Chapter THREE: Town’s College and Schools

The official title of the University of Edinburgh is _Academia Jacobi Sexti_. So “our James,” as Ben Jonson calls him, gave a name to this great seat of learning, and in the form of a charter he gave it his blessing, and there he stopped! Bishop Reid, the last Roman Catholic Bishop of Orkney, left eight thousand merks for a college in Edinburgh, and though that sum sinks considerably when put into current coin of the realm, it is not to be neglected. It was obtained and applied, but the real patrons, authors, managers and supporters for centuries of the University was the good town of Edinburgh through its Town Council. It was _Oure Tounis Colledge_. They appointed its professors and ruled its destinies until almost our own time. The Scottish University Act of 1858 greatly lessened, though it by no means destroyed, their influence.

In a country so much under ecclesiastical influence as Scotland of the Reformation, the union between the College and the Kirk was close and intimate; still it was a corporation of tradesmen that managed the University, and though the professors kicked, there is no doubt they managed it very well. There has ever been something homely and unconventional about the college. It was opened on the 14th October 1583; the students were to wear gowns, they were to speak Latin, none was to soil his mouth with common Scots, and none was to go to taverns, or (it was later ordained) to funerals—a serious form of entertainment for which old Scotland evinced a peculiar zest.

Ah, those counsels of perfection! how the years set them at naught! Why they alone of all men in Edinburgh should not go to taverns or funerals was not a question wherewith they troubled themselves; they simply went. Gowns they never wore, and though half-hearted attempts were now and again made to introduce them, these never succeeded. Sir Alexander Grant, the late Principal, tells us that a working man, whose son was a student, wrote to him, pointing out the advantage of gowns in covering up a shabby dress. Sir Alexander seemed rather struck with this point of view, though after all, the gown must cost something, which might have been better applied to the cloak. The students, as now, lived anywhere.

The histories give many quaint details as to the manners of other days. The classes began at five in summer and six in winter; the bursars rung the bell and swept the rooms; the janitor was a student or even a graduate. His it was to lock the door at eleven at night. The early professors, who did not confine themselves to one subject but carried their class right through, were called regents. One of them, James Reid, had taken up the office in 1603; he was popular in the council, in the town, and in the whole city, but after more than twenty years’ service he came to grief on a quarrel with the all-powerful Kirk. In 1626, William Struthers, Moderator of the Presbytery, spoke of philosophy as the dish-clout of divinity. At a graduation ceremony, Reid quoted Aristippus to the effect that he would rather be an unchristian philosopher than an unphilosophical divine! for which innocent retort the regent was forced to throw up his office. One wonders what would have happened if Town Council and Kirk had come to loggerheads, but they never did, and through a college committee and a college bailie they directed the affairs of the University. Creech, best known to fame as Burns’s publisher, and the subject of some kindly or some unkindly half-humorous verse, was in his time college bailie; but Creech was a great many things in his time, though the world has pretty well forgotten him. The Lord Provost was the important figure in University as well as City life. In 1665 he was declared by the council Rector of the College, yet in the years that followed he did nothing in his office. Long afterwards, in 1838, there was a trial of students before the Sheriff, for the part these had taken in a great snowball bicker with the citizens. Witty Patrick Robertson was their counsel, and was clever enough to throw a farcical air over the whole proceedings. “You are Rector of the University, are you not?” he asked the then Lord Provost. “No! I may be, but I am not aware of it,” was the rather foolish answer. A caricature was immediately circulated of the man who does not know he is Rector! This office was not the present Lord Rectorship, which only dates from the Act of 1858.

