*: 
 
-) Nt& Qter ^C/aeaj 
 
 TY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY I 
 
 i IP 
 
 
 GC >^ 
 
 TY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 TY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 
 ir 
 
 u_ Vo* 
 
 a 
 
 9 P 
 
 1 
 
 o~ "^^A<o7? ~9 = o 
 
C/86&1 
 
 FY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 C^aesj 
 
 Z.ZZZ.-" 
 
 LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LIBRARY Oi 
 
 [Y OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 Y OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 6V_/fS 
 
 LIBRARY 01 
 
PRINCIPAL SHAIEP AND HIS FKIENDS 
 
PEINCIPAL SHAIEP 
 
 AND HIS FRIENDS 
 
 BY WILLIAM KNIGHT 
 
 PROFESSOR OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF ST. ANDREWS 
 
 WITH PORTRAIT 
 
 LONDON 
 JOHN MUEEAY, ALBEMAELE STEEET 
 
 1888 
 
Kll 
 
PREFACE 
 
 THE distinctive feature in a memoir of Principal Shairp 
 must be the study of his character. His outward life was 
 uneventful, and its story is easily told ; but to present an 
 adequate picture of the man, in his manysidedness, is not 
 easy ; and it cannot be done by any of his friends, from a 
 single point of view. He was something much rarer and 
 finer, than either his writing, or his teaching admirable as 
 these were. He impressed himself with equal power on 
 men of all classes, tendencies, and sympathies on persons 
 of the highest culture, and on poor students. There are 
 not many such men at any time in the world. 
 
 Few of his contemporaries were as rich as he was in 
 the friendship of good men, in the loyal attachment of 
 a large circle, moving in widely different spheres of 
 thought and of action. Even from his boyhood he seems 
 to have drawn towards him the esteem of the nobleminded ; 
 and, as life advanced, he instinctively won the admiration 
 of all who were idealists at heart. In consequence of\ 
 this, he has left his mark upon his time, in the mostj 
 beneficent, although in the least showy manner. There 
 have been men with greater powers of intellect, of learn- v 
 ing, and of administrative power; but there has been 
 none, in the academical history of Scotland, from whose per- 
 sonality a greater "virtue has gone forth," touching other 
 lives to fruitful issues. In the pages which follow I have 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 merely tried to build a memorial cairn, with the stones 
 which have been sent to me, in reverent and affectionate 
 memory, by those who owe to him some of the best in- 
 fluences of their lives. 
 
 Perhaps the most striking thing in these tributes to 
 Shairp's memory, which have successively reached me from 
 the most opposite quarters, is the unanimity with which they 
 all express gratitude for his friendship a friendship so strong, 
 steadfast, and unselfish ; and the picture of his life, now 
 seen in retrospect under the light of these memories, is a 
 very radiant one. 
 
 We naturally ask for an explanation of so remarkable a 
 range of friendship, with men of the most opposite opinions, 
 and whose tendencies were altogether divergent. Many 
 causes contributed to it. It was not due merely (or even 
 (mainly) to the width of his own sympathies, but rather to 
 XJhis entering so heartily and with so little thought of 
 [ himself into the subjects which most interested other 
 people, just as they turned up. Naturally very sympathetic, 
 he put himself at once, even with strangers, into the posi- 
 tion of a listener in self-detachment, and " a wise passive- 
 ness " rather than assumed the role of an instructor. He 
 never talked as if it were more important to be listened to 
 than to listen ; and, in consequence, there was nothing in 
 him of the academic pedant, nothing either of the dictator 
 or of the dominie. 
 
 In my own intercourse with him the most distinguish- 
 ing feature of his character was its habitual unselfishness 
 and real magnanimity. Few men have ever had a heart 
 so much " at leisure from itself." He was never known to 
 make an egotistical speech, or a self-complaisant reference 
 to his own writings, or his own work. Still leas was there 
 a trace of what has been said to be a common infirmity of 
 literary men, viz. jealousy of others. This was so entirely 
 
PREFACE vii 
 
 foreign to his nature that he could scarcely comprehend its 
 existence. His appreciation, on the contrary, of the work 
 /tih&t was being done by others work which he knew he 
 jcould not himself do was a pervading feature of his char- 
 acter. Every one who knew him intimately must recall 
 that wistful expression of countenance, calm, watchful, 
 kindly receptive, accordant, but one in which sympathy was 
 all dominant, with which he would so often listen to a 
 narrative, or follow a train of thought, or take in the merits 
 of a case put before him, either by a friend or by a 
 stranger. 
 
 Throughout his whole career Principal Shairp had a 
 very definite purpose in life, and many a noble ambition 
 found its way to the front, and demanded realisation in 
 practice ; but it cannot be said that in the pursuit of 
 any one of these, even the most engrossing of them, he 
 " lived to himself." He certainly never sought prefer- 
 ment in the ordinary sense of the phrase. He accepted 
 it, when it came ; and he had from the first a large 
 vista of laudable ambition, but all his work and achieve- 
 ment seemed to come naturally to him ; and he entered 
 into them without search, or restless struggle. Then as 
 will be seen in the story of his life the way in which he 
 accepted the defeat of several of his plans and ambitions 
 was truly admirable. He simply passed on to the discharge 
 of the next duty that lay before him, as if nothing had 
 occurred to mar his equanimity for a moment. 
 
 He was often misunderstood by those who knew him 
 slightly, and were themselves devoid of ideality ; but this 
 never disconcerted him. With such persons his manner 
 may have had an occasional touch of austerity, out of keep- 
 ing with his otherwise genial nature ; but this was only 
 when the unresponsiveness of others threw him inwards 
 on himself for the time being. In consequence of this, we' 
 
viii PREFACE 
 
 find him occasionally less honoured in his own country than 
 beyond it. For all this he was a Scotsman, in the very core 
 of his being ; widened and mellowed it is true, by his 
 Oxford training, and his subsequent residence in England ; 
 but conspicuous in his love for the traditions, the customs 
 and the provincial features of his native land, and to the 
 last more conservative than cosmopolitan. 
 
 Another very noticeable feature in Shairp's character was 
 his courage in doing what he believed to be right, no matter 
 what it cost his feelings and these were unusually sensi- 
 tive. If he had once made up his mind that a thing ought 
 to be done that it was a public or a private duty nothing 
 would turn him back from the discharge of the most painful 
 part of it ; and he was wholly indifferent to any misunder- 
 standing that might follow. He came of a soldier race ; 
 and it was his strong sense of duty that gave him, on the 
 N one hand the courage that he showed, and on the other his 
 superiority to criticism. 
 
 As will be seen from the following pages, his contribu- 
 tions to the Literature of his Country have been neither few 
 nor small. Indeed their number and extent will be a sur- 
 prise to many readers of this book ; but in all the more 
 important of them, in his Studies in Poetry and Philosophy, 
 in The Poetic Interpretation of Nature, in Kilmahoe, in Burns, 
 in Culture and Religion, and in the Aspects of Poetry, it 
 is the moral element underlying the discussion, his treat- 
 ment (direct or indirect) of the great laws of conduct, with 
 their sanctions and their implicates, that distinguishes these 
 books from the writings of other men on similar themes. 
 In his treatment of all great perennial questions, as well 
 as in everything else that he handled, Principal Shairp 
 invariably struck an elevated note. He approached no sub- 
 ject from its conventional side, and discussed none in a 
 commonplace manner. He thus contributed more than 
 
PREFACE ix 
 
 most writers of his time to raise the tone of literary work- 
 manship. 
 
 It was well that his lifework was ultimately cast in 
 Scotland, that he did not obtain the Oriel Fellowship, but 
 returned, after his experience of Eugby, to a University 
 in his native land, and afterwards to the Principalship of 
 one of its Colleges. On more than one occasion he became 
 a candidate for a Scottish chair of Ethics ; and many of his 
 friends thought that such a chair would have been his most 
 appropriate sphere. 1 It is true that into his lectures in 
 the Humanity classroom he brought an unusually large 
 amount of moral teaching : but, in a chair of Moral Philo- ' 
 sophy itself, his scholarship, his knowledge of the history of 
 opinion, his discernment of the bearing of Ethics on Eeli- 
 gion, and the bright forceful intuitive way in which he in- 
 variably dealt with the problems of human nature, might 
 have given him unique academic power. I do not think 
 that he was a Speculative Philosopher by nature ; and I 
 have often heard him speak with a certain disfavour, if not 
 of quasi -austerity, of "the metaphysicians." See, too, his 
 letters to Mr. Shadworth Hodgson, pp. 2 44-2 52. Of a common 
 friend, who was both poet and speculative philosopher, he 
 used to say to me, " He has mistaken his calling ; he is 
 a poet, spoiled by metaphysics." He was himself not onl^ 
 a poet born, but he was a poetic idealist in all his vie^ 
 of life, and in all his conceptions of character. When a 
 teacher of the classical languages at Eugby and St. Andrews, 
 it was not in that direction that his powers chiefly lay, any 
 
 1 So striking were the tributes he received on these occasions, from his 
 many English friends, that I have given extracts from several of them. 
 Perhaps the most interesting is the testimony of Matthew Arnold, who, in 
 one of the last letters he wrote, spoke of the present Memoir as likely to 
 give him an opportunity of saying something about ' ' dear old Shairp . . . 
 not only a most lovable man in the time when I knew him best, but also a 
 very stimulating and inspiring one." 
 
 
x PREFACE 
 
 more than it afterwards lay in administrative work as Prin- 
 cipal. It was as one whose soul was steeped in poetic 
 feeling, one who had in his early boyhood received 
 
 That first great gift, a vital soul, 
 
 or, to put it otherwise, by the help of other quotations 
 from the poet to whom he owed so much, it was by the pos- 
 session of " an intense and glowing mind " the sure index 
 of poetic endowment that he could " see into the life of 
 things," and was able to touch and to stimulate others. This 
 poetic radiancy, blending with his high standard of action 
 and endeavour, produced a sort of atmosphere, which seemed 
 to move with him wherever he moved. 
 
 If we add to the unassumingness already noticed, and the 
 poetic spirit now mentioned, his extreme conscientiousness 
 whether in literary work or academic duty or the claims 
 which society imposed on him, and his self-forgetfulness 
 throughout it all, we have another explanation of his in- 
 fluence. 
 
 He was enriched at each stage of his career by getting 
 the very best out of it, while his sympathies were widened 
 by every new experience. Home life at Houstoun, school 
 life in the Academy at Edinburgh, student days in the 
 University of Glasgow, autumn holidays in Kintyre, under- 
 graduate life at Oxford, the mastership at Eugby, visits to 
 London, wanderings in the Highlands and in the Border 
 Country, all matured him for his work at St. Andrews. 
 But throughout these advancing stages he retained in a re- 
 markable manner the heart of the child, unsophisticated, 
 never sated or world-weary. There is no trace in the life 
 of Principal Shairp as if he had lived through one set of 
 experiences, and was done with them, and must push on to 
 new interests and ambitions. To the end he returned to the 
 old interests and the lowliest duties, feeling that they were 
 
PREFACE xi 
 
 not self-imposed, but that he was only the humble servitor 
 of a higher Power. Eight lines, written by him in February 
 1872, but never published, express perhaps better than any- 
 thing else, the central purpose of his life 
 
 So might I toiling morn to eve 
 
 Some purpose in my life fulfil, 
 And ere I pass some work achieve, 
 
 To live and move when I am still. 
 
 I ask not with that work combined 
 
 My name should down the ages move, 
 But that my toil such end may find 
 
 As man may bless and God approve. 
 
 One naturally associates this with the Ode to Duty and 
 the Afterthought to the Duddon. To Principal Shairp, if to 
 any in these modern days, " Duty " was " an unerring light," 
 and "joy its own security." 
 
 What specially struck some of his younger or later 
 friends when they came to know him well was the 
 union in him of sympathies that are usually antagonistic, 
 and of attainments seldom united. For example, there is -(dU^ 
 a point at which Poetry, Philosophy, and Eeligion meet. 
 That point is not always a luminous one ; and the links of 
 connection between the spheres being numerous and subtle, 
 they are never wholly visible to those who have not a 
 practical acquaintance with all the three. Now Principal 
 Shairp was, throughout his whole career, a poet, a philo- 
 sopher, and a religious man. Possibly a writer, who had 
 devoted his life to one of the three exclusively, might at the N 
 end have been greater than he was, in the special line 
 selected ; but he would have been much less likely to dis- 
 cern the relations of the provinces, one toward another, than 
 the man who while less distinguished in each was accom- 
 plished in them all. By such a one the harmonies of 
 
xii PREFACE 
 
 knowledge, feeling, and action, of belief and practice, are 
 intuitively discerned. They are seen as by a flash of in- 
 ward light, and a " reconciliation " of their processes or results 
 is quite unnecessary. 
 
