Spare Hours
by John Brown · English · Gutenberg #27153 · 735,348 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Spare Hours
Author: John Brown
Release date: November 4, 2008 [eBook #27153]
Language: English
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_HORAE SUBSECIVAE._
"_A lady, resident in Devonshire, going into one of her parlors,
discovered a young ass, who had found his way into the room, and
carefully closed the door upon himself. He had evidently not
been long in this situation before he had nibbled a part of
Cicero's Orations, and eaten nearly all the index of a folio
edition of Seneca in Latin, a large part of a volume of La
Bruyere's Maxims in French, and several pages of Cecilia. He
had done no other mischief whatever, and not a vestige remained
of the leaves that he had devoured._"--PIERCE EGAN.
"_The treatment of the illustrious dead by the quick, often
reminds me of the gravedigger in Hamlet, and the skull of poor
defunct Yorick._"--W. H. B.
"_Multi ad sapientiam pervenire potuissent, nisi se jam
pervenisse putassent._"
"_There's nothing so amusing as human nature, but then you must
have some one to laugh with._"
SPARE HOURS
BY JOHN BROWN, M. D.
If thou be a severe sour-complexioned man, then I here disallow
thee to be a competent judge.--IZAAK WALTON
BOSTON
TICKNOR AND FIELDS
1864
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1861, by
TICKNOR AND FIELDS,
In the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the
District of Massachusetts
RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE:
STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY H. O. HOUGHTON
NOTE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION.
The author of "Rab and his Friends" scarcely needs an introduction to
American readers. By this time many have learned to agree with a writer
in the "North British Review" that "Rab" is, all things considered, the
most perfect prose narrative since Lamb's "Rosamond Gray."
A new world of doctors, clergymen, shepherds, and carriers is revealed
in the writings of this cheerful Edinburgh scholar, who always brings
genuine human feeling, strong sense, and fine genius to the composition
of his papers. Dogs he loves with an enthusiasm to be found nowhere else
in canine literature. He knows intimately all a cur means when he winks
his eye or wags his tail, so that the whole barking race,--terrier,
mastiff, spaniel, and the rest,--finds in him an affectionate and
interested friend. His genial motto seems to run thus--"I cannot
understand that morality which excludes animals from human sympathy, or
releases man from the debt and obligation he owes to them."
With the author's consent we have rejected from his two series of "Horae
Subsecivae" the articles on strictly professional subjects, and have
collected into this volume the rest of his admirable papers in that
work. The title, "Spare Hours," is also adopted with the author's
sanction.
Dr. Brown is an eminent practising physician in Edinburgh, with small
leisure for literary composition, but no one has stronger claims to be
ranked among the purest and best writers of our day.
_BOSTON, December 1861._
CONTENTS.
RAB AND HIS FRIENDS
"WITH BRAINS, SIR"
THE MYSTERY OF BLACK AND TAN
HER LAST HALF-CROWN
OUR DOGS
QUEEN MARY'S CHILD-GARDEN
PRESENCE OF MIND AND HAPPY GUESSING
MY FATHER'S MEMOIR
MYSTIFICATIONS
"OH, I'M WAT, WAT!"
ARTHUR H. HALLAM
EDUCATION THROUGH THE SENSES
VAUGHAN'S POEMS
DR. CHALMERS
DR. GEORGE WILSON
ST. PAUL'S THORN IN THE FLESH
THE BLACK DWARF'S BONES
NOTES ON ART
AUTHOR'S PREFACE.
In that delightful and provoking book, "THE DOCTOR, &c.," Southey says:
"'Prefaces,' said Charles Blount, Gent., 'Prefaces,' according to this
flippant, ill-opinioned, and unhappy man, 'ever were, and still are, but
of two sorts, let the mode and fashions vary as they please,--let the
long peruke succeed the godly cropt hair; the cravat, the ruff;
presbytery, popery; and popery, presbytery again,--yet still the author
keeps to his old and wonted method of prefacing; when at the beginning
of his book he enters, either with a halter round his neck, submitting
himself to his readers' mercy whether he shall be hanged or no, or else,
in a huffing manner, he appears with the halter in his hand, and
threatens to hang his reader, if he gives him not his good word. This,
with the excitement of friends to his undertaking, and some few
apologies for the want of time, books, and the like, are the constant
and usual shams of all scribblers, ancient and modern.' This was not
true then," says Southey, "nor is it now." I differ from Southey, in
thinking there is some truth in both ways of wearing the halter. For
though it be neither manly nor honest to affect a voluntary humility
(which is after all, a sneaking vanity, and would soon show itself if
taken at its word), any more than it is well-bred, or seemly to put on
(for it generally is put on) the "huffing manner," both such being truly
"shams,"--there is general truth in Mr. Blount's flippancies.
Every man should know and lament (to himself) his own
shortcomings--should mourn over and mend, as he best can, the
"confusions of his wasted youth;" he should feel how ill he has put out
to usury the talent given him by the Great Taskmaster--how far he is
from being "a good and faithful servant;" and he should make this rather
understood than expressed by his manner as a writer; while at the same
time, every man should deny himself the luxury of taking his hat off to
the public, unless he has something to say, and has done his best to say
it aright; and every man should pay not less attention to the dress in
which his thoughts present themselves, than he would to that of his
person on going into company.
Bishop Butler, in his "Preface to his Sermons," in which there is
perhaps more solid living sense than in the same number of words
anywhere else after making the distinction between "obscurity" and
"perplexity and confusion of thought,"--the first being in the subject,
the others in its expression, says,--"confusion and perplexity are, in
writing, indeed without excuse, because any one may, if he pleases, know
whether he understands or sees through what he is about, and it is
unpardonable in a man to lay his thoughts before others, when he is
conscious that he himself does not know whereabouts he is, or how the
matter before him stands. _It is coming abroad in disorder, which he
ought to be dissatisfied to find himself in at home._"
There should therefore be in his Preface, as in the writer himself, two
elements. A writer should have some assurance that he has something to
say, and this assurance should, in the true sense, not the Milesian, be
modest.
* * * * *
I have to apologize for bringing in "Rab and his Friends." I did so,
remembering well the good I got then, as a man and as a doctor. It let
me see down into the depths of our common nature, and feel the strong
and gentle touch that we all need, and never forget, which makes the
world kin; and it gave me an opportunity of introducing, in a way which
he cannot dislike, for he knows it is simply true, my old master and
friend, Professor Syme, whose indenture I am thankful I possess, and
whose first wheels I delight in thinking my apprentice-fee purchased,
thirty years ago. I remember as if it were yesterday, his giving me the
first drive across the west shoulder of Corstorphine Hill. On starting,
he said, "John, we'll do one thing at a time, and there will be no
talk." I sat silent and rejoicing, and can remember the very complexion
and clouds of that day and that matchless view: _Damyat_ and _Benledi_
resting couchant at the gate of the Highlands, with the huge Grampians,
_immane pecus_, crowding down into the plain.
This short and simple story shows, that here, as everywhere else,
personally, professionally, and publicly, reality is his aim and his
attainment. He is one of the men--they are all too few--who desire to be
on the side of truth more than to have truth on their side; and whose
personal and private worth are always better understood than expressed.
It has been happily said of him, that he never wastes a word, or a drop
of ink, or a drop of blood; and his is the strongest, exactest, truest,
immediatest, safest intellect, dedicated by its possessor to the
surgical cure of mankind, I have ever yet met with. He will, I firmly
believe, leave an inheritance of good done, and mischief destroyed, of
truth in theory and in practice established, and of error in the same
exposed and ended, such as no one since John Hunter has been gifted to
bequeath to his fellow-men. As an instrument for discovering truth, I
have never seen his perspicacity equalled; his mental eye is
_achromatic_, and admits into the judging mind a pure white light, and
records an undisturbed, uncolored image, undiminished and unenlarged in
its passage; and he has the moral power, courage, and conscience, to use
and devote such an inestimable instrument aright. I need hardly add,
that the story of "Rab and his Friends" is in all essentials strictly
matter of fact.
There is an odd sort of point, if it can be called a point, on which I
would fain say something--and that is an occasional outbreak of sudden,
and it may be felt, untimely humorousness. I plead guilty to this,
sensible of the tendency in me of the merely ludicrous to intrude, and
to insist on being attended to, and expressed: it is perhaps too much
the way with all of us now-a-days, to be forever joking. _Mr. Punch_, to
whom we take off our hats, grateful for his innocent and honest fun,
especially in his Leech, leads the way; and our two great novelists,
Thackeray and Dickens, the first especially, are, in the deepest and
highest sense, essentially humorists,--the best, nay, indeed the almost
only good thing in the latter, being his broad and wild fun; Swiveller,
and the Dodger, and Sam Weller, and Miggs, are more impressive far to my
taste than the melo-dramatic, utterly unreal Dombey, or his strumous and
hysterical son, or than all the later dreary trash of "Bleak House," &c.
My excuse is, that these papers are really what they profess to be, done
at bye-hours. _Dulce est desipere_, when in its fit place and time.
Moreover, let me tell my young doctor friends, that a cheerful face, and
step, and neckcloth, and button-hole, and an occasional hearty and
kindly joke, a power of executing and setting agoing a good laugh, are
stock in our trade not to be despised. The merry heart does good like a
medicine. Your pompous man, and your selfish man, don't laugh much, or
care for laughter; it discomposes the fixed grandeur of the one, and has
little room in the heart of the other, who is literally self-contained.
My Edinburgh readers will recall many excellent jokes of their
doctors--"Lang Sandie Wood," Dr. Henry Davidson our _Guy Patin_ and
better, &c.
I may give an instance, when a joke was more and better than itself. A
comely young wife, the "cynosure" of her circle, was in bed, apparently
dying from swelling and inflammation of the throat, an inaccessible
abscess stopping the way; she could swallow nothing; everything had been
tried. Her friends were standing round her bed in misery and
helplessness. "_Try her wi' a compliment_," said her husband, in a not
uncomic despair. She had genuine humor, as well as he; and as
physiologists know, there is a sort of mental tickling which is beyond
and above control, being under the reflex system, and instinctive as
well as sighing. She laughed with her whole body and soul, and burst the
abscess, and was well.
Humor, if genuine (and if not, it is not humor), is the very flavor of
the spirit, its rich and fragrant _ozmazome_--having in its aroma
something of everything in the man, his expressed juice; wit is but the
laughing flower of the intellect or the turn of speech, and is often
what we call a "gum-flower," and looks well when dry. Humor is, in a
certain sense, involuntary in its origin in one man, and in its effect
upon another; it is systemic, and not local.
Sydney Smith, in his delightful and valuable _Sketches of Lectures on
Moral Philosophy_, to which I have referred, makes a touching and
impressive confession of the evil to the rest of a man's nature from the
predominant power and cultivation of the ludicrous. I believe Charles
Lamb could have told a like, and as true, but sadder story. He started
on life with all the endowments of a great, ample, and serious nature,
and he ended in being little else than the incomparable joker and
humorist, and was in the true sense, "of large discourse."[1]
[1] Many good and fine things have been said of this wonderful
and unique genius, but I know none better or finer than
these lines by my friend John Hunter of Craigcrook. They are
too little known, and no one will be anything but pleased to
read them, except their author. The third line might have
been Elia's own:--
"... Humor, wild wit,
Quips, cranks, puns, sneers,--with clear sweet thought profound;--
_And stinging jests, with honey for the wound_,"--
The subtlest lines of ALL fine powers, split
To their last films, then marvellously spun
In magic web, whose million hues are ONE!"
I knew one man who was almost altogether and absolutely
comic, and yet a man of sense, fidelity, courage, and worth,
but over his entire nature the comic ruled supreme--the late
Sir Adam Ferguson, whose very face was a breach of
solemnity; I dare say, even in sleep he looked a wag. This
was the way in which everything appeared to him first, and
often last too, with a serious enough middle saw him not
long before his death, when he was of great age and knew he
was dying; there was no levity in his manner, or
thoughtlessness about his state; he was kind, and shrewd as
ever; but how he flashed out with utter merriment when he
got hold of a joke, or rather when it got hold of him, and
shook him, not an inch of his body was free of its power--it
possessed him, not he it. The first attack was on showing me
a calotype of himself by the late Adamson (of Hill and
Adamson; the Vandyke and Raeburn of photography), in the
corner of which he had written, with a hand trembling with
age and fun, "Adam's-sun _fecit_"--it came back upon him and
tore him without mercy.
Then, his blood being up, he told me a story of his uncle,
the great Dr. Black the chemist; no one will grudge the
reading of it in my imperfect record, though it is to the
reality what reading music is to hearing it.
Dr. Black, when Professor of Chemistry in Edinburgh
University, had a gruff old man as his porter, a James
Alston. James was one of the old school of chemistry, and
held by phlogiston, but for no better reason than the
endless trouble the new-fangled discoveries brought upon him
in the way of apparatus.
The Professor was lecturing on Hydrogen Gas, and had made
arrangements for showing its lightness, what our preceptor,
Dr. Charles Hope, called, in his lofty way, its "principle
of absolute levity." He was greatly excited, the good old
man of genius. James was standing behind his chair, ready
and sulky. His master told his young friends that the
bladder he had filled with the gas must, on principle,
ascend; but that they would see practically if it did, and
he cut the string. Up it rushed, amid the shouts and
upturned faces of the boys, and the quiet joy of their
master; James regarding it with a glum curiosity.
Young Adam Ferguson was there, and left at the end of the
hour with the rest, but finding he had forgotten his stick,
went back; in the empty room, he found James perched upon a
lofty and shaky ladder, trying, amid much perspiration, and
blasphemy, and want of breath, to hit down his enemy, who
rose at each stroke--the old battling with the new. Sir
Adam's reproduction of this scene, his voice and screams of
rapture, I shall never forget.
Let me give another pleasant story of Dr. Black and Sir
Adam, which our Principal (Dr. Lee) delights to tell; it is
merely its bones. The doctor sent him to the bank for
L5--four in notes, and one in silver; then told him that he
must be paid for his trouble with a shilling, and next
proceeded to give him good advice about the management of
money, particularly recommending a careful record of every
penny spent, holding the shilling up before him all the
time. During this address, Sir Adam was turning over in his
mind all the trash he would be able to purchase with the
shilling, and his feeling may be imagined when the doctor
finally returned it to his own pocket.
It only remains now for me to thank my cousin and life-long friend, John
Taylor Brown, the author of the tract on "St. Paul's Thorn in the
Flesh." I am sure my readers will thank me not less heartily than I now
do him. The theory that the thorn of the great apostle was an affection
of the eyes is not new; it will be found in "Hannah More's Life," and in
"Conybeare and Howson;" but his argument and his whole treatment, I have
reason to believe, from my father and other competent judges, is
thoroughly original; it is an exquisite monograph, and to me most
instructive and striking. Every one will ask why such a man has not
written more--a question my fastidious friend will find is easier asked
than answered.
* * * * *
This Preface was written, and I had a proof ready for his pencil, when I
was summoned to the death of him to whom I owe my life. He had been
dying for months, but he and I hoped to have got and to have given into
his hands a copy of these _Horae_, the correction of which had often
whiled away his long hours of languor and pain. God thought otherwise. I
shall miss his great knowledge, his loving and keen eye--his _ne quid
nimis_--his sympathy--himself. Let me be thankful that it was given to
me _assidere valetudini, fovere deficientem, satiari vultu, complexu_.
_Si quis piorum manibus locus; si, ut sapientibus placet, non cum
corpore extinguuntur magnae animae; placide quiescas!_
Or, in more sacred and hopeful words, which, put there at my father's
request, may be found at the close of the paper on young Hallam: "O man
greatly beloved, go thou thy way till the end; for thou shalt rest, and
stand in thy lot at the end of the days."
It is not for a son to speak what he thinks of his father so soon after
his death. I leave him now with a portrait of his spiritual lineaments,
by Dr. Cairns,--which is to them what a painting by Velasquez and Da
Vinci combined would have been to his bodily presence.
"As he was of the Pauline type of mind, his
Christianity ran into the same mould. A strong,
intense, and vehement nature, with masculine
intellect and unyielding will, he accepted the Bible
in its literal simplicity as an absolute revelation,
and then showed the strength of his character in
subjugating his whole being to this decisive
influence, and in projecting the same convictions
into other minds. He was a believer in the sense of
the old Puritans, and, amid the doubt and skepticism
of the nineteenth century, held as firmly as any of
them by the doctrines of atonement and grace. He had
most of the idiosyncrasy of Baxter, though not
without the contemplation of Howe. The doctrines of
Calvinism, mitigated but not renounced, and received
simply as dictates of Heaven, without any effort or
hope to bridge over their inscrutable depths by
philosophical theories, he translated into a
fervent, humble, and resolutely active life.
"There was a fountain of tenderness in his nature as
well as a sweep of impetuous indignation; and the
one drawn out, and the other controlled by his
Christian faith, made him at once a philanthropist
and a reformer, and both in the highest departments
of human interest. The union of these ardent
elements, and of a highly devotional temperament,
not untouched with melancholy, with the patience of
the scholar, and the sobriety of the critic, formed
the singularity and almost the anomaly of his
personal character. These contrasts were tempered by
the discipline of experience; and his life, both as
a man and a Christian, seemed to become more rich,
genial, and harmonious as it approached its
close."--_Scotsman_, October 20th.
J. B.
23, RUTLAND STREET, _October 30, 1858_.
POST PREFACE.
I have to thank the public and my own special craft cordially and much
for their reception of these Idle Hours--Brown Studies, as a friendly
wag calls them--and above all, for their taking to their hearts that
great old dog and his dead friends,--for all which the one friend who
survives thanks them. There is no harm and some good in letting our
sympathy and affection go forth without stint on such objects, dead and
homely though they be.
When I think of that noble head, with its look and eye of boundless
affection and pluck, simplicity and single-heartedness, I feel what it
would be for us, who call ourselves the higher animals, to be in our
ways as simple, affectionate, and true, as that old mastiff; and in the
highest of all senses, I often think of what Robert Burns says
somewhere, "Man is the god of the dog." It would be well for man if his
worship were as immediate and instinctive--as absolute as the dog's. Did
we serve our God with half the zeal Rab served his, we might trust to
sleep as peacefully in our graves as he does in his. When James turned
his angry eye and raised his quick voice and foot, his worshipper slunk
away, humbled and afraid, angry with himself for making _him_ angry;
anxious by any means to crouch back into his favor, and a kind look or
word. Is that the way we take His displeasure, even when we can't think,
as Rab couldn't, we were immediately to blame? It is, as the old worthy
says, something to trust our God in the dark, as the dog does his.
A dear and wise and exquisite child, drew a plan for a headstone on the
grave of a favorite terrier, and she had in it the words "WHO died" on
such a day; the older and more worldly-minded painter put in "WHICH;"
and my friend and "Bossy's" said to me, with some displeasure, as we
were examining the monuments, "Wasn't he a Who as much as they?" and
wasn't she righter than they? and
"Quis desiderio sit aut pudor aut modus
Tam cari capitis"--
as that of "Rab."
With regard to the quotations--and the much Latin and some Greek, the
world of men, and especially of women, is dead against me. I am sorry
for it. As he said, who was reminded in an argument that the facts were
against him, "So much the worse for them," and I may add for me. Latin
and Greek are not dead--in one sense, they are happily immortal; but the
present age is doing its worst to kill them, and much of their own best
good and pleasure.
23, RUTLAND STREET,
_October 13, 1859_.
_RAB AND HIS FRIENDS._
_To MY TWO FRIENDS
at Busby, Renfrewshire,
In Remembrance of a Journey from Carstairs Junction
to Toledo and back,
The Story of "Rab and his Friends" is inscribed._
Four-and-thirty years ago, Bob Ainslie and I were coming up Infirmary
Street from the Edinburgh High School, our heads together, and our arms
intertwisted, as only lovers and boys know how, or why.
When we got to the top of the street, and turned north, we espied a
crowd at the Tron Church. "A dog-fight!" shouted Bob, and was off; and
so was I, both of us all but praying that it might not be over before we
got up! And is not this boy-nature? and human nature too? and don't we
all wish a house on fire not to be out before we see it? Dogs like
fighting; old Isaac says they "delight" in it, and for the best of all
reasons; and boys are not cruel because they like to see the fight. They
see three of the great cardinal virtues of dog or man--courage,
endurance, and skill--in intense action. This is very different from a
love of making dogs fight, and enjoying, and aggravating, and making
gain by their pluck. A boy--be he ever so fond himself of fighting, if
he be a good boy, hates and despises all this, but he would have run off
with Bob and me fast enough: it is a natural, and a not wicked interest,
that all boys and men have in witnessing intense energy in action.