Edinburgh has never been a rich town. In the old days, it was as poor as poor might be, and so was its college; they had nothing in the way of plate to show visitors, or to parade on great occasions. Their only exhibits were the college mace and George Buchanan’s skull! There was a legend about the mace. In 1683 the tomb of Bishop Kennedy at St. Andrews was opened: it contained five silver maces—quite a providential arrangement, one for each of the Scots Universities, and one to spare! But there was a mace in Edinburgh before this. We have note of it in 1640, and in 1651 the Town Council had it on loan for the use of the public. In 1660 the macer of the Parliament needs must borrow it till his masters get one of their own. There is a quaint, homely touch about this passing on of the mace from one body to another. It had been a valuable and interesting relic, but in the night between 29th and 30th October 1787 the library was forced, and the mace stolen from the press wherein it lay, and was never seen more. Ten guineas reward was offered, but in vain. Every one presently suspected Deacon Brodie, himself a member of the Council, and perhaps the most captivating and romantic burglar on record. Ere a year was over, he was lying in the Tolbooth a condemned felon, but he uttered no word as to the precious bauble. The year after that, very shame induced the Council to procure an elegant silver mace, with a fine Latin inscription, and the arms of James VI., the arms of the City, and the arms of the University itself, invented for the special purpose. It was just in time to be used on the laying of the foundation-stone of the new university buildings in 1789, and it has been used ever since on great occasions only. The loan of it is not asked for any more! every body corporate now has a mace of its own!

The Buchanan skull is still held by the college. That eminent scholar died on the 28th September 1582, and was buried in the Greyfriars Churchyard. John Adamson, Principal of the University between 1623 and 1651, got the skull by bribing the sexton, and bequeathed it to the college. The story rather revolts the taste of to-day, but grim old Scotland had a strange hankering after those elements of mortality. Its remarkable thinness was noted, in fact the light could be seen through it, and anatomists of later years dwelt on the fine breadth of forehead, and remarkable contours. It was judged, moreover, a skull of a Celtic type—Celtic was possibly enough Buchanan’s race. Long afterwards Sir William Hamilton, at the Royal Society in Edinburgh, compared it with the skull of a Malay robber and cut-throat, and showed that, according to the principles of the phrenologists, the Malay had the finer head. This was meant as a _reductio ad absurdum_ of phrenology, though, after all, the evidence of identification could not be satisfactory. If the sexton consented to be bribed he was not likely, in old Greyfriars, to be at a loss for a skull, but it seems irreverent to pursue the subject further.

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.”

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!

One of the idols to whom Aytoun referred was no doubt his father-in-law, John Wilson (1820-1853), the well-known Christopher North, described by Sir R. Christison as “the grandest specimen I have ever seen of the human form, tall, perfectly symmetrical, massive and majestic, yet agile.” Even in old age he had many of his early characteristics. He noted a coal carter brutally driving a heavily-laden horse up the steep streets of Edinburgh; he remonstrated with the fellow, who raised his whip in a threatening manner as if to strike. The spirit of the old man swelled in righteous anger, he tore away the whip as if it had been straw, loosened the harness, threw the coals into the street, then clutching the whip in one hand and leading the horse by the other, he marched through Moray Place, to deposit the unfortunate animal in more kindly keeping.

There are stories of the library that merit attention. I will give the name of Robert Henderson, appointed librarian in 1685, where he so continued till 1747—sixty-two years altogether, the longest record of University service extant. Physically of a lean and emaciated figure, he had a very high opinion of his own erudition. Now in the old college there was a certain ruinous wall to which was attached the legend, that it would topple over on some great scholar. The librarian affected an extreme anxiety when in the vicinity of the wall. At length it was taken down. Boswell told the story to Johnson. The sage did not lose the chance for a very palpable hit at Scots learning. “They were afraid it never would fall!” he growled. There was a like tradition regarding that precipitous part of Arthur’s Seat quaintly named Samson’s Ribs. An old witch prophesied they would be sure to fall on the greatest philosopher in Scotland. Sir John Leslie was afraid to pass that way.

