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Chapter V Adam Ferguson SCOTTISH MEN OF LETTERS CHAPTER V ADAM FERGUSON - DR. HUGH BLAIR - DR. WILLIAM WILKIE - DR. BLACKLOCK The remarkable feature of literary society in Scotland in the second half of the century was the familiar fraternity in which these men lived. They all knew one another - most of them since boyhood, for they were all about the same age. They met one another almost every day of their lives; they belonged to the same set of society, sat at the same tables in the dingy old flats, copiously partaking of claret and punch without a headache, and of indigestible national dishes without a nightmare, with all the zest of epicures over the most delicious novelties. They could not go out of their wynds without being sure to see friends they had met last night at Mrs. Cockburn’s merry parties, over a light tea and cakes; or at the Lord President’s, over a heavy supper and drink. David Hume, when he left his house in James’ Court, before he had gone for two minutes up the High Street, might meet the dapper and prim Dr. Hugh Blair, or rub shoulders with Lord Elibank, to whom he would give a stiff bow, as he was not on good terms with his lordship. Principal Robertson, proceeding in his stately gait, would meet Dr. Carlyle arrived from Inveresk, who had just put up his horse in the stabling in the Grassmarket, equipped in jack-boots and spurs and whip, accoutrements which were slightly discordant with his clerical coat and bands. Probably there had ridden into town from Kilduff Mr. John Home - radiant in smiles and a scarlet coat - on his now aged steed. Lord Kames would pass by in wig and gown from his house in the Canongate on his way to court, and as his tall, gaunt figure disappeared round the corner, who should come but Lord Monboddo, who always kept his distance from a man who had the bad taste to ridicule his profound speculations. At his door at the Luckenbooths, standing on the steps leading to his book-shop, Mr. William Creech would be seen, attired in silk breeches and black coat, with carefully-powdered hair, for it was twelve o’clock, the hour that the bibliophile had his levées of literary friends, and he would intimate to Lord Hailes and rubicund James Boswell that in the back room were little Mr. William Tytler of Woodhouselee, turning over some antiquarian books, and Mr. Adam Ferguson, with his young friend Dugald Stewart, who was then professor of Mathematics. Then there might come in to make arrangements for SCOTTISH MEN OF LETTERS the press, Mr. William Smellie, the printer, also naturalist and natural philosopher, who was the correspondent and translator of Buffon, the editor and compiler of all the principal articles in the first edition of the Encyclopœdia Britannica, which began to appear in 1771, in three modest volumes, edited for a modest £200. This lumbering, slouching figure, with uncombed hair, unshaven face, clad in a grey coat far too big, all sprinkled with snuff, and a rusty cocked hat, was he of caustic tongue and rude humour, who talked philosophy at Lord Monboddo’s suppers, and headed the revelries of the Crochallan Club, in Douglas’s tavern, with jocose and roystering comrades. It was there Robert Burns met him on too festive evenings in 1787 - His bristling beard just rising in its might - ’Twas four long nights and days to shaving night; His uncombed, grizzly locks, wild staring, thatched A head for thought profound and clear unmatched. Such were the men, notable for learning and letters, who met every day; while there were lawyers like Henry Erskine, the most delightful of jesters, most able of pleaders; the mighty Robert MacQueen, famous as Lord Braxfield; Andrew Crosbie; Lord Cullen, the incomparable mimic; and men of science like Drs. Cullen and Black, Gregory and Robison. Smollett enthusiastically said Edinburgh was a “hotbed of genius.” [Humphrey Clinker.] When Amyat, the king’s chemist, was in town, he said to Smellie: “Here I stand at what is called the Cross of Edinburgh, and can in a few minutes take fifty men of genius by the hand.” [Kerr’s Life of Smellie, ii. 252.] Allowing for some courteous exaggeration, it certainly was a remarkable time. It was in 1773 - the year in which Dr. Johnson arrived in Edinburgh to overawe the Scottish capital with his literary magnitude - that David Hume wrote to his friend Strahan, the printer, alleging that “England is so sunk in stupidity and barbarism and faction that you may as well think of Lapland for an author.” [Letters to Strahan (ed. by Hill).] This is, of course, in his whimsical way of girding at the Southrons; but it must be owned that there were very few English men of letters when he wrote - singularly