Does any curious and finely-ignorant woman wish to know how Bob's eye at
a glance announced a dog-fight to his brain? He did not, he could not
see the dogs fighting; it was a flash of an inference, a rapid
induction. The crowd round a couple of dogs fighting, is a crowd
masculine mainly, with an occasional active, compassionate woman,
fluttering wildly round the outside, and using her tongue and her hands
freely upon the men, as so many "brutes;" it is a crowd annular,
compact, and mobile; a crowd centripetal, having its eyes and its heads
all bent downwards and inwards, to one common focus.
Well, Bob and I are up, and find it is not over: a small thoroughbred,
white bull-terrier, is busy throttling a large shepherd's dog,
unaccustomed to war, but not to be trifled with. They are hard at it;
the scientific little fellow doing his work in great style, his pastoral
enemy fighting wildly, but with the sharpest of teeth and a great
courage. Science and breeding, however, soon had their own; the Game
Chicken, as the premature Bob called him, working his way up, took his
final grip of poor Yarrow's throat,--and he lay gasping and done for.
His master, a brown, handsome, big young shepherd from Tweedsmuir, would
have liked to have knocked down any man, would "drink up Esil, or eat a
crocodile," for that part, if he had a chance: it was no use kicking the
little dog; that would only make him hold the closer. Many were the
means shouted out in mouthfuls, of the best possible ways of ending it.
"Water!" but there was none near, and many cried for it who might have
got it from the well at Blackfriars Wynd. "Bite the tail!" and a large,
vague, benevolent, middle-aged man, more desirous than wise, with some
struggle got the bushy end of _Yarrow's_ tail into his ample mouth, and
bit it with all his might. This was more than enough for the
much-enduring, much-perspiring shepherd, who, with a gleam of joy over
his broad visage, delivered a terrific facer upon our large, vague,
benevolent, middle-aged friend,--who went down like a shot.
Still the Chicken holds; death not far _off_. "Snuff! a pinch of snuff!"
observed a calm, highly-dressed young buck, with an eye-glass in his
eye. "Snuff, indeed!" growled the angry crowd, affronted and glaring.
"Snuff! a pinch of snuff!" again observes the buck but with more
urgency; whereon were produced several open boxes, and from a mull which
may have been at Culloden, he took a pinch, knelt down, and presented it
to the nose of the Chicken. The laws of physiology and of snuff take
their course; the Chicken sneezes, and Yarrow is free!
The young pastoral giant stalks off with Yarrow in his arms,--comforting
him.
But the Bull Terrier's blood is up, and his soul unsatisfied; he grips
the first dog he meets, and discovering she is not a dog, in Homeric
phrase, he makes a brief sort of _amende_, and is off. The boys, with
Bob and me at their head, are after him: down Niddry Street he goes,
bent on mischief; up the Cowgate like an arrow--Bob and I, and our small
men, panting behind.
There, under the single arch of the South Bridge, is a huge mastiff,
sauntering down the middle of the causeway, as if with his hands in his
pockets: he is old, gray, brindled, as big as a little Highland bull,
and has the Shaksperian dewlaps shaking as he goes.
The Chicken makes straight at him, and fastens on his throat. To our
astonishment, the great creature does nothing but stand still, hold
himself up, and roar--yes, roar; a long, serious, remonstrative roar.
How is this? Bob and I are up to them. _He is muzzled!_ The bailies had
proclaimed a general muzzling, and his master, studying strength and
economy mainly, had encompassed his huge jaws in a home-made apparatus,
constructed out of the leather of some ancient _breechin_. His mouth was
open as far as it could; his lips curled up in rage--a sort of terrible
grin; his teeth gleaming, ready, from out the darkness; the strap across
his mouth tense as a bowstring; his whole frame stiff with indignation
and surprise; his roar asking us all round; "Did you ever see the like
of this?" He looked a statue of anger and astonishment, done in Aberdeen
granite.
We soon had a crowd: the Chicken held on. "A knife!" cried Bob; and a
cobbler gave him his knife: you know the kind of knife, worn away
obliquely to a point, and always keen. I put its edge to the tense
leather; it ran before it; and then!--one sudden jerk of that enormous
head, a sort of dirty mist about his mouth, no noise,--and the bright
and fierce little fellow is dropped, limp, and dead. A solemn pause:
this was more than any of us had bargained for. I turned the little
fellow over, and saw he was quite dead; the mastiff had taken him by the
small of the back like a rat, and broken it.
He looked down at his victim appeased, ashamed, and amazed; snuffed him
all over, stared at him, and taking a sudden thought, turned round and
trotted off. Bob took the dead dog up, and said, "John, we'll bury him
after tea." "Yes," said I, and was off after the mastiff. He made up the
Cowgate at a rapid swing; he had forgotten some engagement. He turned up
the Candlemaker Row, and stopped at the Harrow Inn.
There was a carrier's cart ready to start, and a keen, thin, impatient,
black-a-vised little man, his hand at his gray horse's head, looking
about angrily for something. "Rab, ye thief!" said he, aiming a kick at
my great friend, who drew cringing up, and avoiding the heavy shoe with
more agility than dignity, and watching his master's eye, slunk dismayed
under the cart,--his ears down, and as much as he had of tail down too.
What a man this must be--thought I--to whom my tremendous hero turns
tail! The carrier saw the muzzle hanging, cut and useless, from his
neck, and I eagerly told him the story, which Bob and I always thought,
and still think, Homer, or King David, or Sir Walter alone were worthy
to rehearse. The severe little man was mitigated, and condescended to
say, "Rab, my man, puir Rabbie,"--whereupon the stump of a tail rose up,
the ears were cocked, the eyes filled, and were comforted; the two
friends were reconciled. "Hupp!" and a stroke of the whip were given to
Jess; and off went the three.
* * * * *
Bob and I buried the Game Chicken that night (we had not much of a tea)
in the back-green of his house in Melville Street, No. 17, with
considerable gravity and silence; and being at the time in the Iliad,
and, like all boys, Trojans, we called him Hector of course.
* * * * *
Six years have passed,--a long time for a boy and a dog: Bob Ainslie is
off to the wars; I am a medical student, and clerk at Minto House
Hospital.
Rab I saw almost every week, on the Wednesday; and we had much pleasant
intimacy. I found the way to his heart by frequent scratching of his
huge head, and an occasional bone. When I did not notice him he would
plant himself straight before me, and stand wagging that bud of a tail,
and looking up, with his head a little to the one side. His master I
occasionally saw; he used to call me "Maister John," but was laconic as
any Spartan.
One fine October afternoon, I was leaving the hospital, when I saw the
large gate open, and in walked Rab, with that great and easy saunter of
his. He looked as if taking general possession of the place; like the
Duke of Wellington entering a subdued city, satiated with victory and
peace. After him came Jess, now white from age, with her cart; and in it
a woman, carefully wrapped up,--the carrier leading the horse anxiously,
and looking back. When he saw me, James (for his name was James Noble)
made a curt and grotesque "boo," and said, "Maister John, this is the
mistress; she's got a trouble in her breest--some kind o' an income
we're thinking'."
By this time I saw the woman's face; she was sitting on a sack filled
with straw, her husband's plaid round her, and his big-coat with its
large white metal buttons, over her feet.
I never saw a more unforgettable face--pale, serious, _lonely_,[2]
delicate, sweet, without being at all what we call fine. She looked
sixty, and had on a mutch, white as snow, with its black ribbon; her
silvery, smooth hair setting off her dark-gray eyes--eyes such as one
sees only twice or thrice in a lifetime, full of suffering, full also of
the overcoming of it: her eyebrows black and delicate, and her mouth
firm, patient, and contented, which few mouths ever are.
[2] It is not easy giving this look by one word; it was
expressive of her being so much of her life alone.
As I have said, I never saw a more beautiful countenance, or one more
subdued to settled quiet. "Ailie," said James, "this is Maister John,
the young doctor; Rab's freend, ye ken. We often speak aboot you,
doctor." She smiled, and made a movement, but said nothing; and prepared
to come down, putting her plaid aside and rising. Had Solomon, in all
his glory, been handing down the Queen of Sheba at his palace gate, he
could not have done it more daintily, more tenderly, more like a
gentleman, than did James the Howgate carrier, when he lifted down Ailie
his wife. The contrast of his small, swarthy, weather-beaten, keen,
worldly face to hers--pale, subdued, and beautiful--was something
wonderful. Rab looked on concerned and puzzled, but ready for anything
that might turn up,--were it to strangle the nurse, the porter, or even
me. Ailie and he seemed great friends.
"As I was sayin' she's got a kind o' trouble in her breest, doctor; wull
ye tak' a look at it?" We walked into the consulting-room, all four; Rab
grim and comic, willing to be happy and confidential if cause could be
shown, willing also to be the reverse, on the same terms. Ailie sat
down, undid her open gown and her lawn handkerchief round her neck, and
without a word, showed me her right breast. I looked at and examined it
carefully,-she and James watching me, and Rab eying all three. What
could I say? there it was, that had once been so soft, so shapely, so
white, so gracious and bountiful, so "full of all blessed
conditions,"--hard as a stone, a centre of horrid pain, making that pale
face, with its gray, lucid, reasonable eyes, and its sweet resolved
mouth, express the full measure of suffering overcome. Why was that
gentle, modest, sweet woman, clean and lovable, condemned by God to bear
such a burden?
I got her away to bed. "May Rab and me bide?" said James. "_You_ may;
and Rab, if he will behave himself." "I'se warrant he's do that,
doctor;" and in slank the faithful beast. I wish you could have seen
him. There are no such dogs now. He belonged to a lost tribe. As I have
said, he was brindled and gray like Rubislaw granite; his hair short,
hard, and close, like a lion's; his body thick set, like a little
bull--a sort of compressed Hercules of a dog. He must have been ninety
pounds' weight, at the least; he had a large blunt head; his muzzle
black as night, his mouth blacker than any night, a tooth or two--being
all he had--gleaming out of his jaws of darkness. His head was scarred
with the records of old wounds, a sort of series of fields of battle all
over it; one eye out, one ear cropped as close as was Archbishop
Leighton's father's; the remaining eye had the power of two; and above
it, and in constant communication with it, was a tattered rag of an ear,
which was forever unfurling itself, like an old flag; and then that bud
of a tail, about one inch long, if it could in any sense be said to be
long, being as broad as long--the mobility, the instantaneousness of
that bud were very funny and surprising, and its expressive twinklings
and winkings, the intercommunications between the eye, the ear, and it,
were of the oddest and swiftest.
Rab had the dignity and simplicity of great size; and having fought his
way all along the road to absolute supremacy, he was as mighty in his
own line as Julius Caesar or the Duke of Wellington, and had the
gravity[3] of all great fighters.
[3] A Highland game-keeper, when asked why a certain terrier, of
singular pluck, was so much more solemn than the other dogs,
said, "Oh, Sir, life's full o' sairiousness to him--he just
never can get enuff o' fechtin'."
You must have often observed the likeness of certain men to certain
animals, and of certain dogs to men. Now, I never looked at Rab without
thinking of the great Baptist preacher, Andrew Fuller.[4] The same
large, heavy, menacing, combative, sombre, honest countenance, the same
deep inevitable eye, the same look,--as of thunder asleep, but
ready,--neither a dog nor a man to be trifled with.
[4] Fuller was, in early life, when a farmer lad at Soham, famous
as a boxer; not quarrelsome, but not without "the stern
delight" a man of strength and courage feels in their
exercise. Dr. Charles Stewart, of Dunearn, whose rare gifts
and graces as a physician, a divine, a scholar, and a
gentleman, live only in the memory of those few who knew and
survive him, liked to tell how Mr. Fuller used to say, that
when he was in the pulpit, and saw a _buirdly_ man come
along the passage, he would instinctively draw himself up,
measure his imaginary antagonist, and forecast how he would
deal with him, his hands meanwhile condensing into fists,
and tending to "square." He must have been a hard hitter if
he boxed as he preached--what "The Fancy" would call "an
ugly customer."
Next day, my master, the surgeon, examined Ailie. There was no doubt it
must kill her, and soon. It could be removed--it might never return--it
would give her speedy relief--she should have it done. She curtsied,
looked at James, and said, "When?" "To-morrow," said the kind surgeon--a
man of few words. She and James and Rab and I retired. I noticed that he
and she spoke little, but seemed to anticipate everything in each other.
The following day, at noon, the students came in, hurrying up the great
stair. At the first landing-place, on a small well-known blackboard, was
a bit of paper fastened by wafers, and many remains of old wafers beside
it. On the paper were the words,--"An operation to-day. J. B. _Clerk_."
Up ran the youths, eager to secure good places: in they crowded, full of
interest and talk. "What's the case?" "Which side is it?"
Don't think them heartless; they are neither better nor worse than you
or I; they get over their professional horrors, and into their proper
work--and in them pity--as an _emotion_, ending in itself or at best in
tears and a long-drawn breath, lessens, while pity as a _motive_, is
quickened, and gains power and purpose. It is well for poor human nature
that it is so.
The operating theatre is crowded; much talk and fun, and all the
cordiality and stir of youth. The surgeon with his staff of assistants
is there. In comes Ailie: one look at her quiets and abates the eager
students. That beautiful old woman is too much for them; they sit down,
and are dumb, and gaze at her. These rough boys feel the power of her
presence. She walks in quickly, but without haste; dressed in her mutch,
her neckerchief, her white dimity short-gown, her black bombazine
petticoat, showing her white worsted stockings and her carpet-shoes.
Behind her was James with Rab. James sat down in the distance, and took
that huge and noble head between his knees. Rab looked perplexed and
dangerous; forever cocking his ear and dropping it as fast.
Ailie stepped up on a seat, and laid herself on the table, as her friend
the surgeon told her; arranged herself, gave a rapid look at James, shut
her eyes, rested herself on me, and took my hand. The operation was at
once begun; it was necessarily slow; and chloroform--one of God's best
gifts to his suffering children--was then unknown. The surgeon did his
work. The pale face showed its pain, but was still and silent. Rab's
soul was working within him; he saw that something strange was going
on,--blood flowing from his mistress, and she suffering; his ragged ear
was up, and importunate; he growled and gave now and then a sharp
impatient yelp; he would have liked to have done something to that man.
But James had him firm, and gave him a _glower_ from time to time, and
an intimation of a possible kick;--all the better for James, it kept his
eye and his mind off Ailie.
It is over: she is dressed, steps gently and decently down from the
table, looks for James; then, turning to the surgeon and the students,
she curtsies,--and in a low, clear voice, begs their pardon if she has
behaved ill. The students--all of us--wept like children; the surgeon
happed her up carefully,--and, resting on James and me, Ailie went to
her room, Rab following. We put her to bed. James took off his heavy
shoes, crammed with tackets, heel-capt and toe-capt, and put them
carefully under the table, saying, "Maister John, I'm for nane o' yer
strynge nurse bodies for Ailie. I'll be her nurse, and I'll gang aboot
on my stockin' soles as canny as pussy." And so he did; and handy and
clever, and swift and tender as any woman, was that horny-handed, snell,
peremptory little man. Everything she got he gave her: he seldom slept;
and often I saw his small shrewd eyes out of the darkness, fixed on her.
As before, they spoke little.
Rab behaved well, never moving, showing us how meek and gentle he could
be, and occasionally, in his sleep, letting us know that he was
demolishing some adversary. He took a walk with me every day, generally
to the Candlemaker Row; but he was sombre and mild; declined doing
battle, though some fit cases offered, and indeed submitted to sundry
indignities; and was always very ready to turn, and came faster back,
and trotted up the stair with much lightness, and went straight to that
door.
Jess, the mare, had been sent, with her weatherworn cart, to Howgate,
and had doubtless her own dim and placid meditations and confusions, on
the absence of her master and Rab, and her unnatural freedom from the
road and her cart.
For some days Ailie did well. The wound healed "by the first intention;"
for as James said, "Oor Ailie's skin's ower clean to beil." The students
came in quiet and anxious, and surrounded her bed. She said she liked to
see their young, honest faces. The surgeon dressed her, and spoke to her
in his own short kind way, pitying her through his eyes, Rab and James
outside the circle,--Rab being now reconciled, and even cordial, and
having made up his mind that as yet nobody required worrying, but, as
you may suppose, _semper paratus_.
So far well: but, four days after the operation, my patient had a sudden
and long shivering, a "groosin'," as she called it. I saw her soon
after; her eyes were too bright, her cheek colored; she was restless,
and ashamed of being so; the balance was lost; mischief had begun. On
looking at the wound, a blush of red told the secret: her pulse was
rapid, her breathing anxious and quick, she wasn't herself, as she said,
and was vexed at her restlessness. We tried what we could. James did
everything, was everywhere; never in the way, never out of it; Rab
subsided under the table into a dark place, and was motionless, all but
his eye, which followed every one. Ailie got worse; began to wander in
her mind, gently; was more demonstrative in her ways to James, rapid in
her questions, and sharp at times. He was vexed, and said, "She was
never that way afore; no, never." For a time she knew her head was
wrong, and was always asking our pardon--the dear, gentle old woman:
then delirium set in strong, without pause. Her brain gave way, and then
came that terrible spectacle,--
"The intellectual power, through words and things,
Went sounding on its dim and perilous way;"
she sang bits of old songs and Psalms, stopping suddenly, mingling the
Psalms of David and the diviner words of his Son and Lord, with homely
odds and ends and scraps of ballads.
Nothing more touching, or in a sense more strangely beautiful, did I
ever witness. Her tremulous, rapid, affectionate, eager, Scotch
voice,--the swift, aimless, bewildered mind, the baffled utterance, the
bright and perilous eye; some wild words, some household cares,
something for James, the names of the dead, Rab called rapidly and in a
"fremyt" voice, and he starting up surprised, and slinking off as if he
were to blame somehow, or had been dreaming he heard; many eager
questions and beseechings which James and I could make nothing of, and
on which she seemed to set her all, and then sink back ununderstood. It
was very sad, but better than many things that are not called sad. James
hovered about, put out and miserable, but active and exact as ever; read
to her when there was a lull, short bits from the Psalms, prose and
metre, chanting the latter in his own rude and serious way, showing
great knowledge of the fit words, bearing up like a man, and dealing
over her as his "ain Ailie." "Ailie, ma woman!" "Ma ain bonnie wee
dawtie!"
The end was drawing on: the golden bowl was breaking; the silver cord
was fast being loosed--that _animula blandula_, _vagula_, _hospes_,
_comesque_, was about to flee. The body and the soul--companions for
sixty years--were being sundered, and taking leave. She was walking
alone, through the valley of that shadow, into which one day we must all
enter,--and yet she was not alone, for we know whose rod and staff were
comforting her.
One night she had fallen quiet, and as we hoped, asleep; her eyes were
shut. We put down the gas, and sat watching her. Suddenly she sat up in
bed, and taking a bed-gown which was lying on it rolled up, she held it
eagerly to her breast,--to the right side. We could see her eyes bright
with a surprising tenderness and joy, bending over this bundle of
clothes. She held it as a woman holds her sucking child; opening out her
night-gown impatiently, and holding it close, and brooding over it, and
murmuring foolish little words, as over one whom his mother comforteth,
and who sucks and is satisfied. It was pitiful and strange to see her
wasted dying look, keen and yet vague--her immense love.
"Preserve me!" groaned James, giving way. And then she rocked back and
forward, as if to make it sleep, hushing it, and wasting on it her
infinite fondness. "Wae's me, doctor; I declare she's thinkin' it's that
bairn." "What bairn?" "The only bairn we ever had; our wee Mysie, and
she's in the Kingdom, forty years and mair." It was plainly true: the
pain in the breast, telling its urgent story to a bewildered, ruined
brain, was misread and mistaken; it suggested to her the uneasiness of a
breast full of milk, and then the child; and so again once more they
were together, and she had her ain wee Mysie in her bosom.
This was the close. She sank rapidly: the delirium left her; but, as she
whispered, she was "clean silly;" it was the lightening before the final
darkness. After having for some time lain still--her eyes shut, she said
"James!" He came close to her, and lifting up her calm, clear, beautiful
eyes, she gave him a long look, turned to me kindly but shortly, looked
for Rab but could not see him, then turned to her husband again, as if
she would never leave off looking, shut her eyes, and composed herself.
She lay for some time breathing quick, and passed away so gently, that
when we thought she was gone, James, in his old-fashioned way, held the
mirror to her face. After a long pause, one small spot of dimness was
breathed out; it vanished away, and never returned, leaving the blank
clear darkness of the mirror without a stain. "What is our life? it is
even a vapor, which appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth
away."
Rab all this time had been full awake and motionless; he came forward
beside us: Ailie's hand, which James had held, was hanging down; it was
soaked with his tears; Rab licked it all over carefully, looked at her,
and returned to his place under the table.
James and I sat, I don't know how long, but for some time,--saying
nothing: he started up abruptly, and with some noise went to the table,
and putting his right fore and middle fingers each into a shoe, pulled
them out, and put them on, breaking one of the leather latchets, and
muttering in anger, "I never did the like o' that afore!"