The relations between the Town Council and the professors in the first half of the nineteenth century were sometimes far from harmonious. The days were past when the Academy of James VI. was merely the “Tounes Colledge,” it was more and more a University with a European reputation. A cultured scholar of the type of Sir William Hamilton, “spectator of all time and of all existence,” in Plato’s striking phrase, was not like to rest contented under the sway of the Town Council. Possibly the Council sneered at him and his likes, as visionary, unpractical, eccentric; possibly there was truth on both sides, so much _does_ depend on your point of view. The University, somewhat unwisely, went to law with the Council, and came down rather heavily; nor were the Council generous victors. The Lord Provost of the time met Professor Dunbar one day at dinner—“We have got you Professors under our thumb, and by —— we will make you feel it,” said he rather coarsely. The professors consoled each other with anecdotes of Town Council oddities in college affairs. One councillor gave as a reason why he voted for a professorial candidate that, “He was asked by a leddy who had lately given him a good job.” “I don’t care that,” said another, snapping his fingers, “for the chair of —— , but whoever the Provost votes for, I’ll vote for somebody else.” An English scholar had come to Edinburgh as candidate for a chair. He called on a worthy member of the Council to whom his very accent suggested black prelacy, or worse. “Are ye a jined member?” The stranger stared in hopeless bewilderment. “Are ye a jined member o’ onie boadie?” was the far from lucid explanation. However, the Act of 1858 has changed all this, and town and gown in Edinburgh fight no more. Well, there is no gown, and the University has always been a good part of the good town of Edinburgh, as much now as ever. Take a broad view from first to last, and how to deny that the Council did their duty well! Principal Sir Alexander Grant in his _Story of the University of Edinburgh_ bears generous and emphatic testimony as to this, and here we may well leave the matter.

I must now desert the groves of the Academy of James VI. to say a word on a lesser school and its schoolmasters. Here we have the memorable and illustrative story of the great barring out of September 1595 at the old High School. The scholars had gone on the 15th of that month to ask the Council for the week’s holiday of privilege as was usual. It was curtly refused, whereupon some “gentlemen’s bairns” collected firearms and swords, and in dead of night seized the schoolhouse, which they fortified in some sort. Their Rector, Master Pollock, was refused admittance next morning, and complained to the magistrates. Bailie John Macmorran came to the spot with a posse of officers, but William Sinclair, son of the Chancellor of Caithness, took his stand at a window and threatened to pistol the first who approached. Bailie Macmorran was a big man in his day—his house, now restored as University Hall, still rises stately and impressive in Riddle’s Close, on the south side of the Lawnmarket—and he was not to be put down by a schoolboy; he ordered his satellites to crash in the door with the beam they were bringing forward. It is not hard to reconstitute the scene: the bailie, full of civic importance and wrath, the angry boy at the window, the pride of youth and blood in his set, determined face. Presently the pistol shot rang out, and Macmorran fell dead on the pavement with a bullet through his brain. The whole town rushed to the spot, seized the frightened boys and thrust them into the Tolbooth, but finally they were liberated without hurt, after, it would seem, some form of a trial.

There are many quaint details as to the scholars. They used to go to the fields in the summer to cut rushes or bent for the floor of the school, but, you see, fighting was the work or the game of nearly every male in Scotland, and even the children must needs have their share. On these expeditions the boys fell to slashing one another with their hooks, and they were stopped. The winter of 1716 was distinguished by furious riots, though not of the same deadly nature. The pupils demolished every window of the school and of the adjacent parish church of Lady Yester, also the wall which fenced the playground.

I will not gather records of the various Rectors, not even of Dr. Alexander Adam, the most famous of them all. You can see to-day his portrait by Raeburn, and one of Raeburn’s best in the Gallery on the Mound, and think of his striking utterance in the last hours of his life, “Boys, it is growing dark, you may go home.” In his prime he had a profound conviction of his own qualities and those of his school. “Come away, sir,”—thus he would address a new scholar,—“you will see more here in an hour than you will in any other school in Europe.” He had a long series of eminent pupils, among them Scott, Horner, and Jeffrey, and the manner in which they have spoken of him justifies his words and his reputation.