my 
 own, was just what was needed to give me an excuse 
 for following the dictates of my heart. I most deeply 
 deplore with you the too early loss of this invaluable 
 life. The sad news shocked me and deeply grieved. 
 The Church has lost its most eloquent and honest 
 pastor ; literature its foremost and most genial critic 
 a man of true genius who could not write a sentence 
 that had not, in some way, the virtue of his inspiration 
 in it. What you have lost, dear madam, even such 
 mere guild friends as myself can have no difficulty in 
 concluding. 
 
 " The warm, eager tenderness that was a fostering 
 boon to so many in the public must, after all, have 
 found its best and truest seat at home." 
 
 Following that, let one of Gilfillan's old and 
 admiring intimates, Mr. Logan, be heard as to one 
 side of his nature : " In the last note I received from 
 my cherished friend, only a week before he was taken 
 from us, he spoke of hearing the Rev. James M'Owan 
 of St. Andrews preach in Newport, 'an interesting, 
 earnest, and useful sermon.' The spirit of this note was 
 in fine keeping with hundreds it was my privilege to 
 receive from him, especially about ministerial brethren 
 of his own and other denominations. At the very 
 time he might be hitting hard at a man in public, on 
 some point of difference of opinion, I have known 
 him writing kindly words about the same person in 
 private. Often he has written to myself urging the 
 claims of some one who was in need, although that 
 same man had written bitterly against himself in 
 
7 HE CLOSE CHARACTERISTICS. 451 
 
 public, and he would tell me at the same time that he 
 had sent on his own ' mite/ Many a time I advised 
 Gilfillan to be more careful in his public utterances, 
 but I never for a moment doubted his own heart- 
 interest in the glorious Gospel he so long preached to 
 others. His was a laborious, singularly unselfish, and 
 useful life." 
 
 Two estimates full of affectionate understanding, 
 have been contributed to this volume by Mr. Leng, 
 the senior Member of Parliament for Dundee, whose 
 knowledge of Mr. Gilfillan was long and intimate, 
 and by Dr. Joseph Parker, of the City Temple. The 
 contributions speak for themselves, and with them 
 our memorial closes. 
 
 Mr. Leng writes from Kinbrae, Newport, Fife : 
 "The name of George Gilfillan first attracted my 
 attention about the year 1848, when it was part of 
 my duty, as sub-editor of an English Provincial 
 paper, to review the monthly magazines. His 
 brilliant and sparkling essays and criticisms on the 
 Poets in Hoggs Instructor and Taifs Magazine were 
 then eagerly looked for, month after month, and at 
 once delighted, informed, and stimulated youthful 
 and receptive minds. Some time about' 1849 or 1850 
 he was announced to lecture at the Hull Mechanics' 
 Institution. From reading his estimates of the 
 Poets, so sparkling, sympathetic, and imaginative, I 
 anticipated that he would be a semi-ethereal being, 
 cast in a poetic mould, and was surprised when he 
 came on the platform to see his stalwart frame and 
 ruddy countenance, and to hear his vigorous and 
 rugged Doric, which some of his audience scarcely 
 understood. His lecture, however, impressed me as 
 
452 GEORGE GILF1LLAN. 
 
 that of a man of rare potentiality, and at its close, when 
 I informed him that I was one of his critics, he gave 
 me the first of the many friendly shakes of his hand 
 I subsequently enjoyed. 
 
 "On coming to Dundee, in 1851. I soon found my 
 way to ' Paradise/ as his manse was curiously called, 
 and was welcomed to the hospitality extended by 
 him and Mrs. Gilfillan to all who came. There was 
 a double charm in that United Presbyterian Manse, 
 in the distinct and almost equally notable personali- 
 ties of the minister and his wife. The former drew 
 to him, from far and near, youthful aspirants to 
 literary culture and fame, who looked up to the then 
 great popular critic as the arbiter of their destiny. 
 His appearance, his manner, and his utterances, were 
 all, to them, those of a literary lion, and they admired 
 when they did not tremble at the toss of his head, 
 the shake of his mane, or the roar of his voice. It 
 amused him sometimes to frighten his cubs, but his 
 kindly nature predominated, and he more often 
 pawed them, in his desire to lick them into shape. 
 They never came away without being impressed by the 
 flashing fire of his eyes, his vivid delineations of what 
 he had seen, his wonderful memory of whatever he 
 had read, his fierce onslaughts on whatever he con- 
 demned, and his enthusiastic commendation of what- 
 ever he approved. Every one felt that George 
 Gilfillan was not only a big man, but that he had 
 a big heart as well as a big head. 
 
 "Mrs. Gilfillan, again, without children of her own, 
 became a second mother to all who entered ' Para- 
 dise.' The very model of a Scotch housewife, every 
 room in ' Paradise ' was always perfect in its neatness, 
 simplicity, and comfort. Without luxury or waste, 
 
THE CLOSE CHARACTERISTICS. 453 
 
 the table was always fully spread, covered with 
 abundance of food, and everything the best of its 
 kind. No one that entered the door was ever sent 
 empty away. Nor was she a Martha, burdened with 
 household cares. She was able to take her part, and 
 hold her own in any conversation, and many a 
 pawky, and wise, and humorous remark came from 
 her without any effort or sign of self-consciousness 
 or desire for applause. One of the kindest, most 
 sensible and devoted of women, Mrs. Gilfillan will be 
 long remembered by every visitant of the manse she 
 adorned. 
 
 "My acquaintance with George Gilfillan ripened 
 into a life-long friendship, which no differences of 
 opinion ever disturbed. He soon became, at my 
 request, a regular contributor to the Dundee Adver- 
 tiser^ and for many years was its principal reviewer 
 of books. Never was there a steadier or more indus- 
 trious worker. I was often astonished at the prompti- 
 tude with which he would dispose of a large volume 
 or parcel of books, not merely by * cutting the leaves 
 and smelling the paper-knife/ but in a way showing 
 that he had mastered the contents. His criticisms 
 were always racy. Whatever he wrote had the emi- 
 nent merit of being exceedingly readable. His 
 versatility, too, was extraordinary. When the 
 British Association visited Dundee in 1867 I asked 
 him to write sketches of the leading scientists, and 
 he did them admirably. He subsequently wrote 
 biographical notices of eminent men in all the 
 highest walks of life some of which appeared long 
 after his own decease and they were always done 
 in a manner few could equal, either in fulness of 
 information or vivacity of style. 
 
454 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 " I should like to say that I have found his edition 
 of the ' Poets/ published by Nichol, the most read- 
 able in my library, where it is assigned a place of 
 honour. Of his speeches, often sitting with him on 
 the same platform, I can testify that few men could 
 rouse a Scottish, and especially a Dundee, audience 
 to such enthusiasm as he in his thundering denuncia- 
 tions of wrong or overpowering appeals for right. 
 The deep, convulsive sobs, that sometimes sounded 
 like moans from his cavernous voice, often gave a 
 weird effect to his oratory." 
 
 Among the biographical papers which Mr. Leng 
 refers to in these graphic notes, was one on Long- 
 fellow, prepared by Mr. Gilfillan on a false rumour of 
 the poet's death. It appeared in April, 1882, " like 
 a voice from the dead," expressing the admiration 
 Gilfillan always felt for the simple, cordial genius of 
 Longfellow, and which, as we know, Longfellow 
 repaid with steady esteem. One who visited the 
 American poet shortly after Gilfillan's death, had 
 from his own lips his opinion of the man he had 
 never seen, but admired and held as a friend. " Mr. 
 Longfellow expressed his high admiration of Gilfil- 
 lan's endowments " (Mr. Stuart Muir in the Edin- 
 burgh Couranf). So different were the two that this 
 appreciation has the more value. 
 
