Ex Libris C. K. OGDEN PROFESSOR BLACKIE. FIRST EDITIOK, November, 1895. SECOND EDITION, February, 1896. PROFESSOR BLACKIE His SAYINGS AND DOINGS. A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH By His Nephew HOWARD ANGUS KENNEDY. With Illustrations. London: JAMES CLARKE & CO. 1896. THIS ACCOUNT OP JOHN STUART BLACKIE IS DEDICATED, IN SYMPATHY AND RESPECT, TO HIS WIFE, WHOSE LOSS A NATION SHAKES THE BOOK, AND ITS SUBJECT. THIS is a small book about a great man. A biography not indeed complete, for no two octavos could give a full account of such a life, but approaching completeness will have been published before this appears in print. Miss Anna Stoddart has produced, from plentiful stores of authori- tative information, a work to which I hope many readers of these pages may be induced to turn. Indeed, it is not for those who can obtain the larger work that the smaller has been written, but for the many who cannot. It will be evident at the same time that the present volume has an entirely independent origin and existence. A strong man breasts the tide ; a great man turns it. Not once alone, nor only twice, did Blackie justify his title by such a test. Neither of him nor of any man can it be said that he was always great and 2OO0016 VI altogether original; and I am not con- cerned, even if it were possible for me, to determine his precise degree of greatness or originality. Much of our debt to Blackie is owing to Bunsen ; some, far less than is commonly imagined, to Carlyle. He himself said that the writers who had most influenced him were Aristotle, Plato, Goethe, Shakespere, Scott, Burns, Words- worth, and the Apostle Paul. From a multitude of other sources he drew such nourishment as they had for him, assim- ilating the good and rejecting the uselesa with a peculiarly active mental digestion. ft Perhaps even more important," he said, ' ' towards the achievement of a noble life than a memory well stored with sacred texts is an imagination well decorated with heroic pictures." In both these ways his mind was richly furnished, and from such a storehouse he brought forth continually " things old and new." Deny the existence of originality if you will trace all good things right up to heaven, by a Jacob's ladder direct or through long lines of ancestors and teachers and the fact remains that John Stuart Blackie Vll clothed with a new form the ideas he had received, and charged them afresh with a penetrating force that made men listen and accept. He was a seer, who saw deeply if not always to the bottom, and opened the eyes of other men to see. He was a prophet who made prophets ; a teacher who not only taught but inspired others to teach. He showed the young how to quit themselves like men, the old how to keep the spirit of youth. He presented to the student, as Professor Laurie has said, " the true type of the scholar in the large and unconventional sense of that word : always in search of the truth, always proclaiming the inalien- able right of reason to be heard in the affairs of men ; always proclaiming the eternal attractions of the good and the beautiful within or without the academic walls." A man of the world who set a shining example of unworldliness, he was too genuinely religious to be " other-worldly." Most orthodox of heretics, his Protestant- ism was as deep as his Catholicity was wide. A fervid patriot, he proved his love Till by chastising Ms country even more than by chastising her foes ; and his country- men, to their credit be it said, came to love him with a personal devotion such as no flatterer could have won. His sayings and doings often made them angry ; but the roots of his popularity ran deep into the Scottish heart. Edinburgh well, he was a part of the city. Not Sir Walter's monument nor the Castle Rock itself was a more familiar object than the old but ever young Professor, marching along so lithe and erect, the brown plaid wound over his chest and shoulders, the stout silver-k nobbed staff in his hand, the clean- cut face full of distinction, the long white hair flowing from a wideawake pressed well down over the keen, grey eyes. The citizens felt a pride of ownership in him. He poured shame upon their idols fashion in West-end circles and democ- racy in the multitude but they still cherished, in the one case a genteel and in the other an overflowing, affection for their censor. From Edinburgh you may travel round the world in any direction, sure that wherever you find a Scottish IX heart you will see a face that brightens with affection at the sound of Blackie's name. Great as he was in the public esteem, he had a private fame still more illus- trious. He brought into the home a soul unspotted by the impurities of the outside world. The more intimately he was known, the more dearly he was loved and the more fervently admired. He was " a hero to his valet." To call him the last of the Scots would be a piece of pessimism, and pessimism is a vice that he abhorred. There are men in Scotland yet, and in every Scottish community in the world, who are carrying forward the flag he lifted so high. But Scotland seems a different place since he has gone, and Scotsmen are a nation bereaved. Thou brave old Scot! And art thou gone ? How much of light \vith thee's departed ! Philosopher, yet full of fun, Great humorist, yet human-hearted ; A Caledonian, yet not dour, A scholar, yet not dry-as-dusty, A pietist, yet never sour ! O stout and tender, true and trusty, Octogenarian optimist, The world for thee seemed aye more sunny; We loved thee better for each twist Which streaked a soul as sweet as honey. We shall not see thy like again ! We've fallen on times most queer and quacky, And oft shall miss the healthy brain And manly heart of brave old Blackie ! * The aim of the following pages is not to give a severely chronological list of Professor Blackie's doings and sayings. Although he did one thing at a time and did that well, it was never long before he was doing something else. Sub- serviency to dates in the case of such a man would keep the reader dancing from subject to subject and back again in a peculiarly bewildering fashion. The writer has attempted to give not only a plain narrative of the Professor's outward doings, but a moderately coherent account of his sayings on the great questions with which he dealt. No attempt has been made to hide such incidents, however laughable, and such extreme and auda- cious assertions, hasty as they sometimes * From " Punch/' March 9th, 1895, by permission of the Proprietors. were, as show the perennially boyish side of the Professor's nature. Of incidents that might bring anything worse than laughter upon his memory there are none to hide. In writing the Life of Robert Burns, Blackie said: "I have allowed the poet, both in his verse and in his prose, to be as much as possible his own portrait painter." I have followed this example, while grate- fully taking advantage of the reminis- cences of old students and other friends, and not neglecting the duty of inde- pendent research. The book has been finished neither without difficulty nor to the writer's satisfaction ; but if, as I hope, it helps to spread and perpetuate the knowledge of the good and wise Professor, its aim will be achieved and its existence justified. H. A. KENNEDY. NOTE TO SECOND EDITION. THE warmth of the welcome given with practical unanimity to the first edition of this book has agreeably surprised the writer. Happily for him, the subject is of sufficient interest to cover the short- comings in its treatment. If the opinion expressed by public and private critics of every degree is correct that the book gives a true picture of the Professor and an epitome of his teaching such as young men, whom he loved, will find useful- its publication has been more than justified. H. A. KENNEDY. January 8, 1896. CONTENTS. CHAPTER PAGE I. His Forebears 1 II. The Boy 14 III. Going to be a Minister 22 IV. Germany and Italy ... ... ... 34 V. "Stickit" 46 VI. The Fight for the Chair 59 VII. Professor of Humanity ... ... 67 VIII. Excursions 85 IX. The Greek Chair 102 X. Educational Eeform 110 XL Eational Greek 122 XII. Professor and Students 136 XIII. Noctes Hellenicse 156 XIV. His Politics 163 XV. The Highlanders' Champion 175 XVI. The Celtic Chair 185 XVII. The Scottish Nationalist 205 XVIII. Poet and Versemaker 218 XIX. The Good, the True, and the Beautiful 234 XX. Self-Culture, and Some Other Books 271 XXI. English Excursions 285 XXII. Farther Afield 298 XXIII. The Man, and Some of His Friends... 312 XXIV. The End 329 Published Works of John Stuart Blackie 338 Index , 341 ILLUSTRATIONS. PORTRAITS OF JOHN STUART BLACKII. As a Boy of Five. From " The Strand Maga- zine." Engraved from an oil painting in the possession of Mrs. Blackie ... 17 At the Age of 45. From a lithograph ... 112 At the Age of 68. From a photo by Macara 312 At the Age of 80. Etched from a photo- graph by Elliot and Fry. (Frontispiece.) From a Political Cartoon, 1880 ...... 165 " A Professor of the Highlands " ...... 196 ALEXANDER BLACKIE. From an oil painting by Sir Watson Gordon, President of the Eoyal Scottish Academy, in the possession of Mrs. Kennedy ............ 8 GEORGE S. BLACKIE. From a steel engraving 93 THE HOMES or JOHN STUART BLACKIE. His Father's House, Marischal Street, Aber- deen ; and the Humanity Professor's House in Old Aberdeen ......... 88 His Edinburgh Homes : 24 Hill Street, from 1860 to 1882 ; 9 Douglas Crescent, 1882 to 1895 ............... 152 His Highland Home: Altnacraig, Oban ... 192 xvi Illustrations. PAGE His UNIVERSITIES. Marischal College, Aberdeen 69 Arms of Marischal College, Aberdeen ... 67 Edinburgh University 138 Arms of Edinburgh University 102 FACSIMILES. Letter from Edinburgh, 1824 24 Latin Exercise for " the Gooders," 1827 ... 