1 written for the “book” of the edinburgh university union fancy fair.
i am asked to write something (it is not specifically stated what) to the profit and glory of my alma mater; and the fact is i seem to be in very nearly the same case with those who addressed me, for while i am willing enough to write something, i know not what to write. only one point i see, that if i am to write at all, it should be of the university itself and my own days under its shadow; of the things that are still the same and of those that are already changed: such talk, in short, as would pass naturally between a student of today and one of yesterday, supposing them to meet and grow confidential.
the generations pass away swiftly enough on the high seas of life; more swiftly still in the little bubbling back-water of the quadrangle; so that we see there, on a scale startlingly diminished, the flight of time and the succession of men. i looked for my name the other day in last year’s case-book of the speculative. naturally enough i looked for it near the end; it was not there, nor yet in the next column, so that i began to think it had been dropped at press; and when at last i found it, mounted on the shoulders of so many successors, and looking in that posture like the name of a man of ninety, i was conscious of some of the dignity of years. this kind of dignity of temporal precession is likely, with prolonged life, to become more familiar, possibly less welcome; but i felt it strongly then, it is strongly on me now, and i am the more emboldened to speak with my successors in the tone of a parent and a praiser of things past.
for, indeed, that which they attend is but a fallen university; it has doubtless some remains of good, for human institutions decline by gradual stages; but decline, in spite of all seeming embellishments, it does; and what is perhaps more singular, began to do so when i ceased to be a student. thus, by an odd chance, i had the very last of the very best of alma mater; the same thing, i hear (which makes it the more strange), had previously happened to my father; and if they are good and do not die, something not at all unsimilar will be found in time to have befallen my successors of today. of the specific points of change, of advantage in the past, of shortcoming in the present, i must own that, on a near examination, they look wondrous cloudy. the chief and far the most lamentable change is the absence of a certain lean, ugly, idle, unpopular student, whose presence was for me the gist and heart of the whole matter; whose changing humours, fine occasional purposes of good, flinching acceptance of evil, shiverings on wet, east-windy, morning journeys up to class, infinite yawnings during lecture and unquenchable gusto in the delights of truantry, made up the sunshine and shadow of my college life. you cannot fancy what you missed in missing him; his virtues, i make sure, are inconceivable to his successors, just as they were apparently concealed from his contemporaries, for i was practically alone in the pleasure i had in his society. poor soul, i remember how much he was cast down at times, and how life (which had not yet begun) seemed to be already at an end, and hope quite dead, and misfortune and dishonour, like physical presences, dogging him as he went. and it may be worth while to add that these clouds rolled away in their season, and that all clouds roll away at last, and the troubles of youth in particular are things but of a moment. so this student, whom i have in my eye, took his full share of these concerns, and that very largely by his own fault; but he still clung to his fortune, and in the midst of much misconduct, kept on in his own way learning how to work; and at last, to his wonder, escaped out of the stage of studentship not openly shamed; leaving behind him the university of edinburgh shorn of a good deal of its interest for myself.
but while he is (in more senses than one) the first person, he is by no means the only one whom i regret, or whom the students of today, if they knew what they had lost, would regret also. they have still tait, to be sure — long may they have him! — and they have still tait’s class-room, cupola and all; but think of what a different place it was when this youth of mine (at least on roll days) would be present on the benches, and, at the near end of the platform, lindsay senior [professor tait’s laboratory assistant] was airing his robust old age. it is possible my successors may have never even heard of old lindsay; but when he went, a link snapped with the last century. he had something of a rustic air, sturdy and fresh and plain; he spoke with a ripe east-country accent, which i used to admire; his reminiscences were all of journeys on foot or highways busy with post-chaises — a scotland before steam; he had seen the coal fire on the isle of may, and he regaled me with tales of my own grandfather. thus he was for me a mirror of things perished; it was only in his memory that i could see the huge shock of flames of the may beacon stream to leeward, and the watchers, as they fed the fire, lay hold unscorched of the windward bars of the furnace; it was only thus that i could see my grandfather driving swiftly in a gig along the seaboard road from pittenweem to crail, and for all his business hurry, drawing up to speak good-humouredly with those he met. and now, in his turn, lindsay is gone also; inhabits only the memories of other men, till these shall follow him; and figures in my reminiscences as my grandfather figured in his.