 Another feature in Principal Shairp's character, equally 
 important with his width of sympathy, was his reverence for 
 (the Past, and for everything that has come down to us con- 
 \secrated by Time. No one could walk with him in any 
 place where associations with antiquity clustered an ancient 
 battlefield, a ruined abbey, a castle of the Middle Age, a 
 cathedral close, a Highland glen with its ruined cottage- 
 mounds, its hillsides where the Covenanters worshipped, or 
 its burial-places where they sleep without catching the 
 contagion of his spirit, and feeling how vividly the whole 
 pageantry of the past lived and moved again to him. His 
 patriotic sympathies were most catholic, in the sense that they 
 took in every genuine element of national life, and were 
 therefore stirred equally by the Covenanter and by the Jaco- 
 bite. In full accord with all that is best in Scottish life and 
 character, he could also appreciate the broader stream of 
 national life in the south, with which some Scotsmen have 
 little sympathy. He was a wide-minded and a strong- 
 souled man, loyal to the traditions of his ancestry and up- 
 bringing, yet with an eye quick to discern the defects of 
 Scottish provincialism whether in the student or the poli- 
 tician, in the literary or the religious man and a hand ready 
 to lay them bare. His dislike to Scottish roughness was 
 not greater than his distaste to a mere mimicry of English 
 ways, and the affectation of English habits by Scotsmen. 
 
 My aim in this book is that Principal Shairp should 
 speak for himself, both to those who know his writings, and 
 who knew the man and have been helped by him ; that he 
 should continue to speak a little longer, partly through his 
 letters, partly through extracts from his private journals, 
 
PREFACE xiii 
 
 and above all by the " reminiscences " of his friends now 
 living. These, woven together by a few connecting threads, 
 may serve to perpetuate the influence of his life. And 
 little more can be done. The art of the mental and moral 
 photographer is hard to learn. 
 
 As to his conversation, who can reproduce its inde- 
 finable charm? or give a picture of his expressive face in 
 its changefulness whether relaxed with humour, or roused 
 to indignation, or touched with pity for some human sorrow, 
 or thrilled by a vision of the beautiful, or bent in reverent 
 worship ? All his friends recall it ; yet neither portrait, 
 nor photograph, nor description can reproduce it. And as 
 to his peculiarities of manner those characteristic minor 
 traits, in which so much lies hid how often would he 
 hesitate for the right word, descriptive of some subtle point 
 of character or idea ! and, when at last he got it (the 
 happy phrase that summed up his conviction, and embodied 
 it, so far as the medium of words can do so), how he would 
 repeat, and re-repeat it, with incisive manner, and thrilling 
 voice, and at times rememberable gesture; and how the 
 tones of that voice often revealed a depth of conviction 
 that the spoken word was powerless to disclose ! 
 
 He was seen at his very best in the society of congenial 
 friends ; and, in a sympathetic group, his memory, his imagi- 
 nation, and his intellect were wonderfully quickened. His 
 social powers were of a high order, and will long be cherished, 
 not only in academic circles at St. Andrews, Oxford, and 
 London, but at many a country house and in many a lowly 
 home. He is missed in the old city by the sea, which he 
 loved so well ; in the cottages of the poor, as well as in the 
 rooms of his colleagues; and not less at those delightful 
 gatherings that have made Megginch and Linlathen places of 
 happy memory to many of his contemporaries. 
 
 In addition to the books he has left behind him, Prin- 
 
xiv PREFACE 
 
 cipal Shairp contributed memorial sketches of many of his 
 friends to their respective "Lives," such as that of Arthur 
 Hugh Clough, Norman Macleod, John Macintosh of Geddes, 
 Thomas Erskine of Linlathen, M'Leod Campbell of Kow, 
 Bishop Cotton of Calcutta, and Bishop Patteson of Mel- 
 anesia, Principal Forbes and Professor Terrier of St. Andrews, 
 and Dr. Park, of the same city, Archbishop Tait, etc. These, 
 as character-studies, are extremely valuable, and as they are 
 scattered in many volumes, I have made extracts from some 
 of them in this book. It was my original intention to make 
 them more copious, but the inexorable limits of Biography 
 have prevented this. As these Studies, however, are amongst 
 the finest of his writings and reveal him in the capacity of 
 moral analyst, as well as portray the friends whose characters 
 he has delineated it is to be hoped that they may yet be 
 brought together in a volume by themselves. 
 
 It is a mistake in Biography only to publish the letters 
 of the person whose life is being recorded, omitting those 
 addressed to him by his friends. The latter often cast more 
 light on the subject of a Memoir than his own epistles do ; 
 and, as many letters passed between Dr. John Brown of 
 Edinburgh and Principal Shairp, chiefly in reference to his 
 poems and prose essays as they successively appeared, some 
 of them are published in this volume. The Principal's 
 letters to Dr. Clerk at Kilmalie, to Mr. Erskine of Linlathen, 
 and, above all, to the home circle at Houstoun, are full of 
 interest. 
 
 I have to express my sincere thanks to the numerous 
 friends who have assisted me with their Keminiscences 
 above all to Mrs. Shairp, and her son at whose request the 
 work has been undertaken, and without whose assistance it 
 could not have been carried out. 
 
 I have also to thank some of those who have sent con- 
 tributions, for the generous way in which they have allowed 
 
PREFACE xv 
 
 me to divide their papers into sections a process which, 
 while necessary for the purposes of biography, destroys their 
 literary completeness. Several having alluded to the career 
 of their friend from his youth onwards, it was obviously 
 impossible to print every paper, in the form in which it 
 reached me, without repeating the same incidents over and 
 over again. 1 In this connection my thanks are specially 
 due to Professor Sellar, for the disinterested way in which he 
 has acted in reference to his admirable paper on his friend. 
 For the same reason my thanks are due to the Deans of 
 Westminster and Salisbury, to Professor Veitch, and to Mr. 
 Butler of Oriel College, Oxford. 
 
 The book has been called Principal Shairp and his Friends, 
 both from the number of his friendships, from the many con- 
 temporaries whose characters he himself drew, and from the 
 large number who have contributed to this memorial volume. 
 Its underlying idea is a series of photographs of character, 
 taken from many opposite points of view, by those who knew 
 him best. It is true that a biography, which resolved itself into 
 a series of obituary notices in praise of the departed, would 
 not only become wearisome as it proceeded, but would have 
 no special value to posterity. Perhaps, however, the variety 
 to be found in these studies of character may give a dis- 
 tinctive feature to the book ; and, although it may be true 
 that we are becoming rather much of a memorial- writing 
 age, and that our biographical literature is excessive, such 
 tributes to a singularly pure and noble nature, one who, 
 as Mr. Poste writes (referring to their early Oxford days) 
 " lived habitually in a higher level of thought and feeling 
 than the rest of us," and was, as Matthew Arnold said only 
 a few weeks ago, " that delightful self, which inspired such 
 
 1 Where this has been partially done as in the several accounts of the 
 Highland walk and the visit to Clough at Drumnadrochit (see pp. 103-114) 
 it has been from some distinctive feature in the several accounts. 
 
xvi PREFACE 
 
 affection, and so well deserved to inspire it," may be fruit- 
 ful of good to others. Longum iter est per prcecepta, Ireve et 
 efficax per exempla. 
 
 It may be as well to mention that the extracts from 
 papers which have appeared previously are printed in 
 smaller type, and that several of Shairp's poems are pub- 
 lished in this Memoir for the first time. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PREFACE v 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 HOME AT HOUSTOUN ..... 1 
 
 CHAPTEE II 
 
 BOYHOOD : THE EDINBURGH ACADEMY ... 7 
 
 CHAPTEE III 
 
 GLASGOW UNIVERSITY . . . . .13 
 
 CHAPTEE IV 
 
 OXFORD UNDERGRADUATE LIFE . . . .31 
 
 CHAPTEE V 
 
 REMINISCENCES OF OXFORD, AND OF OXFORD INFLUENCES AND 
 
 FRIENDS ...... 49 
 
 CHAPTEE VI 
 
 SUMMER HOLIDAYS IN WESTMORLAND AND SCOTLAND 63 
 
xviii CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 PAGE 
 
 MASTERSHIP AT RUGBY ; AUTUMNS IN THE HIGHLANDS, AND 
 
 ELSEWHERE 98 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 MEMORIAL SKETCHES BY RUGBY FRIENDS AND PUPILS . 130 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE AND INCIDENTS : YARROW . . . 168 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 FIRST HOME AT ST. ANDREWS, AND THE PROFESSORSHIP OF 
 
 LATIN. .... .183 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 LITERARY WORK AND FRIENDSHIPS : MR. ERSKINE AND 
 
 DR. JOHN BROWN ..... 205 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE HIGHLANDS AND THE BORDERS . . . 253 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 THE PRINCIPALSHIP OF THE UNITED COLLEGE . . 269 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE OXFORD CHAIR OF POETRY 330 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 xix 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 LATER YEARS AT ST. ANDREWS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 356 
 
 CHAPTEE XVI 
 
 THE RIVIERA : ORMSARY 
 
 390 
 
 CHAPTEE XVII 
 
 ESTIMATES IN MEMORIAM 
 
 408 
 
 APPENDIX I 
 
 427 
 
 APPENDIX II 
 
 437 
 
 APPENDIX III 
 
 443 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 HOME AT HOUSTOUN 
 
 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP was bom at Houstoun, Linlithgow- 
 shire, on the 30th July 1819. He was the third son of 
 Major Norman Shairp of Houstoun, and of Elizabeth Binning, 
 daughter of John Campbell of Kildalloig, Argyleshire. 
 
 The property of Houstoun was acquired by the Shairps 
 in the sixteenth century. The first of the family who held 
 it was Sir John Shairp, through whom the cabinet and 
 gloves, that once belonged to Mary Queen of Scots, and 
 are now at Houstoun, came there. 1 
 
 Shairp was a lineal descendant of Mary Scott, " The 
 Flower of Yarrow." His great-grandmother, Anne Scott 
 of Harden, who married Shairp of Houstoun, was the eldest 
 daughter of John Scott of Harden, whose great-grandfather, 
 Sir Gideon Scott of High Chester, was grandson of " The 
 Flower of Yarrow." 2 She was a Scott of Dry hope, and her 
 romantic wooing is referred to in Shairp's poem TJiree 
 Friends in Yarrow, in the volume edited by Mr. Palgrave. 
 His maternal ancestry had a great interest for Shairp ; and 
 an inheritance of goodness, reaching him from a distant 
 
 1 It is probable that he was employed as an advocate for the Queen in one 
 of the investigations into her conduct. When he bought Houstoun, in the 
 year 1560, it was not a barony, but he purchased other neighbouring lands, 
 and got the whole erected into a barony at a later date. 
 
 2 His great-grandmother's only sister, Mary Lilias Scott, called the second 
 "Flower of Yarrow," died at Edinburgh in 1790. 
 
 B 
 
2 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 past, was probably an influential element in the moulding of 
 his character. 
 
 His grandfather still spoken of at Houstoun as " The 
 Laird," and whose portrait, by Eaeburn, hangs on the wall of 
 the dining-room married Miss M'Leod of M'Leod (whose 
 portrait is also at Houstoun). A reference to the M'Leods 
 will be found in Samuel Johnson's Visit to the Hebrides, 
 when speaking of the charms and refinements of Dunvegan. 
 
 His father, Major Norman Shairp, was a characteristic 
 example of the old Scottish laird of a past generation ; a 
 man of clear mind, strong sense, and spotless integrity of 
 character; proud of his ancestry, and his patrimonial in- 
 heritance, a keen fox-hunter, a strong conservative, a warm 
 friend. During the eleven years in which he served in the 
 Indian army he took part in thirteen pitched battles ; and 
 during the memorable campaigns of 1803-1806 he was with 
 his regiment under canvas, exposed to all the trials of an 
 Indian climate. He retired somewhat early from active 
 service ; but continued, for more than half a century, to lead 
 the life of an honoured country gentleman, the joy of all 
 friends, and as good and true a man as could be found in 
 Midlothian. 
 
