A SCOTCH PROBATIONER.
(Dominie Sampson.)
There are few of our originals in whom we can exhibit such precise points of coincident resemblance between the real and fictitious character, as in him whom we now assign as the prototype of Dominie Sampson. The person of real existence also possesses the singular recommendation of presenting more dignified and admirable characteristics, in their plain unvarnished detail, than the ridiculous caricature produced in “Guy Mannering,” though it be drawn by an author whose elegant imagination has often exalted, but seldom debased, the materials to which he has condescended to be indebted.
Mr. James Sanson was the son of James Sanson, tacksman of Birkhillside Mill, situate in the parish of Legerwood, in Berwickshire. After getting the rudiments of his education at a country-school, he went to the University of Edinburgh, and, at a subsequent period, completed his probationary studies at that of Glasgow. At these colleges he made great proficiency in the Latin, Greek, and Hebrew languages, and became deeply immersed in the depths of philosophy and theology, of which, as with Dominie Sampson, the more abstruse and neglected branches were his favourite subjects of application. He was a close, incessant student; and, in the families where he afterwards resided as a tutor, all his leisure moments were devoted to the pursuits of literature. Even his hours of relaxation and walking were not exempted, in the exceeding earnestness of his solicitude. Then he was seldom seen without a book, upon which he would be so intent, that a friend might have passed, and even spoken to him, without Sanson’s being conscious of the circumstance. After going through his probationary trials before the presbytery, he became an acceptable, even an admired preacher, and was frequently employed in assisting the clergymen of the neighbourhood.
From the narrow circumstances of his father, he was obliged early in life to become a tutor. Into whose family he first entered is unknown. However, in this humble situation, owing probably to the parsimonious economy to which he had been accustomed in his father’s house, he in a short time saved the sum of twenty-five pounds—a little fortune in those days to a youth of Mr. Sanson’s habits.
With this money he determined upon a pedestrian excursion into England, for which he was excellently qualified, from his uncommon strength and undaunted resolution. After journeying over a great part of the sister kingdom, he came to Harwich, where a sight of the passage-boats to Holland, and the cheapness of the fare, induced him to take a trip to the continent. How he was supported during his peregrinations was never certainly discovered; but he actually travelled over the greater part of the Netherlands, besides a considerable portion of Germany, and spent only about the third part of his twenty-five pounds. He always kept a profound silence upon the subject himself; but it is conjectured, with great probability, that in the Low Countries he had recourse to convents, were the monks were ever ready to do acts of kindness to men of such learning as Sanson would appear to them to be. Perhaps he procured the means of subsistence by the expedients which the celebrated Goldsmith is said to have practised in his continental wanderings, and made the disputation of the morning supply the dinner of the day.
After his return from the continent, about 1784, he entered the family of the Rev. Laurence Johnson of Earlston, where he continued some time, partly employed in the education of his children, and giving occasional assistance in his public ministerial duty. From this situation he removed to the house of Mr. Thomas Scott, uncle of the celebrated Sir Walter, whose family then resided at Ellieston, in the county of Roxburgh. While superintending this gentleman’s children, he was appointed to a higher duty—the charge of Carlenridge Chapel, in the parish of Hawick, which he performed regularly every Sunday, at the same time that he attended the education of the family through the week. We may safely conjecture that it was at this particular period of his life he first was honoured with the title of Dominie Sanson.
He was next employed by the Earl of Hopetoun, as chaplain to that nobleman’s tenants at Leadhills, where, with an admirable but unfortunate tenaciousness of duty, he patiently continued to exercise his honourable calling, to the irreparable destruction of his own health. The atmosphere being tainted with the natural effluvia of the noxious mineral which was the staple production of the place, though incapable of influencing the health of those who had been accustomed to it from their infancy, had soon a fatal effect upon the life of poor Sanson. The first calamitous consequence that befel him was the loss of his teeth; next he became totally blind; and, last of all, to complete the sacrifice, the insalubrious air extinguished the principle of life. Thus did this worthy man, though conscious of the fate that awaited him, choose rather to encounter the last enemy of our nature, than relinquish what he considered a sacred duty. Strange that one, whose conduct through life was every way so worthy of the esteem and gratitude of mankind—whose death would not have disgraced the devotion of a primitive martyr—should by means of a few less dignified peculiarities, have eventually conferred the character of perfection on a work of humour, and, in a caricatured exhibition, supplied attractions, nearly unparalleled, to innumerable theatres!
Mr. James Sanson was of the greatest stature—near six feet high, and otherwise proportionately enormous. His person was coarse, his limbs large, and his manners awkward; so that, while people admired the simplicity and innocence of his character, they could not help smiling at the clumsiness of his motions and the rudeness of his address. His soul was pure and untainted—the seat of many manly and amiable virtues. He was ever faithful in his duty, both as a preacher and a tutor, warmly attached to the interests of the family in which he resided, and gentle in the instruction of his pupils. As a preacher, though his manner in his public exhibitions, no less than in private society, was not in his favour, he was well received by every class of hearers. His discourses were the well-digested productions of a laborious mind; and his sentiments seldom failed to be expressed with the utmost beauty and elegance of diction.