Scottish Life Memorials and Recollections
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
A CENTURY OF SCOTTISH LIFE. MEMORIALS AND RECOLLECTIONS OF HISTORICAL 'AND REMARKABLE PERSONS. WITH ILLUSTRATIONS OF CALEDONIAN HUMOUR. BY THE REV. CHARLES ROGERS, LL.D., F.S.A. SCOT. HISTORIOGRAPHER TO THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF GREAT BRITAIN. SECOND EDITION, ENLARGED. LONDON : CHARLES GEIFFIN & CO., 8TATIONEBS 5 HALL COUET. 1872. LONDON : PRINTED BT J. AND W. RIDER, BARTHOLOMF.W CLOSE. DA AI.K7 PEEFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. THE first edition of this work having obtained a degree of favour much beyond its deserts, I have been encouraged carefully to revise every portion of it. The entire arrange- ment has been altered, the department more especially anecdotal recast, and much new matter added. Besides, the present edition is produced at a price more suited to the majority of readers. A CENTURY OF SCOTTISH LIFE is the most appropriate title I can devise for a work which includes memorials and anecdotes of remarkable Scotsmen and others during the last hundred years. For a portion of the memorials I am indebted to my late father, a Scottish country minister, and one of the best conversationalists of his time. Person- ally I have had the privilege of associating with many gifted Scotsmen for the last thirty years, and I have commemo- rated those who are departed. My sketches are short, for I have not attempted biographies. Throughout the work I have endeavoured to be succinct, preferring to illustrate my subject with anecdotes rather than with reflections of my own. The present edition is enriched with contri- butions from my patriotic friend Mr. Sheriff Barclay of Perthshire, and other ingenious and obliging correspondents. CHARLES ROGERS. SXOWNDOUN VILLA, Lewisham, Kent. CONTENTS. PAGB PREFACE 7 A COUNTRY MINISTER AND His KECOLLECTIONS ... 9 MEN I HAVE KNOWN 45 SCOTTISH MINSTRELS . ... .91 THE CLERGY AND PARISH OFFICERS 120 MAGNATES AND MAGISTRATES 188 - THE YEOMAN AND THE COTTAGER . 151 INDEX . 166 A CENTUKY OF SCOTTISH LIFE, A COUNTRY MINISTER AND HIS EECOLLECTIONS. MY father, the Rev. James Roger, minister of Dunino, Fife- shire (1805 1849), was an eminent classical and general scholar. Born on the 24th June, 1767, at Coupar Grange, Perthshire, an estate of which his ancestors were co-proprietors, he was dedicated to the altar by his father, a pious elder of the Church. In his fourteenth year he entered the University of St. Andrews, having gained by competition a bursary or ex- hibition, which secured his education and maintenance for four sessions. At the close of his first session he obtained a pre- mium awarded by the Earl of Kinnoull, Chancellor of the University, to the student who had made the greatest progress in his classical studies. During the latter years of his theological course he attended Marischal College, Aberdeen. In 1791 he was licensed to preach by the Presbytery of Dundee. Soon afterwards he was introduced to the celebrated Mr. George Dempster of Dunnichen, and, on his recommendation, was appointed to prepare an Agricultural Survey of Forfarshire for the Board of Agriculture. In 1796, he published an essay on the principles of Government, intended to correct popular notions as to the beneficial consequences of the French Revolu- tion. In the same year he was awarded a gold medal by the Highland Society, for an essay on the best method of improving the Highlands. My father now contemplated an extensive work on the rise and progress of Agriculture, but he afterwards abandoned the intention from lack of encouragement. He next made trial of literary. life in London, but lost heart and returned to Scotland. In 1805 he was ordained to the ministerial office at Dunino, B 10 A COUNTRY MINISTER AND HIS RECOLLECTIONS. where, in the hope of obtaining academical preferment, which had been the lot of his three immediate predecessors, he devoted himself to studies of a more recondite and philoso- phical character. In 1816 he was a candidate for the Pro- fessorship of Moral Philosophy at St. Andrews. He continued to prosecute his classical and philosophical studies with unabated ardour. Until his 82nd year he read daily in the Latin and Greek classics, and in Hebrew literature. His con- versational powers were of the first order, and his information was almost encyclopaedic. After a period of feeble health he died on the 23rd November, 1849, at the age of eighty-three. A few days after his decease he was thus described by an able journalist: "With the excellent natural abilities which he possessed, cultivated by study, the fruits of which a memory of great tenacity enabled him to have always at his command, and with a varied and extensive acquaintance with the real living world, Mr. Roger was to those who had the happiness of being acquainted with him