 We end with Dr. Parker's eloquent tribute. He 
 writes, under date 28th July, 1892 : 
 
 " Your note finds me at Southport on my way to 
 Windermere. I am glad Gilfillan is to have a Life. 
 You will spend strength upon it I am sure. George 
 cannot be 'done' with a wave of the hand. I feel 
 as if I ought to have at least a little finger in the pie, 
 
THE CLOSE-CHARACTERISTICS. 455 
 
 but how can I write away from the ink-horn and pen 
 which know me best ? How is it that all other pens 
 have no go in them, and are fit only for invoices and 
 labels ? This pen, however, is friendlier than many 
 others ; so, what do you say, if here, and now, with- 
 out loss of one minute, I put down the outline of 
 mind and body which fills my grateful memory? 
 Gilfillan came to preach for me in Manchester, and 
 once, when he lectured there, he had dinner and tea 
 at my house, so we saw the giant close at hand, and 
 weighed him and measured him without coming to 
 exact figures in either case. He was in very deed a 
 big man big altogether, in head and heart, in physi- 
 cal avoirdupois and mental troy. He only knew a 
 very little part of himself of his own personality 
 there were outlying districts, almost provinces, which 
 he had not laid under adequate cultivation, and which 
 were full of mines and treasure-trove. I am not sure 
 that cultivation, in any pedantic sense, had much to 
 do with Gilfillan's greatness. The difference between 
 him and most other men was the difference between 
 an egg and an eagle. Gilfillan was alight with the 
 glory of genius. He discovered nothing ; he seemed 
 to know intuitively. He saw from afar. What, 
 then, if in his seeing men found haze, aerial colour, 
 and a perspective that brought parallels to angles 
 and so upset the popular geometry ? Gilfillan seemed 
 to start life without any special regard for Euclid ; 
 not that he ever spoke disrespectfully of squares and tri- 
 angles, but to him they were nowhere beside the gospel- 
 breathing flowers and the apocalyptic clouds. The 
 woman standing in the sun was no miracle to Gilfillan ; 
 the miracle would have been to find a woman in any 
 other place. Ezekiel, Daniel, and Revelation were 
 
456 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 written in his mother tongue. He understood them 
 and loved them and simplified them by other images. 
 Did Gilfillan ever think but in metaphor? Did he 
 ever hear of a syllogism, that mental porridge of the 
 Scot ? Or, hearing of it, did he leave it that he might 
 accept a higher and diviner hospitality ? Porridge or 
 nectar, syllogism or trope, Gilfillan was a well-fed 
 man, so overflowing with life that his touch had heal- 
 ing in it. As a young man I simply revelled in his 
 style, and now that I am no longer young I still find 
 in it a strong man's strength and a good man's tender- 
 ness. Of course it is highly coloured ; I know it, 
 I admit it, I do not deplore it. Of course it is redund- 
 ant ; quite true redundant after the manner of old 
 mother nature, so bountiful and so lavish in all her 
 summer ways. Gilfillan's music is the rush of tonjents, 
 or the shout of Bashan and Lebanon in the very 
 riotousness of their pride. The lute and the harp 
 were not his favourite instruments, though now and 
 then he could be placid and soothing in his strains. 
 He loved to see the upheaving of mountains, the 
 salutations of passing comets, and Etna signalling to 
 Sirius. All this was quite in his way. It was a great, 
 rugged, royal way, and not the way of the tiny men 
 who have often smiled upon his mannerism. These 
 are the men who mistake fluttering for flying, and a 
 stone-breaker for a sculptor. 
 
 " Can I ever forget the sermon Gilfillan delivered in 
 my pulpit in Manchester? Nothing like it was ever 
 seen under the sun. He took the sermon out of his 
 trouser pocket and laid it in little heaps not of the 
 whitest paper on the pulpit Bible, and took it up 
 scrap by scrap, and read each at the pulpit lamp as 
 
THE CLOSE-CHARACTERISTICS. 457 
 
 if he were announcing a bazaar or a tea-meeting. 
 But listen ! Shut out the grotesque image of a piece 
 of paper held up to a lamp by a giant in gold spec- 
 tacles, and listen. How clean cut each sentence ! 
 What a figure was that! What a portrait in few 
 words ! What an electric-spark sentence ! How 
 long, solemn, subduing the voice, dying in a cadence 
 that has in it the moan of a heart-sob ! When he 
 announced the hundredth psalm, the word psalm 
 seemed to become a tune in the saying of it. Yes, 
 it was a grand sermon ; but it was execrably delivered 
 as a whole. It might have been some other man's 
 sermoji, read for the purpose of showing how poor it 
 was. Yet, listen, listen ! You will then be charmed 
 and thrilled and blest. First the shock, then the 
 almost-laugh, then the wonder, then the prayer, then 
 the heart-felt thanks. It was very wonderful ; and 
 often beautiful exceedingly. 
 
 " From a domestic and dining point of view George 
 Gilfillan left us a vivid recollection. It would be too 
 strong a metaphor to describe our honoured guest 
 as an ascetic. He was not, and his ways were not 
 exactly prim. In the upper room he rubbed his 
 glorious head and face with a towel and then threw 
 the towel upon a swing-mirror. Coming downstairs 
 he vigorously stirred the fire with our best tongs, and 
 then threw the tongs under the bars with a fine dis- 
 regard of domestic perspective. I remember well 
 that on the day of Mr. Gilfillan's dining with us we 
 had an afternoon engagement at five o'clock which 
 we could not put off. Should we ask him to stay to 
 tea ? We had to start soon after four, so what time 
 was there for tea? Mr. Gilfillan settled the business 
 
458 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 for us, for immediately after dinner he drew his chair 
 to the fire and said, ' We maun have tea early.' 
 Thus do the Invisibles work kindly for us if we will 
 but let them alone and cease to fret about the coming 
 and going of daily life. 
 
 " To return. Gilfillan's style has been described as 
 turgid, bombastic, and artificial. There are men who 
 can use such words quite glibly in describing other 
 men's literary method. Gilfillan's style may be all 
 they say ; but under this style lies the bold and burn- 
 ing thought. What of that ? Besides, nature has 
 many expressions. Her chariots, like her Lord's, are 
 twenty-thousand, and her angels are thousands of 
 thousands. Think of the Ganges rebuking the 
 Atlantic ! Think of the bantam regarding the eagle 
 as an exaggeration. Every man in his own order, 
 and God for us all, should be our motto. Gilfillan 
 had his royal way and royally he pursued it. Bless- 
 ing on his memory ! Honour to his high name ! " 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 DR. ROBERTSON NICOLL has kindly sent the fol- 
 lowing, addressed to him on 26th November, 1892, by 
 Mr. Hall Caine : 
 
