The most perfervidly Scottish professor of my time was undoubtedly John Stuart Blackie, who taught a multifarious range of subjects, including some Greek, of which he was Professor. Although those of his students who really wanted to increase their knowledge of Greek would fain have been spared some of his disquisitions on the current politics or problems of the day, they could not but recognise his boundless enthusiasm, his cheery good nature, and his high ideals of life and conduct. In my time he wore a brown wig, which was so manifestly artificial that we used sometimes to imagine that it was coming off, and speculated on what the professor would be like without it. But in later years he allowed his own white hair to grow long, and with his clean-shaven face, his broad soft felt hat, and his brown plaid over his shoulders, he became by far the most picturesque figure in the Edinburgh of his time. He had been so much in Germany, and was so well versed in German life and literature, that he seemed naturally to assume the manner of a German professor. There was, indeed, a good deal of external resemblance between him and the late venerable historian Mommsen. But Blackie was distinguished from his more typical continental brethren by the boisterous exuberance of his spirits. Even in the class-room this feature could not be wholly repressed, but it reached its climax among friends at a dinner table, more especially at such gatherings as those of the Royal Society Club. After eloquent talk he would eventually be unable to remain seated, but would start up and march round the room, gesticulating and singing a verse of some Scottish song, or one of his own patriotic ditties.
SIR DOUGLAS MACLAGAN
Besides the genial Blackie, the Senate of Edinburgh University, when I was a member of it, contained some other less vociferous but extremely clubbable professors. Two of them deserve special mention here—Christison and Maclagan. Sir Robert Christison was excellent company, with his ample fund of reminiscence and anecdote. At the club-dinners Sir Douglas Maclagan never failed to regale us with one of his inimitable songs. He had a good voice, and sang with much expression and humour. His ‘Battle of Glen Tilt’ was a source of endless pleasure to his friends, and he entered so thoroughly into the spirit of it that one could almost see the scene between the duke and his gillies on the one side, and the botany professor and his students on the other. Some of the touches in that ditty are full of sly fun, such, for example, as the description of the botanising:
Some folk’ll tak’ a heap o’ fash
For unco little en’, man;
An’ meikle time an’ meikle cash
For nocht ava’ they’ll spen’, man.
Thae chaps had come a hunder’ mile
For what was hardly worth their while;
’Twas a’ to poo