 Major Shairp gave his sons the best education possible, 
 but taught them that their future was in their own hands ; 
 and throughout his whole career alike at Edinburgh, 
 Glasgow, and Oxford, till his education was finished his 
 son John was generously treated, but without unnecessary 
 luxury. In a letter to Dr. Clerk of Kilmalie, written after 
 his father's death, Shairp said : " He has been spared to us 
 beyond the allotted fourscore years, and yet when it came, 
 his death could not have been more felt if he had been 
 removed in middle manhood. He has taken with him so 
 much of what was dearest in the past, that this old house 
 is another place now." 
 
 Houstoun House the home of his ancestors and of his 
 own radiant childhood is a picturesque relic of a past age ; 
 and its associations with antique times, and a vanished type 
 of Scottish manners, give it an interest of its own, apart from 
 
HOME AT HOUSTOUN 
 
 its being Shairp's birthplace. It is thus described in the 
 poem Kilmahoe 
 
 An old white lofty-gabled Lowland home, 
 Up to the sunshine, and the breezes all, 
 For ages o'er the ancestral trees have clomb 
 Its stalwart chimneys tall. 
 
 Far seen, far open on the south it gleams 
 To clear noons, like a white unfurled flag ; 
 In rainy weather, dimmed with stains and scaurs, 
 Like a grey lichened crag. 
 
 Far seen, wide gazing, the old mansion grey, 
 Adown the long lime avenue, from its doors, 
 Looks here to rich tilled lands, yonder away 
 To meditative moors. 
 
 Hard by, hedge-sheltered garden, hiding woods, 
 And morning fields, for childhood's summer play, 
 Nor less responsive to more sober moods, 
 And life's autumnal day. 1 
 
 He drew the picture of his mother, under the name of 
 Moira, in the same poem ; 2 and he speaks of the two sisters, 
 Moira and Marion (his mother and aunt), gazing in autumn 
 from the deep window-nook at Houstoun, 
 
 On the hairst moon, that from alcove of blue 
 Silvered the garden, every bower and bield, 
 Hedges of glistening holly, and dark yew ; 
 
 And up the household field 
 Slanted the shadows of twin silver firs 
 To white sheep couching on the moon-bathed sward, 
 Till thought was lost in years that ne'er were theirs 
 
 A far and fond regard. 
 
 Here it was, in the " stately pathetic old house " (as Dr. 
 John Brown called it) that, in his earliest days, Nature laid 
 her hand upon the growing boy, and " spake to him re- 
 
 1 In Shairp's copy of The Prelude, which is pencil-marked in a very interest- 
 ing way, the following words are underlined 
 
 Early died 
 
 My honoured mother, she who was the heart 
 And hinge of all our learnings and our love. 
 
 2 See Kilmahoe : a Highland Pastoral, pp. 112, 113. 
 
4 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 memberable things." In the quaint garden, with its recesses 
 and winding walks, shaded with large thick hedges of yew 
 (such as are now rarely to be seen), in the long avenue of 
 limes by which the house is approached from the east, or 
 out in the broad meadows to the south, he first saw that 
 " splendour in the grass " and " glory in the flower " from 
 which Wordsworth gathers one of the chief " intimations of 
 immortality." 
 
 His earliest education at Houstoun was carried on by a 
 tutor, Mr. Bell, a Dumfriesshire man, of whom in after years 
 he often spoke. Mr. Bell came to Houstoun in 1825; but 
 what chiefly educated Shairp was, first, the high-toned and 
 happy family life in the ancestral home, its gracious atmo- 
 sphere ; and next, the open-air country life of his childhood, 
 with the walks and rides, and country sports of his boyhood. 
 These as in the case of the poet who afterwards influenced 
 him so much were more influential than the formal lessons 
 of the schoolroom. 
 
 When eight years of age he was taken by his father on 
 his first visit to Kildalloig, his mother's home in Argyle- 
 shire, where his eldest uncle lived. At the same time he 
 visited Glen Saddell, also in Kintyre, and then rented by 
 a younger uncle. Kildalloig is the Kilmdhoe of his 
 poems, and Glen Saddell is the Glen SallacJi described in 
 his Dream. The early impressions of the coast of Kintyre 
 never faded from his mind ; and this first visit awakened that 
 love of Highland scenery, of Scottish character, and Celtic 
 tradition, which lasted through life, and gave a special colour 
 to much of his subsequent work. 
 
 Few of his poems already published can be quoted 
 in this Memoir, but the Dream of Glen Sallach has a special 
 interest and an autobiographic value. It was the recol- 
 lection of a boy of eight, for he never revisited Glen 
 Saddell. 
 
 That summer glen is far away, 
 
 Who loved me then, their graves are green, 
 
 But still that dell and distant day, 
 Lie bright in memory's softest sheen. 
 
HOME AT HO US TO UN 
 
 Are these still there, outspread in space, 
 
 The grey-mossed trees, the mountain stream ? 
 
 Or in some ante-natal place, 
 
 That only cometh back in dream ? 
 
 There first upon my soul was cast 
 
 Dim reverence, blent with glorious thrills, 
 
 From out an old heroic past, 
 
 Lapped in the older calm of hills. 
 
 Still after thirty summers loom 
 
 On dreaming hours the lichened trees, 
 
 The ivied walls, the warrior's tomb, 
 'Mid those old mountain sanctities. 
 
 How awed I stood ! where once had kneeled 
 
 The pilgrims by the holy well, 
 O'er which through centuries unrepealed 
 
 Rome's consecration still doth dwell. 
 
 How crept among the broken piles ! 
 
 And clansmen's grave-stones moss-o'ergrown, 
 Where rests the Lord of all the Isles, 
 
 With plaid and claymore graven in stone. 
 
 In deep of noon, mysterious dread 
 
 Fell on me in that glimmering glen, 
 Till, as from haunted ground, I fled 
 
 Back to the kindly homes of men. 
 
 Thanks to that glen ! its scenery blends 
 
 With childhood's most ideal hour, 
 When Highland hills I made my friends, 
 
 First owned their beauty, felt their power. 
 
 Still, doubtless, o'er Kilbrannan Sound, 
 
 As lovely lights from Arran gleam, 
 'Mid hills that gird Glen Sallach round, 
 
 As happy children dream their dream. 
 
 The western sea, as deep of tone, 
 
 Is murmuring 'gainst that caverned shore ; 
 
 But, one whole generation gone, 
 
 No more those haunts are ours, no more. 
 
 This Dream will recall to man} 7 readers a similar 
 experience in the life of Wordsworth; but without trac- 
 ing the parallel, it may be better to quote some stanzas 
 from an unpublished poem, which Shairp wrote between 
 
6 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP, i 
 
 1875 and 1880, and which he entitled Retrospect, or Days 
 from out the Shadows. He evidently meant to write in 
 verse a brief sketch of the more interesting points in his 
 own life. What survives is unfortunately very fragmentary. 
 In the first set of stanzas, entitled Home, he asks why 
 single looks, and scenes, or words, belonging to our child- 
 hood, cleave to the memory in our later years, when every- 
 thing else around them has vanished ? whether is it due 
 to " their own intrinsic might," or to " a diviner Presence 
 near us," awakening tenderness and awe, and giving us 
 "some reaching forward to the Infinite"? and he then 
 describes such a haunting memory of his childhood in the 
 garden at Houstoun, when his school-life first began. 
 
 A second time of similarly vivid experience in boyhood 
 was in Kintyre, which he describes in lines, which may be 
 taken as a sort of sequel to the Dream of Glen Sallach 
 
 The sunset on a wild West Highland shore 
 
 Slow dying round a tawny sanded bay, 
 
 The twilight waters shimmering before, 
 
 The peaks of Arran gleaming far away, 
 
 Send back their splendours, while the boatmen strong, 
 
 With lazy oar-plash and low chaunted song, 
 
 Drag the net shoreward, heavy with sea-prey. 
 
 Then the large salmon, on the wet beach spread, 
 Silver-sheened, quivered in the shadows dim, 
 While the tall forester, with careless tread, 
 Came bearing down the wild-cat, huge of limb, 
 Slain in his cranny on the woody crags, 
 And flung him full length on the shingly slag, 
 The brindled beast, a portent strange and grim. 
 
 Ah me ! what awe on my young spirit fell, 
 Entering the dark glen with its ancient wood, 
 'Neath which still trickled the clear Holy Well, 
 And the old Abbey crumbled, time-subdued ; 
 How crept I 'mong the tombs, where moss-o'ergrown 
 The Lord of Isles lies panoplied in stone 
 Till I fled frighted from the weirdly dell. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 BOYHOOD : THE EDINBURGH ACADEMY 
 
 IN October 1829, when ten years of age, Shairp became a 
 pupil at the Edinburgh Academy. He and his brothers 
 lived with their tutor in lodgings ; and much good and 
 solid work must have been done during the four years in 
 which he remained at that school. With the exception of 
 a few holidays at Christmas, six hours of each day, for five 
 days of the week, were spent in school during nearly ten 
 months of the year. Nearly as many hours each evening 
 were devoted to the work of preparation for the classes 
 next day. Writing to his father from Oxford in after 
 years he said that, during these four years at the Edin- 
 burgh Academy, the basis of any scholarship he had was 
 laid. He retained a real affection for the Academy to the 
 very end of his life ; and, as will be seen in a subsequent 
 chapter, his interest in it was publicly expressed in a speech, 
 at a dinner of old Academy pupils, in its jubilee year of 
 1875. 
 
 The occasional monotony of his school work was broken, 
 and his life brightened, by holiday visits to Houstoun, 
 which he reached from Edinburgh by coach or canal-boat. 
 During one entire winter he remained at Houstoun, and was 
 there tutored along with his brother Norman ; but they 
 returned to the Academy in the following year, leaving it 
 finally in 1834, and spending the next winter in Edinburgh, 
 where they took some private classes. It was during this 
 winter of 1835 that Shairp first came under the influence 
 of the poetry of Wordsworth. 
 
8 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 To no one have I been more indebted, in the prepara- 
 tion of this Memoir, than to Professor Sellar of the 
 University of Edinburgh ; and his account of those early 
 years, at the Academy and at Houstoun, I must detach from 
 the rest of his paper, and insert it at this stage. I much 
 regret that the continuity of Mr. Sellar's account of our com- 
 mon friend will suffer by its being broken up into sections, 
 and inserted at different places ; but this is a lesser evil than 
 the inevitable repetition which would otherwise take place. 
 
 " I feel how difficult it is to convey to those who did 
 not know him any adequate impression of the fresh and 
 buoyant spring of life, which never failed our old friend and 
 colleague during the forty years of my intimacy with him, 
 of the frank natural enthusiasm, tempered but not abated 
 as he grew older, with which he spoke on all subjects 
 which interested him, of his affection for his friends, and, 
 generally, of a nature singularly pure, genuine, and 
 generous, and a character loyal, reverent, disinterested, 
 and consistent, from his earliest youth till his latest years. 
 I feel it also difficult to select, out of the long period 
 during which I knew him, those recollections and impres- 
 sions which might be thought most characteristic of him. 
 I will try to recall my earlier impressions, and to give an 
 account, drawn chiefly from what I have heard from himself, 
 of the influences which formed him during the time of his 
 education, and also of his work as Professor during those 
 pleasant years when we were colleagues together at St. 
 Andrews. I must leave you to select from these notes what 
 may seem to you most suitable for the object which all his 
 friends who take any part in this commemoration of him 
 must have in view, to give to those who did not know him 
 some idea of a life, as true, beautiful, and, in its own sphere, 
 as influential for good, as any ever known 'to us. 
 
 My memories of him go so far back as the year 1834, 
 when he left the Edinburgh Academy. I cannot remember 
 his appearance then, and as I was only in the second, 
 while he was in the seventh class, it is very likely that I 
 
ii BOYHOOD: THE EDINBURGH ACADEMY 9 
 
 may never have spoken to him. But I remember in the prize- 
 list of the year his name at the end of a poem in Latin 
 hexameters, which I read long afterwards, and which showed, 
 for one so young as he was at the time, good scholarship 
 and good taste. I mention this because when I once spoke 
 to him about it, he told me that the one part of his work 
 which he liked at school was the writing of Latin verses, 
 which, under our old rector, Archdeacon Williams, was, if not 
 made so much of (to the exclusion of other subjects) as in 
 the old English public schools, still sufficiently encouraged 
 to give scope for the taste of those who had an aptitude for it. 
 