 " I rejoice to hear that a life of Gilfillan is to be pub- 
 lished. That he should have gone so long unhonoured of 
 the biographer would be a matter of astonishment to me if 
 I did not know that even more than imaginative writing, 
 which has its forms and fashions, its whims and idiosyn- 
 crasies that come and go, criticism, however excellent, is apt 
 to pass away with the hour that produces it. But in simple 
 truth, Gilfillan was a man of many and various gifts, and if 
 as a poet he lacked the vitalising touch of imagination, as a 
 critic he had that insight and sympathy which is the half- 
 brother of creative genius. The literary critic is apt to be 
 narrower than the poet, the dramatist, and the novelist in 
 taste and judgment. He who makes demand of the fru- 
 gality and severity of our eighteenth century style is often 
 unable to appreciate the romantic temper of the seventeenth 
 and nineteenth centuries. We might easier expect Pope to 
 write with the spirit of Coleridge, or Fielding to produce 
 the novels of George Eliot, than look for any right under- 
 standing of Wordsworth in Jeffrey, or of Dickens in the 
 worshippers of Ibsen. The critical intellect appears to have 
 been a very unelastic thing in all ages, but there have 
 
 459 
 
460 APPENDIX. 
 
 always been brilliant exceptions to the rule, and Gilfillan must 
 be reckoned as one of them. That he was a warm apprecia- 
 tor, that he knew the value of enthusiasm, that he could be 
 catholic and yet by no means wanting in strong conviction, 
 that he could love and hate and still be bound by no narrow 
 prejudices or predilections, his editions of the Poets suffi- 
 ciently show. These were, I well remember, favourite 
 books with Rossetti, and many an evening I can recall 
 when he would take down from the shelf one or other of 
 the large-page volumes and read aloud from its easy type. 
 Rossetti thought Gilfillan sound as a critic, if sometimes 
 overwrought and l tall.' 
 
 " I have also my own selfish reason for remembering that 
 Gilfillan was a generous appreciator. Somewhere as far 
 back as 1870 I wrote a very long poem, which was printed 
 and published four years later by a publisher of more enter- 
 prise than intelligence. Two years after that I sent a copy 
 of it to Gilfillan. I was unknown to him, and he had no 
 inducement to give me more attention than the man ] of 
 letters usually pays to the hundred and one aspirants who 
 seek his counsel. Gilfillan was a man of much mark at 
 that time, writing frequently, lecturing constantly, travelling 
 a good deal, and still preaching every week. Nevertheless 
 he read my poem, and wrote me two letters about it of so 
 much warmth of praise, yet so much candour of criticism, 
 that my ambition, if it had ever smouldered, must have been 
 fired afresh, and my best energies put on their mettle. . . . 
 I have disappointed Gilfillan's predictions, but I am none 
 the less touched by the recollection of his encouragement. 
 When I came up to London six years later, I had one surprise 
 awaiting me, and that was the surprise, and indeed the 
 shock, of finding that hardly any of the literary people whom 
 I met with knew anything about Gilfillan, and that the great 
 poet I have mentioned was literally the only man known to 
 me who spoke of him with genuine warmth of praise. So 
 soon can true and honest work in literature be overlooked ; 
 
APPENDIX. 461 
 
 so easily can generous criticism be forgotten ; of such stuff 
 is the 'memory' of the half-posterity to which the literary man 
 so proudly appeals ! " 
 
 We are obliged to Mr. Hall Caine for one of the 
 letters referred to. It is dated 23rd February, 1876. 
 Mr. Gilfillan says : 
 
 " I have snatched an hour or two to-night from my sterner 
 duties to look over your poem. I admire much in it. I 
 have marked some passages, and could have marked more 
 which have, it seems to me, the true ring of genius. Indeed, 
 it altogether abounds with fine fancy, and shows excellent 
 descriptive powers. I notice, on the other hand, a great 
 many peculiarities or affectations of language, a few of which 
 I have also marked, and which can easily be remedied. 
 
 " The great defect is, I think, obscurity. The story does 
 not tell itself distinctly, and that is a defect which the public 
 is less disposed than the critics to pardon. The critics have 
 been reduced by the examples of Browning, &c., to be too 
 lenient to this defect, and have succeeded in forcing thus 
 into the market a great quantity of matter which lies in 
 libraries and on drawing-room tables, but is seldom read. 
 Critics can get people to buy, but not to read. This is the 
 old story of one man bringing a horse to the water, but twenty 
 not being able to get him to drink. Your poem has genius, 
 but it does not draw you on in the stream of its story, and 
 would therefore not succeed in the true sense of success. 
 I doubt even if it would sell. 
 
 " Try some other theme, and treat it in a more popular 
 way. Read for this purpose Robert Buchanan's ' White 
 Rose and Red,' and mark the flow and clearness of his verse. 
 He, too, began with mysticism." 
 
PUBLICATIONS OF MR. GILFILLAN. 
 
 THE following list of Mr. Gilfillan's publications does not 
 profess to be complete. Many of his contributions to 
 periodicals are unsigned and cannot be traced to him with 
 absolute certainty ; the authorship of most of the following 
 has, however, been verified otherwise than by internal 
 evidence. No attempt is made to give year by year the 
 reviews and articles contributed to the Dundee Advertiser 
 and other newspapers. Too numerous for individual 
 mention, they are of great literary interest, and show that in 
 the last period of his life he was keenly alive to every note 
 of excellence, and writing as freely and strongly as ever. 
 
 1827. Article in British Farmers 1 Magazine. 
 
 1839. Articles on Professor Wilson and Dr. Chalmers in 
 
 Edinburgh University Magazine. 
 
 1840. FIVE DISCOURSES. 
 
 Articles in Dumfries Herald, on De Ouincey, Jeffrey, 
 Wordsworth, Carlyle, Chalmers, Irving. 
 
 1841. Articles in Dumfries Herald, on Coleridge, Shelley, 
 
 Preachers, Bible Poetry, Peebles. 
 
 1842. Articles in Dtimfries Herald, on Brougham, Godwin, Allan 
 
 Cunningham. 
 
 HADES ; OR, THE UNSEEN, a discourse. 
 
 1843. Articles in Dumfries Herald, on Ebenezer Elliott, Camp- 
 
 bell, and others. 
 1845. Articles in Dumfries Herald, on Tennyson, Pollock, and 
 
 others. 
 
 Articles in Hogg's Instructor, on Connection between 
 Poetry and Religion, Painting : its Origin and History, 
 Painting : its Pleasures and Relation to Religion, Rev. 
 Sydney Smith, Music, Genius (two papers), Sir D. K. 
 Sand ford, Isaac Taylor, William Wordsworth. 
 GALLERY OF LITERARY PORTRAITS (Tait, 
 Edinburgh). 
 
 462 
 
PUBLICATIONS OF MR. GILFILLAN. 463 
 
 1846. In Hoggs Instructor, on Thomas Moore, Dr. Thomas 
 
 Brown, General Characteristics of Modern British Poetry, 
 Female Authors, Popular and Cheap Literature. 
 In Taifs Magazine, on Sir E. B. Lytton, James Mont- 
 gomery, Leigh Hunt. 
 
 1847. In Hogg's Instructor, on Books, Reminiscences of a Tour 
 
 through England (five papers). 
 
 In Taifs Magazine, on John Foster's Life and Correspond- 
 ence, Thomas Hood, G. Crabbe, Alfred Tennyson, Mrs. 
 Hemans, Lord Byron, Mrs. Browning, Mrs. Shelley. 
 
 1848. In Hoggs Instructor, on Dr. Jamieson, Dr. G. Croly, Dr. 
 
 Ferrier, Life of Sterling, Samuel Gilfillan, and W. Anderson, 
 
 Poetry of Thomas Aird. 
 In Taifs Magazine, on Emerson, Prof. Nichol, G. Dawson, 
 
 Genius of John Milton, A Bundle of Books. 
 In British Quarterly, on Duke of Argyll's "Presbytery." 
 In "Our Scottish Clergy," Vol. I. (Edinburgh, 1848), on 
 
 Rev. H. M. MacGill, Rev. Dr. Eadie, Rev. G. Jeffrey. (These 
 
 were previously contributed to the Glasgow Examiner.} 
 THE CHRISTIAN BEARINGS OF ASTRONOMY, a lecture. 
 THE CONNECTION BETWEEN SCIENCE, LITERATURE 
 
 AND RELIGION, a lecture. 
 