I believe he never did; nor after either. "Rab!" he said roughly, and
pointing with his thumb to the bottom of the bed. Rab leapt up, and
settled himself; his head and eye to the dead face. "Maister John, ye'll
wait for me," said the carrier; and disappeared in the darkness,
thundering down-stairs in his heavy shoes. I ran to a front window;
there he was, already round the house, and out at the gate, fleeing like
a shadow.
I was afraid about him, and yet not afraid; so I sat down beside Rab,
and being wearied, fell asleep. I awoke from a sudden noise outside. It
was November, and there had been a heavy fall of snow. Rab was _in statu
quo_; he heard the noise too, and plainly knew it, but never moved. I
looked out; and there, at the gate, in the dim morning--for the sun was
not up--was Jess and the cart,--a cloud of steam rising from the old
mare. I did not see James; he was already at the door, and came up the
stairs, and met me. It was less than three hours since he left, and he
must have posted out--who knows how?--to Howgate, full nine miles off;
yoked Jess, and driven her astonished into town. He had an armful of
blankets, and was streaming with perspiration. He nodded to me, spread
out on the floor two pairs of clean old blankets having at their
corners, "A. G., 1794," in large letters in red worsted. These were the
initials of Alison Graeme, and James may have looked in at her from
without--himself unseen but not unthought of--when he was "wat, wat, and
weary," and after having walked many a mile over the hills, may have
seen her sitting, while "a' the lave were sleepin';" and by the
firelight working her name on the blankets, for her ain James's bed.
He motioned Rab down, and taking his wife in his arms, laid her in the
blankets, and happed her carefully and firmly up, leaving the face
uncovered; and then lifting her, he nodded again sharply to me, and with
a resolved but utterly miserable face, strode along the passage, and
down-stairs, followed by Rab. I followed with a light; but he didn't
need it. I went out, holding stupidly the candle in my hand in the calm
frosty air; we were soon at the gate. I could have helped him, but I saw
he was not to be meddled with, and he was strong, and did not need it.
He laid her down as tenderly, as safely, as he had lifted her out ten
days before--as tenderly as when he had her first in his arms when she
was only "A. G.,"--sorted her, leaving that beautiful sealed face open
to the heavens; and then taking Jess by the head, he moved away. He did
not notice me, neither did Rab, who presided behind the cart.
I stood till they passed through the long shadow of the College, and
turned up Nicolson Street. I heard the solitary cart sound through the
streets, and die away and come again; and I returned, thinking of that
company going up Libberton Brae, then along Roslin Muir, the morning
light touching the Pentlands and making them like on-looking ghosts;
then down the hill through Auchindinny woods, past "haunted
Woodhouselee;" and as daybreak came sweeping up the bleak Lammermuirs,
and fell on his own door, the company would stop, and James would take
the key, and lift Ailie up again, laying her on her own bed, and, having
put Jess up, would return with Rab and shut the door.
James buried his wife, with his neighbors mourning, Rab inspecting the
solemnity from a distance. It was snow, and that black ragged hole would
look strange in the midst of the swelling spotless cushion of white.
James looked after everything; then rather suddenly fell ill, and took
to bed; was insensible when the doctor came, and soon died. A sort of
low fever was prevailing in the village, and his want of sleep, his
exhaustion, and his misery, made him apt to take it. The grave was not
difficult to reopen. A fresh fall of snow had again made all things
white and smooth; Rab once more looked on, and slunk home to the stable.
* * * * *
And what of Rab? I asked for him next week at the new carrier who got
the goodwill of James's business, and was now master of Jess and her
cart. "How's Rab?" He put me off, and said rather rudely, "What's _your_
business wi' the dowg?" I was not to be so put off. "Where's Rab?" He,
getting confused and red, and intermeddling with his hair, said, "'Deed,
sir, Rab's deid." "Dead! what did he die of?" "Weel, sir," said he,
getting redder, "he didna exactly dee; he was killed. I had to brain him
wi' a rack-pin; there was nae doin' wi' him. He lay in the treviss wi'
the mear, and wadna come oot. I tempit him wi' kail and meat, but he wad
tak naething, and keepit me frae feedin' the beast, and he was aye gur
gurrin', and grup gruppin' me by the legs. I was laith to make awa wi'
the auld dowg, his like wasna atween this and Thornhill,--but, 'deed,
sir, I could do naething else." I believed him. Fit end for Rab, quick
and complete. His teeth and his friends gone, why should he keep the
peace, and be civil?
"_With BRAINS, Sir._"
"_Multi multa sciunt, pauci multum._"
"_It is one thing to_ wish to have truth on our side, _and
another thing to wish to be_ on the side of truth."--WHATELY.
"{Atalaiporos tois pollois he zetesis tes alepheias, kai
epi ta hetoima mallon trepontai.}"--THUCYDIDES.
"_The most perfect philosophy of the_ natural _kind, only staves
off our_ IGNORANCE _a little longer; as, perhaps, the most
perfect philosophy of the_ moral or metaphysical _kind, serves
only to discover larger portions of it._"--DAVID HUME.
"Pray, Mr. Opie, may I ask what you mix your colors with?" said a brisk
dilettante student to the great painter. "With _Brains_, sir," was the
gruff reply--and the right one. It did not give much of what we call
information; it did not expound the principles and rules of the art;
but, if the inquirer had the commodity referred to, it would awaken him;
it would set him a-going, a-thinking, and a-painting to good purpose. If
he had not the wherewithal, as was likely enough, the less he had to do
with colors and their mixture the better. Many other artists, when asked
such a question, would have either set about detailing the mechanical
composition of such and such colors, in such and such proportions,
rubbed up so and so; or perhaps they would (and so much the better, but
not the best) have shown him how they laid them on; but even this would
leave him at the critical point. Opie preferred going to the quick and
the heart of the matter: "With _Brains_, sir."
Sir Joshua Reynolds was taken by a friend to see a picture. He was
anxious to admire it, and he looked it over with a keen and careful but
favorable eye. "Capital composition; correct drawing; the color, tone,
chiaroscuro excellent; but--but--it wants, hang it, it wants--_That!_"
snapping his fingers; and, wanting "that," though it had everything
else, it was worth nothing.
Again, Etty was appointed teacher of the students of the Royal Academy,
having been preceded by a clever, talkative, scientific expounder of
aesthetics, who delighted to tell the young men _how_ everything was
done, how to copy this, and how to express that. A student came up to
the new master, "How should I do this, sir?" "Suppose you try." Another,
"What does this mean, Mr. Etty?" "Suppose you look." "But I have
looked." "Suppose you look again." And they did try, and they did look,
and looked again; and they saw and achieved what they never could have
done, had the how or the what (supposing this possible, which it is not
in its full and highest meaning) been told them, or done for them; in
the one case, sight and action were immediate, exact, intense, and
secure; in the other mediate, feeble, and lost as soon as gained. But
what are "_Brains_"? what did Opie mean? and what is Sir Joshua's
"_That_"? What is included in it? and what is the use, or the need of
trying and trying, of missing often before you hit, when you can be told
at once and be done with it; or of looking when you may be shown?
Everything in medicine and in painting--practical arts--as means to
ends, let their scientific enlargement be ever so rapid and immense,
depends upon the right answers to these questions.
First of all, "brains," in the painter, are not diligence, knowledge,
skill, sensibility, a strong will, or a high aim,--he may have all
these, and never paint anything so truly good and effective as the
rugged woodcut we must all remember, of Apollyon bestriding the whole
breadth of the way, and Christian girding at him like a man, in the old
sixpenny _Pilgrim's Progress_; and a young medical student may have
zeal, knowledge, ingenuity, attention, a good eye and a steady hand--he
may be an accomplished anatomist, stethoscopist, histologist, and
analyst; and yet, with all this, and all the lectures, and all the
books, and all the sayings, and all the preparations, drawings, tables,
and other helps of his teachers, crowded into his memory or his
note-books, he may be beaten in treating a whitlow or a colic, by the
nurse in the wards where he was clerk, or by the old country doctor who
brought him into the world, and who listens with such humble wonder to
his young friend's account, on his coming home after each session, of
all he had seen and done,--of all the last astonishing discoveries and
operations of the day. What the painter wants, in addition to, and as
the complement of, the other elements, is _genius and sense_; what the
doctor needs to crown and give worth and safety to his accomplishments,
is _sense and genius_: in the first case, more of this, than of that; in
the second, more of that, than of this. These are the "_Brains_" and the
"_That_."
And what is genius? and what is sense? Genius is a peculiar native
aptitude, or tendency, to any one calling or pursuit over all others. A
man may have a genius for governing, for killing, or for curing the
greatest number of men, and in the best possible manner: a man may have
a genius for the fiddle, or his mission may be for the tight-rope, or
the Jew's harp; or it may be a natural turn for seeking, and finding,
and teaching truth, and for doing the greatest possible good to mankind;
or it may be a turn equally natural for seeking, and finding, and
teaching a lie, and doing the _maximum_ of mischief. It was as natural,
as inevitable, for Wilkie to develop himself into a painter, and such a
painter as we know him to have been, as it is for an acorn when planted
to grow up into an oak, a specific _quercus robur_. But _genius_, and
nothing else, is not enough, even for a painter; he must likewise have
_sense_; and what is sense? _Sense_ drives, or ought to drive, the
coach; sense regulates, combines, restrains, commands, all the
rest--even the genius; and sense implies exactness and soundness, power
and promptitude of mind.
Then for the young doctor, he must have as his main, his master faculty,
SENSE--Brains--{nous}, justness of mind, because his subject-matter is
one in which principle works, rather than impulse, as in painting; the
understanding has first to do with it, however much it is worthy of the
full exercise of the feelings, and the affections. But all will not do,
if GENIUS is not there,--a real turn for the profession. It may not be a
liking for it--some of the best of its practitioners never really liked
it, at least liked other things better; but there must be a fitness of
faculty of body and mind for its full, constant, exact pursuit. This
sense and this genius, such a special therapeutic gift, had Hippocrates,
Sydenham, Pott, Pinel, John Hunter, Delpech, Dupuytren, Kellie, Cheyne,
Baillie, and Abercrombie. We might, to pursue the subject, pick out
painters who had much genius and little or no sense, and _vice versa_;
and physicians and surgeons, who had sense without genius, and genius
without sense, and some perhaps who had neither, and yet were
noticeable, and, in their own sideways, useful men.
But our great object will be gained if we have given our young readers
(and these remarks are addressed exclusively to students) any idea of
what we mean, if we have made them think, and look inwards. The noble
and sacred science you have entered on is large, difficult, and deep,
beyond most others; it is every day becoming larger, deeper, and in many
senses more difficult, more complicated and involved. It requires _more
than the average_ intellect, energy, attention, patience, and courage,
and that singular but imperial quality, at once a gift and an
acquirement, _presence of mind_--{anchinoia}, or nearness of the {nous},
as the subtle Greeks called it--than almost any other department of
human thought and action, except perhaps that of ruling men. Therefore
it is, that we hold it to be of paramount importance that the parents,
teachers, and friends of youths intended for medicine, and above all,
that those who examine them on their entering on their studies, should
at least (we might safely go much farther) satisfy themselves as far as
they can, that they are not below _par_ in intelligence; they may be
deficient and unapt, _qua medici_, and yet, if taken in time, may make
excellent men in other useful and honorable callings.
But suppose we have got the requisite amount and specific kind of
capacity, how are we to fill it with its means; how are we to make it
effectual for its end? On this point we say nothing, except that the
fear now-a-days, is rather that the mind gets too much of too many
things, than too little or too few. But this means of turning knowledge
to action, making it what Bacon meant when he said it was power,
invigorating the thinking substance--giving tone, and you may call it
muscle and nerve, blood and bone, to the mind--a firm gripe, and a keen
and sure eye; _that_ we think, is far too little considered or cared for
at present, as if the mere act of filling in everything forever into a
poor lad's brain, would give him the ability to make anything of it, and
above all, the power to appropriate the small portions of true
nutriment, and reject the dregs.
One comfort we have, that in the main, and in the last resort, there is
really very little that _can_ be done for any man by another. Begin with
the sense and the genius--the keen appetite and the good digestion--and,
amid all obstacles and hardships, the work goes on merrily and well;
without these, we all know what a laborious affair, and a dismal, it is
to make an incapable youth apply. Did any of you ever set yourselves to
keep up artificial respiration, or to trudge about for a whole night
with a narcotized victim of opium, or transfuse blood (your own perhaps)
into a poor, fainting exanimate wretch? If so, you will have some idea
of the heartless attempt, and its generally vain and miserable result,
to make a dull student apprehend--a debauched, interested, knowing, or
active in anything beyond the base of his brain--a weak, etiolated
intellect hearty, and worth anything; and yet how many such are dragged
through their dreary _curricula_, and by some miraculous process of
cramming, and equally miraculous power of turning their insides out, get
through their examinations: and then--what then? providentially, in most
cases, they find their level; the broad daylight of the world--its
shrewd and keen eye, its strong instinct of what can, and what cannot
serve _its_ purpose--puts all, except the poor object himself, to
rights; happy is it for him if he turns to some new and more congenial
pursuit in time.
But it may be asked, how are the brains to be strengthened, the sense
quickened, the genius awakened, the affections raised--the whole man
turned to the best account for the cure of his fellow-men? How are you,
when physics and physiology are increasing so marvellously, and when the
burden of knowledge, the quantity of transferable information, of
registered facts, of current names--and such names!--is so infinite: how
are you to enable a student to take all in, bear up under all, and use
it as not abusing it, or being abused by it? You must invigorate the
containing and sustaining mind, you must strengthen him from within, as
well as fill him from without; you must discipline, nourish, edify,
relieve, and refresh his entire nature; and how? We have no time to go
at large into this, but we will indicate what we mean:--encourage
languages, especially French and German, at the early part of their
studies; encourage not merely the book knowledge, but the personal
pursuit of natural history, of field botany, of geology, of zoology;
give the young, fresh, unforgetting eye, exercise and free scope upon
the infinite diversity and combination of natural colors, forms,
substances, surfaces, weights, and sizes--everything, in a word, that
will educate their eye or ear, their touch, taste, and smell, their
sense of muscular resistance; encourage them by prizes, to make
skeletons, preparations, and collections of any natural objects; and,
above all, try and get hold of their affections, and make them put their
hearts into their work. Let them, if possible, have the advantage of a
regulated _tutorial_, as well as the ordinary professorial system. Let
there be no excess in the number of classes and frequency of lectures.
Let them be drilled in composition; by this we mean the writing and
spelling of correct, plain English (a matter not of every-day
occurrence, and not on the increase),--let them be directed to the best
books of the old masters in medicine, and _examined in them_,--let them
be encouraged in the use of a wholesome and manly literature. We do not
mean popular or even modern literature--such as Emerson, Bulwer, or
Alison, or the trash of inferior periodicals or novels--fashion, vanity,
and the spirit of the age, will attract them readily enough to all
these; we refer to the treasures of our elder and better authors. If our
young medical student would take our advice, and for an hour or two
twice a week take up a volume of Shakspeare, Cervantes, Milton, Dryden,
Pope, Cowper, Montaigne, Addison, Defoe, Goldsmith, Fielding, Scott,
Charles Lamb, Macaulay, Jeffrey, Sydney Smith, Helps, Thackeray, &c.,
not to mention authors on deeper and more sacred subjects--they would
have happier and healthier minds, and make none the worse doctors. If
they, by good fortune--for the tide has set in strong against the
_literae humaniores_--have come off with some Greek or Latin, we would
supplicate for an ode of Horace, a couple of pages of Cicero or of Pliny
once a month, and a page of Xenophon. French and German should be
mastered either before or during the first years of study. They will
never afterwards be acquired so easily or so thoroughly, and the want of
them may be bitterly felt when too late.
But one main help, we are persuaded, is to be found in studying, and by
this we do not mean the mere reading, but the digging into and through,
the energizing upon, and mastering such books as we have mentioned at
the close of this paper. These are not, of course, the only works we
would recommend to those who wish to understand thoroughly, and to make
up their minds, on these great subjects as wholes; but we all know too
well that our Art is long, broad, and deep,--and Time, opportunity, and
our little hour, brief and uncertain, therefore, we would recommend
those books as a sort of game of the mind, a mental exercise--like
cricket, a gymnastic, a clearing of the eyes of their mind as with
euphrasy, a strengthening their power over particulars, a getting fresh,
strong views of worn out, old things, and, above all, a learning the
right use of their reason, and by knowing their own ignorance and
weakness, finding true knowledge and strength. Taking up a book like
Arnauld, and reading a chapter of his lively, manly sense, is like
throwing your manuals, and scalpels, and microscopes, and natural (most
unnatural) orders out of your hand and head, and taking a game with the
Grange Club, or a run to the top of Arthur Seat. Exertion quickens your
pulse, expands your lungs, makes your blood warmer and redder, fills
your mouth with the pure waters of relish, strengthens and supples your
legs; and though on your way to the top you may encounter rocks, and
baffling _debris_, and gusts of fierce winds rushing out upon you from
behind corners, just as you will find in Arnauld, and all truly serious
and honest books of the kind, difficulties and puzzles, winds of
doctrine, and deceitful mists; still you are rewarded at the top by the
wide view. You see, as from a tower, the end of all. You look into the
perfections and relations of things. You see the clouds, the bright
lights and the everlasting hills on the far horizon. You come down the
hill a happier, a better, and a hungrier man, and of a better mind. But,
as we said, you must eat the book, you must crush it, and cut it with
your teeth and swallow it; just as you must walk up, and not be carried
up the hill, much less imagine you are there, or look upon a picture of
what you would see were you up, however accurately or artistically done;
no--you yourself must _do_ both.
Philosophy--the love and the possession of wisdom--is divided into two
things, science or knowledge; and a habit, or power of mind. He who has
got the first is not truly wise unless his mind has reduced and
assimilated it, as Dr. Prout would have said, unless he appropriates and
can use it for his need.
The prime qualifications of a physician may be summed up in the words
_Capax_, _Perspicax_, _Sagax_, _Efficax_. _Capax_--there must be room to
receive, and arrange, and keep knowledge; _Perspicax_--senses and
perceptions, keen, accurate, and immediate, to bring in materials from
all sensible things; _Sagax_--a central power of knowing what is what,
and what it is worth, of choosing and rejecting, of judging; and
finally, _Efficax_--the will and the way--the power to turn all the
other three--capacity, perspicacity, sagacity, to account, in the
performance of the thing in hand, and thus rendering back to the outer
world, in a new and useful form, what you had received from it. These
are the intellectual qualities which make up the physician, without any
one of which he would be _mancus_, and would not deserve the name of a
complete artsman, any more than proteine would be itself if any one of
its four elements were amissing.
We have left ourselves no room to speak of the books we have named at
the end of this paper. We recommend them all to our young readers.
Arnauld's excellent and entertaining _Art of Thinking_--the once famous
Port-Royal Logic--is, if only one be taken, probably the best. Thomson's
little book is admirable, and is specially suited for a medical student,
as its illustrations are drawn with great intelligence and exactness
from chemistry and physiology. We know nothing more perfect than the
analysis, at page 348, of Sir H. Davy's beautiful experiments to account
for the traces of an alkali, found when decomposing water by galvanism.
It is quite exquisite, the hunt after and the unearthing of "_the
residual cause_." This book has the great advantage of a clear, lively,
and strong style. We can only give some short extracts.
INDUCTION AND DEDUCTION.
"We may define the inductive method as the process of
discovering laws and rules from facts, and causes from effects;
and the deductive, as the method of deriving facts from laws,
and effects from their causes."
There is a valuable paragraph on anticipation and its uses--there is a
power and desire of the mind to project itself from the known into the
unknown, in the expectation of finding what it is in search of.
"This power of divination, this sagacity, which is the mother of
all science, we may call anticipation. The intellect, with a
dog-like instinct, will not hunt until it has found the scent.
It must have some presage of the result before it will turn its
energies to its attainment. The system of anatomy which has
immortalized the name of Oken, is the consequence of a _flash of
anticipation_, which glanced through his mind when he picked up,
in a chance walk, the skull of a deer, bleached by the weather,
and exclaimed--'_It is a vertebral column!_'"
"The man of science possesses principles--the man of art, not
the less nobly gifted, is possessed and carried away by them.
The principles which art _involves_, science _evolves_. The
truths on which the success of art depends lurk in the artist's
mind in an undeveloped state, guiding his hand, stimulating his
invention, balancing his judgment, but not appearing in regular
propositions." "An art (that of medicine for instance) will of
course admit into its limits, everything (_and nothing else_)
which can conduce to the performance of _its own proper work_;
it recognizes no other principles of selection."
