Robert Leighton, Principal between 1653 and 1662, was afterwards Bishop of Dunblane, and then Archbishop of Glasgow. In 1672 he was still living in his rooms in the college, and was there waited upon one day by Chorley, an English student studying divinity at Glasgow. He brought the compliments of his college and tutor, and invited the prelate to his approaching laureation. He next presented him with the laureation thesis, which was gratefully received, but when the visitor produced a pair of “fine fringed gloves” “he started back and with all demonstrations of humility excused himself as unworthy of such a present.” Chorley, however, whilst humble was persistent, and though the Archbishop refused again and again and retreated backwards, Chorley followed, and at the end fairly pinned Leighton against the wall! His Grace needs must yield, “but it was amazing to see with what humble gratitude, bowing to the very ground, this great man accepted them.” So much for the author of the classic Commentary on the 1st Epistle of St. Peter. Is it not a picture of the time when men were extreme in all things, though Leighton alone was extreme in humility? Was there not (you ask) something ironic in the self-depreciation? I do not think so, for you look as “through a lattice on the soul” and recognise a spirit ill at ease in an evil day, one who might have uttered Lord Bacon’s pathetic complaint multum incola fuit anima mea with far more point and fitness than ever Bacon did.
Of a later Principal, Gilbert Rule (1690-1701), a less conspicuous but very pleasing memory remains. His window was opposite that of Campbell, Professor of Divinity. Now Dr. Rule was ever late at his books, whilst Campbell was eager over them ere the late northern dawn was astir; so the one candle was not out before the other was lighted. They were called the evening and the morning star. Rule died first, and when Campbell missed the familiar light, he said, “the evening star was now gone down, and the morning star would soon disappear,” and ere long it was noted that both windows were dark. Among his other gifts, Gilbert Rule was a powerful preacher. In some ministerial wandering it was his lot to pass a night in a solitary house in a nook of the wild Grampians. At midnight enter a ghost, who would take no denial; Gilbert must out through the night till a certain spot was reached; then the ghost vanished and the Doctor got him back to bed, with, you imagine, chattering teeth and dismal foreboding. Next day the ground was opened, and the skeleton of a murdered man discovered. Gilbert preached on the following Sunday from the parish pulpit, and reasoned so powerfully of judgment and the wrath to come that an old man got up and confessed himself the murderer. In due course he was executed and the ghost walked no more.
William Carstares, Principal between 1703 and 1715, was a great figure in Church and State. “Cardinal” Carstares they nicknamed him at Dutch William’s Court, and both that astute monarch and Queen Anne, Stuart as she was, gave him almost unbounded confidence. In tact and diplomacy he excelled his contemporaries and in the valuable art of knowing what to conceal even when forced to speak. He was put to it, for the most famous anecdote about him tells of his suffering under the thumbikins in 1684. They were applied for an hour with such savage force that the King’s smith had to go for his tools to reverse the screws before it was possible to set free the maimed and bruised thumbs. In Carstares’ picture the thumbs are very prominent, in fact or flattery they show forth quite untouched. At the King’s special request he tried them on the royal digits; His Majesty vowed he had confessed anything to be rid of them. We have a pleasing picture of an annual fish dinner at Leith whereat the Principal was entertained by his colleagues. Calamy the English nonconformist was a guest, and was much delighted with the talk and the fare, and especially “the freedom and harmony between the Principal and the masters of the college,” they expressing a veneration for him as a common father, and he a tenderness for them as if they had all been his children.
Principal Robertson (1762-1793) is still a distinguished figure, but he belongs to Letters in the first place, and the Church in the second; yet even here he was eminent. A charming anecdote tells how as Principal he visited the logic class where John Stevenson, his own old teacher, was still prelecting. He addressed the students in Latin, urging them to profit, as he hoped he had himself profited, by the teaching of Stevenson, whereat “the aged Professor, unable any longer to suppress his emotion, dissolved in tears of grateful affection, and fell on the neck of his favourite pupil, his Principal.”
George Husband Baird (1793-1840) was a much more commonplace figure. His middle name was thought felicitous; he was husband to the Lord Provost’s daughter and there seemed no other sufficient reason to account for his elevation. This play upon names, by the way, has always been a favourite though puerile form of Edinburgh wit. The better part of a century afterwards we had one of our little wars on the Gold Coast, and some local jester asked for the difference between the folk of Ashantee and those of Edinburgh. The first, it was said, took their law from Coffee and the second their coffee from Law! The Ashantee war of the ’seventies is already rather dim and ancient history, but Coffee, it may be remembered, was the name of their king, and the other term referred to a well-known Edinburgh house still to the fore. However, we return to our Baird for a moment. He was Minister of the High Church as well as Principal. Discoursing of the illness of George III., he wept copiously and unreasonably; “from George Husband Baird to George III. greeting,” said one of his hearers.