 Shairp had a just appreciation of the sound scholarly 
 training and the fresh intellectual stimulus which we got from 
 the teaching of our rector. Yet he did not speak with much 
 enthusiasm about his school -days. He never at any time 
 cared about school-games, which, though they did not then 
 play so important a part in school -life as they do now, 
 must always form a large ingredient in its pleasure, and 
 are the chief bond of that companionship which men like 
 to recall in after years. He cared still less for, in fact he 
 always disliked and condemned, the strenuous competition 
 which was the principal motive to work. He admitted 
 the necessity of applying this motive, at least in the earlier 
 stages of education, but he thought the desire of ' beating ' 
 somebody else neither a very elevated nor a Christian 
 principle of action ; and he desired to see it give place as 
 soon as possible to a sense of duty, and a sense of pleasure 
 in the work done for its own sake. 
 
 The year of his boyhood which he liked most to 
 dwell on was the year immediately preceding his last year 
 at the Edinburgh Academy, when, for some reason or 
 other, he was kept at home with a tutor. The love of 
 his home was through all his life one of the strongest 
 sentiments in his nature, the sentiment by which more, 
 I think, than by any other, the successive stages of his 
 life were as they were in him to a degree beyond what 
 I have ever known in any other man 
 
 Bound each to each by natural piety. 
 
10 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 He always spoke of the influence of a happy home as 
 among the most beneficent of the forces which mould char- 
 acter ; and when in after days at Oxford he saw among his 
 friends and contemporaries some who had evidently suffered 
 much from the speculative perplexities which were then in 
 the air, and by which he himself was for a time not abso- 
 lutely unaffected, he seemed to attribute his own comparative 
 immunity from them to this influence. 
 
 One pleasant reminiscence of that year was that he 
 then had, if not his initiation into, yet his fullest en- 
 joyment of the pleasures of ' hunting,' which was the one 
 form of sport for which he thoroughly cared, and about 
 which, though he had long practically given it up, he 
 always spoke and wrote with enthusiasm. One of the 
 most genuinely poetical and spirited of his poems, which I 
 first heard him repeat with an account of the actual cir- 
 cumstances out of which it arose, in one of our rides 
 together at Rugby, is The Run, published along with 
 KilmaJioe, in the first edition of his poems. The plea- 
 sure which he felt in the sport, and to which he has given 
 a singularly musical expression in that poem, was not the 
 mere physical pleasure of hard riding, though he knew 
 what that was, but the imaginative feeling of the poetry 
 of the scenes through which it bore him, and the imagina- 
 tive outlet which it gave to the chivalrous and adventurous 
 spirit which he inherited, and which was conspicuous in 
 his outward bearing. 
 
 The only other pastime into which he entered keenly, 
 and of which also he discussed and celebrated the poetry, 
 was ' curling,' the attraction of which to him was, partly, that 
 it was an exclusively national game, but chiefly, I think, 
 that it was associated with happy days at his old home in 
 Linlithgowshire, in which some part of his winter holiday 
 was passed every year of his life. If, therefore, his school- 
 life, though it must have had its share in training his 
 intellect, does not seem to have made any deep impression 
 on his character, it was because its influence and any 
 attraction which it might have had for him were over- 
 
ii BOYHOOD: THE EDINBURGH ACADEMY 11 
 
 powered by the strong and kindly influence and attraction 
 of his home. Yet he was thoroughly loyal to his school, 
 and I remember, as I sat beside him, how cordially he 
 entered into the spirit of the jubilee celebration in 18*75, 
 over which his friend, the late Archbishop of Canterbury, 
 presided, on the completion of the fiftieth year since the 
 foundation of the school, when the older ones among us were 
 reminded of the actae non alio rege puertiae." 
 
 Mr. Sellar's paper will be continued in the next chapter. 
 This one may be concluded by two additional fragments 
 from the poem Retrospect, which have a distinct biographic 
 interest. The first was entitled " School Time," and the 
 second " Bannockburn." The earliest effect upon Shairp of 
 that great poet, whom he afterwards did so much to interpret, 
 comes out in the former, as well as the happy influence of 
 the home at Houstoun. The latter shows how his poetic 
 imagination was stirred in boyhood by his first visit to a 
 famous historic field, and how the delight of a day of 
 youthful sport, amid " the music of the baying pack," gave 
 place to a still nobler enthusiasm, when " all the old 
 chivalries came floating back," and mingled with the excite- 
 ment of the present hour. To my mind the three stanzas 
 on Bannockburn show Shairp at his very best, as a poet, not 
 of Nature, but of historic incident, a distant national event 
 famous but far past being suggested and made to live 
 before him, in the thrilling experience of the chase. 
 
 SCHOOL TIME 
 
 When in drear city pent, the heart forlorn 
 For green fields pined, and unpolluted skies, 
 The voice of Wordsworth soothingly inborne 
 Came to my boyhood with a glad surprise 
 As here and there some memorable line 
 Flashed on the soul a glimpse of the divine 
 Beauty that in the world undreamed-of lies. 
 
 Ah me ! the joy some frosty afternoon 
 
 To leave the Town and wander westward home, 
 
 When the blue depth o'erhead with clouds was strewn 
 
12 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP, n 
 
 Like manes of flying coursers, white as foam ! 
 Bright and more bright they in the sunset shone, 
 And yet another glory they put on 
 Illumined by the spirit undertone. 
 
 Wordsworth was singing in me I aware 
 Of a new brightness in the full moon's look 
 As with her light she flooded the void air, 
 And one by one the stars their station took 
 Along the edges of the Pentland range : 
 O'er earth and sky I felt had come a change 
 A glory that hath not this earth forsook. 
 
 BANNOCKBUEN 
 
 Softly the West blew, and the May -morn shone, 
 
 When from an ancient beautiful abode 
 
 My father led me, all his field-gear on, 
 
 And o'er the plain of Bannockburn we rode 
 
 To meet the hounds, and the blithe hunter train, 
 
 Upon the moory hills beneath Dunblane, 
 
 And take the season's latest benison. 
 
 that first look athwart the famous Field ! 
 That vision of the Castled Eock sublime ! 
 Through all my being how it glowed and thrilled 
 Pulsations of the unforgotten time : 
 Then, with the music of the baying pack, 
 All the old chivalries came floating back, 
 And mingled with the chevy and the chime. 
 
 And as the chase went crashing all day long 
 
 O'er Sheriff muir, and down through Kippen glen, 
 
 My heart, unweeting of the hunter throng, 
 
 Was busy with the Bruce and his brave men; 
 
 Then, at dayfall, the moon on our return, 
 
 Serene as on the eve of Bannockburn, 
 
 Looked from Demayet down with cloudless ken. 
 
 This will suggest to some the skating scene on Esthwaite, 
 when Wordsworth retired from the game in imitation of 
 the chase 
 
 The pack loud chiming, and the hunted hare, 
 
 to watch the winter sunset, or " to cut across the reflex of a 
 star " in one of the silent bays of the mere. 
 
CHAPTEE III 
 
 GLASGOW UNIVERSITY 
 
 IN the autumn of 1836 Shairp went to the University 
 of Glasgow, where he spent three winter sessions, living 
 with the Misses Macleod, sisters of the minister of St. 
 Columba's Church, and aunts of his future friend, 
 Norman Macleod. They lived not far from Norman's own 
 home in Bath Street. During these years at the western 
 University of Scotland he made several friendships of a deep 
 and lasting character. There was Macleod himself, seven 
 years his senior, the genial, brilliant, large-hearted man 
 most unworldly of ecclesiastics whose force and directness 
 of character, overflowing humour, strong Celtic sympathies, 
 and rare devotion to duty, had special attraction for the 
 younger student. There were John Macintosh of Geddes, 
 afterwards Norman's brother - in - law, to whose Memoir 
 Shairp contributed a most interesting sketch ; William 
 Clerk, afterwards minister of Kilmalie, in the district of 
 Lochiel ; Henry Douglas, afterwards his brother-in-law, and 
 in later years bishop of Bombay, with several others. 
 
 The discussions that took place amongst this group 
 of friends at Norman's house, or at his own, were 
 perhaps more influential over Shairp's future life than 
 those to which he listened within College walls. He 
 doubtless owed much to the teaching of Sir Daniel Sand- 
 ford, and to that of the late Professor Eamsay ; as well 
 as to the knowledge of Formal Logic which he received from 
 Professor Buchanan ; but it was at these delightful evening 
 gatherings in Bath Street, when Coleridge, Wordsworth, 
 
14 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP 
 
 Sir Thomas Brown, and Jeremy Taylor were discussed, or at 
 the meetings of " The Peel Club," where the students met to 
 consider the politics of the hour, that the intellectual life of 
 this group of friends was mainly stirred. Happy friendships 
 were formed during these Glasgow winters a prelude to 
 those which awaited him at Oxford. In both places the 
 set of men into whose society he was thrown was a 
 remarkable one. They were drawn together by affinities 
 unusually deep ; and when differences developed themselves 
 within the circle, each both received and gave an impulse 
 to the other, which was strong at the time, and the effect 
 of which continued through life. 
 
 In a letter to his sister, Miss B. Shairp, in November 
 1838, he wrote: "Ever since I came here the time has 
 been chiefly occupied in bustling about the election of a 
 Lord Eector for the University, and we succeeded in carry- 
 ing Sir James Graham after much difficulty, at which you 
 may suppose there was a good deal of canvassing and 
 speechifying, in which I had my own share." 
 
 Professor Sellar writes thus of the time spent at the 
 University of Glasgow : " Of the years passed there he 
 used often to speak, and always with unmixed pleasure and 
 enthusiasm. He quoted with sympathy a saying of one of 
 his friends of that time, when he met him in after years, 
 that ' he looked back on his Glasgow time as the romance of 
 his life.' He had a very cordial feeling to all the Pro- 
 fessors under whom he studied, and a grateful recognition 
 of the good he got from them. He was especially distin-. 
 guished in the Moral Philosophy Class, and I remember 
 hearing from the Professor of the subject, that his essays 
 were generally based on Coleridge, whose teaching was at 
 that time something quite new in our universities. He 
 has told me that what made the most powerful impression 
 upon him among all the lectures that he listened to was the 
 inaugural lecture of Professor Lushington, in the opening 
 of the session 1838-39. It was a lecture which not only 
 contained a most just and impressive survey and estimate 
 of Greek literature, but was surcharged with the new 
 
in GLASGOW UNIVERSITY 15 
 
 thought and imaginative feeling pervading the remark- 
 able Cambridge set to which he belonged, the names 
 of most of whom are now well known to the world, and 
 some of whom (and he certainly) looked on Coleridge then 
 as their master, or at least as a teacher to whom they owed 
 much. Shairp left the lecture, as he told me, repeating to 
 himself the line 
 
 That strain I heard was of a higher mood ; 1 
 
 and the impression thus produced was confirmed by 
 his attendance on the private Greek Class. I can remember 
 his quoting to me at Oxford happy translations of lines or 
 half-lines of Sophocles, and pregnant bits of criticism from 
 the lectures. He gained a prize at the end of the session 
 for an essay on a comparison of the Ajax of Sophocles with 
 the Gorwlanus of Shakespeare, of which the Professor, 
 who, though warm in his admiration of merit, was habitually 
 temperate in the expression of praise, spoke in terms of 
 more than common appreciation. The feeling with which 
 they then regarded one another deepened in later life into 
 one of affectionate friendship. 
 
 He had great enjoyment in his student -life, and was 
 fortunate in the set of young men among whom he was 
 thrown. During his time in Glasgow, Shairp was, for the 
 only time in his life, a keen political partisan, and was, I 
 think, one of the founders of the Peel Club, which had its 
 origin in the election of Sir Eobert Peel as Lord Eector, in 
 the year 1836. He was consistent in after-life in adher- 
 ing to the politics of his youth and early associations ; but 
 he never again took an active part in, or cared much about 
 the contests of parties. 
 
 To this time also he referred the beginning of his intel- 
 lectual life, which, though expanded and modified by later 
 influences, flowed consistently till the end in the channel 
 which his spirit then struck out for it. Besides the impulse 
 which he derived from the literary and philosophical classes, 
 
 1 He frequently referred to this lecture in the last decade of his life, and 
 always with the utmost enthusiasm. 
 
16 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 he then first came under the influence of Wordsworth, 
 which continued, I think, to be the master-influence of his 
 intellectual life. It required an independent spirit, and a 
 taste for poetry not learned from others or adopted from 
 literary fashion, but avroSiSa/crov, for a young Scotchman 
 in those days to become an enthusiastic votary of a poet, 
 who was then only known to the majority of his country- 
 men by the satire of Byron, the parody in the Rejected 
 Addresses, and the criticism of the Edinburgh Review. The 
 influence of Scott he had felt from his childhood, and in 
 one of the summers during his Glasgow college days, or in his 
 early Oxford time, he met Lockhart in a country house, and 
 had some conversation with him. He used often to recall his 
 ' proud, sad face,' as of one for whom life had no more zest, 
 since he had lost the companionship of the great man with 
 whom he was so closely allied. With these two, Scott and 
 Wordsworth, as he formed the earliest, so also he maintained 
 the most constant of all his friendships in the world of letters. 
 