"He who reads a book on logic, probably thinks no better when he
rises up than when he sat down, but if any of the principles
there unfolded cleave to his memory, and he afterwards, perhaps
unconsciously, shapes and corrects his thoughts by them, no
doubt the whole powers of his reasoning receive benefit. In a
word, every art, from reasoning to riding and rowing, is learned
by assiduous practice, and if principles do any good, it is
proportioned to the readiness with which they can be converted
into rules, and the patient constancy with which they are
applied in all our attempts at excellence."
"_A man can teach names to another man, but he cannot plant in
another's mind that far higher gift--the power of naming._"
"_Language is not only the vehicle of thought, it is a great and
efficient instrument in thinking._"
"The whole of every _science_ may be made the subject of
teaching. Not so with _art_; much of it is not teachable."
Coleridge's profound and brilliant, but unequal, and often somewhat
nebulous _Essay on Method_, is worth reading over, were it only as an
exercitation, and to impress on the mind the meaning and value of
_method_. Method is the road by which you reach, or hope to reach, a
certain end; it is a process. It is the best direction for the search
after truth. System, again, which is often confounded with it, is a
mapping out, a circumscription of knowledge, either already gained, or
theoretically laid down as probable. Aristotle had a system which did
much good, but also much mischief. Bacon was chiefly occupied in
preparing and pointing out the way--the only way--of procuring
knowledge. He left to others to systematize the knowledge after it was
got; but the pride and indolence of the human spirit lead it constantly
to build systems on imperfect knowledge. It has the trick of filling up
out of its own fancy what it has not the diligence, the humility, and
the honesty, to seek in nature; whose servant, and articulate voice, it
ought to be.
Descartes' little tract on Method is, like everything the lively and
deep-souled Breton did, full of original and bright thought.
Sir John Herschel's volume needs no praise. We know no work of the sort,
fuller of the best moral worth, as well as the highest philosophy. We
fear it is more talked of than read.
We would recommend the article in the _Quarterly Review_ as first-rate,
and written with great eloquence and grace.
SYDNEY SMITH'S _Sketches of Lectures on Moral Philosophy_.
Second Edition.
SEDGWICK'S _Discourse on the Studies at Cambridge, with a
Preface and Appendix_. Sixth Edition.
We have put these two worthies here, not because we had forgotten
them,--much less because we think less of them than the others,
especially Sydney. But because we bring them in at the end of our small
entertainment, as we hand round a liqueur--be it Curacoa, Kimmel, or old
Glenlivet--after dinner, and end with the heterogeneous
plum-pudding--that most English of realized ideas. Sydney Smith's book
is one of rare excellence, and well worthy of the study of men and
women, though perhaps not transcendental enough for our modern
philosophers, male and female. It is really astonishing how much of the
best of everything, from patriotism to nonsense, is to be found in this
volume of sketches. You may read it through, if your sides can bear such
an accumulation of laughter, with great benefit; and if you open it
anywhere, you can't read three sentences without coming across some, it
may be common thought, and often original enough, better expressed and
_put_ than you ever before saw it. The lectures on the Affections, the
Passions and Desires, and on Study, we would have everybody to read and
enjoy.
Sedgwick is a different, and, as a whole, an inferior man; but a _man_
every inch of him, and an Englishman too, in his thoughts, and in his
fine mother wit and tongue. He has, in the midst of all his confusion
and passionateness, the true instinct of philosophy--the true venatic
sense of objective truth. We know nothing better in the main, than his
demolition of what is untrue, and his reduction of what is absurd, and
his taking the wind out of what is tympanitic, in the notorious
_Vestiges_; we don't say he always does justice to what is really good
in it; his mission is to execute justice _upon it_, and that he does.
His remarks on Oken and Owen, and his quotations from Dr. Clarke's
admirable paper on the _Development of the Foetus_, in the _Cambridge
Philosophical Transactions_, we would recommend to our medical friends.
The very confusion of Sedgwick is the free outcome of a deep and racy
nature; it puts us in mind of what happened, when an Englishman was
looking with astonishment and disgust at a Scotchman eating a singed
sheep's head, and was asked by the eater what he thought of that dish?
"_Dish_, sir, do you call that a dish?" "Dish or no dish," rejoined the
Caledonian, "there's a deal o' fine confused feedin' aboot it, let me
tell you."
We conclude these rambling remarks with a quotation from Arnauld, the
friend of Pascal, and the intrepid antagonist of the Vatican and the
Grand Monarque; one of the noblest, freest, most untiring and honest
intellects, our world has ever seen. "Why don't you rest sometimes?"
said his friend Nicole to him. "Rest! why should I rest here? haven't I
an eternity to rest in?" The following sentence from his "_Port-Royal
Logic_," so well introduced and translated by Mr. Baynes, contains the
gist of all we have been trying to say. It should be engraven on the
tablets of every young student's heart--for the heart has to do with
study as well as the head.
"There is nothing more desirable than _good sense and justness
of mind_,--all other qualities of mind are of limited use, but
exactness of judgment is of general utility in every part and in
all employments of life.
"_We are too apt to employ reason merely as an instrument for
acquiring the sciences, whereas we ought to avail ourselves of
the sciences, as an instrument for perfecting our reason_;
justness of mind being infinitely more important than all the
speculative knowledge which we can obtain by means of sciences
the most solid. This ought to lead wise men to make their
sciences _the exercise and not the occupation of their mental
powers_. Men are not born to employ all their time in measuring
lines, in considering the various movements of matter: their
minds are too great, and their life too short, their time too
precious, to be so engrossed; but they are born to be just,
equitable, and prudent, in all their thoughts, their actions,
their business; to these things they ought especially to train
and discipline themselves."
So, young friends, bring _Brains_ to your work, and mix everything with
them, and them with everything. _Arma virumque_, tools and a man to use
them. Stir up, direct, and give free scope to Sir Joshua's "_that_," and
try again, and again; and look, _oculo intento, acie acerrima_. Looking
is a voluntary act,--it is the man within coming to the window; seeing
is a state,--passive and receptive, and, at the best, little more than
registrative.
Since writing the above, we have read with great satisfaction Dr.
Forbes' Lecture delivered before the Chichester Literary Society and
Mechanics' Institute, and published at their request. Its subject is,
Happiness in its relation to Work and Knowledge. It is worthy of its
author, and is, we think, more largely and finely imbued with his
personal character, than any one other of his works that we have met
with. We could not wish a fitter present for a young man starting on the
game of life. It is a wise, cheerful manly, and warm-hearted discourse
on the words of Bacon,--"He that is wise, let him pursue some desire or
other: for he that doth not affect some one thing in chief, unto him all
things are distasteful and tedious." We will not spoil this little
volume by giving any account of it. Let our readers get it, and read it.
The extracts from his Thesis, _De Mentis Exercitatione et Felicitate
exinde derivanda_, are very curious--showing the native vigor and bent
of his mind, and indicating also, at once the identity and the growth of
his thoughts during the lapse of thirty-three years.
We give the last paragraph, the sense and the filial affection of which
are alike admirable. Having mentioned to his hearers that they saw in
himself a living illustration of the truth of his position, that
happiness is a necessary result of knowledge and work, he thus
concludes:--
"If you would further desire to know to what besides I am
chiefly indebted for so enviable a lot, I would say:--1st,
Because I had the good fortune to come into the world with a
healthful frame, and with a sanguine temperament. 2d, Because I
had no patrimony, and was therefore obliged to trust to my own
exertions for a livelihood. 3d, Because I was born in a land
where instruction is greatly prized and readily accessible. 4th,
Because I was brought up to a profession which not only
compelled mental exercise, but supplied for its use materials of
the most delightful and varied kind. _And lastly and
principally, because the good man to whom I owe my existence,
had the foresight to know what would be best for his children.
He had the wisdom, and the courage, and the exceeding love, to
bestow all that could be spared of his worldly means, to
purchase for his sons, that which is beyond price_, EDUCATION;
well judging that the means so expended, if hoarded for future
use, would be, if not valueless, certainly evanescent, while the
precious treasure for which they were exchanged, a cultivated
and instructed mind, would not only last through life, but might
be the fruitful source of treasures far more precious than
itself. So equipped he sent them forth into the world to fight
Life's battle, leaving the issue in the hand of God; confident,
however, that though they might fail to achieve renown or to
conquer Fortune, they possessed _that_ which, if rightly used,
could win for them the yet higher prize of HAPPINESS."
* * * * *
Since this was written, many good books have appeared, but we would
select three, which all young men should read and get--Hartley
Coleridge's _Lives of Northern Worthies_, Thackeray's _Letters of Brown
the Elder_, and _Tom Brown's School-days_--in spirit and in expression,
we don't know any better models for manly courage, good sense, and
feeling, and they are as well written as they are thought.
There are the works of another man, one of the greatest, not only of
our, but of any time, to which we cannot too earnestly draw our young
readers. We mean the philosophical writings of Sir William Hamilton. We
know no more invigorating, quickening, rectifying kind of exercise, than
reading with a will, anything he has written upon permanently important
subjects. There is a greatness and simplicity, a closeness of thought, a
glance keen and wide, a play of the entire nature, and a truthfulness
and downrightness, with an amount, and accuracy, and vivification of
learning, such as we know of in no one other writer, ancient or
modern--not even Leibnitz; and we know no writings which so wholesomely
at once exalt and humble the reader, make him feel what is in him, and
what he can and may, as well as what he cannot, and need never hope to
know. In this respect, Hamilton is as grand as Pascal, and more simple;
he exemplifies everywhere his own sublime adaptation of
Scripture--unless a man become a little child, he cannot enter into the
kingdom; he enters the temple stooping, but he presses on, intrepid and
alone, to the inmost _adytum_, worshipping the more the nearer he gets
to the inaccessible shrine, whose veil no mortal hand has ever rent in
twain. And we name after him, the thoughtful, candid, impressive little
volume of his pupil, his friend, and his successor, Professor Fraser.
The following passage from Sir William Hamilton's _Dissertations_,
besides its wise thought, sounds in the ear like the pathetic and
majestic sadness of a symphony by Beethoven:--
"There are two sorts of ignorance: we philosophize to escape
ignorance, and the consummation of our philosophy is ignorance;
we start from the one, we repose in the other; they are the
goals from which, and to which, we tend; and the pursuit of
knowledge is but a course between two ignorances, as human life
is itself only a travelling from grave to grave.
{Tis bios?--Ek tymboio thoron, eti tymbon hodeuo.}
The highest reach of human science is the scientific recognition
of human ignorance; 'Qui nescit ignorare, ignorat scire.' This
'learned ignorance' is the rational conviction by the human mind
of its inability to transcend certain limits; it is the
knowledge of ourselves,--the science of man. This is
accomplished by a demonstration of the disproportion between
what is to be known, and our faculties of knowing,--the
disproportion, to wit, between the infinite and the finite. In
fact, the recognition of human ignorance, is not only the one
highest, but the one true, knowledge; and its first-fruit, as
has been said, is humility. Simple nescience is not proud;
consummated science is positively humble. For this knowledge it
is not, which 'puffeth up;' but its opposite, the conceit of
false knowledge,--the conceit, in truth, as the apostle notices,
of an ignorance of the very nature of knowledge:--
'Nam nesciens quid scire sit,
Te scire cuncta jactitas.'
"But as our knowledge stands to Ignorance, so stands it also to
Doubt. Doubt is the beginning and the end of our efforts to
know; for as it is true,--'Alte dubitat qui altius credit,' so
it is likewise true,--'Quo magis quaerimus magis dubitamus.'
"The grand result of human wisdom is thus only a consciousness
that what we know is as nothing to what we know not, ('Quantum
est quod nescimus!')--an articulate confession, in fact, by our
natural reason, of the truth declared in revelation, that '_now_
we see through a glass, darkly.'"
His pupil writes in the same spirit and to the same end:--"A discovery,
by means of reflection and mental experiment, of the _limits_ of
knowledge, is the highest and most universally applicable discovery of
all; it is the one through which our intellectual life most strikingly
blends with the moral and practical part of human nature. Progress in
knowledge is often paradoxically indicated by a diminution in the
_apparent bulk_ of what we know. Whatever helps to work off the dregs of
false opinion, and to purify the intellectual mass--whatever deepens our
conviction of our infinite ignorance--really adds to, although it
sometimes seems to diminish, the rational possessions of man. This is
the highest kind of merit that is claimed for Philosophy, by its
earliest as well as by its latest representatives. It is by this
standard that Socrates and Kant measure the chief results of their
toil."
BOOKS REFERRED TO.
1. Arnauld's Port-Royal Logic; translated by T. S. Baynes.--2. Thomson's
Outlines of the Necessary Laws of Thought.--3. Descartes on the Method
of Rightly Conducting the Reason, and Seeking Truth in the Sciences.--4.
Coleridge's Essay on Method.--5. Whately's Logic and Rhetoric; new and
cheap edition.--6. Mill's Logic; new and cheap edition.--7. Dugald
Stewart's Outlines.--8. Sir John Herschel's Preliminary
Dissertation.--9. Quarterly Review, vol. lxviii; Article upon Whewell's
Philosophy of Inductive Sciences.--10. Isaac Taylor's Elements of
Thought.--11. Sir William Hamilton's edition of Reid; Dissertations; and
Lectures.--12. Professor Fraser's Rational Philosophy.--13. Locke on the
Conduct of the Understanding.
_THE MYSTERY OF BLACK AND TAN._
"_The reader must remember that my work is concerning the_
aspects _of things only._"--RUSKIN.
We,--the _Sine Qua Non_, the Duchess, the Sputchard, the Dutchard, the
Ricapicticapic, Oz and Oz, the Maid of Lorn, and myself,--left Crieff
some fifteen years ago, on a bright September morning, soon after
daybreak, in a gig. It was a morning still and keen: the sun sending his
level shafts across Strathearn, and through the thin mist over its river
hollows, to the fierce Aberuchil Hills, and searching out the dark blue
shadows in the corries of Benvorlich. But who and how many are "we?" To
make you as easy as we all were, let me tell you we were four; and are
not these dumb friends of ours persons rather than things? is not their
soul ampler, as Plato would say, than their body, and contains rather
than is contained? Is not what lives and wills in them, and is
affectionate, as spiritual, as immaterial, as truly removed from mere
flesh, blood, and bones, as that soul which is the proper self of their
master? And when we look each other in the face, as I now look in
Dick's, who is lying in his "corny" by the fireside, and he in mine, is
it not as much the dog within looking from out his eyes--the windows of
his soul--as it is the man from his?
The _Sine Qua Non_, who will not be pleased at being spoken of, is such
an one as that vain-glorious and chivalrous Ulric von Huetten--the
Reformation's man of wit, and of the world, and of the sword, who slew
Monkery with the wild laughter of his _Epistolae Obscurorum Virorum_--had
in his mind when he wrote thus to his friend Fredericus Piscator (Mr.
Fred. Fisher), on the 19th May 1519, "_Da mihi uxorem, Friderice, et ut
scias qualem, venustam, adolescentulam, probe educatam, hilarem,
verecundam, patientem._" "_Qualem_," he lets Frederic understand in the
sentence preceding, is one "_qua cum ludam, qua jocos conferam,
amoeniores et leviusculas fabulas misceam, ubi sollicitudinis aciem
obtundam, curarum aestus mitigem_." And if you would know more of the
_Sine Qua Non_, and in English, for the world is dead to Latin now, you
will find her name and nature in Shakspeare's words, when King Henry the
Eighth says, "go thy ways."
_The Duchess_, alias all the other names till you come to the _Maid of
Lorn_, is a rough, gnarled, incomparable little bit of a terrier, three
parts Dandie-Dinmont, and one part--chiefly in tail and hair--cocker:
her father being Lord Rutherfurd's famous "Dandie," and her mother the
daughter of a Skye, and a light-hearted Cocker. The Duchess is about the
size and weight of a rabbit; but has a soul as big, as fierce, and as
faithful as had Meg Merrilies, with a nose as black as Topsy's; and is
herself every bit as game and queer as that delicious imp of darkness
and of Mrs. Stowe. Her legs set her long slim body about two inches and
a half from the ground, making her very like a huge caterpillar or hairy
_oobit_--her two eyes, dark and full, and her shining nose, being all of
her that seems anything but hair. Her tail was a sort of stump, in size
and in look very much like a spare foreleg, stuck in anywhere to be
near. Her color was black above and a rich brown below, with two dots of
tan above the eyes, which dots are among the deepest of the mysteries of
Black and Tan.
This strange little being I had known for some years, but had only
possessed about a month. She and her pup (a young lady called _Smoot_,
which means smolt, a young salmon), were given me by the widow of an
honest and drunken--as much of the one as of the other--Edinburgh
street-porter, a native of Badenoch, as a legacy from him and a fee from
her for my attendance on the poor man's death-bed. But my first sight of
the Duchess was years before in Broughton Street, when I saw her sitting
bolt upright, begging, imploring, with those little rough four leggies,
and those yearning, beautiful eyes, all the world, or any one, to help
her master, who was lying "mortal" in the kennel. I raised him, and with
the help of a ragged Samaritan, who was only less drunk than he, I got
Macpherson--he held from Glen Truim--home; the excited doggie trotting
off, and looking back eagerly to show us the way. I never again passed
the Porters' Stand without speaking to her. After Malcolm's burial I
took possession of her; she escaped to the wretched house, but as her
mistress was off to Kingussie, and the door shut, she gave a pitiful
howl or two, and was forthwith back at my door, with an impatient,
querulous bark. And so this is our second of the four; and is she not
deserving of as many names as any other Duchess, from her of Medina
Sidonia downwards?
A fierier little soul never dwelt in a queerer or stancher body; see her
huddled up, and you would think her a bundle of hair, or a bit of old
mossy wood, or a slice of heathery turf, with some red soil underneath
but speak to her, or give her a cat to deal with, be it bigger than
herself, and what an incarnation of affection, energy, and fury--what a
fell unquenchable little ruffian.
_The Maid of Lorn_ was a chestnut mare, a broken down racer,
thorough-bred as Beeswing, but less fortunate in her life, and I fear
not so happy _occasione mortis_: unlike the Duchess, her body was
greater and finer than her soul; still she was a ladylike creature,
sleek, slim, nervous, meek, willing, and fleet. She had been thrown down
by some brutal half-drunk Forfarshire laird, when he put her wildly and
with her wind gone, at the last hurdle on the North Inch at the Perth
races. She was done for and bought for ten pounds by the landlord of the
Drummond Arms, Crieff, who had been taking as much money out of her, and
putting as little corn into her as was compatible with life, purposing
to run her for the Consolation Stakes at Stirling. Poor young lady, she
was a sad sight--broken in back, in knees, in character, and wind--in
everything but temper, which was as sweet and all-enduring as Penelope's
or our own Enid's.
Of myself, the fourth, I decline making any account. Be it sufficient
that I am the Dutchard's master, and drove the gig.
It was, as I said, a keen and bright morning, and the S. Q. N. feeling
chilly, and the Duchess being away after a cat up a back entry, doing a
chance stroke of business, and the mare looking only half breakfasted, I
made them give her a full feed of meal and water, and stood by and
enjoyed her enjoyment. It seemed too good to be true, and she looked up
every now and then in the midst of her feast, with a mild wonder. Away
she and I bowled down the sleeping village, all overrun with sunshine,
the dumb idiot man and the birds alone up, for the ostler was off to his
straw. There was the S. Q. N. and her small panting friend, who had lost
the cat, but had got what philosophers say is better--the chase. "_Nous
ne cherchons jamais les choses, mais la recherche des choses_," says
Pascal. The Duchess would substitute for _les choses_--_les chats_.
Pursuit, not possession, was her passion. We all got in, and off set the
Maid, who was in excellent heart, quite gay, pricking her ears and
casting up her head, and rattling away at a great pace.
We baited at St. Fillans, and again cheered the heart of the Maid with
unaccustomed corn--the S. Q. N., Duchie, and myself, going up to the
beautiful rising ground at the back of the inn, and lying on the
fragrant heather looking at the Loch, with its mild gleams and shadows,
and its second heaven looking out from its depths, the wild, rough
mountains of Glenartney towering opposite. Duchie, I believe, was
engaged in minor business close at hand, and caught and ate several
large flies and a humble-bee; she was very fond of this small game.