only in his latter years, an acquaintance at once delightful and instructive to a degree which cannot well be described. He had acted as a reporter in the House of Commons, at a time when its deliberations were influenced by the heavings of those terrible convulsions which afterwards overthrew the thrones of Europe, and in every country, except Britain, threw back for more than a century the cause of rational and solid liberty. Mr. Roger had noted the speeches of Pitt and Fox, and of a host of able though lesser men. Others might have had his opportunities of listening to these great men who might not have felt the in- fluence or retained the memory of their presence, or been able to make an after the wiser of their but generation experience ; Mr. Roger was just the man whose vivid and picturesque de- scriptions in conversation faithfully conveyed to others the scenes which he had himself witnessed, and he could raise up r before his hearers the w hole figure of Charles Fox, with his blue coat and yellow waistcoat, opening his manly and simple addresses with a downcast look and an unanimated, heavy air, and gradually getting more and more carried away by the strength of his feelings, till his voice was elevated beyond the pitch to which a calm attention to gracefulness would have confined it, but never elevated so as to lose its power of im- pressing and ruling the hearts of the senate." Of my father's recollections the first portion is presented in his own words. 11 " In November, 1781, I was introduced to the Latin and Greek professors at St. Andrews, _ by my relative, Mr. John Playfair, minister of Liff. This ingenious man, who afterwards obtained fame as European Professor Playfair of Edinburgh, was already in high repute for his scientific attainments, "in 1772, while only twenty-four, he contested the Chair of Natural Philosophy at St. Andrews, and lost the appointment only through an excess of local influence on behalf of a com- petitor. Soon after, he succeeded his father in the church of but he still living Liff, was prosecuting his peculiar studies, being more ardent about success in the academy than in the In after life did Church. we not meet ; but I remember him as venerated for one his learning, and whose unaffected kindly manners caused me to regard him with affection. At the to I period which refer, the professor was in his thirty-third year. Though he had been patriarchal, he could not have administered more fatherly counsel, or warned me more emphatic- ' ally against the snares which beset the inexperienced. Write ' often,' he said, to your father and mother. Never indulge in play till you have finished your tasks, and select only a few companions. Rise early, and revise your morning lesson before leaving your apartment. Keep your room in the even- ings, unless on the appointed holidays.' " When I entered St. Andrews University, I found that the visit of Dr. Samuel Johnson to that ancient seat of learning was still a theme of conversation, though seven years had passed since the English sage walked under the porch of St. Salvator. There was a difference of opinion about Johnson ' with one section of the gownsmen siding,' as they expressed it, had the professors, whose learning the English lexicographer ventured to impugn. At the banquet to which the professors in- have vited him, Johnson expressed surprise that a blessing should than in Latin and when the of been asked in English rather ; key of a of which the the library was missing, he spoke library key could never be found. Several of the older students remem- he had bered Johnson's visit, and described the awe which inspired. " was bold to John Campbell, a Highland student, enough to throw ridicule his dic- the sage, and even upon lampoon ' ' facetious What is a window ? propounded the tionary. ' was to A window, sir, is an querist. Johnson supposed reply, of illumina- orifice cut out of an edifice for the introduction to snuff the candle ? tion.' And how should one ask a friend 12 A COUNTRY MINISTER AND HIS RECOLLECTIONS. ' Sir, you ought to say, Deprive that luminary of its superfluous eminence.' At St. Andrews, Johnson indulged to the full in his combativeness of talk, and the professors, while unwilling to speak harshly of one so noted, remembered his visit with distaste. " St. Andrews, with its three colleges, had dwindled into a state bordering on decay. The modern tenements were built of timber, and the older houses were in ruins. The streets, meanly paved, yielded a crop of grass, which was mowed by while less had of sheep ; frequented thoroughfares crossings boulders, by means of which pedestrians could in wet weather avoid stepping into pools of mud. In the heart of the city a street was named the Foul Waste, and the name was appro- it was the of abomination of and priate ; receptacle every sort, constantly emitted a loathsome smell.