32 Last Letter from Aberdeen, 1852 106 "Rain!" 188 His Favourite Mottoes 241 Letter from His Father: "Victory," 1852 104 ST. GILES'S CATHBDBAL, EDINBURGH 336 PROFESSOR BLACKIE, HIS SAYINGS AND DOINGS. I. HIS FOEEBEAES. THE story of John Stuart Blackie, if a man's life began at his birth, should open in Glasgow ; but when we begin to ascend the ancestral streams which met there eighty-six years ago, we find ourselves in far more attractive surroundings. The Blackies, a small but energetic tribe, belong to Kelso, in the border country. For the most part mechanics and t( mer- chants," or tradesmen, achieving the high nobility of honest work, until this century they were unknown to fame. Alexander Blackie, the son of a Kelso " merchant " and of Alison Stuart his wife, was early left an orphan. He was not friendless, or left entirely to his own devices. In Glasgow, where he worked for his bread from the l 2 Professor BlacJiie. age of fourteen, lie was faithfully put through his catechism on Sunday evenings by his mother's kinswoman, Mrs. Lock- hart. Mrs. Lockhart's own boy, John, became the son-in-law and biographer of Sir Walter Scott. As for John Lockhart's cousin " Scotch cousin," in what degree I cannot tell at first he seems to have thought of becoming a manufacturer. At any rate, he worked at the loom ; and in more prosperous days, especially when his guests were "ower genteel," he used to apologise for his inability to sit still on a chair by saying, " When I was a weaver in Glasgow ! " Later on but he was still a very young man he carried on the trade of a drysalter, or oilman. At the head of a long list of entries in the old two-volume family Bible stands this : " Alexander Blackie and Helen Stodart, married at Airbless by the Rev. William Thomson, of Dalziel, 7th July, 1807." The Stodarts were a Hamilton family of some repute ; perhaps a couple of pegs higher than the Blackies in the social scale, if that were of any conse- quence. A cousin, great in heraldry, Mr. His Forebears. POST NUBES LUX. Robert Riddeli Stodart, has traced them back to John Stodart in Liberton three miles south of Edinburgh who was a very old man when Charles I. and his Parlia- ment came to blows. John's great - grandson, James, had nine children, of whom three may here be mentioned namely the third, James, a farmer, who gave Robert Burns his breakfast on the poet's famous pony-ride to Edin- burgh; the fourth, John, with whom Rob took his lunch, and who became the grandfather of William and Robert Chambers ; and the fifth, William, an architect of some note, a man of lite- rary taste, a friend of the poet Graeme, and the grandfather of John Stuart Blackie. William Stodart was born in 1740, five years before Prince Charlie's rebellion, and married Christina Naismith, 4 Professor Blackie. daughter of Hamilton's chief magistrate. The architect died, a few days after his wife, in 1790, leaving Bothwell Brig and four small daughters to witness that he had not lived in vain. The eldest of these little orphans she was only seven was the Helen of our old Bible. She was brought up, together with her sisters Marion and Margaret, by her mother's kinsfolk. A few minutes spent in looking at the mother of such a son cannot be wasted, and no apology is needed for presenting such dim outlines of a word- portrait as exist. But for one bosom friend, who valued her letters enough to copy and bind them, we should know next to nothing of Helen Stodart. From these letters, which begin in 1804 and continue nearly till her death in 1821, it is clear that she was a young woman of remarkable character. " Blest with the best education," as she says, and " bookishly inclined," she had that strong dash of common-sense which afterwards kept her scholar-son from becoming a pedant. This quality would have saved her from degenerating into a blue-stock- His Forebears. 5 ing, even if a family of ten had not removed the possibility of such a fate. Genuinely religious, her soul rose against the high-and-dry discourses of her day, as well as against the morbid extreme of religiosity. " Let us not mourn over those virtues we do not possess," she exhorts her friend, "but be active and vigilant; seek and we shall find ; let us be cheerful in doing our duty." She early came to the practical conclusion, not even now so generally admitted as it ought to be, that " Faith in Christ, if it does not influence our whole conduct in this life, can avail little in another." Despising those " sequestered virtues " which are " too delicately brought up to endure fatigue," she avows, "I am always aiming to be what I have never attained." Naturally, she discarded that mental asceticism which confines the aspiring heart to " re- ligious " literature. " Too much religious and sentimental reading clogs the mind," she says in one place ; and in another, " I always thought much reading of books of Divinity rather weakened and overwhelmed the mind than strengthened and ennobled 6 Professor Elackie. it." Nature she loved, but not solitude. "We have had variety of employment for our hands ; our ears are charmed with rural music, our eyes feasted with rural scenes ; but what are these ? Quite in- sipid without society ! " This was in 1806. She had quite enough of society before long, though not always of the ideal kind with which she would have peopled the rural paradise of Airbliss and Sil- verton. Marriage came in 1807. At first the young couple made their home on the Abbey Hill, near Holyrood Palace; but after a few months they moved from Edinburgh to Glasgow. There, at Mel- ville Place, on May 29th, 1808, the first child was born. On July 28th, 1809, in Charlotte Street, came the second, who was baptized as "John Stuart" by the Rev. Henry Mushet, of Shuttlestone. With these two little ones, and a still more recent arrival, Mr. Blackie in 1812 took his wife to Aberdeen, having been appointed by the Commercial Bank as its first agent in that city. The family settled down Aberdoniaus, at any rate, will like to know these trifles in a Sis Forebears. 7 strangely-situated house, with its front on Marischal Street and its side several storeys lower on Virginia Street, one road being carried over the other by a bridge. Marischal Street has come down in the world since then, though its bridge is as high as ever. The bank is now a humble eating-house ; but the lodgers who share the upper floors no longer have to send to the top of the street for their water, as the banker had. A peep of the River Dee and the heather slopes beyond was to be had from the windows, but otherwise the view consisted of granite not the clean granite of the newer town, but black with the dust of countless coal carts passing up from the wharf. The surroundings were not calculated to feed the love for beauty in a woman or develop it in a child. As to surroundings of the human sort, the young wife says : " We live very retired. The people in this town visit in a very ceremonious style, which neither Mr. Blackie nor I like; and so we are not obliged to cultivate many friends." " I have not that enlightened society which my imagination pictures, but I have inde- 8 Professor BlacJcie. pendence, which of all things I enjoy. I am not obliged to receive idle and insipid Tisitors that I do not care for." " There is no music amongst us, little entertain- ment of any kind but eating and drinking; I mean dinner parties. From tea till supper the never-failing entertainment is cards. Then the toddy commences, which lasts till twelve or one." Although husband and wife agreed as to the shortcomings of Aberdeen society, they could not compensate each other for the deficiency. Alexander Blackie was a lively fellow, a singer of rattling songs, with " a great flow of spirits," " a ready tongue," "full of joke and fun," "very famous at talking nonsense," quick of temper, and a keen man of business. His son-in-law gives an illustration of this last quality. A certain firm, of the highest repute, owed the Commercial Bank 40,000. Mr. Blackie came to a shrewd conclusion that the firm were going beyond their depth, and, resisting all influence and pressure, even from his own directors, he left no stone unturned till the debt was all paid off. Soon after ALEXANDER BLACKIE. His Forebears. 9 that the firm failed, bringing another Aber- deen Bank down in the crash; and the Commercial Bank directors thanked Mr. Blackie for saving them from themselves. This bj the way. According to the childish recollections of one who spent much time in her house, Mrs. Blackie " was a good height, dark hair, dark eyes beaming with kindness, nimble in her movements, cheerful in manner, did not care about dress, though always tidy, and a great reader." An attractive picture, but in- complete. The banker's wife was a far more serious thinker than himself, and too profound for him either to sympathise with or to understand, especially as she was " bitter bad at speaking." Their eldest daughter, who was nearly thirteen when her mother died, preserved the impression that " she was a very quiet, timid person, silent and reserved, and cer- tainly not demonstrative to her children." The meagreness of these recollections, to which Professor Blackie could add nothing, is poorly supplemented by a solitary incident, not bearing on the family life but recalling an event of 10 Professor Blackie. interest in the history of public opinion. To use the daughter's words : " On the occasion of the illumination for Queen Caroline's acquittal, my mother and father were dining at Mr. Ewing's, opposite us. As she was standing at the lighted window dressed for the occasion, with a white satin hat and feathers, which happened to be the favourite costume of the queen, the crowd below gave a shout of applause, supposing that she was intended as a representation of their idol." Only a mother knows what the burden of motherhood means ; and Helen Blackie had the burden in overflowing measure, with neither opportunity nor capacity for much of the compensating joy. " I have been sadly kept down," she wrote in 1815, when she had three children living and had buried two " sadly kept down with a small family, fully as large as I am able to manage, having not much ability that way." When three more children had come, and two gone, she continued: "As to my own method with children, I have nothing to boast of. The task is difficult. Some His Forebears. 11 people have a natural turn for it, which I am afraid is not the case with me." The general cares of the household, too, were heavy. She had not been idle in her maiden days; the spinning-wheel was her steady companion at Airbliss ; but 'she was "a bad hand at gown-making or anything of that kind." "Very dif- ferent is the case now," she writes after eleven years of married life. " It is not as in days of old, when you once told me that my own thoughts were my greatest amusement." "We have enough to make ourselves and friends comfortable," she was able to say, "and a little to give away to the Bible Society " ; but such savings were made at heavy cost to the housewife. Acknowledging a shawl sent from India by her friend, she remarks, ' ( It is the piece of dress I stood most in want of, but I have got so many to pro- vide for that I myself am always the last person to be considered." At another time, " I have so much to sew, and such a bustle in the house, that I have little quiet for reading, although I attempt it sometimes " and gallantly she kept up the 12 Professor BlacJcie. attempt to the end. " My grand aim in all my domestic economy is to preserve my temper unruffled if possible ! I would wish to be as little impressed with dis- agreeable trifles as possible " an opti- mism of the deliberately-aimed-at sort, like that which her son so happily achieved. Fortunately, there was a sister to carry part of the housewife's load. Marion Stodart was a second, and perhaps more motherly, mother to Helen's children. It was she who sang to them the old Scottish songs, most ravishing of entertainments to a Scottish child. One of these ballads, which seems to have dropped out of sight and hearing, was a tragic legend of the West country : There were seven gypsies all in a row, And they were brisk and bonny, O ; They sang till they came to the Earl o* Cassilis' gate, And there they sang sae sweetly, O. They sang sae sweet, and sae complete, That doun came the fair leddy, O ; And when they saw her weel-faured face They cast the glamour ower her, O. So she's taen off her high-heeled shoes That are made o' the Spanish leather, O, His Forebears. 