Edinburgh sketches & memories

by David Masson

It was on the 1st of October 1583 that this round-headed, reddish-haired man, of Stirlingshire birth, but of St. Andrews training, opened the first session of the University of Edinburgh by an address delivered in the public hall of the new premises in the presence of a crowded audience of citizens and others. Next day, when he received the students who came to enroll themselves in the first class in the new University, their number, what with those supplied by Edinburgh itself, what with those attracted from other parts of the country, was found to be far greater than had been anticipated. Very soon, however, it appeared that this was not altogether a cause for congratulation. The motley body of the entrants had not been manipulated by Rollock for more than a week or two when he had to marshal them into two divisions. A considerable number had broken down in Latin,—were found to be so ill-grounded in that indispensable preliminary that it was hopeless to go on with them as members of the first University class proper, the teaching of which had to be through the medium of Latin. To meet this exigency Rollock proposed to the Town Council that they should at once appoint a second regent, and that this regent should have committed to his charge all who were backward in Latin, to be formed into a preparatory or Humanity class, and drilled as such for a year, while he himself should go on with the others in the first proper Arts or Philosophy class. Were that done, then, next year, when he himself should be carrying on his students into the second class, the other regent might form those that had been kept back, and qualified newcomers with them, into a properly sequent first class; and so the routine would be established. The advice was adopted; and, on Rollock’s recommendation, the person chosen to be Humanity teacher in the meantime, and second regent in regular course, was a Mr. Duncan Nairne, a young man from Glasgow University. Thus all was arranged; and the work of the first session of the University of Edinburgh proceeded,—Rollock teaching his “Bajans,” and Nairne following with the ragged troop whom he was working up in Latin to fit them for the “Bajan” class of next year.

The “session” in each of the Scottish universities extended then over ten, or even eleven, months of every year, i.e. from the beginning of October to, or well into, August. The practice was for the students, or a proportion of them, to reside within the University walls; and, though this practice soon fell into disuse in Edinburgh, it held good at first so far that at least some of the students were boarded and lodged in some rough fashion within the College. The original regulation also was that students should wear academic costume; but against this regulation Edinburgh opinion seems from the first to have set its face most determinedly. It was never really obeyed.

The infant years of the University were years of trial and rough usage. In the jars between the different political factions round the young King, and struggling for the possession of him, the infant institution was much shaken and disturbed. The Magistrates and Town Council, however, did their best; and Rollock was persevering and judicious. The severest interruption to his labours came in his second session, or 1584–5. That session had been begun with good prospects, the property of the College having been increased by a royal grant, and by a collection of about 300 volumes bequeathed by Mr. Clement Little to form the nucleus of a college library. Rollock was proceeding, accordingly, with his second or semi class; and Nairne, having worked up the laggards by this time, was teaching his first class of Bajans. But in the course of the winter Edinburgh was visited by that scourge, “The Plague,” of the frequency of the visits of which in those times, and their paralysing effects on industry of all kinds, no one can be aware who is not versed in the old annals of English and Scottish cities. In May 1585, most of the students having already dispersed, it was necessary to stop the session entirely. This would not have mattered so much, had not the alarm of the Plague continued into the following session. That session, the third in the history of the University, ought to have begun in October 1585; at which time, as Rollock would then have been carrying his students into their third or bachelor class, and Nairne would have been carrying his into their second or semi class, a third regent would have had to be appointed, to undertake the new class of freshmen. But it was not till February 1586, or four months after the proper beginning of the session, that the College was reopened, and then it was deemed best not to attempt a new Bajan class at all that year, but simply to go on with the semies and bachelors. Even in this arrangement there came a difficulty. Scarcely were the classes begun when the promising young Mr. Duncan Nairne died, and, in order that the semi class might be carried on at all, the Town Council had to elect a professor in his room. They chose Mr. Charles Lumsden, a young man who had been one of Rollock’s pupils at St. Andrews. The services of this, the third regent or Professor of Philosophy in the University, did not, however, outlast the remainder of the session in which he had been appointed. A College professorship was not then a post of such attraction that it could be thought strange that Mr. Lumsden should resign it when, in the following October, he received a call to be minister of Duddingston parish. By his resignation at that moment, however, the College would have been left crippled, had not two new regents been at once appointed. These new regents, chosen by competitive trial out of six candidates, were Mr. Adam Colt and Mr. Alexander Scrimgeour. The last of these, Scrimgeour, took charge of the new class of entrants or Bajans; as there had been no class of Bajans in the former year, the semi class was this year a blank; the former pupils of Lumsden and Nairne, now in the third or bachelor class, were entrusted to Mr. Colt; and Rollock himself, proceeding with the pupils who had already been continuously in his charge for three years, carried them through the last or magistrand class.

In August 1587, six months after the execution of Queen Mary at Fotheringay, the fourth session of Edinburgh University was brought to a close by the first act of laureation or graduation in its annals. Forty-seven of Rollock’s pupils, who had remained with him steadily through the entire four years, were then made masters of arts,—a larger number than was to be seen at any subsequent graduation for more than half a century. The signatures of the forty-seven are still to be seen in the preserved graduation-book, appended to a copy of that Scottish Confession of the Reformed Faith to which it was the rule that all graduates should swear everlasting fidelity. Several of the names are those of persons afterwards of some note in Scotland. To three of them is affixed in the graduation-book, in later handwriting, the dreadful word Apostata, signifying that those three disciples of Rollock afterwards apostatised from the Protestant religion.

