Now, I dare say you are marvelling—first, Why I brought this grim, old Rhadamanthus, Belzaleel, U. P. Naso of a doorkeeper up before you; and secondly, How I am to get him down decorously in that ancient blue greatcoat, and get at my own proper text.
And first of the first. I thought it would do you young men—the hope of the world—no harm to let your affections go out toward this dear, old-world specimen of homespun worth. And as to the second, I am going to make it my excuse for what is to come. One day soon after I knew him, when I thought he was in a soft, confidential mood, I said: "Jeems, what kind of weaver are you?" "I'm in the fancical line, maister John," said he somewhat stiffly; "I like its leecence." So exit Jeems—impiger, iracundus, acer—torvus visu—placide quiescat!
Now, my dear friends, I am in the fancical line as well as Jeems, and in virtue of my leecence, I begin my exegetical remarks on the pursuit of truth. By the bye, I should have told Sir Henry that it was truth, not knowledge, I was to be after. Now all knowledge should be true, but it isn't; much of what is called knowledge is very little worth even when true, and much of the best truth is not in a strict sense knowable,—rather it is felt and believed.
Exegetical, you know, is the grand and fashionable word now-a-days for explanatory; it means bringing out of a passage all that is in it, and nothing more. For my part, being in Jeems's line, I am not so particular as to the nothing more. We fancical men are much given to make somethings of nothings; indeed, the noble Italians, call imagination and poetic fancy the little more; its very function is to embellish and intensify the actual and the common. Now you must not laugh at me, or it, when I announce the passage from which I mean to preach upon the pursuit of truth, and the possession of wisdom:—
"On Tintock tap there is a Mist,
And in the Mist there is a Kist,
And in the Kist there is a Cap;
Tak' up the Cap and sup the drap,
And set the Cap on Tintock tap."
And as to what Sir Henry[43] would call the context, we are saved all trouble, there being none, the passage being self-contained, and as destitute of relations as Melchisedec.
[Footnote 43: This was read to Sir Henry W. Moncreiff's Young Men's
Association, November 1862.]
Tintock, you all know, or should know, is a big porphyritic hill in Lanarkshire, standing alone, and dominating like a king over the Upper Ward. Then we all understand what a mist is; and it is worth remembering that as it is more difficult to penetrate, to illuminate, and to see through mist than darkness, so it is easier to enlighten and overcome ignorance, than error, confusion, and mental mist. Then a kist is Scotch for chest, and a cap the same for cup, and drap for drop. Well, then, I draw out of these queer old lines—
First, That to gain real knowledge, to get it at firsthand, you must go up the Hill Difficulty—some Tintock, something you see from afar—and you must climb; you must energize, as Sir William Hamilton and Dr. Chalmers said and did; you must turn your back upon the plain, and you must mainly go alone, and on your own legs. Two boys may start together on going up Tinto, and meet at the top; but the journeys are separate, each takes his own line.
Secondly, You start for your Tintock top with a given object, to get into the mist and get the drop, and you do this chiefly because you have the truth-hunting instinct; you long to know what is hidden there, for there is a wild and urgent charm in the unknown; and you want to realize for yourself what others, it may have been ages ago, tell they have found there.