13 And she's put on her Highland brogues To skip amang the heather, O. On the discovery of which the Earl ff saddled to him his milk-white steed," and rested not till he had hanged the seven gypsies on a tree. It was Marion Stodart who took charge of the six motherless bairns in 1821, when Helen Blackie brought her tenth child into the world and died. Four years later Alexander Blackie married a beautiful widow, Mrs. Margaret Paterson, a grand- daughter of James Watt, and five more children were the result ; but Marion Stodart was still the angel of the house, and lived not only to comfort her brother- in-law when for a second time he was left a widower, but to see her youngest niece a grandmother, and her eldest nephew an old man. n. THE BOY. WHEN this same nephew was only six years old, his mother was able to say, "He seems a steady boy, and fond of his books." Two years later she spoke of her family as "all fine lively children, none of them beautiful, but all have something pleasing a certain some- thing which I cannot describe." In the same year, however, she ventured on a piece of description which deserves our gratitude. " As for John, he is all consideration. He is also possessed of a good deal of the milk of human kindness. He is rapid in all his motions, and methodical to a fault. Nothing that can be done to-day is put off till to-morrow with John. He is ever happy with the present; anything new rather vexes than delights him." Then follows a prophecy of which the beginning is as safe and the ending as wrong as The Boy. 15 prophecy can well be. "His character depends much on the society he forms in after life. If they are good I expect to see him a fine young man, very pushing and fond of money-making, but not much religion about him." We have just one more glimpse of the mother and children together before the great separation. " Christina has been studying French. She is fond of it, and the language seems to flow as easily from her tongue as English. She is not like her mother in this respect, having the gift of speech in a very eminent degree. John," now ten years old, " is at the grammar school. He is considered a good scholar, an d has got several prizes . Christina and he are bothrather clever than otherwise. They are lively children, impatient of restraint, perversely averse to everything that will cross their vain imaginations. I need not add that to keep them within the bounds of prudence and decorum is no easy task." Poor mother ! " You know I am a very incorrect per- son," Helen Blackie wrote once, by way of apology for having forgotten a date. 16 Professor Blackie. This was a weak point also in her son's memory a faculty nevertheless which has preserved for us some youthful recol- lections not on any account to be omitted from this book. The Professor has left two admirable pieces of autobiography, one printed in " The Pupil-Teachers' Monthly" in 1888, and the other, four years later, in " The Young Man." Both, and especially the latter, help to kindle a welcome familiarity between us and the interesting youth whom, the present gene- ration has only known as a snowy sage. " From the family," he says, " I learned obedience and affection. I was neither pampered nor unduly repressed, and never thrust into premature manhood by being removed in my boyish days from the kindly influence of the paternal roof and the home fireside. I always got a penny from my father on certain notable days to buy rock, when I was a good boy, and a sound flog- ging when I was a bad boy." Both of these experiences he decided not at the time were extremely beneficial, and especially the flogging. He was only thrashed twice, it is fair to say once for The Boy. 17 saying he had been at school when he had been sulking in concealment, his aunt having made him take some undesired JOHN STUART BLACKIE, AGED FIVE. broth, and the other time for ''calling: ' O names " at a servant-girl against whom he had a grudge. "I was, I fancy," he says, "as a rule, a very sober, sensible, and well-behaved human creature." " Of my 2 18 Professor BlacJcie. early boyhood I have nothing either very sorrowful or very gladsome to tell nothing that would make a chapter in a novel, or even give matter for a sentimental sonnet. I just lived as the sparrows live, when they hop about picking up what may lie on the roadside, or as the cattle and the sheep live when they are driven comfort- ably from field to field." As for book- learning, the child would have none of it. He would treat the " gooders," as he used to call his little brothers and sisters, to a dramatic rendering of a psalm or soliloquy ; but the ear and not the eye had taught him his lesson. He could neither read nor write till he was about eight years old, when he first went to school: but then he soon made up for lost time. Though his mother writes of "John" as taking prizes at the grammar school, his name does not appear on the registers of that institution. "I was sent," his own account is, " to a private school, well conducted by Peter Merson. I learned a good deal about classical matters," and little else, it seems. " It was the eternal Latin grammar, grammar, grammar," he The Boy. 19 told an Aberdeen audience only last year, with, jovial exaggeration ; " nobody talked about anything but Latin grammar. All the beauty of God's creation was never looked at for a moment." A " systematic training of the body for grace and strength " was equally undreamt of in the granite city. However, he says, " we had * robbers and rangers' for our legs, and marbles and hoops for our arms and fingers and our eyes; and every Wednes- day and Saturday afternoon we had free time to perambulate the green * links ' on both sides of the ' Broad hill,' giving scope to our kites (which we called dragons), and speeding our balls from hole to hole with that combination of strength and calculation which the noble game of golf requires. For cruel sports, such as hanging cats, and bloody noses, and a boyish pugilism, I had never any taste." No taste, but some capacity, it seems. One of his schoolfellows quarrelled with him and flung the usual challenge : " Will you fight me?" "No," said little Blackie, "but I'll knock you down"; and he did. 20 Professor Blackie. After four years of Latin grammar and less-considered trifles, the boy was sent to Marischal College, " where, for a few, in those stern granite countries," as Carlyle says in a reference to the founder, "the diviner pursuits are still possible (thank God and this Keith) on frugal oatmeal." Blackie has put on record that Scottish students " died rather of eating too little than of eating too much "; but he was never in danger from either. That his mental digestion did not suffer more than his physical is surprising, for he entered the University at the ridiculous age of twelve " an age not uncommon in those days, when, by the fault of the ignoble nobles who, at the Reformation, seized on the funds that should have been appro- priated to middle schools and colleges, the universities were doomed, as they still are in no small measure, to devote themselves to the drill of crude boys rather than to the stimulation of ambitious youth." The mental stage he had reached in 1821 Blackie describes thus : " From the school I learned the habit of persistent intel- The Boy. 21 lectual work over books, of accuracy in whatever I handled, and of a laudable ambition to do my best in competition with my comrades ; but, beyond this in- tellectual drill, principally through the medium of the Latin language, I learned little at school." His college career may be put in one sentence, also of his own : "I went through the usual routine of Greek, mathematics, natural history, and natural philosophy, during a three years* course, with credit in three of the classes and distinction in one." Strange to say, it was in mathematics that he achieved this fleeting distinction. " Some people say," he remarked twenty years after- wards, " that mathematics is a science for angels ; but I could never manage it." "But!" Now came the great question, always hard enough to answer, What is the boy to do when he becomes a man ? Alexander Blackie wanted to make a lawyer of him, and John actually spent six months in a solicitor's office. Fancy the feelings of a human Jack-in-the-box with the lid screwed down! in. GOING TO BE A MINISTER. WHEN John was a little lad of six, and his parents had been discussing the matter of education, his mother wrote to her friend in India, " I would like that the minister would take John under his charge, as I wish to have him educated for the Church.*' The boy's own ambition was that of his mother dead three years, at this crisis. " Born in Glasgow and edu- cated in Aberdeen," he told the Aber- donians last year, ff a man should be a match for the devil." He was no match for the devil in 1824, in his own opinion, but he was eager to prepare for the conflict, and the front rank, so far as he then saw, was composed of ministers. His tendency to the pulpit was strengthened by an incident which he never forgot. fl At that period an intimate friend of my father, who used to come in Going to be a Minister. 23 early in the evening and take a hand at cards and a glass of wine, died suddenly. I was a thoughtful youth, and naturally such a striking exhibition of the great mystery of death so close to the family fireside made me think. I became very serious, and fell, in the fashion of young men, a willing victim to the action of strong feelings and untempered imaginings, which only experience could teach me to regulate." With his father's permission he escaped from the lawyer's office and went up to Edinburgh "there," as he tells us, "to finish my quinquennial career of Arts by attending the logic class and second Greek in the first year and the moral philosophy in the second, to which I added chemistry : a breadth and variety of purely human culture which our Scottish Church has wisely ordained to precede the special studies that belong to the clerical profes- sion, and which, I believe, always admit- ting our inferiority in the higher scholar- ship, renders our Scottish theologians more intelligent and more accomplished men than the young aspirants for episcopal honours in the sister kingdom." 