 1849. INTRODUCTION to Longfellow's Poems (Liverpool). 
 In Taifs Magazine, on Poems of Thomas Aird. 
 
 In British Quarterly, on Thomas Campbell. 
 
 In Hogg^s Instructor, on Dr. Wardlaw, Brief Notes of a 
 brief Journey, Comrie and its Environs (four papers), Earth- 
 quakes, Second Bundle of Books, Third Bundle of Books. 
 
 SECOND GALLERY OF LITERARY PORTRAITS 
 (Hogg, Edinburgh). 
 
 In " Our Scottish Clergy," Vol. II., on Dr. Young, Dr. W. 
 L. Alexander, Rev. J. Edwards, Dr. Ritchie, Rev. James 
 Morison. (These were previously contributed to Glasgow 
 Examiner.) 
 
 1850. In Eclectic, on Southey's Life, " Galileo Galilei," De 
 
 Quincey, Wordsworth, "The Roman," Smibert's "Clans of 
 
 the Highlands." 
 In Palladium, on Emerson's " Representative Men," Great 
 
 Poem Mysteries Job, E. B. Browning, Margaret Fuller, and 
 
 George Sand. 
 THE BARDS OF THE BIBLE. (Date on title-page, 
 
 1851.) Edinburgh, James Hogg, 346 pp. 
 In Hoggs Instructor, on "Galileo Galilei," Fourth and 
 
 Fifth Bundles of Books, Mirabeau, "Life of Dr. Heugh," 
 
 Robespierre and Danton, Sixth Bundle of Books. 
 
 1851. In Palladium, on Poem Mysteries Prometheus. 
 
 In Eclectic, on Joanna Baillie, D. M. Moir's Lectures, 
 Recent Poetry and A. Smith, Carlyle's Sterling. 
 
464 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 THE APOCALYPSE OF JESUS CHRIST, a sermon. 
 
 ESSAY prefixed to " Book of British Poesy." 
 
 In Critic, on A new Poet in Glasgow (two articles), 
 
 Macaulay (three articles). 
 In Hogg's Instructor, on Napoleon, Hamlet, Rev. John 
 
 Jameson, D. M. Moir, Seventh and Eighth Bundles of Books, 
 
 Vergniaud. 
 
 1852. In Critic, Review of Aird's Memoir of D. M. Moir (two 
 
 papers). 
 In Eclectic, on John Bunyan. 
 
 MARTYRS, HEROES AND BARDS OF THE SCOT- 
 TISH COVENANT (Albert Cockshaw), 251 pp. 
 
 In Hogg's Instructor, Ninth and Tenth Bundles of Books, 
 Robert Blair, Edward Young. 
 
 LORD BYRON, a lecture. 
 
 1853. MEMOIR of Rev. J. C. Houston, Newcastle, prefixed to 
 
 vol. of Sermons. 
 
 PREFACE to Poems of W. Nevay, Forfar. 
 LIBRARY EDITION of POETS OF BRITAIN, with Biographi- 
 cal and Critical Notes (year begins in April) : 
 Milton, 2 vols., 
 Thomson, 
 Herbert, 
 Young, 
 
 Goldsmith, Collins, and Warton. 
 
 In Hoggs Instncctor, on James Thomson, James Beattie, 
 Eleventh and Twelfth Bundles of Books, Notes of a Trip to 
 England, Modern British Orators (two papers). 
 In Critic, on Hazlitt and Hallam, Jeffrey and Coleridge, 
 J. Stanyan Bigg, De Quincey's " Selections." 
 
 THE GRAND DISCOVERY ; OR, THE FATHERHOOD OF 
 
 GOD (Blackader), 106 pp. 
 In Eclectic, on Alexander Smith. 
 In Scottish Review, on Burns, Dr. Chalmers, Thos. Moore, 
 
 Thackeray's " English Humourists." 
 
 1854. Library Edition of the Poets: 
 
 Cowper, 2 vols., 
 
 Butler, 2 vols., 
 
 Shenstone, 
 
 Beattie, Blair, and Falconer. 
 In Scottish Review, on Sir E. B. Lytton, Age of Cheap 
 
 Literature, " Poetics " by E. S. Dallas (two papers). 
 In Hogg^s Instructor, on Modern British Orators (two 
 
 papers), Louis Kossuth, Prospective Periodical Literature. 
 In Critic, Review of "Babe Christabel," Professor Wilson 
 
 (two papers), A Gathering of Northern Literary Celebrities, 
 
 De Quincey (two papers). 
 In Eclectic, on Professor Wilson, Review of W T hewell's 
 
 "Plurality of Worlds," Edward Irving. (?) 
 
PUBLICATIONS OF MR. GILFILLAN. 465 
 
 THIRD GALLERY OF LITERARY PORTRAITS 
 
 (Edinburgh, James Hogg). 
 PREFACE to letters of Rev. John Jameson. 
 
 1855. Library Edition of the Poets : 
 
 Dryden, 2 vols., 
 
 Bowles, 2 vpls., 
 
 Churchill, 
 
 Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett. 
 
 In Scottish Review, on George Buchanan, J. G. Lockhart. 
 In Critic, on " Noctes," Festus, "The Modern Scottish 
 
 Minstrel." 
 In Hogg's Instructor, on Some Hints on Criticism, Use 
 
 of Religion in Poetry, A Bundle of Books, Christopher North 
 
 in dishabille, Second, Third, and Fourth Bundles of Books. 
 THE GROANS OF THE CREATION and the glorious liberty 
 
 of the children of God, a discourse. 
 
 1856. Library Edition of the Poets : 
 
 Burns, 2 vols., 
 
 H. K. White and Grahame, 
 
 Pope, 2 vols., 
 
 Shakespeare and Surrey. 
 
 THE MOUNTAIN OF THE LORD'S HOUSE, a sermon. 
 In Scottish Review, on Macaulay as a historian, Dr. 
 
 Guthrie and modern Preaching, Religious Poets of Scotland. 
 
 THE HISTORY OF A MAN, edited by GEORGE GIL- 
 FILLAN (Arthur Hall, Virtue & Co.), 357 pp. 
 
 In Titan, Morning with the Muses. 
 
 In Critic, "Modern Scottish Minstrel" (two papers ), 
 Review of Aird's Poems. 
 
 GALLERIES OF LITERARY PORTRAITS (two volume 
 edition, James Hogg), 326 and 368 pp. 
 
 1857. Library Edition of the Poets : 
 
 Crawshaw and Quarles, 
 Scott, 3 vols., 
 Waller and Denham, 
 Akenside. 
 
 CHRISTIAN MISSIONS, a sermon. 
 
 In " Dumfries Album," on Burke as a historian. 
 
 In Scottish Review, on American Poets and Poetry, Self- 
 teaching and Self-taught Authors, the Bible and the Rocks, 
 the late Dr. Samuel Brown. 
 
 In Critic^ Reviews of "The Philosophy of the Bible," 
 "Edinburgh Dissected," Aird's "Old Bachelor," "Modern 
 Scottish Minstrel," Smith's " City Poems," De Quincey's 
 "Sketches." 
 