 At this time, too, he first felt the stirring within 
 himself of the impulses and of something of the faculty 
 of a poet. And the stirring of those impulses and of that 
 faculty were then, as they were through all his subsequent 
 life, intimately connected with what was the master- 
 passion of his life, his love of Nature, especially as she 
 revealed herself to him, in long and often lonely wanderings 
 through the most picturesque scenes in the Highlands and 
 the Border-country, or among the places which spoke to 
 him of the more romantic memories of Scottish history. 
 Till his physical strength began to fail in the last years of his 
 life, he never missed passing some days or weeks in these 
 wanderings ; and there were few if any educated men who 
 knew Scotland, highland and lowland, so well. He only 
 once, I think, yielded to the almost universal passion or 
 fashion of foreign travel, and though he got from his 
 summer abroad a fair knowledge of German for working 
 purposes, he seemed to regret a summer not passed in Scot- 
 land as a summer wasted. 
 
 I was only on two occasions with him in his walks once 
 
in GLASGOW UNIVERSITY 17 
 
 in ascending Ben Cruachan in company with the late Dean 
 of Westminster, the present Master of Balliol, his friend 
 Poste of Oriel, and one or two others ; and another time, 
 along with one other companion, in crossing the Minch 
 Moor to Innerleithen and back again to Yarrow, the out- 
 come of which walk appeared soon after in one of the most 
 perfect of his lyrical poems, The Busk ciboon Traquair. 
 One could not be with him on such occasions without per- 
 ceiving how deep and strong and natural was his enjoyment, 
 how eager and exact his observation of every sound and 
 sight that had attraction for him, and with what a 
 vigorous and elastic tread he went over the ground. I was 
 also struck by his resolute determination not to be satisfied 
 till he ascertained the exact spot which he came out to see. 1 
 A chief source of interest in his poems to those who knew 
 him is that they are the faithful record 
 
 Of what was passing in that brain and breast 
 
 (to apply to himself a line which he once quoted as applied by 
 some poet of the Lake country to Professor Wilson) in those 
 walks, into which he threw his whole heart and spirit. 
 Although he was entirely different from him in his social 
 temperament, though he had nothing of his exuberant 
 humour, and though he never could, even had he wished it, 
 have filled the same place in the eyes of his contemporaries, 
 which the older Professor did, and while his enthusiasm was 
 more subdued, and his imagination and taste were, I think, 
 chastened by a finer culture, yet he always seemed to me 
 in his youth to belong essentially to that one among 
 the various types, in which the praefervidum ingenium of 
 his countrymen manifests itself, of which Professor Wilson 
 was the most eminent representative. 
 
 After leaving Glasgow he passed a winter in Edinburgh, 
 before he was appointed to the Snell Exhibition to Balliol. 
 He attended, I think, some of the University classes, but 
 he spoke of that winter as an idle one, given up chiefly to 
 
 1 Compare Lord Coleridge's reminiscences of his visit to lona with Shairp 
 in 1878, given in a subsequent chapter. 
 
 C 
 
18 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 amusement. It was probably, however, not wasted, and 
 may have helped to give him that ease in social intercourse, of 
 which young men, almost exclusively college-bred, often pain- 
 fully feel the want. There was nothing in him at any time of 
 the manner of a mere student or bookish man. He was 
 perfectly at his ease with men of the most diverse tastes and 
 pursuits scholars, soldiers, or men of the world people of 
 every degree from that of a shepherd or a ploughman to that 
 of those placed at the opposite end of the social scale." 
 
 The influence of the teaching which Shairp received 
 at the University of Glasgow was lifelong. It was not 
 exclusively classical. During these undergraduate years his 
 mind awoke to the meaning of the perennial problems of 
 philosophy, and the great questions of the ages. It is clear 
 that his work in both the philosophical classes that of 
 Logic, and of Moral Philosophy was thorough. In both he 
 was adjudged the highest place in the list of class honours, 
 by the votes of his fellow-students. His studies under Pro- 
 fessors Lushington and Eamsay had deepened his appreciation 
 of the literature of Greece and Eome, and had given him 
 full insight into the best literary models of the past ; while 
 his attendance on the classes of Professors Buchanan and 
 Fleming had at least opened his mind to the significance of 
 Speculative Philosophy, and its bearing on conduct. 
 
 But it is easy to see that alongside of this academic 
 training at the University, a far more powerful factor 
 was at work, educating his mind, and moulding his char- 
 acter. His reading and reciting of the poets, his discus- 
 sions on them with Norman Macleod and others, his own 
 occasional efforts as a writer of verse, the combined influence 
 of the Ballads of his Native Land, the Minstrelsy of the- 
 Border, the Lyrics of Wordsworth, and the Eomances of Sir 
 Walter Scott, and his contact \rith Nature itself when away 
 from the University these things touched him to the quick, 
 and opened up the springs of imagination. It was by their 
 influences, running parallel to the teaching of the University, 
 that " the fountains of the great deep " were " broken up " 
 
in GLASGOW UNIVERSITY 19 
 
 within him, that imaginative insight awoke, and that the 
 stream of poetry began to flow freely forth. 
 
 Perhaps the very strongest of these influences was that 
 which came over him during every holiday, when his his- 
 torical and imaginative sympathy led him to try in the 
 course of long wanderings on foot to localise the allusions 
 in the poems he most loved, and to identify spots that were 
 familiar if not famous to a former race of men. 1 
 
 In his nineteenth year, before returning to Glasgow for 
 the winter, Shairp paid his first visit to the Braes of Yarrow ; 
 and his record of the two autumnal days he spent there is 
 perhaps the earliest specimen of his poetic work which we 
 possess. It is in sixteen stanzas, and as they are of unequal 
 merit, I select only six of them. He called it 
 
 A Remembrance of Two Days spent among the Braes of Yarrow, from 
 the evening of Tuesday 25th till the forenoon of Thursday the 
 27th September, 1838. 
 
 The night came down on the mountain brown, 
 
 The flakes fell fast and still ; 
 But one lone gleam of sunset lay 
 
 On all the western hill. 
 And I deemed it bade us gladsome hail 
 To come and gaze on Yarrow Vale. 
 
 And Yarrow Yarrow, as I stood 
 
 Beside thine ancient flood, 
 My heart was proud that I was born 
 
 Of Scotland's ancient blood. 
 For where, where's the stream can marrow, 
 The holms, the hopes, the hills of Yarrow ? 
 
 Two days I wandered all alone, 
 
 Oft crooning some old rhyme, 
 Some simple song that cadenced well, 
 
 With Yarrow's plaintive chime. 
 Two nights the wakeful voice of Yarrow 
 Sang by my rest till dawn of morrow. 
 
 1 I may perhaps be allowed here to express a regret that Principal Shairp 
 was unable to carry out an intention he once had of localising the allusions to 
 place, throughout the poems of Wordsworth. Had he and Dr. Cradock done 
 it jointly, it would have been a noble bit of work. 
 
20 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 A forest this ! It giveth back 
 
 No music to the breeze ; 
 Yet are there still upon the hill 
 
 Lone melancholy trees. 
 Each standing far off from the other, 
 As mourning for some long-lost brother. 
 
 Scott and Hogg are both referred to in the next stanza. 
 
 In Dryburgh, by his own dear Tweed, 
 
 One hath his dwelling narrow ; 
 One sleepeth sound on Ettrick side, 
 
 Deaf to the roar of Yarrow. 
 Ye may hear it in the twilight dim, 
 But that stream-voice is mute for him. 
 
 Come hither thou who ne'er hast known 
 
 The power of ancient sorrow, 
 Come all alone and find it here 
 
 Among the braes of Yarrow. 
 Here let thy soul drink deeply in 
 The power that sleeps this Vale within. 
 
 As casting light on Shairp's career at the University of 
 Glasgow, and his subsequent years of friendship with John 
 Macintosh and Norman Macleod, some portions of his esti- 
 mates of these two men are quoted here. 
 
 In all Principal Shairp's writings there is nothing more 
 interesting, or valuable, than his series of character-studies 
 of the many friends he had, and to whose biographies he 
 often contributed the most interesting sketch. As the aim 
 of this biography is to illustrate the man in his many- 
 sidedness, a few extracts from these sketches which are 
 now scattered in nearly a dozen volumes will be more 
 acceptable than pages of commentary. The friends to whose 
 lives he has contributed were John Macintosh of Geddes, 
 Norman Macleod, Arthur Clough, Thomas Erskine of Lin- 
 lathen, John M'Leod Campbell of Eow, Bishop Cotton, 
 Bishop Patteson, Principal Forbes, Dr. Park, Dr. John Brown, 
 and Archbishop Tait. The reason why these sketches of his 
 friends are so valuable to us is, that they at the same time 
 
in GLASGOW UNIVERSITY 21 
 
 reveal some things most characteristic of the writer his 
 views of life, his aspirations, his ambitions, and ideals 
 as nothing else does. The estimate of Macintosh is con- 
 tained in a letter to his biographer, written from Kugby in 
 
 1856. 
 
 " RUGBY, lOtfz. April 1856. 
 
 " MY DEAR NORMAN ... It was about the beginning of Nov- 
 ember 1837, I think, on his first coming to Glasgow College, that 
 Macintosh and I met and became acquainted. Years before we had 
 been at the Edinburgh Academy together, but as we were in different 
 classes, we had not known each other to speak to. I knew him, however, 
 by name and appearance ; seem now to see, as it had been but yester- 
 day, the two brothers uniformly dressed in a suit of sky-blue from 
 head to foot, sitting always together at the head of their class the 
 younger and smaller first, the elder next to him. Though it is fully 
 twenty years since, his appearance is clearly before me, and the repu- 
 tation that went with him not only for ability, but for character be- 
 yond his years. There was about him even then a calm collected air, 
 as of one who had a purpose before him, and went straight to it, undis- 
 turbed by other aims. . . . 
 
 The time when he entered Glasgow College was, as you will re- 
 member, a stirring one in that University. Peel had been elected 
 Lord Rector the year before. The Peel Club had been established to 
 support his principles ; political feeling, which was then high among 
 the students, added interest to life, and quickened the stir of thought. 
 But it is not as a young politician that we think of him, as he then 
 was, but rather as a chief favourite in that small circle of friends, 
 of which your father's hearth was at that time the centre. 
 
 There were in all about ten or twelve of us, between the ages of 
 sixteen and eighteen. Many of these had come from the Edinburgh 
 Academy ; most were preparing for Oxford or Cambridge. We were 
 then at the delightful time of life when the fresh heart of boyhood, 
 first freed from restraint, leaps forward eagerly to the opening interests 
 of manhood. Seldom do a band of friends live together on terms so 
 happy, so intimate, so endearing, as those on which, evening after even- 
 ing, we used to meet in that room in your father's house (known 
 amongst us as the coffee-room), or in the lodgings of some one of our 
 number. Many interests there met, and harmonised : poetry, philo- 
 sophy, politics, or field sports, and other amusements. 
 
 He was not remarkable for any precocious activity, but rather for 
 strict self-discipline and thoroughness of purpose, which made him, while 
 earnestly seeking the highest things, never neglect the lowest duties. 
 
 I ought perhaps to add, that these high moral and religious quali- 
 ties were at that time not unaccompanied by a certain shade of that 
 
22 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 austereness which some think characteristic of religious people in 
 Scotland. But however this may be, all his companions felt the force 
 of his goodness. Their great love for him as a friend was mingled 
 with deep respect, I might almost say reverence, for his whole character. 
 
 After he had taken final leave of Cambridge, before returning to 
 Scotland, he came to visit Oxford and some of his old Glasgow friends, 
 who were undergraduates at Balliol College. 
 
 For several days we wandered together among the colleges and old 
 gardens, and by the banks of the river ; and the antique air of the 
 place seemed greatly to impress him. 
 
 The Oxford movement was then at its height ; and he took much 
 interest in all he saw and heard regarding it. I can remember stand- 
 ing with him in the great square of Christ Church, to watch Pusey's 
 spare, bowed-down, surpliced form, as he returned from prayer in the 
 Cathedral. He was present also in St. Mary's on one of the last Sun- 
 day afternoons that Newman's voice was heard there, or elsewhere, as 
 a minister of the English Church. 
 