24 Professor Blackie. A curious old letter lies before me, writ- ten (partly printed) by the boy of fifteen soon after his arrival in Edinburgh to the little sister Marion, then five years old, in Aberdeen. It is a sweet and simple letter, rather more serious in tone than might be expected. It begins : " I was very glad to hear that you and James were turned such good scholars. O what good children you must be. All good children read the Good book, the Bible. But remember, MARION, that you must be a good girl, too, for if you read the Bible and be not a good girl it will be very BAD. Can Dodle read any now ? " Dodle is baby Helen, now three and a-half . Here are a few more sentences : F n> S\>U.ofc.NvVtU < aliwSe Going to be a Minister. 25 " There has been a great fire here which has burnt a great number of houses. What do you think will become of all the poor people who lived in them ? If you were here would you not give them some money to buy a house, or to help them to buy a house ? Yes, James and Marion and Dodle would all do it. . . . Good Marion ! I am glad that you are a good girl. Never be bad, for I cannot love bad girls." In another letter, written while he was staying with his " Uncle and Aunt Gibson " at a farm in Ladhope, before the Edinburgh classes began, the young man tells of his " delicate stomach," and how severely it has made its delicacy known. " They say," however, " I am looking far more stout and healthy than when I first came out, though they were all much surprised at my ( thin bit ' arms." His uncle writes in a postscript: " Dearest John is much stouter than when he came here, and he is the delight of everybody who sees him." John himself had given a delightful picture of the family circle: " There is a continual 26 Professor BlacJcie. smile on the face of the individuals here. Every morning and every evening they shake hands together, and for the most part salute with a kiss. Indeed, Aunt Gibson kisses me more than twice a day, and has for me almost a mother's kindness." Writing in March, 1826, to his Aunt Marion, the student says : " Professor Wilson is at present lecturing on the Grecian philosophy. This is a very profitable subject of contemplation. In each of these systems of morals framed by the wise men of Greece we see much to admire and much to pity." More to pity than to admire, however; for the two lessons he draws from this exercise are that we should be thankful for the clearer light we have received in the Scrip- tures and ashamed of the little good we have achieved by it. In the same letter he writes : " I have no expec- tation of a prize this winter ; my studies have not been diligently pursued. I have made little progress in them. Nor could it be otherwise when the Going to Je a Minister. 27 blessing of God was not with me and I was not simply and sincerely devoting all my powers to His glory." In fact, the young student's mind was so distracted by religious emotions and speculations that he was quite unfit for common studies. Describing this painful experience in "The Young Man," he says : " I became overwhelmingly serious after the extreme Calvinistic type native to Scotland, and began immediately an other-worldly sort of piety which in- terfered seriously with my enjoyment of life and with the further progress of my academical studies. To such a degree, indeed, was I puzzled and preoccupied with profound theological problems about election, reprobation, and other points of the severe Calvinistic theology, that I abstained from reading many books of approved literary excellence, because I thought they were too worldly in their tone, and not sufficiently in har- mony with the spirit of reverential seriousness without which all knowledge and all cleverness merely make a man a more efficient agent of the devil. So far 28 Professor 'Blackie. did this extreme religiosity lead me that I remember well, when I went up at the end of my fifth academical year to receive my certificate of attendance from John Wilson, the Professor expressed his regret that he could not give me a testimonial of the highest kind, because, though I had written one very excellent essay during the session, I had written only one. To this I could say nothing, the true cause of my deficiency, a morbid religiosity, being so personal and peculiar; all I could do was to cover my face and burst into tears, and leave the room." One outcome of the two years at Edin- burgh University two barren years for the most part was the warm friend- ship that sprang up between young Blackie and the aforesaid John Wilson, the famous " Christopher North," who was then, what Blackie afterwards became, the most noted inhabitant of the capital. With unshaken resolve Blackie now mounted another step on the pulpit stair. Returning to Marischal College, he en- Going to be a Minister. 29 tered in the theological faculty. He went in for his new studies with enthusiasm, and did his exercises well for the required space of three years. Long before that term was out the warmth of his heart had softened the rigidity of his creed, which afterwards took so elastic, not to say fluid, a form. The students had to write sample sermons for their professors and fellow-students to criticise. In one of his discourses Blackie let his incipient Arminianism show itself, and Dr. Mearns snubbed him severely. In criticising other men's sermons he won some college fame, not, for sure, because of his zeal in exposing doctrinal errors, but through his gift of tongues. "Principal Brown had been taught in Holland, and knew Latin very well indeed. He laid it down as a rule," Blackie tells us, " that if there was to be any criticism of the discourse it must be in Latin. I remem- ber that I was the only one having the hardihood to criticise in Latin, and I made some little reputation as a Latin scholar." Not long after he had plunged into the 30 Professor Blaclde. professional study of theology, his father who was no theologian, but a shrewd man in other matters than finance noticed that the young man's intellectual vision was still somewhat clouded by over-seriousness, and sent him to take the advice of an equally shrewd divine, Dr. Patrick Forbes, then professor of Latin and chemistry at King's College. Here is Blackie's account of the interview, which had great results : " I immediately made a declaration that in dealing with a subject of so extensive a range as Christian theology I had deemed it advisable to commence with a general systematic scheme of the whole subject, and had accordingly submitted myself to the orthodox guidance of Boston's 'Body of Divinity.' ( Boston! Boston ! Body ! Body ! ' said the stout old doctor; 'neither Boston, nor Calvin, nor any other D.D. must be allowed to stand between you and your Protestant Bible. Let them stalk about on the stilts of a scholastic dogmatism as high as they please, but you place yourself at the feet of Jesus Christ and learn Going to le a Minister. 31 from Him directly. Take your Greek Testament, interleave it, and make notes carefully of what you read ; make a vow to read no Body of Divinity for two years, and after that you will likely find that they are not worth reading.' "I followed his instructions conscien- tiously," the young man adds, now old, " and have, during the whole course of a life protracted considerably beyond the usual term, known how to combine profit- ably and carefully the study of the original Scriptures with a total abstinence from theological systems and sectarian commen- taries." A complete digest of the New Testament, in Greek, was one of the immediate results of the Professor's advice to this student, whose voracity for work, checked in its monstrous meal of Boston, was instantly let loose upon the more wholesome victual set before it. Nor was he so engrossed in professional studies that he could not find time to give the " gooders " their first lessons in botany, sitting on the banks of the Don at Caskie Ben, or to painfully print 32 Professor BlacJcie. for their instruction a long series of original Latin exercises, of which this is a specimen * : The three years passed without a catas- trophe. The potential parson managed to escape, with all his infant heresies, the utter condemnation of his professors, and was ready to emerge from his probationary chrysalis in full-blown gown and bands. " And why was I not licensed to preach ? The why," he tells us, " lay in a good idea of my good father." Whether Mr. BlacMe had any strong conviction that his son ought not to be a minister, or whether he * On a reduced scale, as with the other facsimiles. Going to be a Minister. 33 simply wished to equip " his young theo- logical Johnnie " more fully for his minis- try, it would be hard to guess. Certain it is that Professor Forbes once more appeared in the way with a suggestion that young Blackie should go off with a pair of young Forbes's to the Continent, and add two years in a German university to the eight he had spent in Aberdeen and Edinburgh. IV. GERMANY AND ITALY. THE fathers having agreed to this plan, the three sons were packed off by coach to Edinburgh, and took ship at Leith for the North Sea passage. Landing at Hamburg, they made their way to Gottingen. There they spent six months {f eagerly drinking in living waters from Heeren in history, Otfried Miiller in philology," and other sources. The consuming energy with which young Blackie not only set about his appointed work but created new tasks for himself considerably astonished his com- rades, the elder of whom (the Rev. John Forbes, D.D., LL.D., Emeritus Professor of Oriental Languages, Aberdeen) still preserves, at the hale old age of ninety- three, a vivid recollection of the ex- perience. To begin with, as Blackie tells us himself, he gripped, overcame, and made a friend of his first enemy, the Germany and Italy. 