Most of the literary men of the time were in two camps. Either they wrote for the Edinburgh Review, or for Blackwood’s Magazine, occasionally for both. The opponents knew each other, and were more or less excellent friends, though they used the most violent language. Jeffrey was the great light on the Edinburgh; he was described by Professor Wilson’s wife as “a horrid little man, but held in as high estimation here as the Bible.” Her husband, with Lockhart and Hogg, were the chief writers for the Magazine. The first number of that last, as we now know it, contained the famous Chaldean Manuscript, in which uproarious fun was made of friends and foes, under the guise of a scriptural parable. They began with their own publisher and real editor. “And his name was as it had been the colour of ebony, and his number was the number of a maiden when the days of the year of her virginity have expired.” In other words, Mr. Blackwood of 17 Princes Street. Constable, the publisher, was the “crafty in council,” and he had a notable horn in his forehead that “cast down the truth to the ground.” This was the Review. Professor Wilson was “the beautiful leopard from the valley of the plane trees,” referring to the Isle of Palms, the poem of which Christopher North was the author. Lockhart was the “scorpion which delighteth to sting the faces of men.” Hogg was “the great wild boar from the forests of Lebanon whetting his dreadful tusks for the battle.” It was the composition of these last three spirits, and is described by Aytoun as “a mirror in which we behold literary Edinburgh of 1817, translated into mythology.” It was chiefly put together one night at 53 Queen Street, amidst uproarious laughter that shook the walls of the house, and made the ladies in the room above send to inquire in wonder what the gentlemen below were about. Even the grave Sir William Hamilton was of the party; he contributed a verse, and was so amused at his own performance that he tumbled off his chair in a fit of laughter. Perhaps the personalities by which it gained part of its success were not in the best taste, but never was squib so successful. It shook the town with rage and mirth. After well-nigh a century, though some sort of a key is essential, you read it with a grin; it has a permanent, if small, place in the history of letters. Yet Wilson contributed to the Edinburgh! “John,” said his mother when she heard it, “if you turn Whig, this house is no longer big enough for us both.” There was no fear of that, however.
The most engaging stories of Christopher North tell of his feats of endurance. After he was a grave professor he would throw off his coat and tackle successfully with his fists an obstreperous bully. He would walk seventy miles in the waking part of twenty-four hours. Once, in the braes of Glenorchy, he called at a farmhouse at eleven at night for refreshment. They brought him a bottle of whisky and a can of milk, which he mixed and consumed in two draughts from a huge bowl. He was called to the Scots bar in 1815, and from influence, or favour, agents at first sent him cases. He afterwards confessed that when he saw the papers on his table, he did not know what to do with them. But he speedily drifted into literature, wherein he made a permanent mark. We have all dipped into that huge mine of wit and wisdom, the Noctes Ambrosianæ. You would say of him, and you would of Scott, they were splendid men, their very faults and excesses lovable. What a strange power both had over animals! As in the case of Queen Mary, their servants were ever their faithful and devoted friends. Wilson kept a great number of dogs. Rover was a special favourite. As the animal was dying, Wilson bent over it, “Rover, my poor fellow, give me your paw,” as if he had been taking leave of a man. When Camp died, Scott reverently buried him in the back garden of his Castle Street house; his daughter noted the deep cloud of sorrow on her father’s face. Maida is with him on his monument as in life. Wilson kept sixty-two gamebirds all at once; they made a fearful noise. “Did they never fight?” queried his doctor. “No,” was the answer; “but put a hen amongst them, and I will not answer for the peace being long observed. And so it hath been since the beginning of the world.” These gifted men played each other tricks of the most impish nature. Lockhart once made a formal announcement of Christopher North’s sudden death, with a panegyric upon his character in the Weekly Journal; true, he confined it to a few copies, but it was rather a desperate method of jesting. Patrick Robertson, as Lord Robertson, a Senator of the College of Justice, published a volume of poems. This was duly reviewed in the Quarterly, which Lockhart edited, and a copy sent to the author; it finished off with this mad couplet:
“Here lies the peerless paper lord, Lord Peter,
Who broke the laws of God and man and metre.”
The feelings of “Peter,” as his friends always called Robertson, may be imagined. True, it was the only copy of the Review that contained the couplet: it must have been some time before the disturbed poet found out. Yet “Peter” was a “jokist” of a scarcely less desperate character. At a dinner-party an Oxford don was parading his Greek erudition, to the boredom of the whole company. Robertson gravely replied to some proposition, “I rather think, sir, Dionysius of Halicarnassus is against you there.” “I beg your pardon,” said the don quickly, “Dionysius did not flourish for ninety years after that period.” “Oh,” rejoined Patrick, with an expression of face that must be imagined, “I made a mistake; I meant Thaddeus of Warsaw.” There was no more Greek erudition that night. This fondness for a jest followed those men into every concern of life. One of Wilson’s daughters came to her father in his study and asked, with appropriate blushes, his consent to her engagement to Professor Aytoun. He pinned a sheet of paper to her back, and packed her off to the next room, where her lover was. They were both a little mystified till he read the inscription: “With the author’s compliments.”