 One change, and only one, seemed to have passed over him dur- 
 ing our long separation. The tinge of severity which I was aware of 
 formerly, had wholly disappeared. Without losing his singleness or 
 strength of purpose, he had grown, I thought, more gentle, more 
 serene, more deeply loving towards all men. 
 
 However widely a man differed in opinion or sentiment from 
 himself, it seemed he did not care to dwell on the differences, but 
 rather to open his mind fairly to take in whatever of good or true he 
 had to teach. This open-mindedness, in one so earnest and fixed in 
 his own mind, was very remarkable ; and the whole seemed so evenly- 
 balanced, that while he was not only fair, but sympathetic towards all 
 men, there appeared no symptom of that weakness and " uncertainty of 
 thought often visible in those whose sympathies are stronger than 
 their heads. 
 
 Another time we met and whiled away part of a summer afternoon 
 on the high pastures of Midhope, looking over the Firth of Forth. 
 Then we made the burn our guide, and let it lead us from the open 
 grass fields, down through its deep woody glen, past the antique house 
 of Midhope, till it reaches the salt-sea water. Tennyson was among 
 our other thoughts that day, and we chanted to each other that beauti- 
 ful melody of his 
 
 Flow down, cold rivulet, to the sea, 
 Thy tribute wave deliver. 
 
in GLASGOW UNIVERSITY 23 
 
 We knew not then liow. truly that burden applied 
 
 No more hy thee our steps shall be 
 For ever and for ever. 
 
 But no shadow passed over that afternoon." 1 
 
 In the reminiscences which Shairp contributed to the 
 memoir of his friend Norman Macleod, we find more than in 
 his sketch of Macintosh that bears upon the course of his 
 own life at the University of Glasgow ; and they supplement, 
 in an interesting way, the details given by Professor Sellar. 
 He tells us that, when he went to the University 
 
 " Norman was a young divinity student, and had nearly completed 
 his course in Glasgow College. 
 
 To him his father committed the entire care of the three young 
 men who lived in his house, and it was arranged that I, living with 
 his aunts, should be added as a fourth charge. This I look back to 
 as one of the happiest things that befell me during all my early life. 
 Norman was then in the very hey-day of hope, energy, and young genius. 
 There was not a fine quality which he afterwards displayed, which did 
 not then make itself seen and felt by his friends ; and that youthful- 
 ness of spirit, which was to the last so delightful, had a peculiar charm 
 then, when it was set off by all the personal attractions of two or three 
 and twenty. 
 
 His training had not been merely the ordinary one of a lad from 
 a Scotch Manse, who has attended classes in Glasgow and Edinburgh 
 Universities. His broad and sympathetic spirit had a far richer back- 
 ground to draw upon. It was Morven and the Sound of Mull, the 
 legends of Skye and Dunvegan, and the shore of Kintyre, that had 
 dyed the first and inmost feelings of childhood with their deep colour- 
 ing. Then as boyhood passed into manhood, came his sojourn among 
 Yorkshire squires, his visit to Germany, and all the stimulating society 
 of Weimar, on which still rested the spirit of the lately -departed 
 Goethe. All these things, so unlike the commonplace experience of 
 many, had added to his nature a variety and compass which seemed 
 so wonderful compared with that of most young men around him. 
 Child of Nature as he was, this variety of experience had stimulated 
 and enlarged Nature in him, not overlaid it. 
 
 There were many bonds of sympathy between us to begin with. 
 First, there was his purely Highland and Celtic blood and upbring- 
 ing ; and I, both from my mother's and paternal grandmother's side, 
 had Celtic blood. The shores of Argyleshire were common ground to 
 us. The same places, and the same people many of them were 
 
 1 Memorials of John Macintosh, pp. 69-75. 
 
24 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 familiar to his childhood and to mine. And he, and his father, and 
 mother used to stimulate my love for that western land by endless 
 stories, legends, histories, jests, allusions, brought from thence. It was 
 to him, as to me, the region of poetry, of romance, adventure, mystery, 
 gladness, and sadness infinite. Here was a great background of 
 common interest, which made us feel as old friends at first sight. 
 Indeed, I never remember the time when I felt the least a stranger to 
 Norman. Secondly, besides this, I soon found that our likings for 
 the poets were the same. Especially were we at one in our common 
 devotion to one, to us the chief of poets. 
 
 I well remember those first evenings we used to spend together 
 in Glasgow. I went to No. 9 Bath Street oftener Norman would 
 come over to my room to look after my studies. I was attending 
 Professor Buchanan's class, ' Bob,' as we then irreverently called him, 
 and Norman came to see how I had taken my logic notes, and pre- 
 pared my essay or other work for next day. After a short time 
 spent in looking over the notes of lecture, or the essay, Norman would 
 say, ' I see you understand all about it ; come, let's turn to Billy.' 
 That was his familiar name for Wordsworth, the poet of his soul. 
 
 Before coming to Glasgow I had come upon Wordsworth, and in 
 large measure taken him to heart. Norman had for some years done 
 the same. Our sympathy in this became an immense bond of union. 
 The admiration and study of Wordsworth were not then what they 
 afterwards became a part of the discipline of every educated man. 
 Those who really cared for him in Scotland might, I believe, have 
 then been counted by units. Not a professor in Glasgow University at 
 that time ever alluded to him. Those, therefore, who read him in 
 solitude, if they met another to whom they could open their mind on 
 the subject, were bound to each other by a very inward chord of 
 sympathy. I wish I could recall what we then felt as on those 
 evenings we read or chanted the great lines we already knew, or 
 shouted for joy at coming on some new passage which was a delightful 
 surprise. Often as we walked out on winter nights to College for some 
 meeting of the Peel Club, or other excitement, he would look up into 
 the clear moonlight and repeat 
 
 The moon doth with delight 
 Look round her when the heavens are bare ; 
 Waters on a starry night 
 Are beautiful and fair. 
 
 Numbers of the finest passages we had by heart, and would repeat to 
 each other endlessly. I verily believe that Wordsworth did more for 
 Norman, penetrated more deeply and vitally into him, purifying and 
 elevating his thoughts and feelings at their fountainhead than any 
 other voice of uninspired man, living or dead. Second only to 
 Wordsworth, Coleridge was, of modern poets, our great favourite. 
 Those poems of his, and special passages which have since become 
 
in GLASGOW UNIVERSITY 25 
 
 familiar to all, were then little known in Scotland, and had to us all 
 the charm of a newly-discovered country. We began then, too, to 
 have dealings with his philosophy, which we found much more to our 
 mind than the authorities then in vogue in Glasgow College the 
 prosaic Eeid and the long-winded Thomas Brown. 
 
 Long years afterwards, whenever I took up a Scotch newspaper, 
 if my eye fell on a quotation from Wordsworth or Coleridge, ' Here's 
 Norman,' I would say ; and on looking more carefully I would be sure 
 to find that it was he quoting in one of his speeches some of the 
 favourite lines of Glasgow days. Norman was not much of a classical 
 scholar ; Homer, Virgil, and the rest, were not much to him. But I 
 often thought that if he had known them ever so well, in a scholarly 
 way, they never would have done for him what Wordsworth did, would 
 never have so entered into his secret being, and become a part of his 
 very self. Besides Wordsworth and Coleridge, there were two other 
 poets who were continually on his lips. Goethe was then much to 
 him ; for he was bound up in all his recent Weimar reminiscences ; 
 but I think that, as life went on, Goethe, with his artistic isolation, 
 grew less and less to him. Shakespeare, on the other hand, was then, 
 and always continued to be, an unfailing resource. Many of the 
 characters he used to read and dilate upon with wonderfully realising 
 power. Falstaff was especially dear to him. He read Falstaff's 
 speeches, or rather, acted them, as I have never heard any other man 
 do. He entered into the very heart of the character, and reproduced 
 the fat old-man's humour to the very life. 
 
 These early sympathies, no doubt, made our friendship more 
 rapid and deep. But it did not need any such bonds to make a young 
 man take at once to Norman. To see him, hear him, converse with 
 him, was enough. He was then overflowing with generous, ardent con- 
 tagious impulse. Brimful of imagination, sympathy, buoyancy, humour, 
 drollery, and affectionateness, I never knew any one who contained 
 in himself so large and varied an armful of the humanities. Himself 
 a very child of Nature, he touched Nature and human life at every 
 point. There was nothing human that was without interest for him ; 
 nothing great or noble to which his heart did not leap up instinct- 
 ively. In those days, what Hazlitt says of Coleridge was true of 
 him, ' He talked on for ever.' Since that day I have met and known 
 intimately a good many men more or less remarkable and original. 
 Some of them were stronger on this one side, some on that, than 
 Norman ; but not one of all contained in himself such a variety of 
 gifts and qualities, such elasticity, such boundless fertility of pure 
 nature, apart from all he got from books or culture. 
 
 On his intellectual side, imagination and humour were his 
 strongest qualities, both of them working on a broad base of strong 
 common-sense and knowledge of human nature. On the moral side, 
 sympathy, intense sympathy, with all humanity was the most mani- 
 fest, with a fine aspiration that hated the mean and the selfish, and 
 
2G JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 went out to whatever things were most worthy of a man's love. Deep 
 affectionateness to family and friends affection that could not bear 
 coldness or stiff reserve, but longed to love and to be loved; and if 
 there was in it a touch of the old Highland clannishness, one did not 
 like it the less for that. 
 
 We all met in a common sitting-room. There, when College work 
 was over, sometimes before it was over, or even well begun, we would 
 gather round him, and with story, joke, song, readings from some 
 favourite author, or some recitation of poetry, he would make our hearts 
 leap up. 
 
 What evenings I have seen in that ' coffee-room ' ! Norman, in 
 the grey-blue duffle dressing-gown, in which he then studied, with 
 smoking-cap on his head, coming forth from his own reading-den to 
 refresh himself, and cheer us, by a brief bright quarter of an hour's 
 talk. He was the centre of that small circle, and whenever he ap- 
 peared, even if there was dulness before, life and joy broke forth. At 
 the close of the first session I speak of 1836-37 the party that 
 gathered in the coffee-room changed. MacConochie and Nairne went, 
 and did not return ; William Clerk remained ; and the vacant places 
 were at the beginning of next session, 1837-38, filled by Eobert (now 
 Sir Robert) Dalyell of Binns; James Home, and John Macintosh, 
 the youngest son of Macintosh of Geddes. There were also two 
 or three other students who boarded elsewhere, but who were often 
 admitted as visitors to the joyous gatherings in the coffee-room. 
 
 Before the close of the session of 1837-38 Norman was appointed 
 to the parish of Loudoun, in Ayrshire, and ordained as its minister. 
 When the close of our next and last session in Glasgow (1838-39) 
 arrived, he arranged that his old friends of the coffee-room should 
 go down and pay him a visit in his manse at Loudoun on the 1st 
 of May. The usual winding-up of College had taken place in the 
 morning, and by the afternoon a merry party were seated on the 
 top of the Ayrshire coach, making their way through the pleasant 
 country of Mearns, in Ayrshire, towards their friend's manse. That 
 party consisted of William Clerk, Robert Dalyell, Henry Douglas, and 
 myself. ... It was a beautiful spring evening, and the green burn braes 
 as we wound along laughed on us with their galaxies of primroses. 
 You may imagine what a welcome we received when at evening we 
 reached the manse door. We stayed there three days, or four. The 
 weather was springlike and delightful. We wandered by the side of 
 the Irvine Water, and under the woods, all about Loudoun Castle, and 
 Norman was, as of old, the soul of the party. He recurred to his old 
 Glasgow stories, or told us new ones derived from his brief experience 
 of the Ayrshire people, in whom, and in their characters, he was 
 already deeply interested. All day we spent out of doors, and as we 
 lay, in that balmy weather, on the banks or under the shade of the 
 
in GLASGOW UNIVERSITY 27 
 
 newly-budding trees, converse more hearty it would be impossible to 
 conceive. And yet, there was beneath it an undertone of sadness; 
 for we foreboded too surely what actually has been fulfilled, that it 
 was our last meeting. 
 
 On the last day of our wanderings Norman, who had hitherto 
 kept up our spirits, and never allowed a word of sadness to mar the 
 mirth, at last said suddenly, as we were reclining in one of the 
 Loudoun Castle woods, ' Now, friends, this is the last time we shall 
 all meet together ; I know that well. Let us have a memorial of our 
 meeting. Yonder are a number of primrose bushes. Each of you 
 take up one root with his own hands ; I will do the same ; and we 
 shall plant them at the manse in remembrance of this day.' So we 
 each did, and carried home each his own primrose bush. When we 
 reached the manse, Norman chose a place where we should plant them 
 side by side. It was all simple and natural, yet a pathetic and 
 memorable close of that delightful early time. 
 