35 German language, as Jacob wrestled with, the angel. " I learnt how to learn languages, not by a painful machinery of dry rules and dead books, but just as we learn to swim by plunging into the water and plashing about. It is fear that would make you sink, not the weight of your body. I did not know a single word of German when I stepped out of the Leith packet (there were no steamboats in those days) at Hani- burg, but before I had been three months in Gottingen I followed Professor Heeren's lectures on history as pleasantly as if they had been in English ; not," he assures us, "because I had any special gift of learning languages, but because I plashed about daily in the element and breathed the atmosphere of German." This was only one of the "notable revelations " that were speedily made to him, and perhaps the least of a revelation, for he had learnt to speak Latin by the same fearless and natural method at home. "The next thing I learned," he continues, " was that the German univer- 36 Professor BlacJcie. sities are the model institutions of the kind, the real jraveTria-Ttj^iov, as the Greeks phrase it, or bazaar of universal know- ledge, while the Scottish Universities, except in the medical department in Edinburgh, are mere shops for retail trade in certain useful articles ; and the English universities are shops of a higher order and more gentlemanly appearance, dealing only in a few select articles sought after by persons of much money and great leisure, more from a certain aristocratic tradition and respectable show than from any practical fruits which they are destined to bear." He does not tell us how soon he communicated this un- pleasant discovery to his fellow country- men, and thus flung himself into that struggle for university reform which is one of his many claims upon the national gratitude. His fellow-traveller supplies the omission. " Blackie," he says, " was very quick at picking up German ; he had got a few words even as we were passing through Hamburg; he was very ready in talking to the German stu- dents, and studied the German grammar Germany and Italy. 37 very keenly. We soon noticed that he was busy writing he would not say what and at last we found that by the time we had been six weeks in Got- tingen he had written an article to send home on the inferiority of the Scottish universities ! " This article, the first shot in a brilliant campaign, was published in "The Edinburgh Literary Journal." Busy as he was enlarging his own mind, and transmitting his new light to the nation he had left sitting in darkness, Blackie was no more of a recluse then than in his sunny after life. He threw himself into the life around him, joining his fellow- students in all their amuse- ments except one. He visited the duel- ling-halls, though the more cautious Forbes's left him to go alone; but he would not fight, and it is not recorded that he had to knock any German down as an alternative. "As a stu- dent among students," he says, " I lived in the most intimate fellowship with the Burschen, and joined in all their studies and recreations, except that I 38 Professor BlacJcie. did not fight a duel, or come -home with a scar of honourable folly on my face." As for those unclean courses to which every young man is tempted, and into which the weaker-minded stray under various contemptible excuses, Blackie's mind was absolutely made up from the beginning. "Along with the stern theology of Calvin," he told the young men of later generations, rov i]\iov." " 'Op& TOV r)\t,ov" came the answer. " Do you know what you are saying? " asked the Professor. " No," said the youth : he was a reporter. The reporters insinuated themselves occasionally into the Greek class-room itself, along with truants from less attrac- tive quarters of the University. On the last day of the session, indeed, the pro- ceedings were regarded by the Press, if not by the Professor, as a fair source of "copy." The programme apart from such interpolations by student lungs as any student memory can imagine con- sisted of three parts. First, the distribution of prizes generally books, but sometimes pictures on which the students had been set to write Greek meditations. Second, the speech considerately delivered in Eng- lish for the benefit of the weaker Grecians 148 Professor Blackie. brimful of affectionate and practical advice to those about to become citizens. Third, and last, the Greek poem, declaimed by the Professor as he alone could declaim it, chanting, in mock heroics but with many a beautiful phrase, the renown of the prize-winners, (f than whom more brilliant victors were never bred on English soil, nor in this Celtic land so famed for learned men. Some envious power," the poet continues, with merry eye but only half in jest, " assigned to Scotsmen a rugged plot of earth on the chilly edge of the world. A backbone of barren rock extends from sea to sea, and the land bears everywhere a crop of stones. To the English the soil yields roses unasked ; to us, thistles, and that with labour. But strong hearts, subtlety of thought, un- bending wills, untiring hands, and a spark of the fire divine which Prometheus brought from heaven to kindle wise invention these are the glorious gifts that the blessed ones, the givers of all good things, have bestowed on Caledonia ; our roses these ! " And then he celebrates in turn the classical conquests of " Mac- Professor and Students. 149 Master, who lays hold of knowledge like a crab clawing his prey"; " Kennedy, gentle, mild of speech, pure in spirit, like a violet on the bank of a sacred river " some exceptionally angelic member of the clan ; " McClymont, in whose kindly face shines the kindliness of his heart " : and so forth.* Blackie's love for his students was not a thing of words. He visited them when they were ill, he helped them when they were poor. In the Senatus Aca- demicus he was the champion of the whole body of undergraduates. He never grew old in heart, so he could look at all things, as few but young men can, from a young man's standpoint. They loved him in return. They loved him as one of them- selves ; as a buoyant, hopeful idealist. They admired him for his genius, but they loved him for his candour, his courage, his open-mindedness, his transparent and unconventional sincerity. Many men out of Edinburgh still re- member the famous snow riots between. " town " and " gown " some thirty years * 1863. 150 Professor Blaclde. ago ; in fact, I cannot say how recent the last of the riots may have been. Early one morning the Town Council, with com- mendable but insufficient foresight, sent up a fire-engine to the college quadrangle to melt the snow that had fallen in the night. The medical students, being earlier still, captured the engine and played the hose up and down the street till nightfall, snow and water being more than a match for policemen's batons. During one of these riots, an old student says, a score of undergraduates were made prisoners, but (perhaps for that reason) the shops had to keep their shutters up for a week. "I remember Blackie marching into the quadrangle one day. Mounting the steps to the right that led to his classroom, with the springing step of a boy, he was suddenly arrested by a snowball. Swinging round and facing the silent students, throwing aside his plaid and lifting his hat from his silvery locks, he cried out, with a dramatic gesture, ( Throw away, my brave fellows ! ' " The snowballs were instantly dropped. " I never," says the narrator, " remember Professor and Students. 151 Blackie looking more picturesque than he did on that day." There is one student story about the Professor that has appeared, at one time or another, in almost every newspaper printed in English, and still insists on a place in Blackie literature. Blackie him- self totally forgot this, as he did many other unimportant incidents; but it is true enough. Mr. George M. Lawson, of Newtyle, was an eye-witness. He says : " One morning in the spring of 1879, as the students attending the Greek class, then held in the north-east corner of the old University, were hurrying up at nine o'clock, they were confronted by a notice, posted on one of the pillars outside, some- what to this effect : ( Owing to the out- break of fire this morning, Professor Blackie regrets that he will not be able to meet his classes to-day.' One of us I do not claim the distinction stroked out the ' c ' of ' classes,' whereat the laughter of the undergraduates became extreme. In the course of the morning, as I was lounging about the quadrangle awaiting the next class hour, I saw Professor 152 Professor Blackie. Blackie emerge from what I think was the Senate Hall, at the south-east corner of the buildings. A small crowd still sur- rounded the notice, and at sight of the Professor the laughter and the shouting were renewed. He walked across to see what tho excitement was about, and the students readily gave way to let him see the joke at his expense. Without saying a word the Professor took out a pencil, stroked out the ' 1,' and walked off. He seemed to think little about the incident, and evidently before he next heard of the joke he had forgotten all about it, as it has frequently been reported that he doubted its authenticity." Every Saturday the Professor used to have a batch of his students to breakfast. Mr. Barrie inferred, from observation, that the guests were chosen on account of their physical peculiarities, " such as a lisp, or a glass eye, or one leg longer than the other, or a broken nose." The supply of defective students would soon have run short, even with two or three hundred men on the rolls ; but there is no doubt that Blackie was full of tenderness for the Professor and Students. 153 maimed and the halt. Once, in class, he noticed that the young man whose turn it was to translate was holding the book in his left hand. " Hold the book in your right hand," he commanded. The lad paused for a moment, but only went on with his reading. ' ' Hold it in your EIGHT HAND," called out the Professor, angered by disobedience. Some of the students hissed, and the young man with downcast eyes stretched forth a right arm without a hand. " My dear boy," said the Pro- fessor, coming down from his desk and embracing the youth in fatherly pity and shame, " can you forgive me ? " Then, as the room rang with applause, " I am glad that I teach a class of gentlemen " not serpents, this time ! Let us get back to our breakfast, with Mr. Lowe for chronicler. " Eight is generally the breakfast hour, and the hungry company arrive with exemplary punctuality." Whatever other system of selection he had, Blackie naturally gave the poor Highland students the preference over Edinburgh lads, some of whom were never 154 Professor Blackie. invited at all. " It was a bit of an ordeal," says one of the guests, tf to have to trans- late the Greek mottoes on the Professor's library walls before going down to the coffee and Findon haddocks " and a soup- tureen full of eggs, " but Blackie always responded to the appeal of shyness, and seldom oppressed a young student who looked uncomfortable by professorial attentions of this nature." Mr. Lowe again speaks: "The Pro- fessor welcomes all with a few kind words, and, after grace in Greek, recommends his guests, as a rule of their lives, to read, as lie does, a chapter of the Septuagint every morning on rising. At these repasts the rule is that every one shall express his ideas and wants, as far as possible, in the speech of Xenophon. All the guests are somewhat sheepish and shy; but the Professor, aided by the tact of Mrs. Blackie, will occasionally elicit a shrewd remark. Raw, red-haired Donald Macleod, from the Isle of Skye, who lives all the week on herring, oatmeal, and potatoes, feeing importuned, will treat the company to a Gaelic song ; and then the Professor Professor and Students. 