On such an evening, soon after my marriage, I was sitting between him and Mr. (now Sir) Anderson Critchett. The Professor declared in his emphatic way that no man who lacked a poetic soul ought to live, poetry being one of the most refining and ennobling gifts; he had always been a poet himself and hoped to continue so as long as he lived.
The old scholar became quite excited on the theme and said he would sing to us after dinner, which he did, half singing, half reciting “Scots wha hae wi’ Wallace bled.”
“I believe in singing, it does one good,” he professed, and so he sang.
Eccentric as he was, Blackie’s courtesy was delightful. What a pity we have not more of that sort of thing nowadays! We women do love pretty little attentions.
Blackie once wrote me a poem—it was in Greek:
Likeness to God.
Those things are likest to God,
The heart that fainteth never,
The love that ever is warm,
And the hand of the generous giver.