 CHRISTIANITY AND OUR ERA (James Hogg), 
 478 pp. 
 
 2 H 
 
466 GEORGE GILFILLAN. 
 
 1858. Library Edition of the Poets : 
 
 Percy's Reliques, 3 vols., 
 
 Prior, 
 
 Wyatt, 
 
 Penrose, Green, Dyer, and Armstrong. 
 In Scottish Review, on Henry Rogers, Edmund Burke 
 
 and India, Rev. John Caird, Robert Alfred Vaughan. 
 In Critic, on "Modern Scottish Minstrel," De Quincey's 
 
 Works (four papers), Jamieson's Poems, Jackson's Poems, 
 
 Burghley's " Preaching and Puseyism." 
 In Titan, on Literature, Painting, and Beauty. 
 PREFACE to Jean Hamilton's Poems. 
 
 1859. Library Edition of the Poets : 
 
 Spenser, 5 vols., 
 
 Addison, Gay, and Somerville. 
 In Scottish Review, on Carlyle's " Frederick," Masson's 
 
 " Milton," Novels and Novel Writers, Tennyson's " Idylls." 
 In Titan, Strictures on "Thorndale," Douglas Jerrold. 
 
 1860. Library Edition of the Poets : 
 
 Chaucer, 3 vols., 
 Selections, 3 vols. 
 
 ALPHA AND OMEGA ; or, a series of Scripture studies, 
 2 vols. (A. Hall, Virtue & Co.), 374 and 370 pp. 
 
 In Scottish Review, on Professor Nichol, Notes on Nor- 
 way. 
 
 DEBASING AND DEMORALIZING INFLUENCES of Slavery, 
 
 a lecture. 
 
 1861. In Scottish Review, Notes on Norway, continued. 
 
 1862. In Scottish Review, Memoirs and Memoir Writers, 
 
 British and American Literature, Recent Poetry, Remains 
 and Memorials of Shelley, Christopher North. (?) 
 
 1863. In Christian Spectator, on Spinoza. 
 
 1866. In Pulpit Analyst, on Christian Simplicity, Chalmers and 
 
 Arnold, Robertson of Brighton, " Ecce Homo " (two papers). 
 
 1867. NIGHT : A POEM (Jackson, Walford, and Hodder), 
 
 339 PP- 
 
 In Pulpit Analyst, on Dr. W. Anderson, Rev. J. Everett, 
 Rev. Samuel Gilfillan, Dr. Croly, Dr. John Bruce, Rev. T. 
 Spencer, Rev. John Jameson, Rev. G. Steward, Rev. A. 
 Stewart, Rev. J. Morrell Mackenzie, Star Dust, or Mis- 
 cellaneous Sketches. 
 These were gathered into a volume : 
 
 REMOTER STARS IN THE CHURCH SKY Jack- 
 son, Walford, and Hodder), 171 pp. 
 
 In Dundee Advertiser (from 2oth August to 4th September), 
 on Sir Charles Lyell, Professor Owen, Sir D. Brewster, Sir R. 
 Murchison, Professor Huxley, Professor Phillips, Principal For- 
 bes, Professor J. H. Balfour, Professor Airy, Professor Ran- 
 kine, Sir S. Baker, M. E. Grant Duff, Esq., Professor Tyndall. 
 
PUBLICATIONS OF MR. GILFILLAN. 467 
 
 1869. MODERN CHRISTIAN HEROES, a Gallery of 
 
 Protesting and Reforming Men (Elliot Stock), 312 pp. 
 Includes Oliver Cromwell, John Milton, The Puritans, The 
 Scottish Covenanters, The Secession and Relief Churches, 
 The Rise of Methodism (these papers were previously con- 
 tributed to Forward). 
 
 1870. LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT, BARONET (Oliphant) 
 
 2nd Edition, 1871, 384 pp. 
 
 In People's Friend, Autumnal Rambles in Various Lands 
 Norway (eleven papers), Scotland (twenty-two papers). 
 
 1871. In Dundee Advertiser, among the books reviewed by Mr. 
 
 Gilfillan were the following: " The Jephtha and the Baptist," 
 by George Buchanan, translated by A. Gibb ; " The True 
 Vine," by Rev. H. Macmillan ; "Quiet Hours," by John 
 Pulsford ; " The Scottish Kirk," by Rev. John Guthrie ; 
 " Life and Letters of Hugh Miller," by Peter Bayne (three 
 notices); "The Life and Times of Lord Brougham;" 
 " Sermons," by Rev. F. Ferguson ; " The Songstresses of 
 Scotland," by Sarah Tytler and J. L. Watson ; " The Great 
 Social Evil," by W. Logan ; " Peeps at the Far East," by Dr. 
 Norman Macleod ; " Life and Labours of Duncan Matheson," 
 by Rev. John Macpherson ; " The Sacrifice of Isaac, a 
 Poem," by Rev. Thomas Tilston. [This is but a specimen of 
 the work done for the Advertiser during many years.] 
 
 1872. In "The Shores of Fife" (Edmonston and Douglas), 
 
 Article Historical and Descriptive Notes on Falkland Palace, 
 Loch Leven, &c., 15 pp. 
 
 In People's Friend, To Switzerland and back (eleven 
 papers), Run to North Wales and a few steps beyond (seven 
 papers). 
 
 1873. LIFE OF THE REV. WILLIAM ANDERSON, LL.D., 
 
 Glasgow (Hodder & Stoughton), 414 pp. 
 
 1875. PREFACE to Poems of A. Anderson, Kirkconnel. 
 
 1876. In Celtic Magazine, a Defence of Ossian, The Massacre of 
 
 Glencoe. 
 
 1877. THE HUMANITY OF CHRIST, a sermon (published 1886). 
 In Celtic Magazine, on Lyrical Poetry. 
 
 1878. LIFE OF BURNS in the National Edition of the Works 
 
 of Burns (Mackenzie). 
 ESSAY on Life and Writings of David Vedder, prefixed to 
 
 his Poems (William Peace & Son, Kirkwall). 
 In Celtic Magazine, Our own Lyrical Poetry, Wm. Allan. 
 1881. SKETCHES, LITERARY AND THEOLOGICAL, edited by 
 
 Frank Henderson (Douglas). 
 
INDEX. 
 
 ABERDEEN, visit to, 379. 
 
 Advent, Second, 138, 272, 400. 
 
 Aird, Thomas, 23, 64, 76, 107, 118, 
 141 ; illness of, 147, 148 ; notice 
 of, 174 ; Carlyle writes to, 175 ; 
 Aird to Gilfillan, 175 ; death of, 
 177 ; his father's death, 223 ; 
 testimonial to, 274, 284 ; letters 
 to, 177-238, 425, 435, 437. 
 
 Airlie, Den of, 284. 
 
 Allan, William, 444. 
 
 Allegory, 168. 
 
 "Alpha and Omega," 231. 
 
 American War, 279, 280. 
 
 "Anastasis," 128. 
 
 Anderson, Dr. W., 257, 271, 339. 
 
 Anderson (" Surfaceman "), 162. 
 
 Anti-slavery meeting, 271. 
 
 Associate Synod, 5. 
 
 Astronomy, 351. 
 
 Autumn, 325. 
 
 Awaking from sleep, 270. 
 
 Aytoun, W. E., 213 ; and his allies, 
 389. 
 
 BAILEY, P. J., 169. 
 
 "Balder," 170, 172, 201, 366. 
 