There is a mass of legendary stories about the ordinary professors, but the figures are dim, and the notes of their lives mostly trivial. For instance, there is Dr. John Meiklejohn, who was Professor of Church History, 1739-1781: “He had a smooth round face, that never bore any expression but good-humour and contentment,” he droned monotonously through his lectures, glad to get away to his glebe at Abercorn, eight miles off. He delighted to regale the students at his rural manse, and pressed on them the produce of the soil, with a heartiness which he never showed in inviting their attention to the fathers of the church. “Take an egg, Mr. Smith,” he would genially insist, “they are my own eggs, for the eggs of Edinburgh are not to be depended on.” Of like kidney was David Ritchie, who was Professor of Logic and Metaphysics and Minister of St. Andrew’s Church, but “was more illustrious on the curling pond, than in the Professor’s chair.” But, then, to him in 1836 succeeded Sir William Hamilton, and for twenty years the chair was the philosophical chair of Britain. The records of his fame are not for this page; his passionate devotion to study, his vast learning, are not material for the anecdotist. He was fond of long walks with a friend into the surrounding country, and in his day it was still very easy to leave the town behind you. Though he started with a companion, he was presently away in advance or on the other side of the road, muttering to himself in Greek or Latin or English, forgetful of that external world which occupied no small place in his philosophy. “Dear me, what did you quarrel about?” asked a lady, to his no small amusement. The Council did not always select the most eminent men. About a century before, in 1745 to wit, they had preferred for the chair of Moral Philosophy William Cleghorn to David Hume. There was no other choice, it was said. A Deist might possibly become a Christian, but a Jacobite could not become a Whig. Ruddiman’s amanuensis, Adam Walker, was a student at this class, where he had listened to a lecture on the doctrine of necessity. “Well, does your Professor make us free agents or not?” said his employer. “He gives us arguments on both sides and leaves us to judge,” was the reply. “Indeed,” was Ruddiman’s caustic comment, “the fool hath said in his heart, there is no God, and the Professor will not tell you whether the fool is right or wrong.”
PRINCIPAL WILLIAM CARSTARES
From the Engraving by Jeens
Many of us remember Dunbar’s Greek Lexicon, so much in use till superseded by Liddell and Scott’s. Its author was Professor of Greek in the University from 1806 to 1852. He fell from a tree, it was said, into the Greek chair. In fact, he commenced life as gardener; confined by an accident he betook himself to study, with highly satisfactory results. His predecessor in the chair had been Andrew Dalzel, an important figure in his time, perhaps best remembered by the ineptitude of his criticism of Scott, whom he entertained unawares in his class. Scott sent him in an essay, “cracking up” Ariosto above Homer. Dalzel was naturally furious: “Dunce he was and dunce he would remain.” You cannot blame the professor, but dîs aliter visum! Dunbar’s successor was John Stuart Blackie (1852-1882), one of the best known Edinburgh figures of his time. He had a creed of his own, ways of his own, and a humour of his own. Even the orthodox loved and tolerated the genial individualist who was never malicious. “Blackie’s neyther orthodox, heterodox, nor any ither dox; he’s juist himsel’!” An ardent body of abstainers under some mistaken idea asked him to preside at one of their meetings. He thus addressed them: “I cannot understand why I am asked to be here, I am not a teetotaler—far from it. If a man asks me to dine with him and does not give me a good glass of wine, I say he is neither a Christian nor a gentleman. Germans drink beer, Englishmen drink wine, ladies tea, and fools water.” Blackie was an advocate as well as a professor. Possibly he had in his mind a certain Act of 1716, to wit, the 3rd of Geo. I. chap. 5, whereby a duty was imposed “of two pennies Scots, or one-sixth of a penny sterling on every pint of ale and beer that shall be vended and sold within the City of Edinburgh.” Among the objects to which the duty was to be applied was the settling of a salary upon the Professor of Law in the University of Edinburgh and his successor in office not exceeding £100 per annum. Here is a portrait by himself which brings vividly back, true to the life, that once familiar figure of the Edinburgh pavement: “When I walk along Princes Street I go with a kingly air, my head erect, my chest expanded, my hair flowing, my plaid flying, my stick swinging. Do you know what makes me do that? Well, I’ll tell you—just con-ceit.” Even those who knew him not will understand that the Edinburgh ways never quite seemed the same when that picturesque figure was seen no longer there. And yet the Blackie anecdotes are disappointing. There is a futile story that he once put up a notice he would meet his classes at such an hour. A student with a very elementary sense of humour cut off the c, and he retorted by deleting the l. All this is poor enough. Alas! he was only of the silver or, shall we say, of the iron age of Auld Reekie?
Aytoun in an address at the graduation of 1863, spoke of the professors of his time as the instructors, and almost idols, of the rising generation. He himself filled the chair of Rhetoric between 1845 and 1865. A quaint though scarcely characteristic story is preserved of his early years. One night he was, or was believed to be, absent from home, “late at een birling the wine.” An irate parent stood grimly behind the door the while a hesitating hand fumbled at the latch, the dim light of morn presently revealed a cloaked figure, upon whom swift blows descended without stint or measure. It was not young Aytoun at all, but a mighty Senator of the College of Justice who had mistaken the door for his own, which was a little farther along the street!