Having thus followed Rollock through one complete cycle of his regency or professorship in Arts, one would like to know something as to the nature and methods of his teaching. On this head the information is as follows:—He began, as we have seen, by testing his students in the indispensable Latin. But, though ability to read ordinary Latin authors, to write in Latin, and also to speak Latin in some fashion and understand spoken Latin, were prerequisites to his course, the business of that course itself included necessarily much reading in particular Latin classics, whether for their matter or for their style. Very soon in his first class, however, he attacked Greek, teaching it from the grammar upwards, until easy Greek authors could be read. Greek was continued, for its own sake, into the second and third years of the course; but the chief business of those years, and of the fourth, was “Philosophy,” as divided into Logic, Ethics, and Physics. In each of these departments the philosophical teaching consisted chiefly of expositions of Aristotle. Whether in the original Greek, or, as is more probable, in Latin versions, Rollock, we are expressly told, read Aristotle daily with his pupils, beginning with the Organon Logicum, and then going through the Nicomachean Ethics and the Physics. The Physics came probably in the last year, and in this year also (for mathematics and physical science were then usually delayed till the end) certain additions to Aristotle: to wit, the principles of Arithmetic, a sketch of the Anatomy of the human body, Astronomy as taught in the then standard treatise of Joannes a Sacro Bosco De Sphæra, and finally Geography. Conceive the routine so sketched; conceive the steady plodding on day after day, for some hours every day, through four sessions of ten or eleven months each; and conceive also the disputations in Latin among the students themselves every Saturday, and the express catechisings of them in religion on Sundays: and you will have an idea of what it was to be under Rollock in the first years of the University of Edinburgh.

A still more minute account of what constituted the curriculum of study in the Faculty of Arts during the first age of the University is furnished by an abstract of the “Order of Discipline” in the University, drawn up in the year 1628. One cannot be sure that in every particular this “Order of Discipline” accords with what had been the practice of Rollock; but, as the abstract professes to be mainly a digest of rules and customs that had been already in force, it probably describes substantially the scheme of teaching introduced by Rollock and bequeathed by him to his successors. The scheme may be tabulated thus:—

First Year: Latin, Greek, and the Elements of Logic—(1) Latin: Exercises in turning English into Latin and in translation from Latin; with readings in Latin authors, chiefly Cicero. There seems also to have been practice in Latin verse-making. (2) Greek: The Greek Grammar of Clenardus; Readings in the New Testament, in the Orations of Isocrates, and, for poetry, in Phocylides, Hesiod, and Homer; also translation of Latin themes into Greek, and of Greek into Latin. Passages of the Greek authors read were got by heart, and publicly recited on Saturdays. (3) Logic: This was reserved till near the end of the session, and Ramus was the author used.—There were disputations on Saturdays, and catechisings on Sundays.

Second Year: Recapitulation of previous studies, with Rhetoric, Logic, and Arithmetic—(1) Recapitulation: For the first month, with a final examination in Greek. (2) Rhetoric: Talæus’s Rhetoric (a short and very flimsy compend on the figures of speech, with instructions in delivery), and portions of other manuals, such as Cassander’s Rhetoric and Aphthonius’s Progymnasmata (a collection of specimens of Greek composition to illustrate various styles); also oratorical exercises by the students themselves. (3) Logic: Perphyry’s Introduction to Aristotle’s Organon, and then, in the Organon itself, the Categories, the Prior Analytics, and portions of the Topics and the Sophistics. (4) Arithmetic: towards the end of the session.—Disputations and declamations on Saturdays, and catechisings on Sundays.

Third Year: Recapitulation of previous studies, with Hebrew Grammar, Logic, Ethics, and Physical Science—(1) Recapitulation: This went back upon the Greek, and included examinations in Rhetoric and in Logical Analysis. (2) Hebrew Grammar: taught apparently from the beginning of the session. (3) Logic: The two Books of Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics. (4) Ethics: The first, second, half of the third, and the fourth and fifth Books of Aristotle’s Ethics. (5) Physical Science: Aristotle’s Acroamatics, taught partly textually, partly in compend, followed, at the close of the session, by a descriptive sketch of Human Anatomy.—Disputations on prescribed theses on Saturdays, and theological instruction on Sundays.

Fourth Year: Recapitulation of previous studies, with Astronomy, Cosmography, and other portions of Physics, and Disputations and other preparations for the Laureation. Among the books used in this year were the Sphæra of Joannes a Sacro Bosco, the books of Aristotle De Cælo, De Ortu, De Meteoris, and De Anima, and Hunter’s Cosmography. Atlases and the celestial globe were also in requisition, and the most notable constellations were pointed out in the heavens themselves. But much of the work of this session consisted in logical disputations in the evenings, whether among the magistrands, or between them and the third year’s men.—On Sundays, instruction in Dogmatic and Polemical Theology.