 Balmer, Professor, 44. 
 
 "Bards of the Bible," 88, 107; 
 
 richness and profusion of, 109 ; 
 
 success of, 152; plan of, 177; 
 
 finished, 188. 
 468 
 
 Barlas, Rachel, married to Samuel 
 Gilfillan, 8 ; character, 1 1 ; her 
 religion, 12 ; her illness, 202 ; 
 her death, 205 ; her grave, 171. 
 
 Bayne, Peter, LL.D., 207. 
 
 Begg, Dr., 219. 
 
 Beggars, 304. 
 
 Belfast English Literature Chair, 
 1 80. 
 
 Beveridge, George, 39, 251. 
 
 Bi gg J- Stanyan, 163, 207, 236, 
 394; letters to, 395,414,415. 
 
 Binney, Rev. T., 158. 
 
 Blackie, Dr. J. S., 178. 
 
 Blair, Dr. W., 438. 
 
 Blairgowrie, 382. 
 
 Berwick, Rev. J., 346. 
 
 Brechin, 266. 
 
 Bristol, 211. 
 
 Broad Church party, 331. 
 
 Brown, Dr. S., 66; lectures in 
 Dundee, 68; notice of, 121; 
 letter of, to Mrs. Gilfillan, 121 ; 
 letters to, 122-131 ; Aird on, 
 125 ; Gilfillan on, 142 ; creed of, 
 155 ; his energy, 163 ; his "Gal- 
 ileo," 183 ; dispute with the 
 Banner, 184 ; paper on, 215. 
 
 Browning, A., Tillicoultry, 323, 
 
 335- 
 
 Brougham, 329. 
 Buchanan, George, 207. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 469 
 
 Buchanan, Professor, 35. 
 Burghley, 220, 227, 228, 258, 267, 
 
 322. 
 
 Burke, 208. 
 Burns, 393. 
 
 CAINE, Hall, 459. 
 Caird, Principal, 278. 
 Cairns, Dr. John, 22, 255, 284, 285, 
 Calvinism, 12, 24. [343' 
 
 Campbell, Rev. Mr., Aberdour, 252. 
 Campbell, Thomas, Rector of Glas- 
 gow University, 33 ; his poetry, 
 288. 
 
 Carlisle, 237. 
 Carlyle, Dr. John, 190. 
 Carlyle, Thomas, 30, 74, 76; on 
 Gilfillan, 103 ; his capabilities, 
 no ; quoted, 123 ; creed of, 155 ; 
 his talk, 179 ; his " Sterling," 195. 
 Carlylism, 141, 142, 402. 
 Carr, Mr. Frank, 436. 
 Carruthers, Dr., 437. 
 Chalmers, Dr., 22; his "Astro- 
 nomical Discourses," 34; Pro- 
 fessor, 45 ; preaching, 46. 
 Children, Gilfillan on, 154. 
 Chili, catastrophe in, 363. 
 Christian Magazine, 8. 
 " Christianity and our Era," 192, 
 20 1, 209; notices of, 216; 
 resumt of, 401 ; characterised, 
 404. 
 
 Christmas, 241. 
 Churchill, 130, 210. 
 Churchyards, deserted, 105. 
 Claverhouse, 391. 
 Coleridge, S. T., and Hall, 129; on 
 
 Shakespeare, 288. 
 Coleridgism, 140. 
 Coming men, 276. 
 Comrie, 128, 199, 228, 251, 281. 
 " Confession of Faith," 434. 
 
 Covenanters, essay on, 36, 326. 
 
 "Covenant,Scottish,Martyrs,&c.,of," 
 161 ; success of the book, 162 ; 
 composition of, 197 ; published, 
 197 ; republished, 285 ; quoted, 
 
 391. 
 
 Cowper, 20 1. 
 Crabbe, portrait of, 96. 
 Critic, The, 153, 202. 
 Croly, Dr. G., 136, 192, 212, 234, 
 
 286. 
 
 Cymbeline, 382. 
 Gumming, Dr., 306. 
 
 "DARK Disarrangements," 145. 
 
 Davidson, Dr. S., 344. 
 
 De Quincey, 62, 80, 120, 206, 232. 
 
 Delta (D. M. Moir), 151, 152; his 
 death, 191 ; memoir of, 196, 220. 
 
 Dick, Professor, 43. 
 
 Dobell, Sydney, on Gilfillan, 72 ; 
 notice of, 132 ; letters of Gilfil- 
 lan to, 132-173; his "Roman," 
 185 ; his youth, 192. 
 
 Doubt, 357. 
 
 Douglass, Frederick, 79. 
 
 Dreams, 324, 364, 371. 
 
 Dryden, 208. 
 
 Duncan, Professor, 43. 
 
 EADIE, Dr., 46, 126, 190. 
 Ebsworth, J. W.,226. 
 Eclectic, The, 183, 187, 194. 
 Edinburgh, from 1815 to 1835, 44 ; 
 
 visits to, 212, 266, 319. 
 Edinburgh University Magazine, 
 
 34, 63, 80. 
 
 Emerson, R. W., 78, 269. 
 Erskine, Thomas, of Linlathen, 76, 
 
 77, 181. 
 
 Everett, Rev. J., 326, 371. 
 Exeter Hall, 157. 
 
 "FATHERHOOD of God," 168, 396. 
 
470 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Fettercairn, 369. 
 Feudal System, 4. 
 "Firmilian," 389. 
 " Five Discourses," 63. 
 Foster, 247. 
 
 " GALLERY of Literary Portraits," 
 the First, 99, 119; success of, 135 ; 
 the Second, 182, 185 ; the Third, 
 396. 
 
 Gardiner, Dr. A., 266. 
 
 Gilfillan, George, his birth, 13 ; his 
 father's influence, 15 ; religion, 
 21 ; influence of nature, 28 ; goes 
 to Glasgow University, 31 ; love 
 of books, 32 ; on Chalmers, 34 ; 
 at the Logic class, 35 ; fellow- 
 students, 36 ; internal composi- 
 tion, 36 ; influence of Professor 
 Wilson, 38 ; choice of the minis- 
 try, 41 ; theological course, 42 ; 
 in Edinburgh, 46 ; relations to 
 Wilson, 48 ; literary disappoint- 
 ment, 49 ; mission work, 5 > 
 recollections of, by Rev. A. Ken- 
 nedy, 51 ; licensed, 56 ; first 
 meeting with Mrs. Gilh'llan, 57 ; 
 preaching, 60, 62 ; marriage, 60 ; 
 " Five Discourses," 62 ; friend- 
 ship with Thomas Aird, 64 ; 
 writes in Dumfries Herald, 64 ; 
 rapid writing, 65 ; friendship 
 with S. Brown, 66 ; lectures in 
 Dundee, 68 ; " Hades," 70 ; dark 
 struggle, 74 ; First " Gallery," 69, 
 75 ; meetings with Carlyle, 74, 76 ; 
 with Emerson, 78 ; and Anti- 
 slavery movement, 79 ; sense of 
 power, 80 ; first subjects, 81 ; 
 compared with Burns, 81 ; with 
 Hazlitt, 82 ; with Carlyle, 83 ; 
 literary manner, 84 ; personal 
 appearance, 85 ; Carlyle on, 86 ; 
 