There is not in all Scotland, or as far as I have seen in all else, a
more exquisite twelve miles of scenery than that between Crieff and the
head of Lochearn. Ochtertyre, and its woods; Benchonzie, the
head-quarters of the earthquakes, only lower than Benvorlich; Strowan;
Lawers, with its grand old Scotch pines; Comrie, with the wild Lednoch;
Dunira; and St. Fillans, where we are now lying, and where the poor
thoroughbred is tucking in her corn. We start after two hours of
dreaming in the half sunlight, and rumble ever and anon over an
earthquake, as the common folk call these same hollow, resounding rifts
in the rock beneath, and arriving at the old inn at Lochearnhead, have a
_tousie_ tea. In the evening, when the day was darkening into night,
Duchie and I,--the S. Q. N. remaining to read and rest,--walked up Glen
Ogle. It was then in its primeval state, the new road non-existent, and
the old one staggering up and down and across that most original and
Cyclopean valley, deep, threatening, savage, and yet beautiful--
"Where rocks were rudely heaped, and rent
As by a spirit turbulent;
Where sights were rough, and sounds were wild,
And everything unreconciled;"
with flocks of mighty boulders, straying all over it. Some far up, and
frightful to look at, others huddled down in the river, _immane pecus_,
and one huge unloosened fellow, as big as a manse, up aloft watching
them, like old Proteus with his calves, as if they had fled from the sea
by stress of weather, and had been led by their ancient herd _altos
visere montes_--a wilder, more "unreconciled" place I know not; and now
that the darkness was being poured into it, those big fellows looked
bigger, and hardly "canny."
Just as we were turning to come home--Duchie unwillingly, as she had
much multifarious, and as usual fruitless hunting to do--she and I were
startled by seeing a dog _in_ the side of the hill, where the soil had
been broken. She barked and I stared; she trotted consequentially up and
snuffed _more canino_, and I went nearer: it never moved, and on coming
quite close I saw as it were the _image_ of a terrier, a something that
made me think of an idea unrealized; the rough, short, scrubby heather
and dead grass, made a color and a coat just like those of a good
Highland terrier--a sort of pepper and salt this one was--and below, the
broken soil, in which there was some iron and clay, with old gnarled
roots, for all the world like its odd, bandy, and sturdy legs. Duchie
seemed not so easily unbeguiled as I was, and kept staring, and
snuffing, and growling, but did not touch it,--seemed afraid. I left and
looked again, and certainly it was very odd the _growing_ resemblance to
one of the indigenous, hairy, low-legged dogs, one sees all about the
Highlands, terriers, or earthy ones.
We came home, and told the S. Q. N. our joke. I dreamt of that visionary
terrier, that son of the soil, all night; and in the very early morning,
leaving the S. Q. N. asleep, I walked up with the Duchess to the same
spot. What a morning! it was before sunrise, at least before he had got
above Benvorlich. The loch was lying in a faint mist, beautiful
exceedingly, as if half veiled and asleep, the cataract of Edinample
roaring less loudly than in the night, and the old castle of the Lords
of Lochow, in the shadow of the hills, among its trees, might be seen
"Sole sitting by the shore of old romance."
There was still gloom in Glen Ogle, though the beams of the morning were
shooting up into the broad fields of the sky. I was looking back and
down, when I heard the Duchess bark sharply, and then give a cry of
fear, and on turning round, there was she with as much as she had of
tail between her legs, where I never saw it before, and her small Grace,
without noticing me or my cries, making down to the inn and her
mistress, a hairy hurricane. I walked on to see what it was, and there
in the same spot as last night, in the bank, was a real dog--no mistake;
it was not, as the day before, a mere surface or _spectrum_, or ghost of
a dog; it was plainly round and substantial; it was much developed since
eight P.M. As I looked, it moved slightly, and as it were by a sort of
shiver, as if an electric shock (and why not?) was being administered by
a law of nature; it had then no tail, or rather had an odd amorphous
look in that region; its eye, for it had one--it was seen in
profile--looked to my profane vision like (why not actually?) a huge
blaeberry (_vaccinium Myrtillus_, it is well to be scientific) black and
full; and I thought,--but dare not be sure, and had no time or courage
to be minute,--that where the nose should be, there was a small shining
black snail, probably the _Limax niger_ of M. de Ferussac, curled up,
and if you look at any dog's nose you will be struck with the typical
resemblance, in the corrugations and moistness and jetty blackness of
the one to the other, and of the other to the one. He was a
strongly-built, wiry, bandy, and short-legged dog. As I was staring upon
him, a beam--Oh, first creative beam!--sent from the sun--
"Like as an arrow from a bow,
Shot by an archer strong"--
as he looked over Benvorlich's shoulder, and piercing a cloudlet of mist
which clung close to him, and filling it with whitest radiance, struck
upon that eye or berry, and lit up that nose or snail: in an instant he
sneezed (the _nisus (sneezus?) formativus_ of the ancients); that eye
quivered and was quickened, and with a shudder--such as a horse executes
with that curious muscle of the skin, of which we have a mere fragment
in our neck, the _Platysma Myoides_, and which doubtless has been
lessened as we lost our distance from the horse-type--which dislodged
some dirt and stones and dead heather, and doubtless endless beetles,
and, it may be, made some near weasel open his other eye, up went his
tail, and out he came, lively, entire, consummate, _warm_, wagging his
tail, I was going to say like a Christian, I mean like an ordinary dog.
Then flashed upon me the solution of the _Mystery of Black and Tan_ in
all its varieties: the body, its upper part gray or black or yellow
according to the upper soil and herbs, heather, bent, moss, &c.; the
belly and feet, red or tan or light fawn, according to the nature of the
deep soil, be it ochrey, ferruginous, light clay, or comminuted mica
slate. And wonderfullest of all, the DOTS of TAN above the eyes--and who
has not noticed and wondered as to the philosophy of them?--_I saw made_
by the two fore feet, wet and clayey, being put briskly up to his eyes
as he sneezed that genetic, vivifying sneeze, and leaving their mark,
forever.
He took to me quite pleasantly, by virtue of "natural selection," and
has accompanied me thus far in our "struggle for life," and he, and the
S. Q. N., and the Duchess, and the Maid, returned that day to Crieff,
and were friends all our days. I was a little timid when he was crossing
a burn lest he should wash away his feet, but he merely colored the
water, and every day less and less, till in a fortnight I could wash him
without fear of his becoming a _solution_, or fluid extract of dog, and
thus resolving the mystery back into itself.
The mare's days were short. She won the Consolation Stakes at Stirling,
and was found dead next morning in Gibb's stables. The Duchess died in a
good old age, as may be seen in the history of "Our Dogs." The S. Q. N.,
and the parthenogenesic earth-born, the _Cespes Vivus_--whom we
sometimes called Joshua, because he was the Son of None (Nun), and even
Melchisedec has been whispered, but only that, and Fitz-Memnon, as being
as it were a son of the Sun, sometimes the Autochthon {autochthonos};
(indeed, if the relation of the _coup de soleil_ and the blaeberry had
not been plainly causal and effectual, I might have called him _Filius
Gunni_, for at the very moment of that shudder, by which he leapt out of
non-life into life, the Marquis's gamekeeper fired his rifle up the
hill, and brought down a stray young stag,) these two are happily with
me still, and at this moment she is out on the grass in a low
easy-chair, reading Emilie Carlen's _Brilliant Marriage_, and Dick is
lying at her feet, watching, with cocked ears, some noise in the ripe
wheat, possibly a chicken, for, poor fellow, he has a weakness for
worrying hens, and such small deer, when there is a dearth of greater.
If any, as is not unreasonable, doubt me and my story, they may come and
see Dick. I assure them he is well worth seeing.
_HER LAST HALF-CROWN._
_Once I had friends--though now by all forsaken;
Once I had parents--they are now in heaven.
I had a home once----_
_Worn out with anguish, sin, and cold, and hunger,
Down sunk the outcast, death had seized her senses.
There did the stranger find her in the morning--
God had released her._
SOUTHEY.
Hugh Miller, the geologist, journalist, and man of genius, was sitting
in his newspaper office late one dreary winter night. The clerks had all
left and he was preparing to go, when a quick rap came to the door. He
said "Come in," and, looking towards the entrance, saw a little ragged
child all wet with sleet. "Are ye Hugh Miller?" "Yes." "Mary Duff wants
ye." "What does she want?" "She's deein." Some misty recollection of the
name made him at once set out, and with his well-known plaid and stick,
he was soon striding after the child, who trotted through the now
deserted High Street, into the Canongate. By the time he got to the Old
Playhouse Close, Hugh had revived his memory of Mary Duff: a lively girl
who had been bred up beside him in Cromarty. The last time he had seen
her was at a brother mason's marriage, where Mary was "best maid," and
he "best man." He seemed still to see her bright young careless face,
her tidy short gown, and her dark eyes, and to hear her bantering, merry
tongue.
Down the close went the ragged little woman, and up an outside stair,
Hugh keeping near her with difficulty; in the passage she held out her
hand and touched him; taking it in his great palm, he felt that she
wanted a thumb. Finding her way like a cat through the darkness, she
opened a door, and saying "That's her!" vanished. By the light of a
dying fire he saw lying in the corner of the large empty room something
like a woman's clothes, and on drawing nearer became aware of a thin
pale face and two dark eyes looking keenly but helplessly up at him. The
eyes were plainly Mary Duff's, though he could recognize no other
feature. She wept silently, gazing steadily at him. "Are you Mary Duff?"
"It's a' that's o' me, Hugh." She then tried to speak to him, something
plainly of great urgency, but she couldn't, and seeing that she was very
ill, and was making herself worse, he put half-a-crown into her feverish
hand, and said he would call again in the morning. He could get no
information about her from the neighbors; they were surly or asleep.
When he returned next morning, the little girl met him at the
stair-head, and said, "She's deid." He went in, and found that it was
true; there she lay, the fire out, her face placid, and the likeness to
her maiden self restored. Hugh thought he would have known her now, even
with those bright black eyes closed as they were, _in aeternum_.
Seeking out a neighbor, he said he would like to bury Mary Duff, and
arranged for the funeral with an undertaker in the close. Little seemed
to be known of the poor outcast, except that she was a "licht," or, as
Solomon would have said, a "strange woman." "Did she drink?" "Whiles."
On the day of the funeral one or two residents in the close accompanied
him to the Canongate Churchyard. He observed a decent looking little old
woman watching them, and following at a distance, though the day was wet
and bitter. After the grave was filled, and he had taken off his hat, as
the men finished their business by putting on and slapping the sod, he
saw this old woman remaining. She came up and, courtesying, said, "Ye
wad ken that lass, sir?" "Yes; I knew her when she was young." The woman
then burst into tears, and told Hugh that she "keepit a bit shop at the
Closemooth, and Mary dealt wi' me, and aye paid reglar, and I was feared
she was dead, for she had been a month awin' me half-a-crown:" and then
with a look and voice of awe, she told him how on the night he was sent
for, and immediately after he had left, she had been awakened by some
one in her room; and by her bright fire--for she was a _bein_,
well-to-do body--she had seen the wasted dying creature, who came
forward and said, "Wasn't it half-a-crown?" "Yes." "There it is," and
putting it under the bolster, vanished!
Alas for Mary Duff! her career had been a sad one since the day when she
had stood side by side with Hugh at the wedding of their friends. Her
father died not long after, and her mother supplanted her in the
affections of the man to whom she had given her heart. The shock was
overwhelming, and made home intolerable. Mary fled from it blighted and
embittered, and after a life of shame and sorrow, crept into the corner
of her wretched garret, to die deserted and alone; giving evidence in
her latest act that honesty had survived amid the wreck of nearly every
other virtue.
"My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith
the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways
higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts."
_OUR DOGS._
"_The misery of keeping a dog, is his dying so soon; but to be
sure, if he lived for fifty years, and then died, what would
become of me?_"--SIR WALTER SCOTT.
"_There is in every animal's eye a dim image and gleam of
humanity, a flash of strange light through which their life
looks out and up to our great mystery of command over them, and
claims the fellowship of the creature if not of the
soul._"--RUSKIN.
_To Sir Walter and Lady Trevelyan's
glum and faithful_
"PETER,"
_with much regard_.
I was bitten severely by a little dog when with my mother at Moffat
Wells, being then three years of age, and I have remained "bitten" ever
since in the matter of dogs. I remember that little dog, and can at this
moment not only recall my pain and terror--I have no doubt I was to
blame--but also her face; and were I allowed to search among the shades
in the cynic Elysian fields, I could pick her out still. All my life I
have been familiar with these faithful creatures, making friends of
them, and speaking to them; and the only time I ever addressed the
public, about a year after being bitten, was at the farm of Kirklaw
Hill, near Biggar, when the text, given out from an empty cart in which
the ploughmen had placed me, was "Jacob's dog," and my entire sermon was
as follows:--"Some say that Jacob had a black dog (the _o_ very long),
and some say that Jacob had a white dog, but _I_ (imagine the
presumption of four years!) say Jacob had a brown dog, and a brown dog
it shall be."
I had many intimacies from this time onwards--Bawtie, of the inn;
Keeper, the carrier's bull-terrier; Tiger, a huge tawny mastiff from
Edinburgh, which I think must have been an uncle of Rab's; all the sheep
dogs at Callands--Spring, Mavis, Yarrow, Swallow, Cheviot, etc.; but it
was not till I was at college, and my brother at the High School, that
we possessed a dog.
TOBY
Was the most utterly shabby, vulgar, mean-looking cur I ever beheld: in
one word, _a tyke_. He had not one good feature except his teeth and
eyes, and his bark, if that can be called a feature. He was not ugly
enough to be interesting; his color black and white, his shape leggy and
clumsy; altogether what Sydney Smith would have called an
extraordinarily ordinary dog; and, as I have said, not even greatly
ugly, or, as the Aberdonians have it, _bonnie wi' ill-fauredness_. My
brother William found him the centre of attraction to a multitude of
small blackguards who were drowning him slowly in Lochend Loch, doing
their best to lengthen out the process, and secure the greatest amount
of fun with the nearest approach to death. Even then Toby showed his
great intellect by pretending to be dead, and thus gaining time and an
inspiration. William bought him for twopence, and as he had it not, the
boys accompanied him to Pilrig Street, when I happened to meet him, and
giving the twopence to the biggest boy, had the satisfaction of seeing a
general engagement of much severity, during which the twopence
disappeared; one penny going off with a very small and swift boy, and
the other vanishing hopelessly into the grating of a drain.
Toby was for weeks in the house unbeknown to any one but ourselves two
and the cook, and from my grandmother's love of tidiness and hatred of
dogs and of dirt, I believe she would have expelled "him whom we saved
from drowning," had not he, in his straightforward way, walked into my
father's bedroom one night when he was bathing his feet, and introduced
himself with a wag of his tail, intimating a general willingness to be
happy. My father laughed most heartily, and at last Toby, having got his
way to his bare feet, and having begun to lick his soles and between his
toes with his small rough tongue, my father gave such an unwonted shout
of laughter, that we--grandmother, sisters, and all of us--went in.
Grandmother might argue with all her energy and skill, but as surely as
the pressure of Tom Jones' infantile fist upon Mr. Allworthy's
forefinger undid all the arguments of his sister, so did Toby's tongue
and fun prove too many for grandmother's eloquence. I somehow think Toby
must have been up to all this, for I think he had a peculiar love for my
father ever after, and regarded grandmother from that hour with a
careful and cool eye.
Toby, when full grown, was a strong, coarse dog; coarse in shape, in
countenance, in hair, and in manner. I used to think that, according to
the Pythagorean doctrine, he must have been, or been going to be a
Gilmerton carter. He was of the bull-terrier variety, coarsened through
much mongrelism and a dubious and varied ancestry. His teeth were good,
and he had a large skull, and a rich bark as of a dog three times his
size, and a tail which I never saw equalled--indeed it was a tail _per
se_; it was of immense girth and not short, equal throughout like a
policeman's baton; the machinery for working it was of great power, and
acted in a way, as far as I have been able to discover, quite original.
We called it his ruler.
When he wished to get into the house, he first whined gently, then
growled, then gave a sharp bark, and then came a resounding, mighty
stroke which shook the house; this, after much study and watching, we
found was done by his bringing the entire length of his solid tail flat
upon the door, with a sudden and vigorous stroke; it was quite a _tour
de force_ or a _coup de queue_, and he was perfect in it at once, his
first _bang_ authoritative, having been as masterly and telling as his
last.
With all this inbred vulgar air, he was a dog of great moral
excellence--affectionate, faithful, honest up to his light, with an odd
humor as peculiar and as strong as his tail. My father, in his reserved
way, was very fond of him, and there must have been very funny scenes
with them, for we heard bursts of laughter issuing from his study when
they two were by themselves; there was something in him that took that
grave, beautiful, melancholy face. One can fancy him in the midst of his
books, and sacred work and thoughts, pausing and looking at the secular
Toby, who was looking out for a smile to begin his rough fun, and about
to end by coursing and _gurrin'_ round the room, upsetting my father's
books, laid out on the floor for consultation, and himself nearly at
times, as he stood watching him--and off his guard and shaking with
laughter. Toby had always a great desire to accompany my father up to
town; this my father's good taste and sense of dignity, besides his fear
of losing his friend (a vain fear!), forbade, and as the decision of
character of each was great and nearly equal, it was often a drawn game.
Toby ultimately, by making it his entire object, triumphed. He usually
was nowhere to be seen on my father leaving; he however saw him, and lay
in wait at the head of the street, and up Leith Walk he kept him in view
from the opposite side like a detective, and then, when he knew it was
hopeless to hound him home, he crossed unblushingly over, and joined
company, excessively rejoiced of course.
One Sunday he had gone with him to church, and left him at the vestry
door. The second psalm was given out, and my father was sitting back in
the pulpit, when the door at its back, up which he came from the vestry,
was seen to move, and gently open, then, after a long pause, a black
shining snout pushed its way steadily into the congregation, and was
followed by Toby's entire body. He looked somewhat abashed, but snuffing
his friend, he advanced as if on thin ice, and not seeing him, put his
forelegs on the pulpit, and behold there he was, his own familiar chum.
I watched all this, and anything more beautiful than his look of
happiness, of comfort, of entire ease when he beheld his friend,--the
smoothing down of the anxious ears, the swing of gladness of that mighty
tail,--I don't expect soon to see. My father quietly opened the door,
and Toby was at his feet and invisible to all but himself; had he sent
old George Peaston, the "minister's man," to put him out, Toby would
probably have shown his teeth, and astonished George. He slunk home as
soon as he could, and never repeated that exploit.
I never saw in any other dog the sudden transition from discretion, not
to say abject cowardice, to blazing and permanent valor. From his
earliest years he showed a general meanness of blood, inherited from
many generations of starved, bekicked, and down-trodden forefathers and
mothers, resulting in a condition of intense abjectness in all matters
of personal fear; anybody, even a beggar, by a _gowl_ and a threat of
eye, could send him off howling by anticipation, with that mighty tail
between his legs. But it was not always so to be, and I had the
privilege of seeing courage, reasonable, absolute, and for life, spring
up in Toby at once, as did Athene from the skull of Jove. It happened
thus:--
Toby was in the way of hiding his culinary bones in the small gardens
before his own and the neighboring doors. Mr. Scrymgeour, two doors off,
a bulky, choleric, red-haired, red-faced man--_torvo vultu_--was, by the
law of contrast, a great cultivator of flowers, and he had often scowled
Toby into all but non-existence by a stamp of his foot and a glare of
his eye. One day his gate being open, in walks Toby with a huge bone,
and making a hole where Scrymgeour had two minutes before been planting
some precious slip, the name of which on paper and on a stick Toby made
very light of, substituted his bone, and was engaged covering it, or
thinking he was covering it up with his shovelling nose (a very odd
relic of paradise in the dog), when S. spied him through the inner glass
door, and was out upon him like the Assyrian, with a terrible _gowl_. I
watched them. Instantly Toby made straight at him with a roar too, and
an eye more torve than Scrymgeour's, who, retreating without reserve,
fell prostrate, there is reason to believe, in his own lobby. Toby
contented himself with proclaiming his victory at the door, and
returning finished his bone-planting at his leisure; the enemy, who had
scuttled behind the glass-door, glaring at him.
From this moment Toby was an altered dog. Pluck at first sight was lord
of all; from that time dated his first tremendous deliverance of tail
against the door, which we called "come listen to my tail." That very
evening he paid a visit to Leo, next door's dog, a big, tyrannical bully
and coward, which its master thought a Newfoundland, but whose pedigree
we knew better; this brute continued the same system of chronic
extermination which was interrupted at Lochend,--having Toby down among
his feet, and threatening him with instant death two or three times a
day. To him Toby paid a visit that very evening, down into his den, and
walked about, as much as to say "Come on, Macduff!" but Macduff did not
come on, and henceforward there was an armed neutrality, and they merely
stiffened up and made their backs rigid, pretended each not to see the
other, walking solemnly round, as is the manner of dogs. Toby worked his
new-found faculty thoroughly, but with discretion. He killed cats,
astonished beggars, kept his own in his own garden against all comers,
and came off victorious in several well-fought battles; but he was not
quarrelsome or foolhardy. It was very odd how his carriage changed,
holding his head up, and how much pleasanter he was at home. To my
father, next to William, who was his Humane Society man, he remained
stanch. And what of his end? for the misery of dogs is that they die so
soon, or as Sir Walter says, it is well they do; for if they lived as
long as a Christian, and we liked them in proportion, and they then
died, he said that was a thing he could not stand.