155 will launch out on the importance of this tongue for philological and other purposes. Then some remark will make him. revert to his past career, and he will inflame the- peripatetic ambition of his audience by referring to his wanderings all over Europe in search of truth and beauty ; or he will recount how he met that doughty champion of Chartism, Ernest Jones, on the platform of the Music Hall to hold public appeal to reason on the merits of Democracy. Then, to vary the enter- tainment, the Professor will sing one of his own songs. Then all rising will join in pealing forth f Gaudeamus Igitur,' J> and file out, filled in body and in mind, to woo digestion on the shores of the Forth or the slopes of Arthur's Seat. xin. NOCTES HELLENICS. THERE were suppers as well as breakfasts at Blackie's: the legitimate successors to Noctes Ambrosianse, more sober, but just as gay. The Hellenic Society which he had planted in Aberdeen took root and flourished mightily in Edinburgh as the Hellenic Club. The club met once a fort- night, and the married members enter- tained it in turn. Whoever the host might be, Blackie was the leading spirit of the company, and if we are to attend a meeting of the club let it be at his own house in Hill Street, a thoroughfare already hallowed by the residence of Sir Walter Scott. Arriving a little early, as soon as the door is opened you hear some one striding about and dropping masculine scraps of song as he goes. The owner of the voice immediately dashes out upon you and kales you through a doorway Nodes Hellenicce. 157 over which ^aXevra ra /caXa is printed in letters of gold. You find yourself at once in the master's workshop. The walls, and not the walls only, are covered with books, arranged well, at first you think they are not arranged at all. You never saw a library like this. Books of every age and condition and of every size are packed on the same shelf. What you imagine to be disorder is really order of a rational kind, Blackie's books are not for show but for use, and they are classified not by size or binding but according to their subjects. One large section is devoted to the literature of modern Greece the finest collection of its kind in the country, since transferred to Edinburgh University and some of these books are pro- bably lying out on the Professor's desk or on the great working table that occupies so much of the room. The Professor keeps up a rattling monologue as he moves about the room. If you really prefer a dialogue he will listen attentively and answer relevantly, no matter how young or insignificant you are; not all great men are so considerate ! If, as is. 158 Professor BlacJcie. likely, you have come to listen and to look, you have time enough to do so. You see before you, if you keep your eyes moving, a lithe and erect though only middle-sized man ; with hair of the whitest and silkiest, and plenty of it; with a splendid brow, grey eyes twinkling with merriment or flashing with scorn, a perfect Grecian nose, firm lips and chin ; altogether a face ex- pressing immense power, clean-shaven, and undoubtedly handsome. He wears a long blue dressing-gown, or perhaps a brown velvet jacket, and in any case a long red sash round his waist; with a large turned-down collar, described, I believe, as Shakespearean. In a corner you may discover the big-brimmed soft straw hat that he always wears when at work, to shade his eyes which repaid his care by never needing glasses as long as he lived. By this time, let us hope, the other Hellenists have assembled. Lord Neaves is sure to be there : the lt Beta" of "Black- wood's Magazine," a writer offers de societe and Latin songs, a man of widely- varied culture. Dr. Donaldson, too, is a most; Nodes Hellenicce. 159 regular attendant. He has been at the High School since 1856, and its rector since 1866; author of "The Critical History of Christian Literature and Doc- trine " ; one of the first scholars in the country; u a granite-headed Scot," as Blackie calls him Hard and keen, A granite Hock from granite Aberdeen. Then there are Sir Noel Paton, though not a Hellenist ; Erskine of Linlathen ; Professor Sellar, author of the ' f Augustan Poets " ; Dr. John Muir " Sanscrit Muir " ; David Masson, Professor of English Literature; Dr. Clyde, of the Academy; Dr. Andrew Wood, the trans- lator of Horace ; Dr. Lindsay Alexander, the Congregational minister, strong in theology and moral philosophy ; Dr. Walter C. Smith, the Free Church poet always some of these, and four or five of Blackie's best Greek students. For two hours some old Greek author has the honour of being read and trans- lated and discussed by such men as these. The seniors do the talking, the juniors 160 Professor BlacTde. content to read their allotted page and catch the sparks of inspiration that fly to and fro : for great is the whetting of the wits. Blackie, of course, is chief speaker. He has affinities with every one in the room with the poet, the philologist, the divine, the philosopher, the teacher, the artist. There is scarcely a subject on which he can throw no light ; but he is far, indeed, from thinking himself infalli- ble, speaks with notable modesty of his own researches, and turns up a word in the dictionary rather than press his inter- pretation on a doubter. And how he reads f <( It was wonderful," says a learned friend, after thirty years in which to forget if he could ; " I never heard any one read like him. It was a chorus of Aristophanes, and the way in which he united accent and * quantity* was marvellous. It was all so musical." The two hours fly, Aristophanes retires to his shelf, and " the Professor leads the way upstairs to where a sumptuous supper has been spread under the eye of Mrs. Blackie, who places herself, like a speaker of the House of Commons, at the head Noctes Hellenicce. 161 of the table, a silent, much-respected perhaps much- needed restraining influ- ence. Song alternates with debate; and the Professor, goaded by a remark from an ex-Professor of Divinity as to the pre- eminence of Mill as a moralist, will strike out ferociously against the Utilitar- ians, and wither up their principle by sarcastically referring to it as the greatest happiness of 'the greatest number: greatest number Number One ! ' Or, again, he will be lashed into fury by the suggestion of some one that the person- ality of Homer is a myth, and inveigh savagely against Wolf and the whole tribe of Separatists ; which, in turn, will lead him to expatiate on the higher sys- tematising proclivities of the Germans. Or he will troll forth in lusty tones f The Quaker's Wife,' " his father's favourite, with the son's additions " ' The Maid of Dalnacorra,' ' A Song of Good Conserva- tives,' or the ' Herr Philister.' " Once, when roused to an extra pitch of eloquence on some burning question, the Professor wound up his speech by falling on his knees beside the wife of a reverend 11 162 Professor BlacJcie. Hellenist and kissing her hand, while her daughter's cheek received a similar salute. This was the unique prerogative of a unique man, and none of his friends grudged it. What would have been in- dignantly resented from anyone else was felt to be perfectly natural and delightful from the chivalrous, pure-hearted, and loving Professor. At another of these festivals a young politician was present who had just re- canted his Conservatism and formally joined the Liberal party. Blackie sur- prised the company by making a speech in praise of the young " 'vert " (the reader can supply the prefix). The Professor even declared that he himself, though flourishing his stick in Mr. Gladstone's face on election cartoons, had found it time to turn Liberal ! And this brings us to another chapter. XIV. HIS POLITICS. FORTY years ago, " when the nation had entered on the Crimean war, and all Europe was excited and expectant, Blackie got up and said something which seemed a little unacademic at a large University function. When a few voices were heard in discord with what he had said, he replied, swinging his arms about, ' What ! do you think I am one of those gerund- grinders who can keep his academic soul unruffled by the war breeze which is sweeping over Europe ? ' This was like Blackie," adds Professor Laurie, who tells the story. It was like Blackie to take a citizen's interest in the affairs of the State ; yet he had the impartiality of a mere spectator impartiality, not neu- trality. He could throw himself into a political fight, but never into a political party. At one time he was to be seen 164 Professor BlacJde. battling shoulder to shoulder with the Tories, and at another with the Liberals it all depended on what they were fighting for at the moment. His most famous appearances in the political arena were as champion of the constitution against de- mocracy, and as champion of Scottish Home Rule and the Scottish peasantry against landlordism and centralisation. These appearances did not represent different stages of Blackie's political development. The two positions were held at the same time. The famous debate to which the Pro- fessor alluded at his breakfast-table was held on two successive nights in January, 1867, at the Edinburgh Music Hall. In a lecture to working-men a few weeks before he had challenged any democratic champion to meet him in single combat, and Ernest Jones picked up the glove. In the discussion that followed, as on all other occasions, Blackie was perfectly frank. He did not, like some Tory politicians, attempt to clothe the naked Toryism of his doctrine with professions of re- spect for the democratic principle. It FROM A POUTICAL CARTOON. 1880. 166 Professor BlacJcie. was the democratic principle lie explicitly denounced, and especially its embodiment in the Reform Bill of that period. He had no objection to give a large increase of Toting power to the working men, many of whom he described as more intelligent and trustworthy in a political capacity than some classes of those im- mediately above them in the social scale. But to determine all public questions by the votes of the majority was to him " the rule of unreason." He would balance the democratic force by giving special repre- sentation to " the natural, moral, and in- tellectual aristocracy of the community." About seventeen years ago a pre- sumptuous young man wrote to Professor Blackie expostulating with him for publicly supporting the Tory candidate at a bye- election in the West of Scotland. The Professor did not throw the letter into the fire. He sat down and covered eight pages of letter paper with "political maxims " for his young friend's benefit. Here are a few of them : "A horse requires a rein as well as a spur; and a coachman is not wise who His Politics. 