 Early next morning we left the manse, and, I believe, not one of 
 us ever returned. It was as Norman said. We went our several 
 ways one to Cambridge, two to Oxford ; but never again did more 
 than two of us foregather. 1 
 
 Two things strike me especially in looking back on Norman as he 
 then was. The first was his joyousness the exuberance of his joy 
 joy combined with purity of heart. We had never known any one 
 who took a serious view of life, and was really religious, who com- 
 bined with it so much hearty hopefulness. He was happy in himself, 
 and made all others happy with whom he had to do. At least they 
 must have been very morose persons indeed who were insensible to the 
 contagion of his gladness." 
 
 In all this picture of his friend, while Shairp had not 
 a thought of himself, he gives us many a side-glance into his 
 own character, and in some points he was unconsciously 
 drawing his own portrait. 
 
 It is much to be regretted that so few of the many 
 letters written by Shairp to Norman Macleod survive. Mrs. 
 Macleod tells me they were most frequent before her husband 
 went to Dalkeith, and during their residence there. After- 
 wards they were each too busy in their several paths to 
 correspond much. 
 
 In one of them, an undated note from Houstoun, he 
 writes of an intended visit, along with one of the subsequent 
 " Balliol scholars," to Macleod's house : 
 
 1 Memoir of Norman Macleod, D.D., vol. i. pp. 87-100. 
 
28 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 " If nothing hinders, Prichard and I will be with you 
 on Tuesday morning to breakfast, by the route you mention. 
 'We'll make a day of happy hours/ not in steamer, please, 
 but among the nearest hills, or if you have any lonely 
 shores. Prichard is naturally a grave man, but a very 
 simple straightforward one too. None of the unnatural 
 hocus-pocus priestliness which you connect with Orielism. 
 At present, too, he has something to grieve him, and has 
 come north for change of scene. Therefore you must let 
 your spirits flow freely as of old, and give your fun free 
 play." 
 
 Writing again to Macleod of his Life of their common 
 friend, John Macintosh of Geddes : " . . . You have left 
 almost nothing to wish, unless it were that you had come 
 a little more forward, and made your own comment. But 
 this is a good fault. ... If he had been here now, and 
 could have read that Life as the record of a stranger to 
 himself, it is just the kind of book he would have heartily 
 approved of. Well as I knew his goodness and loveableness, 
 these Journals and Letters have let me see far deeper into 
 his character, than perhaps even years of intercourse might 
 have done. What strength and singleness of will ! . . . 
 The last chapter sank deeper into me, reading it in the 
 silence of my room, than that day when you read it to us 
 in Glasgow. ... As to reviewing it, I cannot. How could 
 I sit down to analyse his character, or to criticise it ? I wish 
 the book to be a treasured one for years to come, and were 
 I to read it through for reviewing, the freshness of it would 
 be gone." 
 
 Shairp's friendship with the whole of the Macleod family 
 was deep and unbroken ; and on the death of the old lady 
 of St. Columba's Manse Norman's mother he wrote thus 
 to her son-in-law and his college friend, Dr. Clerk of Kil- 
 malie : 
 
 " I know that Mrs. Clerk and you will be feeling much 
 the departure of the dear old lady, though you knew that 
 her time was full come. She takes with her so much love, 
 and so many memories. A larger heart, and a finer, more 
 
in GLASGOW UNIVERSITY 29 
 
 capacious mind, I never knew in woman ; and then she had 
 with it the simplicity and single -mindedness, and deep 
 tenacity of affection, that belonged to an earlier time, and 
 seems much rarer now. You and I have often spoken of 
 her. How much of what was best in Norman he owed to 
 her noble nature. I trust that her descendants in the 
 second and third generations may be able to know what 
 she really was, and may live to be like her." 
 
 After Norman Macleod's death he wrote to Clerk 
 
 "... My happiest thoughts of him go back to Bath 
 Street, Loudoun, and Dalkeith. Then he was buoyancy and 
 strength and joy unbounded. You would get a whole night 
 of him from 9 P.M. till 2 or 3 A.M. in his study, when he 
 would let loose the whole man, and you did not feel then 
 that you were overtaxing him. It is a dreadful feature of 
 our modern over-centralised life that everywhere, and in all 
 professions, the foremost men are sacrificed rapidly to the 
 demand made on them by the world. . . ." 
 
 Of Macleod he also said, after he had made the acquaint- 
 ance of the large and varied circle into which he was 
 introduced at Oxford : " I feel sometimes as if he were like 
 all my English friends rolled into one." 
 
 The following extract (the last) from the autobiographic 
 poem Retrospect, refers to the Glasgow College days : 
 
 . . . Can I forget the hour, 
 In the dim city of the murky west, 
 When first I passed beneath the antique Tower 
 That crowned quaint College gables, whither prest 
 An eager throng of students, scarlet-gowned, 
 And among these a gentle company found 
 Of Scotland's youth, more lovely than the rest ! 
 
 And lie was there chief amid younger peers, 
 Waiting the hour that soon should put to proof 
 Tliose powers which Scotland owned in after years, 1 
 But then scarce known beyond his father's roof ; 
 His lofty thought and aspiration strong 
 In eloquence o'erflowing and in song, 
 That kept dark city vapours far aloof. 
 
 1 Macleod. 
 
30 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP, in 
 
 A voice that gathered, from the misty hills 
 
 And sounding shores of Morven, power intense 
 
 To pierce our listening souls with glorious thrills, 
 
 Blending the past with newer influence, 
 
 Till the whole world, past, present, and to be, 
 
 Before our sight dilated wondrously, 
 
 Lit by his shafts of natural eloquence. 
 
 Sometimes one listened there, 1 young soul serene 
 And gentle, through fair face and clear blue eye 
 Forth looking calmly on life's varied scene 
 Before him spread, with pure resolve and high, 
 Though blithe of heart, not many were his words, 
 But his low voice, more sweet than any bird's, 
 Beside me, day by day, made melody. 
 
 John Macintosh wrote thus to Shairp in February 1846 : 
 " I don't know how it is, but the Glasgow sessions do 
 certainly seem to be our Heroic Age, on which, like the 
 after-posts, we look back and linger with a pensive pleasure. 
 You are my Achilles of these days ; Douglas of course the 
 Patroclus ; Norman the ava% avSpwv Agamemnon (but a 
 much finer fellow) ; and I perhaps, to outward appearance, 
 the pious .^Eneas. Do not wonder then that the sight of 
 you stirs up a thousand thoughts. I have been at Norman's 
 a night since, and so much did we harp on you and the 
 former sederunt, that it seemed like the ghost of the evening 
 you were there. I also saw the Dr. and Mrs. Macleod (jroTvia 
 /JUIJTTJP) very hastily at Glasgow. ... I do believe it will 
 be a great relief to you to begin active work. I know 
 it has made me at times almost drunk with ardour and 
 pleasure, and has told most beneficially on my studies. I 
 attribute Norman's exuberance too to the same cause." 
 
 1 Henry Douglas, afterwards Bishop of Bombay. 
 
CHAPTEE IV 
 
 OXFORD UNDERGRADUATE LIFE 
 
 IN April 1840 Shairp gained the Snell Exhibition from 
 Glasgow University to Balliol College, Oxford, and matri- 
 culated in June of that year, his intention at first being to 
 take orders in the Church of England. 
 
 Of his first visit to Oxford there is nothing particular 
 to record. The long vacation of 1840 was partly spent in 
 London, varied by a visit to the barracks at Ipswich, whither 
 he sailed from London, giving a graphic account of the voyage 
 in a letter to one of his sisters at Houstoun. 
 
 The letters he wrote from Oxford to the family circle 
 at Houstoun show the gradual development of the poet and 
 the philosopher, side by side with the scholar ; and they 
 further show how it was scarcely possible that he could 
 come out, in the final schools, as a first in Classics. I hope 
 that classical scholars may forgive my saying that he was 
 doing even better than preparing for that most honourable 
 close of undergraduate life. It was certainly so for him ; 
 and if he had worked so as to win a first, he might not 
 have given to the world what he afterwards gave it. 
 
 These letters to Houstoun also show the strength and 
 tenacity of his home affections, and how harmoniously his 
 character developed during these years. The dignity with 
 which he took the final award of the Examiners is instructive, 
 and the letter to his father about it may be read in connec- 
 tion with a remark in Mr. Cotterill's paper of reminiscences, 
 pp. 278-283. 
 
 Although not a remarkable letter-writer amongst the 
 
32 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 many who have been distinguished in this respect the 
 serenity and brightness of his nature, his good feeling, self- 
 control, and inherent nobleness, came out in all his corre- 
 spondence to a remarkable extent. I do not suppose he ever 
 wrote a line which he had afterwards to regret. The entire 
 absence of envy and of self-engrossedness, as well as of cynical 
 criticism, or depreciation of others, is noteworthy. A serene, 
 appreciative, sunny spirit is seen in every one of them. Here 
 again I avail myself of Mr. Sellar's admirable memoranda : 
 
 " It was in the year 1840 that he was appointed by the 
 Glasgow Professors to a Snell Exhibition to Balliol, and 
 he entered on residence, I think, in the October term. 
 Balliol, though one of the three or four larger colleges, had 
 by no means reached its present dimensions, nor had it the 
 same cosmopolitan character that it has now ; but under 
 the judicious regime of Dr. Jenkyns it had gained the same 
 rank that it holds now in University distinctions. The 
 number of men in residence was about seventy or eighty, 
 carefully selected by the Master from the best type of 
 public schoolmen, most of them about that time from Eton, 
 Eugby, Harrow, Shrewsbury, etc. The scholars were 
 elected by competition open to all parts of the world, 
 and among those who were contemporary, or nearly con- 
 temporary, with Shairp were the ' seven,' whom he has 
 admirably characterised as they then were, in a poem which 
 appeared some years ago 1 in Macmillaris Magazine, with the 
 title ' Balliol Scholars/ The only survivors of the seven are now 
 the Lord Chief- Justice of England and the Bishop of London ; 2 
 
 1 In March 1873. 
 
 2 Since these recollections were written, two of Shairp's oldest and best 
 friends, who were both scholars of Balliol at that time, and have since been 
 well known in the world, Theodore Walrond and Matthew Arnold, have passed 
 away. To others, as well as to myself, among their surviving friends and 
 contemporaries, this quick succession of losses must have recalled, as much 
 from the distinction of the men as from the bond of almost brotherly affection 
 which united them together, at college and through all their later life, the 
 grand and pathetic lines in which Wordsworth mourns over the quick succession 
 of losses among the best and greatest of his contemporaries- 
 How fast has brother followed brother 
 
 From sunshine to the sunless land. 
 
iv OXFORD UNDERGRADUATE LIFE 33 
 
 but among them all the one of whom his contemporaries had 
 the highest opinion and hopes, as a poet and thinker, was 
 Clough ; and I think it was for him more than any of the 
 others that Shairp then felt that idealising hero-worship, 
 which generous young men, of imaginative susceptibility, 
 feel for the genius of their contemporaries. He went one 
 summer with him on a reading-party to Grasmere, and he 
 often talked of its pleasant memories, especially of the 
 delight and amusement which he and all of them had from 
 seeing a great deal of Hartley Coleridge. He told me too 
 of his having once, only once, after one of his long walks, 
 seen Wordsworth standing at his garden-gate, and of how 
 he had felt impelled to shake his hand, and to tell him how 
 much he owed to him. But he shrank always from any 
 kind of 'lion-hunting,' regarding it as rather a form of impu- 
 dent self-assertion than a reverent tribute to greatness. 
 The seven scholars of his poem were the immediate suc- 
 cessors of others as gifted and remarkable, among whom 
 were the late Lord Card well, Sir Stafford ISTorthcote, Dean 
 Stanley, and the present Master of the College, Professor 
 Jowett, who was one of the younger Fellows when Shairp 
 entered on residence, though the great personal and intel- 
 lectual influence which, as Tutor and Master of the College, 
 he has exercised over so many generations of pupils did not 
 begin to assert itself till a year or two later. Among the 
 immediate successors of these seven, with all of whom 
 Shairp became intimate, were Archdeacon Palmer, T. Wai- 
 rond, T. C. Sanders, F. T. Palgrave, the late Professor H. S, 
 Smith, Sir A. Grant, and others. 
 