 on Hazlitt, 91 ; on Shelley, 93 ; 
 on Crabbe, 96 ; " Bundles of 
 Books," 101 ; on Miall, Carlyle 
 and M'Cheyne, 102 ; on novel- 
 reading, 103 ; sermon to students, 
 106 ; " Bards of the Bible," 108 ; 
 on Psalm cxxxix., 112; and 
 the Presbytery, 116; on preach- 
 ing, 117; should he remove to 
 London ? 249 ; early associates, 
 250 ; college companions, 251 ; 
 burdened hours, 261 ; his books, 
 267 ; reminiscences, 295, 384 ; 
 opinions about, 300 ; on his place 
 in literature, 308 ; out of literary 
 world, 353 ; defended by Dr. 
 Anderson, 371; position, 373; 
 feud with Aytoun, 390 ; literary 
 activity, 394 ; his judgment sought, 
 394, 425 ; separation from liter- 
 ary world, 405 ; latest work, 406 ; 
 contrasted with Carlyle, 406 ; 
 compensations, '414 ; correspond- 
 ents of, 418 ; public addresses, 
 430 ; and Church standards, 433 ; 
 testimonial to, 439 ; character- 
 istics, 441 ; closing months, 444 ; 
 last sermon, 447 ; death, 448 ; 
 tribute of Dr. Hutchison Stirling, 
 450 ; of John Leng, Esq., 451 ; 
 of Dr. Joseph Parker, 454 ; his 
 publications, 459. 
 
 GILFILLAN, GEORGE, LETTERS 
 OF : 
 
 To W. B. ROBERTSON On 
 " Hades," literary sketches, 
 115 ; a visit to Irvine and Ayr, 
 "Gallery," Rev. P. Landreth, 
 118 ; on lectures, De Quincey, 
 &c., 119. 
 
 To SAMUEL BROWN on Car- 
 lyle's portrait, Professor Nichol, 
 "Suspiria," 122; the Synod, 
 
INDEX. 
 
 471 
 
 Gilfillan, George, Letters of 
 
 continued. 
 
 T. Aird, 124; Dr. Eadie, H. 
 M. MacGill, 126; " Anastasis," 
 Sketch of Sandford, 128 ; pri- 
 vate difficulties, Hall and 
 Coleridge, Churchill, 129. 
 
 To SYDNEY DOBELL " The 
 Roman," " Bards of the Bible," 
 132 ; plagiarism, Carlyle, 
 nature, 134 ; The Vision, First 
 "Gallery," 135; outward 
 appearance, 135; T. Aird, 
 136 ; Dobell's theory of Sin, 
 the Second Coming, 137 ; 
 echoes of denial, 139 ; width, 
 little enthusiasm in Scotland, 
 140 ; literature a passion, 142 ; 
 "Crazed," 143; lecturing, 
 "Destiny of the Bible," Bailey, 
 143 ; future punishment, S. 
 Brown, 145 ; Palladium , T. 
 Aird's illness, 146; "Night," 
 Dr. Croly, 148 ; Mazzini, 
 Tennyson, Specimens of Eng- 
 lish Literature, 149 ; Paradise 
 Lost, 150; Delta's Lectures, 
 151 ; Second edition of 
 "Bards," 151 ; D. M. Moir, 
 152 ; Critic, "Joint-stock 
 Judgment-seats," 153 ; child- 
 ren, Carlyle, 1 54 ; calling 
 names, sanatory religions, 156 ; 
 London, F. Newman, Mazzini, 
 T. Binney, 157; E. A. Poe, 
 1 60 ; Covenanters, S. Brown, 
 Ancestry, 161 ; Plagiarism, 
 Smith's Poems, J. S. Bigg, 
 162 ; Thomson, Mrs. Stowe, 
 164 ; Herbert, religious doubt, 
 166; "Fatherhood of God," 
 167; "Balder," Bailey, 169; 
 judgment of "Balder," 170; 
 
 Gilfillan, George, Letters of 
 continued. 
 
 mother's death, " my twin 
 Bold Conceptions," 171 ; 
 Kossuth, 172. 
 
 To THOMAS AIRD "Bards of the 
 Bible," Sterling's Remains, 177; 
 Second "Gallery," lecturing, 
 178; Exeter Hall, Offer of 
 Belfast English Literature 
 Chair, 179 ; "Bards," " Galler- 
 ies," S. Brown's marriage, 
 180; Carlyle at Linlathen, 
 181 ; Sydney Yendys, 182 ; 
 Athenczum onset, Aytoun, 
 "Galileo," 182; S. Brown 
 and the Banner, Emerson, 
 184 ; Comrie, Palladium, 186; 
 Jane Eyre, 187 ; Lecturing, 
 1 88; Dr. John Carlyle, 190; 
 death of D. M. Moir, 191 ; 
 Croly's new book, Dobell's 
 boyhood, 192 ; The Exhibition, 
 Henry Melville, 193 ; Alex- 
 ander Smith, 193 ; Kossuth, 
 Carlyle on Sterling, 194 ; " The 
 Garden and Child," 195 ; 
 public dinner, " Covenanters," 
 .196; Edition of Poets, 197; 
 Comrie, Scottish Review, 199 ; 
 J. S. Bigg, " My Novel," 200 ; 
 " Christianity and our Era, " 
 
 201 ; Cowper's life, 201 ; Prof. 
 Wilson's death, mother's illness, 
 
 202 ; anti-popery spirit, 203 ; 
 mother's death, sorrow and 
 work, 205 ; De Quincey, J. S. 
 Bigg, 206 ; P. Bayne, Dryden, 
 Burke, Tulloch, 207 ; Imagin- 
 ary Biography, 209 ; Churchill, 
 " History of a Man," much 
 preaching, 210; journey into 
 England, Bulwer, 211; Aytoun, 
 
472 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Gilfillan, George, Letters of 
 contimied. 
 
 213; sale of "History," old 
 letters, 213 ; S. Brown, 215 ; 
 " Christianity and our Era," 
 216 ; favourable letters, 216 ; 
 Dr. Rogers, 218; Comrie, 
 Quarles, 218 ; A. Smith, Dr. 
 Begg, Dr. Guthrie, 219; Lec- 
 ture at Liverpool, 219 ; re- 
 opening of church, 220 ; 
 Burghley (C. A. Ward), 220; 
 "History of a Man," W. B. 
 Robertson, 221 ; Aird's father's 
 death, Carlyle, 223 ; " Alpha 
 and Omega," Thorndale, 
 Ebsworth, 224 ; death of John 
 Gordon, close of the year, 
 Spenser, 225 ; Masson's 
 "Milton," 226; Burghley, 
 227 ; Comrie, Tennyson's 
 " Idylls," autumn, 228 ; Haw- 
 ick, Dryburgh, " Scottie," 
 Newcastle, 230 ; plans, De 
 Quincey, 231 ; Specimens of 
 poetry, 232 ; Border tour, 
 William Tail, 232; "Alpha 
 and Omega," Norway, 233 ; 
 Prof. Blackie, the Poets, 233 ; 
 Croly's life, revivals, lecture 
 in Glasgow, 234 ; Congrega- 
 tion, travel, 235 ; Lake 
 Country, 236 ; the Exhibition, 
 238 ; Manuscripts, 425 ; Sir T. 
 Sinclair, 435 ; Dr. Carruthers, 
 437 ; Anderson (" Surface- 
 man "), 437. 
 
 To J. STANYAN BIGG "Night 
 and the Soul," London Critics, 
 394 ; Reviews, 395 ; Com- 
 pensations, 414 ; Revelation, 
 
 415. 
 To Rev. J. MUIR, 426. 
 
 Gilfillan, George, Letters of 
 
 continued. 
 