His exit was miserable, and had a strange poetic or tragic relation to
his entrance. My father was out of town; I was away in England. Whether
it was that the absence of my father had relaxed his power of moral
restraint, or whether through neglect of the servant he had been
desperately hungry, or most likely both being true, Toby was discovered
with the remains of a cold leg of mutton, on which he had made an ample
meal;[5] this he was in vain endeavoring to plant as of old, in the hope
of its remaining undiscovered till to-morrow's hunger returned, the
whole shank bone sticking up unmistakably. This was seen by our
excellent and Radamanthine grandmother, who pronounced sentence on the
instant; and next day, as William was leaving for the High School, did
he in the sour morning, through an easterly _haur_, behold him "whom he
saved from drowning," and whom, with better results than in the case of
Launce and Crab, he had taught, as if one should say, "thus would I
teach a dog," dangling by his own chain from his own lamp-post, one of
his hind feet just touching the pavement, and his body preternaturally
elongated.
[5] Toby was in the state of the shepherd boy whom George Webster
met in Glenshee, and asked, "My man, were you ever fou'?"
"Ay, aince" speaking slowly, as if remembering--"Ay, aince."
"What on?" "Cauld mutton!"
William found him dead and warm, and falling in with the milk-boy at the
head of the street, questioned him, and discovered that he was the
executioner, and had got twopence, he--Toby's every morning crony, who
met him and accompanied him up the street, and licked the outside of his
can--had, with an eye to speed and convenience, and a want of taste, not
to say principle and affection, horrible still to think of, suspended
Toby's animation beyond all hope. William instantly fell upon him,
upsetting his milk and cream, and gave him a thorough licking, to his
own intense relief; and, being late, he got from Pyper, who was a
martinet, the customary palmies, which he bore with something
approaching to pleasure. So died Toby; my father said little, but he
missed and mourned his friend.
There is reason to believe that by one of those curious intertwistings
of existence, the milk-boy was that one of the drowning party who got
the penny of the twopence.
WYLIE.
Our next friend was an exquisite shepherd's dog; fleet, thin-flanked,
dainty, and handsome as a small grayhound, with all the grace of silky
waving black and tan hair. We got him thus. Being then young and keen
botanists, and full of the knowledge and love of Tweedside, having been
on every hill-top from Muckle Mendic to Hundleshope and the Lee Pen, and
having fished every water from Tarth to the Leithen, we discovered early
in spring that young Stewart, author of an excellent book on natural
history, a young man of great promise and early death, had found the
_Buxbaumia aphylla_, a beautiful and odd-looking moss, west of Newbie
heights, in the very month we were that moment in. We resolved to start
next day. We walked to Peebles, and then up Haystoun Glen to the cottage
of Adam Cairns, the aged shepherd of the Newbie hirsel, of whom we knew,
and who knew of us from his daughter, Nancy Cairns, a servant with Uncle
Aitken of Callands. We found our way up the burn with difficulty, as the
evening was getting dark; and on getting near the cottage heard them at
worship. We got in, and made ourselves known, and got a famous tea, and
such cream and oat cake!--old Adam looking on us as "clean dementit" to
come out for "a bit moss," which, however, he knew, and with some pride
said he would take us in the morning to the place. As we were going into
a box bed for the night, two young men came in, and said they were "gaun
to burn the water." Off we set. It was a clear, dark, starlight, frosty
night. They had their leisters and tar torches, and it was something
worth seeing--the wild flame, the young fellows striking the fish coming
to the light--how splendid they looked with the light on their scales,
coming out of the darkness--the stumblings and quenchings suddenly of
the lights, as the torch-bearer fell into a deep pool. We got home past
midnight, and slept as we seldom sleep now. In the morning Adam, who had
been long up, and had been up the "_Hope_" with his dog, when he saw we
had wakened, told us there was four inches of snow, and we soon saw it
was too true. So we had to go home without our cryptogamic prize.
It turned out that Adam, who was an old man and frail, and had made some
money, was going at Whitsunday to leave, and live with his son in
Glasgow. We had been admiring the beauty and gentleness and perfect
shape of Wylie, the finest colley I ever saw, and said, "What are you
going to do with Wylie?" "'Deed," says he, "I hardly ken. I canna think
o' sellin' her, though she's worth four pound, and she'll no like the
toun." I said, "Would you let me have her?" and Adam, looking at her
fondly--she came up instantly to him, and made of him--said, "Ay, I
wull, if ye'll be gude to her;" and it was settled that when Adam left
for Glasgow she should be sent into Albany Street by the carrier.
She came, and was at once taken to all our hearts, even grandmother
liked her; and though she was often pensive, as if thinking of her
master and her work on the hills, she made herself at home, and behaved
in all respects like a lady. When out with me, if she saw sheep in the
streets or road, she got quite excited, and helped the work, and was
curiously useful, the being so making her wonderfully happy. And so her
little life went on, never doing wrong, always blithe and kind and
beautiful. But some months after she came, there was a mystery about
her: every Tuesday evening she disappeared; we tried to watch her, but
in vain, she was always off by nine P. M., and was away all night,
coming back next day wearied and all over mud, as if she had travelled
far. She slept all next day. This went on for some months and we could
make nothing of it. Poor dear creature, she looked at us wistfully when
she came in, as if she would have told us if she could, and was
especially fond, though tired.
Well, one day I was walking across the Grassmarket, with Wylie at my
heels, when two shepherds started, and looking at her, one said, "That's
her; that's the wonderfu' wee bitch that naebody kens." I asked him what
he meant, and he told me that for months past she had made her
appearance by the first daylight at the "buchts" or sheep-pens in the
cattle market, and worked incessantly, and to excellent purpose, in
helping the shepherds to get their sheep and lambs in. The man said with
a sort of transport, "She's a perfect meeracle; flees about like a
speerit, and never gangs wrang; wears but never grups, and beats a' oor
dowgs. She's a perfect meeracle, and as soople as a maukin." Then he
related how they all knew her, and said, "There's that wee fell yin;
we'll get them in noo." They tried to coax her to stop and be caught,
but no, she was gentle, but off; and for many a day that "wee fell yin"
was spoken of by these rough fellows. She continued this amateur work
till she died, which she did in peace.
It is very touching the regard the south-country shepherds have to their
dogs. Professor Syme one day, many years ago, when living in Forres
Street, was looking out of his window, and he saw a young shepherd
striding down North Charlotte Street, as if making for his house; it was
midsummer. The man had his dog with him, and Mr. Syme noticed that he
followed the dog, and not it him, though he contrived to steer for the
house. He came, and was ushered into his room; he wished advice about
some ailment, and Mr. Syme saw that he had a bit of twine round the
dog's neck, which he let drop out of his hand when he entered the room.
He asked him the meaning of this, and he explained that the magistrates
had issued a mad-dog proclamation, commanding all dogs to be muzzled or
led on pain of death. "And why do you go about as I saw you did before
you came in to me?" "Oh," said he, looking awkward, "I didna want Birkie
to ken he was tied." Where will you find truer courtesy and finer
feeling? He didn't want to hurt Birkie's feelings.
Mr. Carruthers of Inverness told me a new story of these wise sheep
dogs. A butcher from Inverness had purchased some sheep at Dingwall, and
giving them in charge to his dog, left the road. The dog drove them on,
till coming to a toll, the toll-wife stood before the drove, demanding
her dues. The dog looked at her, and, jumping on her back, crossed his
forelegs over her arms. The sheep passed through, and the dog took his
place behind them, and went on his way.
RAB.
Of Rab I have little to say, indeed have little right to speak of him as
one of "our dogs;" but nobody will be sorry to hear anything of that
noble fellow. Ailie, the day or two after the operation, when she was
well and cheery, spoke about him, and said she would tell me fine
stories when I came out, as I promised to do, to see her at Howgate. I
asked her how James came to get him. She told me that one day she saw
James coming down from Leadburn with the cart; he had been away west,
getting eggs and butter, cheese and hens for Edinburgh. She saw he was
in some trouble, and on looking, there was what she thought a young calf
being dragged, or, as she called it, "haurled," at the back of the cart.
James was in front, and when he came up, very warm and very angry, she
saw that there was a huge young dog tied to the cart, struggling and
pulling back with all his might, and as she said "lookin' fearsom."
James, who was out of breath and temper, being past his time, explained
to Ailie, that this "muckle brute o' a whalp" had been worrying sheep,
and terrifying everybody up at Sir George Montgomery's at Macbie Hill,
and that Sir George had ordered him to be hanged, which, however, was
sooner said than done, as "the thief" showed his intentions of dying
hard. James came up just as Sir George had sent for his gun; and as the
dog had more than once shown a liking for him, he said he "wad gie him a
chance;" and so he tied him to his cart. Young Rab, fearing some
mischief, had been entering a series of protests all the way, and nearly
strangling himself to spite James and Jess, besides giving Jess more
than usual to do. "I wish I had let Sir George pit that charge into him,
the thrawn brute," said James. But Ailie had seen that in his foreleg
there was a splinter of wood, which he had likely got when objecting to
be hanged, and that he was miserably lame. So she got James to leave him
with her, and go straight into Edinburgh. She gave him water, and by her
woman's wit got his lame paw under a door, so that he couldn't suddenly
get at her, then with a quick firm hand she plucked out the splinter,
and put in an ample meal. She went in some time after, taking no notice
of him, and he came limping up, and laid his great jaws in her lap; from
that moment they were "chief," as she said, James finding him mansuete
and civil when he returned.
She said it was Rab's habit to make his appearance exactly half an hour
before his master, trotting in full of importance, as if to say, "He's
all right, he'll be here." One morning James came without him. He had
left Edinburgh very early, and in coming near Auchindinny, at a lonely
part of the road, a man sprang out on him, and demanded his money.
James, who was a cool hand, said, "Weel a weel, let me get it," and
stepping back, he said to Rab, "Speak till him, my man." In an instant
Rab was standing over him, threatening strangulation if he stirred.
James pushed on, leaving Rab in charge; he looked back, and saw that
every attempt to rise was summarily put down. As he was telling Ailie
the story, up came Rab with that great swing of his. It turned out that
the robber was a Howgate lad, the worthless son of a neighbor, and Rab
knowing him had let him cheaply off; the only thing, which was seen by a
man from a field, was, that before letting him rise, he quenched (_pro
tempore_) the fire of the eyes of the ruffian, by a familiar Gulliverian
application of Hydraulics, which I need not further particularize.
James, who did not know the way to tell an untruth, or embellish
anything, told me this as what he called "a fact _positeevely_."
WASP
Was a dark brindled bull-terrier, as pure in blood as Cruiser or Wild
Dayrell. She was brought by my brother from Otley, in the West Riding.
She was very handsome, fierce, and gentle, with a small, compact,
finely-shaped head, and a pair of wonderful eyes,--as full of fire and
of softness as Grisi's; indeed she had to my eye a curious look of that
wonderful genius--at once wild and fond. It was a fine sight to see her
on the prowl across Bowden Moor, now cantering with her nose down, now
gathered up on the top of a dyke, and with erect ears, looking across
the wild like a moss-trooper out on business, keen and fell. She could
do everything it became a dog to do, from killing an otter or a polecat,
to watching and playing with a baby, and was as docile to her master as
she was surly to all else. She was not quarrelsome, but "being in," she
would have pleased Polonius as much, as in being "ware of entrance." She
was never beaten, and she killed on the spot several of the country
bullies who came out upon her when following her master in his rounds.
She generally sent them off howling with one snap, but if this was not
enough, she made an end of it.
But it was as a mother that she shone; and to see the gypsy, Hagar-like
creature nursing her occasional Ishmael--playing with him, and fondling
him all over, teaching his teeth to war, and with her eye and the curl
of her lip daring any one but her master to touch him, was like seeing
Grisi watching her darling "_Gennaro_," who so little knew why and how
much she loved him.
Once when she had three pups, one of them died. For two days and nights
she gave herself up to trying to bring it to life--licking it and
turning it over and over, growling over it, and all but worrying it to
awake it. She paid no attention to the living two, gave them no milk,
flung them away with her teeth, and would have killed them, had they
been allowed to remain with her. She was as one possessed, and neither
ate, nor drank, nor slept, was heavy and miserable with her milk, and in
such a state of excitement that no one could remove the dead pup.
Early on the third day she was seen to take the pup in her mouth, and
start across the fields towards the Tweed, striding like a
race-horse--she plunged in, holding up her burden, and at the middle of
the stream dropped it and swam swiftly ashore; then she stood and
watched the little dark lump floating away, bobbing up and down with the
current, and losing it at last far down, she made her way home, sought
out the living two, devoured them with her love, carried them one by one
to her lair, and gave herself up wholly to nurse them; you can fancy her
mental and bodily happiness and relief when they were pulling away--and
theirs.
On one occasion my brother had lent her to a woman who lived in a lonely
house, and whose husband was away for a time. She was a capital watch.
One day an Italian with his organ came--first begging, then demanding
money--showing that he knew she was alone, and that he meant to help
himself, if she didn't. She threatened to "lowse the dowg;" but as this
was Greek to him, he pushed on. She had just time to set Wasp at him. It
was very short work. She had him by the throat, pulled him and his organ
down with a heavy crash, the organ giving a ludicrous sort of cry of
musical pain. Wasp thinking this was from some creature within, possibly
a _whittret_, left the ruffian, and set to work tooth and nail on the
box. Its master slunk off, and with mingled fury and thankfulness
watched her disembowelling his only means of an honest living. The woman
good-naturedly took her off, and signed to the miscreant to make himself
and his remains scarce. This he did with a scowl; and was found in the
evening in the village, telling a series of lies to the watchmaker, and
bribing him with a shilling to mend his pipes--"his kist o' whussels."
JOCK
Was insane from his birth; at first an _amabilis insania_, but ending in
mischief and sudden death. He was an English terrier, fawn-colored; his
mother's name VAMP (Vampire), and his father's DEMON. He was more
properly _daft_ than mad; his courage, muscularity, and prodigious
animal spirits making him insufferable, and never allowing one sane
feature of himself any chance. No sooner was the street door open, than
he was throttling the first dog passing, bringing upon himself and me
endless grief. Cats he tossed up into the air, and crushed their spines
as they fell. Old ladies he upset by jumping over their heads; old
gentlemen by running between their legs. At home, he would think nothing
of leaping through the tea-things, upsetting the urn, cream, etc., and
at dinner the same sort of thing. I believe if I could have found time
to thrash him sufficiently, and let him be a year older, we might have
kept him; but having upset an Earl when the streets were muddy, I had to
part with him. He was sent to a clergyman in the island of Westray, one
of the Orkneys; and though he had a wretched voyage, and was as sick as
any dog, he signalized the first moment of his arrival at the manse, by
strangling an ancient monkey, or "puggy," the pet of the minister,--who
was a bachelor,--and the wonder of the island. Jock henceforward took to
evil courses, extracting the kidneys of the best young rams, driving
whole hirsels down steep places into the sea, till at last all the guns
of Westray were pointed at him, as he stood at bay under a huge rock on
the shore, and blew him into space. I always regret his end, and blame
myself for sparing the rod. Of
DUCHIE
I have already spoken; her oddities were endless. We had and still have
a dear friend,--"Cousin Susan" she is called by many who are not her
cousins--a perfect lady, and, though hopelessly deaf, as gentle and
contented as was ever Griselda with the full use of her ears; quite as
great a pet, in a word, of us all as Duchie was of ours. One day we
found her mourning the death of a cat, a great playfellow of the
Sputchard's, and her small Grace was with us when we were condoling with
her, and we saw that she looked very wistfully at Duchie. I wrote on the
slate, "Would you like her?" and she through her tears said, "You know
that would never do." But it did do. We left Duchie that very night, and
though she paid us frequent visits, she was Cousin Susan's for life. I
fear indulgence dulled her moral sense. She was an immense happiness to
her mistress, whose silent and lonely days she made glad with her oddity
and mirth. And yet the small creature, old, toothless, and blind,
domineered over her gentle friend--threatening her sometimes if she
presumed to remove the small Fury from the inside of her own bed, into
which it pleased her to creep. Indeed, I believe it is too true, though
it was inferred only, that her mistress and friend spent a great part of
a winter night in trying to coax her dear little ruffian out of the
centre of the bed. One day the cook asked what she would have for
dinner: "I would like a mutton chop, but then, you know, Duchie likes
minced veal better!" The faithful and happy little creature died at a
great age, of natural decay.
* * * * *
But time would fail me, and I fear patience would fail you, my reader,
were I to tell you of CRAB, of JOHN PYM, of PUCK, and of the rest. CRAB,
the Mugger's dog, grave, with deep-set, melancholy eyes, as of a
nobleman (say the Master of Ravenswood) in disguise, large visaged,
shaggy, indomitable, come of the pure Piper Allan's breed. This Piper
Allan, you must know, lived some two hundred years ago in Cocquet Water,
piping like Homer, from place to place, and famous not less for his dog
than for his music, his news and his songs. The Earl of Northumberland,
of his day, offered the piper a small farm for his dog, but after
deliberating for a day Allan said, "Na, na, ma Lord, keep yir ferum;
what wud a piper do wi' a ferum?" From this dog descended Davidson of
Hyndlee's breed, the original Dandie-Dinmont, and Crab could count his
kin up to him. He had a great look of the Right Honorable Edward Ellice,
and had much of his energy and _wecht_; had there been a dog House of
Commons, Crab would have spoken as seldom, and been as great a power in
the house, as the formidable and faithful time-out-of-mind member for
Coventry.
JOHN PYM was a smaller dog than Crab, of more fashionable blood, being a
son of Mr. Somner's famous SHEM, whose father and brother are said to
have been found dead in a drain into which the hounds had run a fox. It
had three entrances: the father was put in at one hole, the son at
another, and speedily the fox bolted out at the third, but no appearance
of the little terriers, and on digging, they were found dead, locked in
each other's jaws; they had met, and it being dark, and there being no
time for explanations, they had throttled each other. John was made of
the same sort of stuff, and was as combative and victorious as his great
namesake, and not unlike him in some of his not so creditable qualities.
He must, I think, have been related to a certain dog to whom "life was
full o' sairiousness," but in John's case the same cause produced an
opposite effect. John was gay and light-hearted, even when there was not
"enuff of fechtin," which, however, seldom happened, there being a
market every week in Melrose, and John appearing most punctually at the
cross to challenge all comers, and being short legged, he inveigled
every dog into an engagement by first attacking him, and then falling
down on his back, in which posture he latterly fought and won all his
battles.
What can I say of PUCK[6]--the thoroughbred--the simple-hearted--the
purloiner of eggs warm from the hen--the flutterer of all manner of
Volscians--the bandy-legged, dear, old, dilapidated buffer? I got him
from my brother, and only parted with him because William's stock was
gone. He had to the end of life a simplicity which was quite touching.
One summer day--a dog-day--when all dogs found straying were hauled away
to the police-office, and killed off in twenties with strychnine, I met
Puck trotting along Princes Street with a policeman, a rope round his
neck, he looking up in the fatal, official, but kindly countenance in
the most artless and cheerful manner, wagging his tail and trotting
along. In ten minutes he would have been in the next world; for I am one
of those who believe dogs _have_ a next world, and why not? Puck ended
his days as the best dog in Roxburghshire. _Placide quiescas!_
[6] In _The Dog_, by Stonehenge, an excellent book, there is a
woodcut of Puck, and "Dr. Wm. Brown's celebrated dog John
Pym" is mentioned. Their pedigrees are given--here is
Puck's, which shows his "strain" is of the pure azure
blood--"Got by John Pym, out of Tib; bred by Purves of
Leaderfoot; sire, Old Dandie, the famous dog of old John
Stoddart of Selkirk--dam, Whin." How Homeric all this
sounds! I cannot help quoting what follows--"Sometimes a
Dandie pup of a good strain may appear not to be game at an
early age; but he should not be parted with on this account,
because many of them do not show their courage till nearly
two years old, and then nothing can beat them; this apparent
softness arising, as I suspect, _from kindness of heart_"--a
suspicion, my dear "Stonehenge," which is true, and shows
your own "kindness of heart," as well as sense.
DICK
Still lives, and long may he live! As he was never born, possibly he may
never die; be it so, he will miss us when we are gone. I could say much
of him, but agree with the lively and admirable Dr. Jortin, when, in his
dedication of his _Remarks on Ecclesiastical History_ to the then (1752)
Archbishop of Canterbury, he excuses himself for not following the
modern custom of praising his Patron, by reminding his Grace "that it
was a custom amongst the ancients, _not to sacrifice to heroes till
after sunset_." I defer my sacrifice till Dick's sun is set.