few in London. Who were they? Johnson, and Sir William Blackstone, the jurist. Add to these Colman, Murphy, and Richard Cumberland, the playwrights; but who else besides? Gray, Churchill, and Sterne were gone. Burke and Goldsmith were Irishmen. The great writers were dead; their successors had not yet come to literary life. It was much, then, to boast that while London, with about 700,000 inhabitants (and Hume SCOTTISH MEN OF LETTERS conjectured “there is a kind of impossibility that any city could ever rise much beyond this proportion”), had not half a dozen authors of mark, Edinburgh, with only 70,000, possessed so many. [“Essay on the Populousness of Ancient Nations.” “I believe this is an historical age - this is an historical nation; and I know of no less than eight histories upon the stocks in this country,” (i.e. Scotland) wrote Hume to Strahan in 1773 (Letters of D. Hume (ed. Hill), p. 155). Even Dr. Carlyle had intend- ed to join the band of historians, for his friend Dr. Dickson writes to him in 1765 from London: “I most ardently wish you to set about your History, and you must procrastinate no longer” (Carlyle MSS.).] Within a few years, the English, who sneered at the Scots, were obliged to buy and to read their books. They read Ferguson for Roman history; Hume, Smollett, Henry for English history; Robertson and Watson for foreign history. In philosophy little had been produced in England since Bishop Berkeley wrote, and they therefore resorted to Hume and Reid, even to Beattie and Monboddo. They got criticism from Blair and Lord Kames; learned political economy from Smith; and docilely accepted poetry from the piping of the Minstrel. All this shows a remarkable contrast in literary activity between north and south of the Tweed. Few men added more vivacity and freshness to the literary band than Adam Ferguson. He was the only one who was not a Lowlander; and coming from Perthshire, with Gaelic accents on his lips, with Highland blood in his veins, and extremely Celtic temper in his spirit, he brought a refreshingly new, but by no means disturbing, element into the society of Edinburgh. He was born in the little Manse of Logierait in 1723. His father was an estimable clergyman, who had been brought up in the straitest sect of the evangelicals. This we gather from the simple reminiscences in which the old minister relates how, on one occasion, the regent at the university of St. Andrews, where he boarded, ordered him on the Sabbath to go to the kitchen to dry some tobacco and grind it into snuff; at which the pious student had been grievously offended, for he had seen his father frequently refuse to take a “sneeze” from a person who, he suspected, had prepared it on the Lord’s Day. [Edin. Review, 1867. It was the custom in pious households to have children baptized as soon as possible. Adam Ferguson and two of his broth- ers were baptized the day after their birth - the rest of the family a few days after (Records of Clan Ferguson, p. 123; see also Memoirs of Thomas Boston).] To the same college his son Adam was sent at the age of sixteen, and thence passed to Edinburgh to complete his studies for the church. When he had completed two out of six portentous years of divinity lectures, required then from all preparing for the ministry, he was, by favour of the General Assembly, licensed, in order to accept the post of Deputy Chaplain of the Black Watch. There were special reasons why he should seek such an appointment. The Duke of Atholl was his father’s patron, and his Grace’s son, Lord John Murray, was colonel of the regiment - a youth of twenty-three - over whose conduct it was ADAM FERGUSON thought an advantage that a watchful, though youthful, ministerial eye should be kept. No one was better fitted for the delicate task than the young Highland chaplain, whose knowledge of Gaelic also enabled him to preach and minister to the Highland soldiers. The story is told, to show his impetuous nature, that on the luckless field of Fontenoy he was seen in the front of his regiment, broadsword in hand, and when the commanding officer bade him remember that his commission did not warrant his taking such a position, “Damn my commission!” was his reply, and he flung that document at his head. [Scott’s Works, xix. 313.] A good story; but was it usual for chaplains to carry their commissions about their persons, ready to fling as missiles at their superior officers, with appropriate but unclerical expletives? More credible and more creditable is the account that, in answer to a remonstrance at his being in the front of his regiment, he replied that he was there not to fight, but to tend the wounded and the dying.
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