 To Rev. G. Jacque " Ruins of 
 Hope," 432 ; Edinburgh 
 Presbytery, 432. 
 
 To Rev. W. BLAIR, D.D. 
 Memoir of James Gilfillan, 438. 
 
 To WILLIAM ALLAN, 444. 
 Gilfillan, Mrs (Margaret Vallentine), 
 
 57, 60, 443. 
 
 Gilfillan, Rev. James, D.D., 438. 
 Gilfillan, Rev. Samuel, ordained at 
 
 Comrie, 5 ; parentage, 6 ; 
 
 character, 7 ; preaching, 7 ; 
 
 " Leumas," 8. 
 
 Glasgow, Visits to, 194, 340, 377. 
 Glen, Dr., 303. 
 Gloag, Dr. Paton, 27. 
 God, the Unknown, 307. 
 Gordon, John, 225. 
 Guthrie, Dr., 219. 
 
 " HADES ; or, the Unseen," 70, 
 
 116,328. 
 
 Hamilton, Janet, 338. 
 Hamilton, Rev. R. W., 340. 
 Hamilton, Sir W., 45. 
 Hawick and neighbourhood, 230. 
 Hazlitt, 19, 82 ; portrait of, 90. 
 Herbert, George, 166. 
 Highland tour, 312. 
 " History of a Man, The," 40, 49, 
 
 209, 211 ; sale of, 213, 224; 
 
 letter about, 369 ; publication of, 
 
 397 ; conversations in, 398 ; 
 
 extract from, 399. 
 Hogg*s Instructor, 69, 99. 
 Hopelessness, 376. 
 Howie, James, M.D., 35. 
 Hunt, Leigh, 179. 
 
 INDIAN Mutiny, 348, 349. 
 Intellectual religious life, 21, 405. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 473 
 
 Ireland, Alexander, 334. 
 Irving, Edward, 354. 
 Italy, oration on, 422. 
 
 JACQUE, Rev. G., 432. 
 Jameson, Rev. John, 24 ; his preach- 
 ing, 25. 
 
 Jamieson, Rev. D., 222, 223. 
 Jeffrey, Dr. George, 289, 299. 
 Jeffrey, Dr. R., 380. 
 Job, Croly on, 286. 
 John, Gospel of, 320. 
 Journal, 241-386. 
 
 KENNEDY, Rev. A., 51 ; character 
 
 of, 54- 
 
 Kidd, Professor, Aberdeen, 341. 
 Kinglake, his Crimean War, 272, 
 
 278. 
 
 Kingsley, Charles, 321. 
 Knight, Professor, 262, 335, 372. 
 Kossuth, 172, 195. 
 
 LANDRETH, Rev. P., quoted, 42 ; 
 
 correspondent of Gilfillan, 119. 
 Lamb, Rev. J., 356. 
 Lednock, The, 29. 
 Leng, John, Esq., 451. 
 Leng, Sir W. Christopher, 356. 
 Letters, old, 213. 
 Linlithgow, 361. 
 Literary Portraits, 89. 
 Literature, religious, 295. 
 Liverpool, Lectures at, 219, 333. 
 Logan, William, 258, 450. 
 London, 178, 193, 196, 211, 238. 
 Longfellow, his " Evangeline," 303, 
 
 message from, 309. 
 Lyndhurst, Lord, 331. 
 Lytton, Sir E. B., 204, 211. 
 
 MACAULAY, Article on, 156; his 
 jottings, 268. 
 
 M'Cheyne, Rev. R. M., 103. 
 MacGill, Rev. H. M., 299. 
 M'Gregor Rev. Mr., Nova Scotia, 
 M'Kerrow, Dr., 334. [303. 
 
 Macleod, Dr. Alex., 337. 
 Macrae, Rev. D., 440, 441. 
 Manchester, 358. 
 Manuscripts, 386, 425. 
 Muir, Rev. J. , Newtyle, 205. 
 " My Novel," 200. 
 
 NATURE, 246 ; effect of, on Gilfillan, 
 
 260. 
 
 Newman, F., 157. 
 Nichol, Professor, 124, 141. 
 "Night," 264, 270, 283, 293, 316, 
 
 347 ; quoted, 412 ; published, 431. 
 
 Palladium, The, 146, 186, 188. 
 
 Parables, The, 261. 
 
 Parker, Dr. Joseph, 358 ; on Gil- 
 fillan, 454. 
 
 "Philosophic Feed," 384. 
 
 Plagiarism, 162. 
 
 Poe, Edgar A., 160. 
 
 Poets, Edition of, 163 ; a burden of 
 work, 165 ; proposals for, 198 ; 
 success of, 212 ; Gilfillan 's work 
 on, 392. 
 
 Poland, 266, 337. 
 
 Popery, 204. 
 
 Professorship offered to Gilfillan, 
 1 80. 
 
 Prometheus, 188. 
 
 Ptilpit Analyst, 431. 
 
 Punch, 275. 
 
 Puritanism, 20. 
 
 RAINBOWS, 247. 
 "Reconciliation," quoted, 407. 
 Renan, 320, 345, 383. 
 Robertson, Rev. F. W., 268, 372, 
 
 417, 419 ; letter from his .father, 
 
 420. 
 
 2 I 
 
474 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Robertson, Dr. W. B., notice of, 
 115; letters of Gilfillan to, 115- 
 
 I2O. 
 
 Robinson Crusoe, 306. 
 "Roman, The," 133. 
 Rome, 423. 
 Rossetti, D. G., 389. 
 
 SANDFORD, Sir D. K., 32, 128. 
 
 Saturday evening, 263. 
 
 Scenery, 28, 343. 
 
 School Wynd Church, 59, 220, 317. 
 
 Seceders, 61. 
 
 Sensationalism, 275. 
 
 Sermon outlines, 255, 264, 290, 298, 
 300, 301, 305, 311, 342, 350, 354, 
 359, 362, 367, 376, 378, 381- 
 
 Shakespeare celebration, 382. 
 
 Shelley, 93. 
 
 Sin, Theory of, 137. 
 
 Sinclair, Sir T., 435. 
 
 " Sketches, Literary and Theologi- 
 cal," 411. 
 
 Smith, Alexander, 155, 159, 166, 
 169, 194, 195 ; success of his 
 Poems, 200; "Dreamthorp," 292. 
 
 Spinoza, Paper on, 293, 310. 
 
 Stirling, Dr. Hutchison, on Gilfil- 
 lan, 449. 
 
 Stockton, 336. 
 
 Stowe, Mrs., 79, 165. 
 Strathearn, Ministers of, 428. 
 Sunderland, 326, 370. 
 Synod, The, 124. 
 
 Taifs Magazine, 69, 100. 
 Tennyson, an artist, 150 ; " Idylls,' 
 
 229. 
 
 Tent-preachings, 26. 
 Thackeray, 347. 
 Thomson, James, 165. 
 Truth, Love of, 294. 
 Tulloch, Principal, 72, 208, 253. 
 
 ULVERSTON, 236. 
 Union of Free and United Presby- 
 terian Churches, 277, 282, 371. 
 Universal restoration, 145. 
 
 VALLENTINE, Agnes, 70, 265. 
 
 WEAVING, 4. 
 
 Whewell's "Plurality of Worlds," 
 
 203. 
 Wilson, Professor, 37, 38, 45, 147, 
 
 202. 
 
 YENDYS, Sydney (Dobell), 182. 
 Young, Rev. John, 380. 
 
 ZULEIKA picture, 329. 
 
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