I think every family should have a dog; it is like having a perpetual
baby; it is the plaything and crony of the whole house. It keeps them
all young. All unite upon Dick. And then he tells no tales, betrays no
secrets, never sulks, asks no troublesome questions, never gets into
debt, never coming down late for breakfast, or coming in through his
Chubb _too early_ to bed--is always ready for a bit of fun, lies in wait
for it, and you may, if choleric, to your relief, kick him instead of
some one else, who would not take it so meekly, and, moreover, would
certainly not, as he does, ask your pardon for being kicked.
Never put a collar on your dog--it only gets him stolen; give him only
one meal a day, and let that, as Dame Dorothy, Sir Thomas Browne's wife,
would say, be "rayther under." Wash him once a week, and always wash the
soap out; and let him be carefully combed and brushed twice a week.
By the bye, I was wrong in saying that it was Burns who said Man is the
God of the Dog--he got it from Bacon's _Essay on Atheism_.
_QUEEN MARY'S CHILD-GARDEN._
If any one wants a pleasure that is sure to please, one over which he
needn't growl the sardonic beatitude of the great Dean, let him, when
the Mercury is at "Fair," take the nine A.M. train to the North and a
return-ticket for Callander, and when he arrives at Stirling, let him
ask the most obliging and knowing of station-masters to telegraph to
"the Dreadnought" for a carriage to be in waiting. When passing Dunblane
Cathedral, let him resolve to write to the _Scotsman_, advising the
removal of a couple of shabby trees which obstruct the view of that
beautiful triple end window which Mr. Ruskin and everybody else admires,
and by the time he has written this letter in his mind, and turned the
sentences to it, he will find himself at Callander and the carriage all
ready. Giving the order for the _Port of Monteith_, he will rattle
through this hard-featured, and to our eye comfortless village, lying
ugly amid so much grandeur and beauty, and let him stop on the crown of
the bridge, and fill his eyes with the perfection of the view up the
Pass of Leny--the Teith lying diffuse and asleep, as if its heart were
in the Highlands and it were loath to go, the noble Ben Ledi imaged in
its broad stream. Then let him make his way across a bit of pleasant
moorland--flushed with maidenhair and white with cotton grass, and
fragrant with the _Orchis conopsia_, well deserving its epithet
_odoratissima_.
He will see from the turn of the hill-side the Blair of Drummond waving
with corn and shadowed with rich woods, where eighty years ago there was
a black peat-moss; and far off, on the horizon, Damyat and the Touch
Fells; and at his side the little loch of Ruskie, in which he may see
five Highland cattle, three tawny brown and two brindled, standing in
the still water--themselves as still, all except their switching tails
and winking ears--the perfect images of quiet enjoyment. By this time he
will have come in sight of the Lake of Monteith, set in its woods, with
its magical shadows and soft gleams. There is a loveliness, a gentleness
and peace about it more like "lone St. Mary's Lake," or Derwent Water,
than of any of its sister lochs. It is lovely rather than beautiful, and
is a sort of gentle prelude, in the _minor_ key, to the coming glories
and intenser charms of Loch Ard and the true Highlands beyond.
You are now at the Port, and have passed the secluded and cheerful
manse, and the parish kirk with its graves, close to the lake, and the
proud aisle of the Grahams of Gartmore washed by its waves. Across the
road is the modest little inn, a Fisher's Tryst. On the unruffled water
lie several islets, plump with rich foliage, brooding like great birds
of calm. You somehow think of them as on, not in the lake, or like
clouds lying in a nether sky--"like ships waiting for the wind." You get
a coble, and a _yauld_ old Celt, its master, and are rowed across to
_Inchmahome, the Isle of Rest_. Here you find on landing huge Spanish
chestnuts, one lying dead, others standing stark and peeled, like
gigantic antlers, and others flourishing in their _viridis senectus_,
and in a thicket of wood you see the remains of a monastery of great
beauty, the design and workmanship exquisite. You wander through the
ruins, overgrown with ferns and Spanish filberts, and old fruit-trees,
and at the corner of the old monkish garden you come upon one of the
strangest and most touching sights you ever saw--an oval space of about
18 feet by 12, with the remains of a double row of boxwood all round,
the plants of box being about fourteen feet high, and eight or nine
inches in diameter, healthy, but plainly of great age.
What is this? it is called in the guide-books Queen Mary's Bower; but
besides its being plainly not in the least a bower, what could the
little Queen, then five years old, and "fancy free," do with a bower? It
is plainly, as was, we believe, first suggested by our keen-sighted and
diagnostic Professor of Clinical Surgery,[7] _the Child-Queen's Garden_,
with her little walk, and its rows of boxwood, left to themselves for
three hundred years. Yes, without doubt, "here is that first garden of
her simpleness." Fancy the little, lovely royal child, with her four
Marys, her playfellows, her child maids of honor, with their little
hands and feet, and their innocent and happy eyes, pattering about that
garden all that time ago, laughing, and running, and gardening as only
children do and can. As is well known, Mary was placed by her mother in
this Isle of Rest before sailing from the Clyde for France. There is
something "that tirls the heartstrings a' to the life" in standing and
looking on this unmistakable living relic of that strange and pathetic
old time. Were we Mr. Tennyson, we would write an Idyll of that child
Queen, in that garden of hers, eating her bread and honey--getting her
teaching from the holy men, the monks of old, and running off in wild
mirth to her garden and her flowers, all unconscious of the black,
lowering thunder-cloud on Ben Lomond's shoulder.
[7] The same seeing eye and understanding mind, when they were
eighteen years of age, discovered and published the Solvent
of Caoutchouc, for which a patent was taken out afterwards
by the famous Mackintosh. If the young discoverer had
secured the patent, he might have made a fortune as large as
his present reputation--I don't suppose he much regrets that
he didn't.
"Oh, blessed vision! happy child!
Thou art so exquisitely wild;
I think of thee with many fears
Of what may be thy lot in future years.
I thought of times when Pain might be thy guest,
Lord of thy house and hospitality.
And Grief, uneasy lover! never rest
But when she sat within the touch of thee.
What hast thou to do with sorrow,
Or the injuries of to-morrow?"
You have ample time to linger there amid
"The gleams, the shadows, and the peace profound,"
and get your mind informed with quietness and beauty, and fed with
thoughts of other years, and of her whose story, like Helen of Troy's,
will continue to move the hearts of men as long as the gray hills stand
round about that gentle lake, and are mirrored at evening in its depths.
You may do and enjoy all this, and be in Princes Street by nine P.M.;
and we wish we were as sure of many things as of your saying, "Yes, this
_is_ a pleasure that has pleased, and will please again; this was
something expected which did not disappoint."
* * * * *
There is another garden of Queen Mary's, which may still be seen, and
which has been left to itself like that in the Isle of Rest. It is in
the grounds at Chatsworth, and is moated, walled round, and raised about
fifteen feet above the park. Here the Queen, when a prisoner under the
charge of "Old Bess of Hardwake," was allowed to walk without any guard.
How different the two! and how different she who took her pleasure in
them!
Lines written on the steps of a small moated garden at
Chatsworth, called
"QUEEN MARY'S BOWER.
"The moated bower is wild and drear,
And sad the dark yew's shade;
The flowers which bloom in silence here,
In silence also fade.
"The woodbine and the light wild rose
Float o'er the broken wall;
And here the mournful nightshade blows,
To note the garden's fall.
"Where once a princess wept her woes,
The bird of night complains;
And sighing trees the tale disclose
They learnt from Mary's strains.
"A. H."
_PRESENCE OF MIND, AND HAPPY GUESSING._
"_Depend upon it a lucky guess is never merely luck--there is
always some talent in it._"--MISS AUSTEN, _in Emma._
Dr. Chalmers used to say that in the dynamics of human affairs, two
qualities were essential to greatness--Power and Promptitude. One man
might have both, another power without promptitude, another promptitude
without power. We must all feel the common sense of this, and can
readily see how it applies to a general in the field, to a pilot in a
storm, to a sportsman, to a fencer, to a debater. It is the same with an
operating surgeon at all times, and may be at any time with the
practitioner of the art of healing. He must be ready for what are called
emergencies--cases which rise up at your feet, and must be dealt with on
the instant,--he must have power and promptitude.
It is a curious condition of mind that this requires: it is like
sleeping with your pistol under your pillow, and it on full cock; a
moment lost and all may be lost. There is the very nick of time. This is
what we mean by presence of mind; by a man having such a subject at his
finger ends; that part of the mind lying nearest the outer world, and
having to act on it through the bodily organs, through the will--the
outposts must be always awake. It is of course, so to speak, only a
portion of the mind that is thus needed and thus available; if the whole
mind were forever at the advanced posts, it would soon lose itself in
this endeavor to keep it. Now, though the thing needed to be done may be
simple enough, what goes to the doing of it, and to the being at once
ready and able to do it, involves much: the wedge would not be a wedge,
or do a wedge's work, without the width behind as well as the edge in
front. Your men of promptitude without genius or power, including
knowledge and will, are those who present the wedge the wrong way. Thus
your extremely prompt people are often doing the wrong thing, which is
almost always worse than nothing. Our vague friend who bit "Yarrow's"
tail instead of "the Chicken's," was full of promptitude; as was also
that other man, probably a relative, who barred the door with a boiled
carrot; each knew what was needed--the biting the tail, the barring the
door; both erred as to the means--the one by want of presence of mind,
the other by lack of mind itself. We must have just enough of the right
knowledge and no more; we must have the habit of using this; we must
have self-reliance, and the consentaneousness of the entire mind; and
what our hand finds to do, we must do with our might as well as with it.
Therefore it is that this master act of the man, under some sudden and
great unexpected crisis, is in a great measure performed unconsciously
as to its mental means. The man is so _totus in illo_, that there is no
bit of the mind left to watch and record the acts of the rest; therefore
men, when they have done some signal feat of presence of mind, if asked
how they did it, generally don't very well know--they just did it; it
was, in fact, done and then thought of, not thought of and then done, in
which case it would likely never have been done. Not that the act was
uncaused by mind; it is one of the highest powers of mind thus to act;
but it is done, if I may use the phrase, by an acquired instinct. You
will find all this in that wonderful old Greek who was Alexander the
Great's and the old world's schoolmaster, and ours if we were
wise,--whose truthfulness and clear insight one wonders at the longer he
lives. He seems to have seen the human mind as a bird or an engineer
does the earth--he knew the plan of it. We now-a-days see it as one sees
a country, athwart and in perspective, and from the side; he saw it from
above and from below. There are therefore no shadows, no
foreshortenings, no clear-obscure, indeed no disturbing medium; it is as
if he examined everything _in vacuo_. I refer my readers to what he says
on {Anchinoia} and {Eustochia}.[8]
[8] As I am now, to my sorrow and shame, too much of a mediate
Grecian, I give a Balliol friend's note on these two
words:--"What you have called 'presence of mind' and 'happy
guessing' may, I think, be identified respectively with
Aristotle's {anchinoia} and {eustochia}. The latter of
these, {eustochia}, Aristotle mentions incidentally when
treating of {euboulia}, or good deliberation. _Eth. Nic._
bk. vi. ch. 9. Good deliberation, he says, is not
{eustochia}, for the former is a slow process, whereas the
latter is not guided by reason, and is rapid. In the same
passage he tells us that {anchinoia} is a sort of
{eustochia}. But he speaks of {anchinoia} more fully in
_Ana. Post._ i. 34:--'{Anchinoia} is a sort of happy
guessing at the intermediate, when there is not time for
consideration: as when a man, seeing that the bright side of
the moon is always turned towards the sun, comprehends that
her light is borrowed from the sun; or concludes, from
seeing one conversing with a capitalist that he wants to
borrow money; or infers that people are friends from the
fact of their having common enemies.'" And then he goes on
to make these simple observations confused and perplexing by
reducing them to his logical formula.
"The derivation of the words will confirm this view.
{Eustochia} is a hitting the _mark_ successfully, a reaching
to the end, the rapid and, as it were, intuitive perception
of the truth. This is what Whewell means by saying, 'all
induction is a happy conjecture.' But when Aristotle says
that this faculty is not guided by reason ({aneu te gar
logou}), he does not mean to imply that it grows up
altogether independent of reason, any more than Whewell
means to say that all the discoveries in the inductive
sciences have been made by men taking 'shots' at them, as
boys at school do at hard passages in their Latin lessons.
On the contrary, no faculty is so absolutely the child of
reason as this faculty of happy guessing. It only attains to
perfection after the reason has been long and painfully
trained in the sphere in which the guesses are to be made.
What Aristotle does mean is, that when it has attained
perfection, we are not conscious of the share which reason
has in its operation--it is so rapid that by no analysis can
we detect the presence of reason in its action. Sir Isaac
Newton seeing the apple fall, and thence 'guessing' at the
law of gravitation, is a good instance of {eustochia}.
"{Anchinoia}, on the other hand, is a _nearness of mind_;
not a reaching to the end, but an apprehension of the best
means; not a perception of the truth, but a perception of
how the truth is to be supported. It is sometimes translated
'sagacity,' but readiness or presence of mind is better, as
sagacity rather involves the idea of consideration. In
matters purely intellectual it is ready wit. It is a sort of
shorter or more limited {eustochia}. It is more of a natural
gift than {eustochia}, because the latter is a far higher
and nobler faculty, and therefore more dependent for its
perfection on cultivation, as all our highest faculties are.
{Eustochia} is more akin to genius, {anchinoia} to practical
common sense."
My object in what I have now written and am going to write, is to
impress upon medical students the value of power and promptitude in
combination, for their professional purposes; the uses to them of
nearness of the {Nous}, and of happy guessing; and how you may see the
sense, and neatness, and pith of that excellent thinker, as well as best
of all story-tellers, Miss Austen, when she says in _Emma_, "Depend upon
it, a lucky guess is never merely luck, there is always some talent in
it." Talent here denoting intelligence and will in action. In all
sciences except those called exact, this happy guessing plays a large
part, and in none more than in medicine, which is truly a tentative art,
founded upon likelihood, and is therefore what we call contingent.
Instead of this view of the healing art discouraging us from making our
ultimate principles as precise, as we should make our observations, it
should urge us the more to this; for, depend upon it, that guess as we
may often have to do, he will guess best, most happily for himself and
his patient, who has the greatest amount of true knowledge, and the most
serviceable amount of what we may call mental cash, ready money, and
ready weapons.
We must not only have wisdom, which is knowledge assimilated and made
our own, but we must, as the Lancashire men say and do, _have wit to use
it_. We may carry a nugget of gold in our pocket, or a L100 bank-note,
but unless we can get it _changed_, it is of little use, and we must
moreover have the coin of the country we are in. This want of presence
of mind, and having your wits about you, is as fatal to a surgeon as to
a general.
That wise little man, Dr. Henry Marshall, little in body but not little
in mind, in brain, and in worth, used to give an instance of this. A
young, well-educated surgeon, attached to a regiment quartered at
Musselburgh, went out professionally with two officers who were in
search of "satisfaction." One fell shot in the thigh, and in half an
hour after he was found dead, the surgeon kneeling pale and grim over
him, with his two thumbs sunk in his thigh _below_ the wound, the grass
steeped in blood. If he had put them two inches higher, or extemporized
a tourniquet with his sash and the pistol's ramrod and a stone, he might
have saved his friend's life and his own--for he shot himself that
night.
Here is another. Robbie Watson, whom I now see walking mildly about the
streets--having taken to coal--was driver of the Dumfries coach by
Biggar. One day he had changed horses, and was starting down a steep
hill, with an acute turn at the foot, when he found his wheelers, two
new horses, utterly ignorant of backing. They got furious, and we
outside got alarmed. Robbie made an attempt to pull up, and then with an
odd smile took his whip, gathered up his reins, and lashed the entire
four into a gallop. If we had not seen his face we would have thought
him a maniac; he kept them well together, and shot down like an arrow,
as far as we could see to certain destruction. Right in front at the
turn was a stout gate into a field, shut; he drove them straight at
that, and through we went, the gate broken into shivers, and we finding
ourselves safe, and the very horses enjoying the joke. I remember we
emptied our pockets into Robbie's hat, which he had taken off to wipe
his head. Now, in a few seconds all this must have passed through his
head--"that horse is not a wheeler, nor that one either; we'll come to
mischief; there's the gate; yes, I'll do it." And he did it; but then he
had to do it with his might; he had to make it impossible for his four
horses to do anything but toss the gate before them.
Here is another case. Dr. Reid of Peebles, long famous in the end of
last and beginning of this century, as the Doctor of Tweeddale; a man of
great force of character, and a true Philip, a lover of horses, saw one
Fair day a black horse, entire, thoroughbred. The groom asked a low
price, and would answer no questions. At the close of the fair the
doctor bought him, amid the derision of his friends. Next morning he
rode him up Tweed, came home after a long round, and had never been
better carried. This went on for some weeks; the fine creature was
without a fault. One Sunday morning, he was posting up by Neidpath at a
great pace, the country people trooping into the town to church.
Opposite the fine old castle, the thorough-bred stood stock still, and
it needed all the doctor's horsemanship to counteract the law of
projectiles; he did, and sat still, and not only gave no sign of urging
the horse, but rather intimated that it was his particular desire that
he should stop. He sat there a full hour, his friends making an
excellent joke of it, and he declining, of course, all interference. At
the end of the hour, the Black Duke, as he was called, turned one ear
forward, then another, looked aside, shook himself, and moved on, his
master intimating that this was exactly what he wished; and from that
day till his death, some fifteen years after, never did these two
friends allude to this little circumstance, and it was never repeated;
though it turned out that he had killed his two men previously. The
doctor must have, when he got him, said to himself, "if he is not stolen
there is a reason for his paltry price," and he would go over all the
possibilities. So that when he stood still, he would say, "Ah, this is
it;" but then he saw this at once, and lost no time, and did nothing.
Had he given the horse one dig with his spurs, or one cut with his whip,
or an impatient jerk with his bit, the case would have failed. When a
colt it had been brutally used, and being nervous, it lost its judgment,
poor thing, and lost its presence of mind.
One more instance of nearness of the {Nous}. A lady was in front of her
lawn with her children, when a mad dog made his appearance, pursued by
the peasants. What did she do? What would you have done? Shut your eyes
and think. She went straight to the dog, received its head in her thick
stuff gown, between her knees, and muffling it up, held it with all her
might till the men came up. No one was hurt. Of course, she fainted
after it was all right.
We all know (but why should we not know again?) the story of the Grecian
mother who saw her child sporting on the edge of the bridge. She knew
that a cry would startle it over into the raging stream--she came gently
near, and opening her bosom allured the little scapegrace.
I once saw a great surgeon, after settling a particular procedure as to
a life-and-death operation, as a general settles his order of battle. He
began his work, and at the second cut altered the entire conduct of the
operation. No one not in the secret could have told this: not a moment's
pause, not a quiver of the face, not a look of doubt. This is the same
master power in man, which makes the difference between Sir John Moore
and Sir John Cope.
Mrs. Major Robertson, a woman of slight make, great beauty, and
remarkable energy, courage, and sense (she told me the story herself),
on going up to her bedroom at night--there being no one in the house but
a servant girl, in the ground floor--saw a portion of a man's foot
projecting from under the bed. She gave no cry of alarm, but shut the
door as usual, set down her candle, and began as if to undress, when she
said aloud to herself, with an impatient tone and gesture, "I've
forgotten that key again, I declare;" and leaving the candle burning,
and the door open, she went down-stairs, got the watchman, and secured
the proprietor of the foot, which had not moved an inch. How many women
or men could have done, or rather been all this!
_MY FATHER'S MEMOIR._
_A LETTER TO JOHN CAIRNS, D. D._
"_I praised the dead which are already dead, more than the
living which are yet alive._"
LETTER TO JOHN CAIRNS, D. D.
23 RUTLAND STREET, _15th August, 1860._
MY DEAR FRIEND,--When, at the urgent request of his trustees and family,
and in accordance with what I believe was his own wish, you undertook my
father's Memoir, it was in a measure on the understanding that I would
furnish you with some domestic and personal details. This I hoped to
have done but was unable.
Though convinced more than ever how little my hand is needed, I will now
endeavor to fulfil my promise. Before doing so, however, you must permit
me to express our deep gratitude to you for this crowning proof of your
regard for him
"Without whose life we had not been;"
to whom for many years you habitually wrote as "My father," and one of
whose best blessings, when he was "such an one as Paul the aged," was to
know that you were to him "mine own son in the gospel."
With regard to the manner in which you have done this last kindness to
the dead, I can say nothing more expressive of our feelings, and, I am
sure, nothing more gratifying to you, than that the record you have
given of my father's life, and of the series of great public questions
in which he took part, is done in the way which would have been most
pleasing to himself--that which, with his passionate love of truth and
liberty, his relish for concentrated, just thought and expression, and
his love of being loved, he would have most desired, in any one speaking
of him after he was gone. He would, I doubt not, say, as one said to a
great painter, on looking at his portrait, "It is certainly like, but it
is much better looking;" and you might well reply as did the painter,
"It is the truth, told lovingly"--and all the more true that it is so
told. You have, indeed, been enabled to speak the truth, or as the Greek
has it, {aletheuein en agape}--to truth it in love.