to-day, again, they have professor butcher, and i hear he has a prodigious deal of greek; and they have professor chrystal, who is a man filled with the mathematics. and doubtless these are set-offs. but they cannot change the fact that professor blackie has retired, and that professor kelland is dead. no man’s education is complete or truly liberal who knew not kelland. there were unutterable lessons in the mere sight of that frail old clerical gentleman, lively as a boy, kind like a fairy godfather, and keeping perfect order in his class by the spell of that very kindness. i have heard him drift into reminiscences in class time, though not for long, and give us glimpses of old-world life in out-of-the-way english parishes when he was young; thus playing the same part as lindsay — the part of the surviving memory, signalling out of the dark backward and abysm of time the images of perished things. but it was a part that scarce became him; he somehow lacked the means: for all his silver hair and worn face, he was not truly old; and he had too much of the unrest and petulant fire of youth, and too much invincible innocence of mind, to play the veteran well. the time to measure him best, to taste (in the old phrase) his gracious nature, was when he received his class at home. what a pretty simplicity would he then show, trying to amuse us like children with toys; and what an engaging nervousness of manner, as fearing that his efforts might not succeed! truly he made us all feel like children, and like children embarrassed, but at the same time filled with sympathy for the conscientious, troubled elder-boy who was working so hard to entertain us. a theorist has held the view that there is no feature in man so tell-tale as his spectacles; that the mouth may be compressed and the brow smoothed artificially, but the sheen of the barnacles is diagnostic. and truly it must have been thus with kelland; for as i still fancy i behold him frisking actively about the platform, pointer in hand, that which i seem to see most clearly is the way his glasses glittered with affection. i never knew but one other man who had (if you will permit the phrase) so kind a spectacle; and that was dr. appleton. but the light in his case was tempered and passive; in kelland’s it danced, and changed, and flashed vivaciously among the students, like a perpetual challenge to goodwill.
i cannot say so much about professor blackie, for a good reason. kelland’s class i attended, once even gained there a certificate of merit, the only distinction of my university career. but although i am the holder of a certificate of attendance in the professor’s own hand, i cannot remember to have been present in the greek class above a dozen times. professor blackie was even kind enough to remark (more than once) while in the very act of writing the document above referred to, that he did not know my face. indeed, i denied myself many opportunities; acting upon an extensive and highly rational system of truantry, which cost me a great deal of trouble to put in exercise — perhaps as much as would have taught me greek — and sent me forth into the world and the profession of letters with the merest shadow of an education. but they say it is always a good thing to have taken pains, and that success is its own reward, whatever be its nature; so that, perhaps, even upon this i should plume myself, that no one ever played the truant with more deliberate care, and none ever had more certificates for less education. one consequence, however, of my system is that i have much less to say of professor blackie than i had of professor kelland; and as he is still alive, and will long, i hope, continue to be so, it will not surprise you very much that i have no intention of saying it.
meanwhile, how many others have gone — jenkin, hodgson, and i know not who besides; and of that tide of students that used to throng the arch and blacken the quadrangle, how many are scattered into the remotest parts of the earth, and how many more have lain down beside their fathers in their “resting-graves”! and again, how many of these last have not found their way there, all too early, through the stress of education! that was one thing, at least, from which my truantry protected me. i am sorry indeed that i have no greek, but i should be sorrier still if i were dead; nor do i know the name of that branch of knowledge which is worth acquiring at the price of a brain fever. there are many sordid tragedies in the life of the student, above all if he be poor, or drunken, or both; but nothing more moves a wise man’s pity than the case of the lad who is in too much hurry to be learned. and so, for the sake of a moral at the end, i will call up one more figure, and have done. a student, ambitious of success by that hot, intemperate manner of study that now grows so common, read night and day for an examination. as he went on, the task became more easy to him, sleep was more easily banished, his brain grew hot and clear and more capacious, the necessary knowledge daily fuller and more orderly. it came to the eve of the trial and he watched all night in his high chamber, reviewing what he knew, and already secure of success. his window looked eastward, and being (as i said) high up, and the house itself standing on a hill, commanded a view over dwindling suburbs to a country horizon. at last my student drew up his blind, and still in quite a jocund humour, looked abroad. day was breaking, the cast was tinging with strange fires, the clouds breaking up for the coming of the sun; and at the sight, nameless terror seized upon his mind. he was sane, his senses were undisturbed; he saw clearly, and knew what he was seeing, and knew that it was normal; but he could neither bear to see it nor find the strength to look away, and fled in panic from his chamber into the enclosure of the street. in the cool air and silence, and among the sleeping houses, his strength was renewed. nothing troubled him but the memory of what had passed, and an abject fear of its return.
“gallo canente, spes redit,
aegris salus refunditur,
lapsis fides revertitur,”
as they sang of old in portugal in the morning office. but to him that good hour of cockcrow, and the changes of the dawn, had brought panic, and lasting doubt, and such terror as he still shook to think of. he dared not return to his lodging; he could not eat; he sat down, he rose up, he wandered; the city woke about him with its cheerful bustle, the sun climbed overhead; and still he grew but the more absorbed in the distress of his recollection and the fear of his past fear. at the appointed hour, he came to the door of the place of examination; but when he was asked, he had forgotten his name. seeing him so disordered, they had not the heart to send him away, but gave him a paper and admitted him, still nameless, to the hall. vain kindness, vain efforts. he could only sit in a still growing horror, writing nothing, ignorant of all, his mind filled with a single memory of the breaking day and his own intolerable fear. and that same night he was tossing in a brain fever.
people are afraid of war and wounds and dentists, all with excellent reason; but these are not to be compared with such chaotic terrors of the mind as fell on this young man, and made him cover his eyes from the innocent morning. we all have by our bedsides the box of the merchant abudah, thank god, securely enough shut; but when a young man sacrifices sleep to labour, let him have a care, for he is playing with the lock.