167 flings away the drag because he is not now going down hill. " If the Tories are the stupid party in the State, the Liberals are the feverish party. To over-stimulated brains a little stupidity may sometimes be conducive to health. "J in domestic progress the chief honours belong to the Liberals, the Tories show their talent in the greater force and vigour of their foreign policy. " The Liberals and the Tories are equally factious, struggling for power. Those who are stirred by the passions which inspire these parties vote systematically with their party ; those who are free from those passions that is, true patriots vote for their country. " Liberty is a snare ; Equality a lie, and Fraternity a dream. " Liberty is like wine : a little is good ; much of it is dangerous." To these let us add a motto which he never left long unspoken "All extremes are bad" ; and this sentence from his " Self-Culture " : "A good man will as much as possible strive to be 168 Professor BlacJcie. shaken out of himself, and learn to study the excellences of persons and parties to whom he is naturally opposed." He believed in Liberty as necessary to free men ' ' from those artificial bonds and hindrances to normal development, with which insolent power, official formalism, or ossified institutions may have enthralled them." Moreover, as he said in the last article he wrote, " in all forms of govern- ment, whether political or ecclesiastical, absolute power is a weapon too strong to be used wisely by a feeble human arm." But " it is not freedom but the use of freedom that ennobles man. Savages and nomads have always more freedom than civilised societies."* As for Equality, here is an illustration of its non-existence: "Take a class, we shall say, of one hundred young men learning Greek in the University of Edin- burgh : my experience is that out of these one hundred there will be only one man of decided eminence, and not more than half-a-dozen of superior talent ; and that the difference between those who have * Essays on Social Subjects. His Politics. 169 least and those who have most will be much greater at the end of six months' teaching than it was at the beginning." * You see yon birkie, ca'd a lord, Wha struts, and stares, and a' that; Tho' hundreds worship at his word, He's but a coof for a' that. For a' that, and a' that, Their dignities and a' that, The rank is but the guinea stamp, The man's the gowd for a' that ! " The man who wrote this," said Blackie, " was the prophet of democratic equality in the only true sense. So, also, was the Apostle Peter. f Honour all men * in their several places, and in the perform- ance of their several functions ; but in no- wise worship rank. Specially, as St. Paul has it, f Mind not high things, but conde- scend to men of low estate.' " f " Fix this in your minds, before all things, that there are few things in social life more contemptible than a rich man who stands upon his riches. He acquires a certain social position, and from this perhaps gets M.P. tagged to his name ; but take the * Political Tracts, 1868 : " On Government." t Essays on Social Subjects. 170 Professor SlacJcie. creature down from his artificial elevation and look him fairly in the face, and you will find that he is a figure too insignificant to measure swords with." * The House of Lords, with its existing constitution " repugnant alike to the plainest dictates of common-sense and the spirit of the age," Blackie declared to be an anomaly which, "even in this land of multifarious anomalies, will not bear a moment's consideration." And yet, he continued, "I believe that an Upper House founded on common-sense principles, such as the Eoman Senate and the Spartan yepovo-ia, is absolutely necessary for the safety and the sound- ness of legislation ; and I am convinced, with Aristotle, that all extremes are wrong, and that for this reason any democratic body is then best when it acts under the check of an aristocratic body, while in the same way every aristocratic body then commands the greatest amount of influence when it is wisely seasoned by an infusion of the democratic element. Let, then, the House of Lords have the * Self -Culture. His Politics. 171 sense and the courage to reform them- selves on the principles of Aristotle and common-sense, and all the Radicals in Oldham and Birmingham will not be able to prevail against them." " I am not a Radical," he once said, "but I see that some things are radically wrong." Fraternity might be a dream, an ideal, but it was one which his religion held up for realisation. In "Four Phases of Morals " the author says :- " If there is only one God, the Father of the whole human race, then there is only one family; all men are brethren; nationality ceases; philanthropy, or love of men in the widest sense of the word, becomes natural ; mere patriotism has now only a relative value." Blackie had no more admiration for the doctrines of modern socialism than for the shibboleth of the French Revolution. But he had much sympathy for those who are trying to bring fraternity out of dream- land. Writing to an ardent if not very theoretical socialist a couple of years ago he said, "I have read your article with full assent. The great difficulty in 172 Professor Blackie. organising society is to reconcile a certain systematic enforced order with that greatest possible number of the greatest variety of free individuals which, so far as one can see, is the principle on which the creative Force in this wonderful world proceeds. Christianity has now been on the field as the prime mover in all social matters for nearly 2,000 years ; and yet how little of that dydirr) asserts itself in our social surroundings, which, as St. Paul says, is the -jr^pw^a vopov." " You cannot honour all men," he said, many years ago, " unless you try to know all men ; and you know no man till you have looked with the eye of a brother into the best that is in him." * The extreme individualist was as far as the extreme socialist from Blackie's stand- point. e ' With your proudest pretensions and highest accomplishments you remain a very small creature in a very big world, and no more capable of standing alone or acting merely for yourself than a single note is in a harmony over which the constructive genius of a Beethoven or a Self-Culture. His Politics. 173 Wagner presides." He was delighted to see the property of the individual drawn upon for the benefit of the community, and especially for large and imperial purposes. " Taxes," he declared, in one of his twenty-four maxims, " are one of the grand distinctions between civilised men and savages." "The progress of civilisation in its natural and healthy career is the progress of limitation and the curtailment in various ways of that freedom which originally belonged to every member of the community." * Freedom to get as much out of another man, in the form of labour or rent, as he can be driven to yield, is no man's right. "Pay a man fairly, according to the quantity and quality of the work done this is simply justice ; pay him a little more, and justice rises into the region of Christian love ; while anything like squeezing out of the labourer the greatest possible amount of labour for the lowest possible wage is in the highest degree both inhuman and un-Christian." f * What does History Teach ? f Essays on Social Subjects. 174 Professor BlacJcie. With this notable declaration we may end the chapter : " In all cases of general discontent, social fret, and illegal violence, the parties who are accused of stirring class against class are not the agitators who appear on the scene, but the malad- ministrators who made their appearance necessary. , . . There is no truth in the philosophy of history more certain than that whenever the multitude of the ruled rebel against their rulers, the original fault I do not say the whole blame but the original fault and germinative cause of discontent and revolt unquestionably lies with the rulers." XV. THE HIGHLANDERS' CHAMPION. OF all the chapters of an always honour- able career, this one deserves to be printed in letters of gold : the story of his fight for the Highland peasantry. He carried on the struggle with none but the highest motives brotherly love for the weak and oppressed, combined with patriotic jealousy for the honour and interests of his country and the empire at large. He was content to forfeit the friendship of some whom he honoured, rather than slacken his zeal in a cause which demanded the fervour of a prophet. Nevertheless, his words were not more vigorous than the cause was urgent. His denunciations were not in- discriminate, and his judgments were tempered by charity. It is nearly half-a-century since Blackie stepped into the vacant position of the Crofters' Champion. His early explora- 176 Professor Blackie. tions of the Highlands brought him face to face with evils which no appeal to conventional phrases or unjust laws could excuse. On one of his expeditions from Aberdeen, for instance, he came to " Aultnaharra, almost the very central point of Sutherlandshire, and, resting there for a night, next day walked down the whole length of bonnie Strathnaver to the sea. During this walk," he tells us, " I came upon vast heaps of the ruined clachans, whence the people had been driven to make way for the economical reform commonly called the big farm system ; and, when arrived at the bottom of the strath on the seacoast, I found my- self in the midst of one of those marine cities of refuge into which the ousted crofters had been huddled ; those of them at least who had not found their way to America. " Bonnie Strathnaver ! Sutherland's pride, Sweet is the breath of the hirks on thy side ; But where is the blue smoke that curled from the glen When thy lone hills were dappled with dwellings of men ? " * * Lays of the Highlands and Islands. The Highlanders' Champion. 177 He found, as lie says, a certain relief to his sorrow in lyrical utterance ; but a friend suggested that he should send a plain prose statement of the case to "The Times." This he did, and a leading: article * o was published in consequence. Con- siderable search has failed to identify this article ; but a stirring " leader " appeared on June 4th, 1845, after a Special Commissioner of the paper had investigated the clearance of Glen Calvie. This event "The Times" denounced as an " inhuman process," a case of " heartless oppression," and not distinguishable from hundreds of others. As soon as it became known that Professor Blackie had taken up the question, he found his breakfast- table loaded day after day with accounts from all parts of the world describing "the process by which the very pith and marrow of rural life in the Highlands bad been sacrificed to economic theories alike inhuman and impolitic.'