I have over and over again sat down to try and do what I promised and
wished--to give some faint expression of my father's life; not of what
he did or said or wrote--not even of what he was as a man of God and a
public teacher; but what he was in his essential nature--what he would
have been had he been anything else than what he was, or had lived a
thousand years ago.
Sometimes I have this so vividly in my mind that I think I have only to
sit down and write it off, and do it to the quick. "The idea of his
life," what he was as a whole, what was his self, all his days,
would,--to go on with words which not time or custom can ever wither or
make stale,--
"Sweetly creep
Into my study of imagination;
And every lovely organ of his life
Would come apparelled in more precious habit--
More moving delicate, and full of life,
Into the eye and prospect of my soul,
Than when he lived indeed,"
as if the sacredness of death and the bloom of eternity were on it; or
as you may have seen in an untroubled lake, the heaven reflected with
its clouds, brighter, purer, more exquisite than itself; but when you
try to put this into words, to detain yourself over it, it is by this
very act disturbed, broken and bedimmed, and soon vanishes away, as
would the imaged heavens in the lake, if a pebble were cast into it, or
a breath of wind stirred its face. The very anxiety to transfer it, as
it looked out of the clear darkness of the past, makes the image grow
dim and disappear.
Every one whose thoughts are not seldom with the dead, must have felt
both these conditions; how, in certain passive, tranquil states, there
comes up into the darkened chamber of the mind, its "chamber of
imagery"--uncalled, as if it blossomed out of space, exact, absolute,
consummate, vivid, speaking, not darkly as in a glass, but face to face,
and "moving delicate"--this "idea of his life;" and then how an effort
to prolong and perpetuate and record all this, troubles the vision and
kills it! It is as if one should try to paint in a mirror the reflection
of a dear and unseen face; the coarse, uncertain passionate handling and
color, ineffectual and hopeless, shut out the very thing itself.
I will therefore give this up as in vain, and try by some fragmentary
sketches, scenes, and anecdotes, to let you know in some measure what
manner of man my father was. Anecdotes, if true and alive, are always
valuable; the man in the concrete, the _totus quis_ comes out in them;
and I know you too well to think that you will consider as trivial or
out of place anything in which his real nature displayed itself, and
your own sense of humor as a master and central power of the human soul,
playing about the very essence of the man, will do more than forgive
anything of this kind which may crop out here and there, like the smile
of wild-flowers in grass, or by the wayside.
My first recollection of my father, my first impression, not only of his
character, but of his eyes and face and presence, strange as it may
seem, dates from my fifth year. Doubtless I had looked at him often
enough before that, and had my own childish thoughts about him; but this
was the time when I got my fixed, compact idea of him, and the first
look of him which I felt could never be forgotten. I saw him, as it
were, by a flash of lightning, sudden and complete. A child begins by
seeing bits of everything; it knows in part--here a little, there a
little; it makes up its wholes out of its own littles, and is long of
reaching the fulness of a whole; and in this we are children all our
lives in much. Children are long of seeing, or at least of looking at
what is above them; they like the ground, and its flowers and stones,
its "red sodgers" and lady-birds, and all its queer things; their world
is about three feet high, and they are more often stooping than gazing
up. I know I was past ten before I saw, or cared to see, the ceilings of
the rooms in the manse at Biggar.
On the morning of the 28th May, 1816, my eldest sister Janet and I were
sleeping in the kitchen-bed with Tibbie Meek,[9] our only servant. We
were all three awakened by a cry of pain--sharp, insufferable, as if one
were stung. Years after we two confided to each other, sitting by the
burnside, that we thought that "great cry" which arose at midnight in
Egypt must have been like it. We all knew whose voice it was, and, in
our night-clothes, we ran into the passage, and into the little parlor
to the left hand, in which was a closet-bed. We found my father standing
before us, erect, his hands clenched in his black hair, his eyes full of
misery and amazement, his face white as that of the dead. He frightened
us. He saw this, or else his intense will had mastered his agony, for,
taking his hands from his head, he said, slowly and gently, "Let us give
thanks," and turned to a little sofa in the room; there lay our mother,
dead.[10] She had long been ailing. I remember her sitting in a
shawl,--an Indian one with little dark green spots on a light
ground,--and watching her growing pale with what I afterwards knew must
have been strong pain. She had, being feverish, slipped out of bed, and
"grandmother," her mother, seeing her "change come," had called my
father, and they two saw her open her blue, kind, and true eyes,
"comfortable" to us all "as the day"--I remember them better than those
of any one I saw yesterday--and, with one faint look of recognition to
him, close them till the time of the restitution of all things.
"She had another morn than ours."
Then were seen in full action his keen, passionate nature, his sense of
mental pain, and his supreme will, instant and unsparing, making himself
and his terrified household give thanks in the midst of such a
desolation,--and for it. Her warfare was accomplished, her iniquities
were pardoned: she had already received from her Lord's hand double for
all her sins; this was his supreme and over-mastering thought, and he
gave it utterance.
[9] A year ago, I found an elderly countrywoman, a widow, waiting
for me. Rising up, she said, "D'ye mind me?" I looked at
her, but could get nothing from her face; but the voice
remained in my ear, as if coming from "the fields of sleep,"
and I said by a sort of instinct, "Tibbie Meek!" I had not
seen her or heard her voice for more than forty years. She
had come to get some medical advice. Voices are often like
the smells of flowers and leaves, the tastes of wild
fruits--they touch and awaken memory in a strange way.
"Tibbie" is now living at Thankerton.
[10] This sofa, which was henceforward sacred in the house, he
had always beside him. He used to tell us he set her down
upon it when he brought her home to the manse.
No man was happier in his wives. My mother was modest, calm, thrifty,
reasonable, tender, happy-hearted. She was his student-love, and is even
now remembered in that pastoral region, for "her sweet gentleness and
wife-like government." Her death and his sorrow and loss, settled down
deep into the heart of the countryside. He was so young and bright, so
full of fire, so unlike any one else, so devoted to his work, so
chivalrous in his look and manner, so fearless, and yet so sensitive and
self-contained. She was so wise, good and gentle, gracious and frank.
His subtlety of affection, and his almost cruel self-command, were shown
on the day of the funeral. It was to Symington, four miles off,--a quiet
little churchyard, lying in the shadow of Tinto; a place where she
herself had wished to be laid. The funeral was chiefly on horseback. We,
the family, were in coaches. I had been since the death in a sort of
stupid musing and wonder, not making out what it all meant. I knew my
mother was said to be dead. I saw she was still, and laid out, and then
shut up, and didn't move; but I did not know that when she was carried
out in that long black box, and we all went with her, she alone was
never to return.
When we got to the village all the people were at their doors. One
woman, the blacksmith Thomas Spence's wife, had a nursing baby in her
arms, and he leapt up and crowed with joy at the strange sight, the
crowding horsemen, the coaches, and the nodding plumes of the hearse.
This was my brother William, then nine months old, and Margaret Spence
was his foster-mother. Those with me were overcome at this sight; he of
all the world whose, in some ways, was the greatest loss, the least
conscious, turning it to his own childish glee.
We got to the churchyard and stood round the open grave. My dear old
grandfather was asked by my father to pray; he did. I don't remember his
words; I believe he, through his tears and sobs, repeated the Divine
words, "All flesh is grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of
the grass; the grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away, but
the word of the Lord endureth forever;" adding, in his homely and
pathetic way, that the flower would again bloom, never again to fade;
that what was now sown in dishonor and weakness, would be raised in
glory and power, like unto His own glorious body. Then to my surprise
and alarm, the coffin, resting on its bearers, was placed over that dark
hole, and I watched with curious eye the unrolling of those neat black
bunches of cords, which I have often enough seen since. My father took
the one at the head, and also another much smaller springing from the
same point as his, which he had caused to be put there, and unrolling
it, put it into my hand. I twisted it firmly round my fingers, and
awaited the result; the burial men with their real ropes lowered the
coffin, and when it rested at the bottom, it was too far down for me to
see it--the grave was made very deep, as he used afterwards to tell us,
that it might hold us all--my father first and abruptly let his cord
drop, followed by the rest. This was too much. I now saw what was meant,
and held on and fixed my fist and feet, and I believe my father had some
difficulty in forcing open my small fingers; he let the little black
cord drop, and I remember, in my misery and anger, seeing its open end
disappearing in the gloom.
My mother's death was the second epoch in my father's life; it marked a
change at once and for life; and for a man so self-reliant, so poised
upon a centre of his own, it is wonderful the extent of change it made.
He went home, preached her funeral sermon, every one in the church in
tears, himself outwardly unmoved.[11] But from that time dates an
entire, though always deepening, alteration in his manner of preaching,
because an entire change in his way of dealing with God's Word. Not that
his abiding religious views and convictions were then originated or even
altered--I doubt not that from a child he not only knew the Holy
Scriptures, but was "wise unto salvation"--but it strengthened and
clarified, quickened and gave permanent direction to, his sense of God
as revealed in His Word. He took as it were to subsoil ploughing; he got
a new and adamantine point to the instrument with which he bored, and
with a fresh power--with his whole might, he sunk it right down into the
living rock, to the virgin gold. His entire nature had got a shock, and
his blood was drawn inwards, his surface was chilled; but fuel was
heaped all the more on the inner fires, and his zeal, that {ti thermon
pragma}, burned with a new ardor; indeed had he not found an outlet for
his pent-up energy, his brain must have given way, and his faculties
have either consumed themselves in wild, wasteful splendor and
combustion, or dwindled into lethargy.[12]
[11] I have been told that _once_ in the course of the sermon his
voice trembled, and many feared he was about to break down.
[12] There is a story illustrative of this altered manner and
matter of preaching. He had been preaching when very young,
at Galashiels, and one wife said to her "neebor," "Jean,
what think ye o' the lad?" "_It's maist o't tinsel wark_,"
said Jean, neither relishing nor appreciating his fine
sentiments and figures. After my mother's death, he preached
in the same place, and Jean, running to her friend, took the
first word, "_It's a' gowd noo_."
The manse became silent; we lived and slept and played under the shadow
of that death, and we saw, or rather felt, that he was another father
than before. No more happy laughter from the two in the parlor, as he
was reading Larry, the Irish postboy's letter in Miss Edgeworth's tale,
or the last Waverley novel; no more visitings in a cart with her, he
riding beside us on his white thorough-bred pony, to Kilbucho, or Rachan
Mill, or Kirklawhill. He went among his people as usual when they were
ill; he preached better than ever--they were sometimes frightened to
think how wonderfully he preached; but the sunshine was over--the glad
and careless look, the joy of young life and mutual love. He was little
with us, and, as I said, the house was still, except when he was
_mandating_ his sermons for Sabbath. This he always did, not only _viva
voce_, but with as much energy and loudness as in the pulpit; we felt
his voice was sharper, and rang keen through the house.
What we lost, the congregation and the world gained. He gave himself
wholly to his work. As you have yourself said, he changed his entire
system and fashion of preaching; from being elegant, rhetorical, and
ambitious, he became concentrated, urgent, moving (being himself moved),
keen, searching, unswerving, authoritative to fierceness, full of the
terrors of the Lord, if he could but persuade men. The truth of the
words of God had shone out upon him with an immediateness and infinity
of meaning and power, which made them, though the same words he had
looked on from childhood, other and greater and deeper words. He then
left the ordinary commentators, and men who write about meanings and
flutter around the circumference and corners; he was bent on the centre,
on touching with his own fingers, on seeing with his own eyes, the pearl
of great price. Then it was that he began to dig into the depths, into
the primary and auriferous rock of Scripture, and take nothing at
another's hand: then he took up with the word "apprehend;" he had laid
hold of the truth,--there it was, with its evidence, in his hand; and
every one who knew him must remember well how, in speaking with
earnestness of the meaning of a passage, he, in his ardent, hesitating
way, looked into the palm of his hand as if he actually saw there the
truth he was going to utter. This word _apprehend_ played a large part
in his lectures, as the thing itself did in his processes of
investigation, or, if I might make a word, _indigation_. Comprehension,
he said, was for few; apprehension was for every man who had hands and a
head to rule them, and an eye to direct them. Out of this arose one of
his deficiencies. He _could_ go largely into the generalities of a
subject, and relished greatly others doing it, so that they did do it
really and well; but he was averse to abstract and wide reasonings.
Principles he rejoiced in: he worked with them as with his choicest
weapons; they were the polished stones for his sling, against the
Goliaths of presumption, error, and tyranny in thought or in polity,
civil or ecclesiastical; but he somehow divined a principle, or got at
it naked and alone, rather than deduced it and brought it to a point
from an immensity of particulars, and then rendered it back so as to
bind them into one _cosmos_. One of my young friends now dead, who
afterwards went to India, used to come and hear him in Broughton Place
with me, and this word _apprehend_ caught him, and as he had a great
love for my father, in writing home to me, he never forgot to ask how
"grand old Apprehend" was.
From this time dates my father's possession and use of the German
Exegetics. After my mother's death I slept with him; his bed was in his
study, a small room,[13] with a very small grate; and I remember well
his getting those fat, shapeless, spongy German books, as if one would
sink in them, and be bogged in their bibulous, unsized paper; and
watching him as he impatiently cut them up, and dived into them in his
rapid, eclectic way, tasting them, and dropping for my play such a lot
of soft, large, curled bits from the paper-cutter, leaving the edges all
shaggy. He never came to bed when I was awake, which was not to be
wondered at; but I can remember often awaking far on in the night or
morning, and seeing that keen, beautiful, intense face bending over
these Rosenmuellers, and Ernestis, and Storrs, and Kuinoels--the fire
out, and the gray dawn peering through the window; and when he heard me
move, he would speak to me in the foolish words of endearment my mother
was wont to use, and come to bed, and take me, warm as I was, into his
cold bosom.
[13] On a low chest of drawers in this room there lay for many
years my mother's parasol, by his orders--I daresay, for
long, the only one in Biggar.
_Vitringa in Jesaiam_ I especially remember, a noble folio. Even then,
with that eagerness to communicate what he had himself found, of which
you must often have been made the subject, he went and told it. He would
try to make me, small man as I was, "apprehend" what he and Vitringa
between them had made out of the fifty-third chapter of his favorite
prophet, the princely Isaiah.[14] Even then, so far as I can recall, he
never took notes of what he read. He did not need this, his intellectual
force and clearness were so great; he was so _totus in illo_, whatever
it was, that he recorded by a secret of its own, his mind's results and
victories and _memoranda_, as he went on; he did not even mark his
books, at least very seldom; he marked his mind.
[14] His reading aloud of everything from John Gilpin to John
Howe was a fine and high art, or rather gift. Henderson
could not have given
"The dinner waits, and we are tired;"
Says Gilpin, "So am I,"
better; and to hear him sounding the depths and cadences of
the Living Temple, "bearing on its front this doleful
inscription, 'Here God once dwelt,'" was like listening to
the recitative of Handel. But Isaiah was his masterpiece;
and I remember quite well his startling us all when reading
at family worship, "His name shall be called Wonderful,
Counsellor, the mighty God," by a peremptory, explosive
sharpness, as of thunder overhead, at the words "the mighty
God," similar to the rendering now given to Handel's music,
and doubtless so meant by him; and then closing with "the
Prince of Peace," soft and low. No man who wishes to feel
Isaiah, as well as understand him, should be ignorant of
Handel's "Messiah." His prelude to "Comfort ye"--its simple
theme, cheerful and infinite as the ripple of the
unsearchable sea--gives a deeper meaning to the words. One
of my father's great delights in his dying months was
reading the lives of Handel and of Michael Angelo, then
newly out. He felt that the author of "He was despised," and
"He shall feed his flock," and those other wonderful airs,
was a man of profound religious feeling, of which they were
the utterance; and he rejoiced over the warlike airs and
choruses of "Judas Maccabaeus." You have recorded his
estimate of the religious nature of him of the _terribile
via_; he said it was a relief to his mind to know that such
a mighty genius walked humbly with his God.
He was thus every year preaching with more and more power, because with
more and more knowledge and "pureness;" and, as you say, there were
probably nowhere in Britain such lectures delivered at that time to such
an audience, consisting of country people, sound, devout, well-read in
their Bibles and in the native divinity, but quite unused to persistent,
deep, critical thought.
Much of this--most of it--was entirely his own, self-originated and
self-sustained, and done for its own sake,
"All too happy in the pleasure
Of his own exceeding treasure."
But he often said, with deep feeling, that one thing put him always on
his mettle, the knowledge that "yonder in that corner, under the
gallery, sat, Sabbath after Sabbath, a man who knew his Greek Testament
better than I did."
This was his brother-in-law, and one of his elders, Mr. Robert Johnston,
married to his sister Violet, a merchant and portioner in Biggar, a
remarkable man, of whom it is difficult to say to strangers what is
true, without being accused of exaggeration. A shopkeeper in that remote
little town, he not only intermeddled fearlessly with all knowledge, but
mastered more than many practised and University men do in their own
lines. Mathematics, astronomy, and especially what may be called
_selenology_, or the doctrine of the moon, and the higher geometry and
physics; Hebrew, Sanscrit, Greek, and Latin, to the veriest rigors of
prosody and metre; Spanish and Italian, German, French, and any odd
language that came in his way; all these he knew more or less
thoroughly, and acquired them in the most leisurely, easy, cool sort of
way, as if he grazed and browsed perpetually in the field of letters,
rather than made formal meals, or gathered for any ulterior purpose, his
fruits, his roots, and his nuts--he especially liked mental nuts--much
less bought them from any one.
With all this, his knowledge of human, and especially of Biggar human
nature, the ins and outs of its little secret ongoings, the entire
gossip of the place, was like a woman's; moreover, every personage great
or small, heroic or comic, in Homer--whose poems he made it a matter of
conscience to read once every four years--Plautus, Suetonius, Plutarch,
Tacitus, and Lucian, down through Boccaccio and Don Quixote, which he
knew by heart and from the living Spanish, to Joseph Andrews, the
Spectator, Goldsmith and Swift, Miss Austen, Miss Edgeworth, and Miss
Ferrier, Galt and Sir Walter,--he was as familiar with, as with David
Crockat the nailer, or the parish minister, the town-drummer, the
mole-catcher, or the poaching weaver, who had the night before leistered
a prime kipper at Rachan Mill, by the flare of a tarry wisp, or brought
home his surreptitious gray hen or _maukin_ from the wilds of Dunsyre or
the dreary Lang Whang.[15]
[15] With the practices of this last worthy, when carried on
moderately, and for the sport's sake, he had a special
sympathy.
This singular man came to the manse every Friday evening for many years,
and he and my father discussed everything and everybody;--beginning with
tough, strong head work--a bout at wrestling, be it Caesar's Bridge, the
Epistles of Phalaris, the import of {men} and {de}, the Catholic
question, or the great roots of Christian faith; ending with the latest
joke in the town or the _West Raw_, the last effusion by Affleck, tailor
and poet, the last blunder of AEsop the apothecary, and the last repartee
of the village fool, with the week's Edinburgh and Glasgow news by their
respective carriers; the whole little life, sad and humorous--who had
been born, and who was dying or dead, married or about to be, for the
past eight days.[16]
[16] I believe this was the true though secret source of much of
my father's knowledge of the minute personal history of
every one in his region, which,--to his people, knowing his
reserved manner and his devotion to his studies, and his so
rarely meeting them or speaking to them except from the
pulpit, or at a diet of visitation, was a perpetual wonder,
and of which he made great use in his dealings with his
afflicted or erring "members."
This amused, and, in the true sense, diverted my father, and gratified
his curiosity, which was great, and his love of men, as well as for man.
He was shy, and unwilling to ask what he longed to know, liking better
to have it given him without the asking; and no one could do this better
than "Uncle Johnston."
You may readily understand what a thorough exercise and diversion of an
intellectual and social kind this was, for they were neither of them men
to shirk from close gripes, or trifle and flourish with their weapons;
they laid on and spared not. And then my uncle had generally some
special nut of his own to crack, some thesis to fling down and offer
battle on, some "particle" to energize upon; for though quiet and calm,
he was thoroughly combative, and enjoyed seeing his friend's blood up,
and hearing his emphatic and bright speech, and watching his flashing
eye. Then he never spared him; criticized and sometimes quizzed--for he
had great humor--his style, as well as debated and weighed his
apprehendings and exegeses, shaking them heartily to test their
strength. He was so thoroughly independent of all authority, except that
of reason and truth, and his own humor; so ready to detect what was
weak, extravagant, or unfair; so full of relish for intellectual power
and accuracy, and so attached to and proud of my father, and bent on his
making the best of himself, that this
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