De Quincey spent the last thirty years of his life mainly in Edinburgh. His grave is in St. Cuthbert’s Churchyard. He seems a strange, exotic figure, for his literary interests, at any rate, were not at all Scots. Once he paid a casual visit to Gloucester Place, where Wilson lived. It was a stormy night, and he stayed on—for about a year. His hours and dietary were peculiar, but he was allowed to do exactly as he liked. “Thomas de Sawdust,” as W. E. Henley rather cruelly nicknamed him, excited the astonishment of the Scots cook by the magnificent way in which he ordered a simple meal. “Weel, I never heard the like o’ that in a’ my days; the bodie has an awfu’ sicht o’ words. If it had been my ain maister that was wanting his denner he would ha’ ordered a hale tablefu’ in little mair than a waff o’ his han’, and here’s a’ this claver aboot a bit mutton no bigger than a preen. Mr. De Quinshay would mak’ a gran’ preacher, though I’m thinking a hantle o’ the folk wouldna ken what he was driving at.” During most of the day De Quincey lay in a stupor; the early hours of the next morning were his time for talk. The Edinburgh of that time was still a town of strong individualities, brilliant wits, and clever talkers, but when that weird voice began, the listeners, though they were the very flower of the intellect of the place, were content to hold their peace: all tradition lies, or this strange figure was here the first of them all.
In some ways it was a curious and primitive time, certainly none of these men was a drunkard, but they all wrote as if they quaffed liquor like the gods of the Norse mythology, and with some of them practice conformed to theory, whilst fists and sticks were quite orthodox modes of settling disputes. Even the grave Ebony was not immune. A writer in Glasgow, one Douglas, was aggrieved at some real or fancied reference in the Magazine. He hied him to Edinburgh, and as Mr. Blackwood was entering his shop, he laid a horsewhip in rather a half-hearted fashion, it would seem, about his shoulders. Then he made off. The editor publisher forthwith procured a cudgel, and luckily discovered his aggressor on the point of entering the Glasgow coach; he gave him a sound beating. As nothing more is heard of the incident, probably both sides considered honour as satisfied. How difficult to imagine people of position in incidents like this in Edinburgh of to-day; but I will not dwell longer on them and their likes, but move on to another era.
“Virgilium viditantum,” very happily quoted Scott, the only time he ever saw (save for a casual street view) and spoke with Burns. One wishes that there was more to be said of Scott and Carlyle. Carlyle was a student at Edinburgh, and passed the early years of his literary working life there. He saw Scott on the street many a time and earnestly desired a more intimate knowledge. This meeting would have been as interesting as that, but it was not to be. Never was fate more ironical, nay, perverse. Goethe was the friend and correspondent of both, and it seemed to him at Weimar an odd thing that these men, both students of German literature, both citizens of Edinburgh, should not be personal friends. He did everything he could. Through Carlyle he sent messages and gifts to Scott, and these Carlyle transmitted in a modest and courteous note (13th April 1828). Alas! it was after the deluge. Scott, with the bravest of hearts, yet with lessening physical and mental power, was fighting that desperate and heroic battle we know so well. The letter went unanswered, and they never met. Less important people were kinder. Jeffrey told Carlyle he must give him a lift, and they were great friends afterwards. In 1815 for the first time he met Edward Irving in a room off Rose Street. The latter asked a number of local questions about Annan, which subject did not interest the youthful sage at all; finally, he professed total ignorance and indifference as to the history and condition of some one’s baby. “You seem to know nothing,” said Irving very crossly. The answer was characteristic. “Sir, by what right do you try my knowledge in this way? I have no interest to inform myself about the births in Annan, and care not if the process of birth and generation there should cease and determine altogether.” Carlyle studied for the Scots kirk, but he was soon very doubtful as to his vocation. In 1817 he came from Kirkcaldy to put down his name for the theological hall. “Old Dr. Ritchie was ‘not at home’ when I called to enter myself. ‘Good,’ said I, ‘let the omen be fulfilled,’ ” and he shook the dust of the hall from his feet for evermore. Possibly he muttered something about, “Hebrew old Clo”, if he did, his genius for cutting nicknames carried him away. Through it all no one had greater reverence for the written Word. Carlyle, for good or for ill, was a Calvinist at heart. In the winter of 1823 he was sore beset with the “fiend dyspepsia.” He rode from his father’s house all the way to Edinburgh to consult a specialist. The oracle was not dubious. “It was all tobacco, sir; give up tobacco.” But could he give it up? “Give it up, sir?” he testily replied. “I can cut off my hand with an axe if that should be necessary.” Carlyle let it alone for months, but was not a whit the better; at length, swearing he would endure the “diabolical farce and delusion” no longer, he laid almost violent hands on a long clay and tobacco pouch and was as happy as it was possible for him to be. Perhaps the doctor was right after all.
Up to the middle of the last century a strange personage called Peter Nimmo, or more often Sir Peter Nimmo, moved about the classes of Edinburgh University, and had done so for years. Professor Masson in Edinburgh Sketches and Memories has told with his wonted care and accuracy what it is possible to know of the subject. He was most probably a “stickit minister” who hung about the classes year after year, half-witted no doubt, but with a method in his madness. He pretended or believed or not unwillingly was hoaxed into the belief that he was continually being asked to the houses of professors and others, where not seldom he was received and got some sort of entertainment. Using Professor Wilson’s name as a passport he achieved an interview with Wordsworth, who described him as “a Scotch baronet, eccentric in appearance, but fundamentally one of the most sensible men he had ever met with.” It was shrewdly suspected that he simply held his tongue, and allowed Wordsworth to do all the talking; a good listener is usually found a highly agreeable person. He tickled Carlyle’s sense of humour, and was made the subject of a poem by the latter in Fraser’s Magazine. It was one of the earliest and one of the very worst things that Carlyle ever did.
I note in passing that Peter Nimmo had a predecessor or contemporary, John Sheriff by name, who died in August 1844 in his seventieth year. He was widely known as Doctor Syntax, from some fancied resemblance to the stock portrait of that celebrity. He devoted all his time to University class-rooms and City churches, through which he roamed at will as by prescriptive right. He boasted that he had attended more than a hundred courses of lectures; but his great joy was when any chance enabled him to occupy the seat of the Lord High Commissioner in St. Giles’.