* The more he eaw and inquired, the more keenly he felu the bitter injustice and the folly of de- stroying our reserves of manhood. Here are two scraps of letters, the first from 12 178 Professor BlacJcie. Braemar in the forties, and the second from Oban in 1869: "The only draw- back to the beauty of the Highlands with me and it is a great one is the diminu- tion of the population, and the dominance of an overgrown landed aristocracy, which cares more for deer than for men, and has, in the space of a single generation, been willing to forget the splendid services which these poor despised cotters did to our country in Spain and at Waterloo." " The one-sided, loveless policy of a certain school of economists, acting along with the stupidity and greed of landlords, has ' improved ' this country into a solitude that pays the rent; without life or love, or memory or hope. We have lost our people : and Bens and glens, which satisfy the painter's eye, cannot feed the human heart. However, I make the best of it, being convinced that all grumbling is sin." His way of making the best of it was to make it better. His tongue and pen, busy as they were with other affairs, were placed freely at the service of the Highlanders. No small share of the The Highlanders' Champion. 179 credit for the Crofters' Commission and the resulting legislation imperfect as that legislation still is belonged to the Pro- fessor of Greek in the University of Edinburgh. He was not carried off his feet by sentiment. He recognised that "there were, and there still may be, cases where a certain amount of emi- gration is as beneficial to those who leave the country as to those who remain in it. But weeding is one thing, and extirpation is another."* " The sacrifice of the Highlanders to the selfishness or carelessness or ignorance of landlords armed with partial and one-sided land laws, and to a political economy, falsely so called, which mis- takes the wealth of the few for the well-being of the many, is one of the greatest blots on the face of our modern civilisation. That is the decided sentence of Sismondi, Roscher, and other Conti- nental economists who have preserved their minds untainted by that commercial spirit which in this country has turned political economy into a pretentious * Lays of the Highlands and Islands, 180 Professor Blackie. sophistry for the purpose of giving scien- tific names to the most heartless forms of social selfishness." "It is a very sad business, and not calculated to excite in the beholder a very high idea of the capability of the British Government to perform the highest function of all govern- ment the protection of the weak against the strong." He refused to tar all landlords with the same brush, and one of his books dealing largely with this subject "Altavona," published by Mr. Douglas in 1882 was written in dialogue to ensure the pre- sentation of both sides. Throughout he acted on the principle that " offence, though it must sometimes be given, ought never to be courted. Nevertheless," as he well said, " there are occasions when a man must speak boldly out, even at the risk of plucking the beard of fair authority somewhat rudely. If he does not do so he is a coward and a poltroon, and not the less so because he has nine hundred and ninety-nine lily- livered followers at his back." * In this * Self-Culture. The Highlanders' Champion. 181 spirit he wrote the famous sonnet on <( Absentee Proprietors": Who owns these ample hills ? A lord who lives Ten months in London, and in Scotland two ; O'er the wide moors with gun in hand he drives : And, Scotland, this is all he knows of you ! Your tongue, your thoughts, your soul, are strange to him ; Your faith, your courage and your patience true Touch him as near as when with hasty limb He brushes from his boot the mountain dew. Your sober church, your priestless sacraments He loveth not who loveth these to kill The guarded game and swell the squandered rents. These be thy masters, Scotland ! These the men Who make thy people vanish from the glen ! * Blackie's most important work on this subject is one which students of the land question cannot afford to leave unread. It was published in 1885 under the title *' The Scottish Highlanders and the Land Laws ; an Historico-Economical Inquiry," and was dedicated " To John Bright, the eloquent denouncer of Irish wrongs." Some idea of the severe and thorough research that went to the making of this valuable book may be got from the fact * Lays and Legends ; and in Messis Vitse. 182 Professor Blackie. that the author read all the books and pamphlets he could get on rural economy and the land laws, inquired systematically into the rural economics and agrarian legislation of various countries of Europe, and made journeys of investigation to the Channel Islands, to Ireland, and to Italy : "the analogy of the usurpation of the lands of the Italian yeomanry by the aristocracy in the latter days of the Roman Republic, with the consequent patriotic struggle of the Gracchi to restore the land to the people," having flashed with a painful vividness on his mind. Blackie was not very hopeful of success in this crusade, and even the report of the Crofters' Commission was an agree- able surprise to him. " The report," he wrote to a correspondent in Canada, " is much more kindly than I expected, thanks to Lord Napier, who has livsd too long in India to have his type of social philosophy made after the image of John Bull's insular tradition. Whether any thing will be done is a different question. Our Government never does a thing because it The Highlanders' Champion. 183 ought to be done, but because they are forced to do it. In Ireland the force was strong enough to wrench justice from them; in the Highlands, I feav, it will prove too weak. They will likely let the report lie on the table and do nothing, as they did many years with the Irish reports before Gladstone forced justice down their throats." Legislation came, as we know. It did not meet all the country's requirements, or rise to Professor Blackie's standard. " If we had a Moses or Lycurgus amongst us he would undoubtedly enact (1) That all deer forests, as luxuries of the richest class of society, should be severely taxed ; " (2) that the animals should all be well fenced in from the crops of their human neighbours ; and (3) that a Govern- ment Board should keep such forests within their natural bounds, and prevent them encroaching on land " that could be profit- ably occupied by a rural population." "Property in land is in an altogether different position from properly in movables ; " it " exists," as he had said elsewhere, tf for the sake of the people." 184 Professor Blackie. "It is not the primary business of a landholder to make money," but to "support upon his property as large an amount of a rural population as it can conveniently maintain." The land laws of Scotland, being " made by the land- lords, in the interest of their own class mainly," had fostered a mercantile notion that a landlord " could do what he liked with his own " ;* an entirely damnable doctrine, but one that the people might now demolish without further help from a Greek professor. In a letter written early in 1886 he says: "The Highlanders may now be left to speak for themselves, having half a dozen of M.P.'s of their own choice ; and I hope they will have sense to desire only what is reason- able and practicable, and not follow their Irish cousins in demanding that the existing world shall be turned upside down and inside out for their convenience. I mean now to let them look for help to their own kin and clan." * Appendix to his inaugural address as Chief of the Gaelic Society at Perth, October 7th, 1880. (Douglas.) XVI. THE CELTIC CHAIR. BLACKIE'S sayings and doings for the High- landers cannot aptly be told in a single chapter. His indignation at their material woes was not more fruitful than his sorrow for their disappearing language and neglected literature. " There are very few districts of my native land," the Professor was able to say at the age of sixty-three, " from the green graves of the two drowned Margarets in Wigtown to the bleak and black savageness of Cape Wrath, and the Fuggla Bock in Shetland, which I have not visited." But the Lowlander by birth was a Celt by temperament, a Highlander at heart, and he found his divinest inspirations in the mountain air. " The features of many of our most beautiful Highland districts, under their most beau- tiful aspects, with all the best emotions 186 Professor BlacJcie. which a familiarity with them can create, and all the patriotic associations with which they are intertwined, have become part of my life and of the atmosphere which I breathe." * For many years the Professor and Mrs. Blackie spent their summers on the west coast, at Oban. There they built a house in 1865, with the sea and the isles in front, the moors and the mountains in rear. Indeed, he once responded at a Highland gathering to the toast of the Highland landlords his qualification being the ownership of the acre bearing his Highland home. He called it Altna- craig, " the stream by the rock." Beside the splendour of shore and ocean, inland beauties paled. " I am delighted to hear you are so satisfied with the beauty of Aberfeldy," he wrote from Oban to a friend deep in the heart of Perthshire; " but if you come here you will see THE BEAUTIFUL + THE SUBLIME = PERFEC- TION ! " The village of Aberfeldy itself annoyed him, as a blot on the face of fair Strath-Tay ; for twenty years ago there was * Lays of the Highlands and Islands. The Celtic Chair. 187 " only one handsome building in it," he declared, "the new Independent Church, with which, thank God, I had something to do that will mingle with a sweet echo in my deathbed hymn." But Aberfeldy became pretty familiar with the Professor's " Ciamar tha sibh J n diugh ? " and the village streets were picturesque at any rate when he marched through them. The "breastful of good-natured scolding" that he gave them as a lecture, while on a visit to "that dashing Amazon, the Countess of Bread al bane," and the little skirmish with his Highland brother-in-law orer the Celtic superstitions which the minister's minister-father had done much to dispel, are shining items in the annals of the place. He was very happy at Oban. He rejoiced in forest and flower, sea and rock, storm- wrack and sunshine. " The sea i's roaring like a cauldron," he writes with gusto, "the white crests chasing one another like snowdrifts ; the trees tossing their arms like frantic women in a shipwreck, and the windows of Heaven are opened in- deed." " After a few days' cessation the 188 Professor Blackie. Prince of the Power of the Air is again exercising his function here most diaboli- cally." To himself this was a small matter, but " Alas for the poor cotters ! " Here is a scrap of this letter in facsimile, as it was not often the Professor turned artist : He rejoiced, too, in some of the human creatures who flocked to Oban his own presence being one of the attractions.