 There was no sharp distinction made between reading 
 and non-reading men, but the whole College formed a very 
 friendly society ; and one of the considerations which deter- 
 mined Shairp long afterwards to send his son to Oriel was, 
 that it had not outgrown the size which admitted of a 
 common family-kind of life among its members, of which 
 he himself had felt the charm and benefit at Balliol. Into 
 this society of young Englishmen the Scotch Exhibitioners 
 from Glasgow were heartily welcomed. They brought some 
 
 D 
 
34 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 prestige with them, for members of their body had added 
 distinction to the College before it had become famous ; and 
 even now the names of Adam Smith, Sir William Hamilton, 
 Lockhart, and the present Lord Justice-General of Scotland, 
 are not unworthy to stand beside those of the most distin- 
 guished among former scholars. Yet I think the Exhibi- 
 tioners who came after Shairp owed a good deal of their 
 friendly reception to the place which he had secured for 
 them by his personal popularity and his intellectual repu- 
 tation. Among those who came immediately after him 
 were his future brother-in-law, Henry Douglas, Sir Francis 
 Sandford, and Patrick Cumin, Secretary to the Education 
 Office. Shairp and all the rest of us felt both the 
 pleasure, and the enlargement to our whole nature, of 
 this intimate association with young Englishmen of culture, 
 promise, and social vivacity; many of whom, in their turn, 
 I am sure, felt the new zest given to the genial enliven- 
 ment and the varied intellectual life of the College by this 
 Scottish leaven introduced among them. 
 
 In his first term his old love of hunting had a sharp 
 struggle with his love of reading. I remember hearing, 
 partly from himself and partly from some one else, that in 
 the early days of his residence, before he had made many 
 acquaintances, feeling depressed by the novelty of his posi- 
 tion, he determined to cheer himself by a day's hunting. 
 Some of the older members of the ' fast set ' (as it was 
 called) were out on the same day, and when they came back 
 to Hall there was a general inquiry as to who the freshman 
 was who had ridden so well and hard. He was immedi- 
 ately asked by one of them to his rooms, and as they were 
 a manly and cheerful set of men, with whose life in the 
 open air he had a fellow-feeling, if he had been of weaker 
 character, or less confirmed intellectual pursuits, he might 
 have drifted permanently into the set which was first opened 
 to him. But another rumour soon got abroad about him 
 which reached the older reading-men, who had been at first 
 rather shy of him, owing to his fame in the hunting-field, 
 that there was a freshman in College who possessed a trans- 
 
iv OXFORD UNDERGRADUATE LIFE 35 
 
 lation of Kant, and was believed to know all about it. I 
 have heard it said, though I cannot vouch for the accuracy 
 of the report, that the book was borrowed by the College 
 tutor, who, a few years later, did much to make the study 
 of philosophy more systematic in Oxford, and that the 
 reading of it was his first initiation into the subject. 
 Shairp soon formed his chief friendships among the 
 scholars and reading-men, and became himself one among 
 the latter. 
 
 The life of a reading-man was then somewhat different 
 from what it is now. The range of reading was more 
 limited, and examinations were fewer. There was, in fact, 
 for honour-men, only one examination of any importance 
 that at the end of his three, or, in some cases, four years to 
 which he looked forward from the beginning of his time. 
 This long postponement of their trial gave ample scope for 
 idleness in the first and second year, and many largely 
 availed themselves of their opportunities in that way. But 
 to those who read steadily it gave ' leisure to grow wise,' 
 to assimilate the thought and substance of their books, and 
 to read much of poetry and philosophy besides, for its own 
 sake, which had a no less important bearing on their mental 
 development. The accurate study of the form and language 
 of the books was not, as it is at present, sharply separated 
 from the sympathetic study of their substance and thought. 
 Scholarship was carried on, as I am inclined to think it 
 ought always to be, side by side with literature, philosophy, 
 and history, and not abruptly separated by an intermediate 
 examination. All of them formed part of the work of each 
 year. Shairp's chief difficulty was, I think, with his scholar- 
 ship, especially (as it was with all the Scotchmen) with 
 composition, which was taught very thoroughly in English 
 schools at an age when the imitative faculty is most flex- 
 ible, and before the active powers of thought and of the 
 assimilation of knowledge are developed. 
 
 Good Latin composition was a sine qud non for success 
 in every Oxford examination. The late Eector of Lincoln, 
 in one of the bitter criticisms which he has left on record 
 
36 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 of the Oxford of his days, both unreformed and reformed, 
 speaks somewhere of the College Tutor of the old school 
 covering his intellectual nakedness with 'his rag of Latin 
 prose.' Shairp, by dint of a good deal of uncongenial 
 labour, did acquire this accomplishment, and I think he felt 
 that he had got good by the discipline, though in his case it 
 was somewhat against the grain. He had, however, real 
 pleasure in getting up his books, especially his poets (among 
 whom I think ^Eschylus was his favourite), and the Ethics 
 of Aristotle. His previous reading made the philosophy or 
 ' science ' as it used to be called, a non lucendo interesting 
 and familiar to him. The range of ethical study was not 
 large. It comprised the Rhetoric and Ethics of Aristotle, 
 Butler's Sermons, and the moral consciousness and experi- 
 ence of the individual student himself and of his private 
 c coach.' Yet this teaching, narrow as it looks, really called 
 out the faculty and habit of eftiical insight and criticism ; 
 and many men who were educated under it would in after 
 life acknowledge that it was the most powerful influence in 
 their intellectual development. Eeaders of his Life will re- 
 member how highly the use of the Ethics, as a text-book, 
 was valued by Dr. Arnold. The range of history too was 
 limited to Herodotus, Thucydides, the first decade of Livy, 
 and occasionally the Annals or Histories of Tacitus. The 
 works neither of Grote nor Mommsen had then appeared. 
 The student had to work out historical problems a good 
 deal for himself. Yet that the study of Herodotus and 
 Thucydides, read and re-read by the light of Thirlwall and 
 Arnold, and of Livy by the light of Niebuhr, was a good 
 historical 'propaedeutic' may be learned from the testi- 
 mony of an historian who was trained by it, and whose 
 time at Oxford was coincident with Shairp's Professor 
 Freeman. 
 
 But there were other more powerful intellectual forces 
 acting on susceptible minds, then, than that of the regular 
 studies of the place. By far the most searching and moving 
 of these was that of Dr. Newman, then at the very zenith 
 of his influence. No better account has ever been given of 
 
iv OXFORD UNDERGRADUATE LIFE 37 
 
 that influence, no juster tribute has ever been paid to the 
 genius, sincerity, and by magical spell of him who wielded it, 
 than that given by Shairp in his essay on Keble. He 
 never was in the least inclined to give assent to Dr. New- 
 man's logical position, or to accept his theological doctrines ; 
 and he had a positive repugnance to the form which these 
 doctrines assumed in some of his adherents. But he had 
 the sincerest admiration of the high, pure, unworldly type 
 of character realised by him, and by some of the older among 
 his followers and of those closest to him in personal sym- 
 pathy. The whole attitude of Dr. Newman, then and after- 
 wards, touched his imagination ; and I remember long 
 afterwards his characterising him, in two lines of his friend 
 Matthew Arnold, as 
 
 One of that small transfigured band 
 Whom the world could not tame. 
 
 It was also during Shairp's time at Oxford that the in- 
 fluence of Dr. Arnold, beyond his own immediate sphere, 
 began to be felt. This was partly a continuation of his 
 Rugby influence, transmitted through his pupils, some of the 
 best of whom were, and continued through all his life to be, 
 among Shairp's most intimate friends. But it had been 
 brought more immediately to bear on Oxford by his recent 
 appointment to the Professorship of Modern History, and 
 the delivery of a course of lectures, probably the most elo- 
 quent, in the best sense of the word, ever listened to by an 
 Oxford audience : and the startling suddenness of his death, 
 though it entailed a great loss to English education, and a 
 still greater and permanent loss to English literature, added 
 to the impression produced by his teaching and personality ; 
 and this was still further deepened by the publication of his 
 Life a year or two later. Though Shairp did not sympathise 
 with Dr. Arnold's political position either in Church or 
 State, yet I have often heard him express the strongest 
 personal and literary admiration for him; and he, as well 
 as Dr. Newman, is to be included among those who helped 
 to form his intellectual and religious life. 
 
38 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 But a larger wave of imaginative and emotional in- 
 fluence, which had begun elsewhere, and soon afterwards 
 spread over the whole nation, then reached Oxford, and 
 Shairp was one of the first to feel it the influence of 
 Carlyle. I remember his telling me how it reached him. 
 
 He had been tired by his morning's reading, depressed 
 by the weather, which was too bad even for an Oxford ' con- 
 stitutional,' and had gone, in a state of intellectual depres- 
 sion, into a bookseller's shop, had seen and immediately 
 bought the four or five volumes of Miscellanies, which had 
 just appeared, and carried them back to his rooms. The 
 first essay on which he came was that on Edward Irving, 
 which he read and re-read, walking about his room, feeling 
 himself, as he said, possessed and carried away by a new 
 passion, unlike to what he had ever experienced before. I 
 can yet recall how he repeated with deep feeling, and that 
 fine musical intonation which he gave to anything in verse 
 or prose (as, for example, passages in Newman's Sermons] 
 which deeply moved him, such sentences as ' His was the 
 truest, bravest, brotherliest human heart mine ever came in 
 contact with,' etc. ; and that, ' He sleeps with his fathers 
 in that loved birth-land. Mighty Babylon rages on by him 
 henceforth unheeded for ever.' 
 
 This admiration, mingled with a kind of affectionate 
 regard (though I don't remember that he had any personal 
 acquaintance with him), continued through his life. But 
 he had little sympathy with his later attitude to the world, 
 and not much with some of the later developments of his 
 literary style. All satire, even the greatest and most 
 searching, was uncongenial to him; and that will partly 
 explain his imperfect appreciation of one of the most power- 
 ful manifestations of Burns's many sided genius. 
 
 It was about this time too that the two volumes which 
 first established Tennyson's right to rank among great 
 English poets appeared, Shairp acknowledged the rising star, 
 but this did not make him, as it did some of his younger 
 associates, falter in his devotion to the older light, which 
 was still sinning. His taste in poetry had been early formed, 
 
iv OXFORD UNDERGRADUATE LIFE 39 
 
 and he was slow to admit even the two greatest among our 
 living poets to an equal place in his heart with the older 
 objects of his love. His love of poetry was rather deep 
 and vivid than manysided. He was inclined to set his 
 face against any new heresy of criticism any 
 
 Vana superstitio, veterumque ignara deorum, 
 
 to which young Oxford then, as I fancy it still is, was 
 prone. The worst of those heresies, which some adopted 
 who should have known better, and which they probably 
 outlived, was one, which if it had not its origin, at least 
 found its strongest support in Carlyle, a tendency to dis- 
 parage Scott, not only as a poet but as a great creative 
 genius. Against this heresy Shairp always indignantly 
 protested, and I can remember the warmth with which he 
 replied to some shallow but perhaps not altogether untrue 
 criticism on some of his weaker places : ' I would as soon 
 think of criticising my own father as Sir Walter,' 
 
 The first time I saw him was in the October term of 
 1842, the beginning of his third year of residence, when I 
 was in Oxford for a few days as candidate for a scholarship. 
 I had heard much of him in Glasgow, where he left behind 
 him a great personal and intellectual reputation. On 
 arriving in Oxford I heard still more of him from the Snell 
 Exhibitioners, who immediately preceded me and whom I 
 had known in Glasgow. He had in the previous June 
 added distinction to their body, and to his College, by 
 gaining the Newdigate prize for an English poem on the 
 subject of Charles XII., which was justly regarded as the 
 poem of most original power which had appeared since 
 Stanley's Gipsies. I have heard that it received some 
 mark of recognition, in the way of letter or some other token, 
 from old Bernadotte, who was then King of Sweden. It is 
 one among very few prize-poems, indeed, that one can still 
 read with pleasure and admiration. To those who knew 
 him it has the interest of giving his own fresh impressions 
 of Nature derived from those wanderings in spring, among 
 
 The dark woods and the silent hills 
 
40 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 of his country, which had already begun. I can recall the 
 room in which I first saw him, and his appearance as he 
 stood on the hearthrug in front of the fire. He was a little 
 older than most undergraduates are, and he looked perhaps 
 a little older than he was I mean more manly -looking and 
 more fully developed. He received me, as a newcomer 
 from Scotland and Glasgow, with that frank, kindly greeting 
 ' the smile in the eye as well as on the lip,' as in the 
 young shepherd in Theocritus which was never absent in 
 our meetings after longer or shorter separation in later 
 years. I retain the impression rather of the high spirit and 
 animation, and of a kind of generous pride characteristic of 
 him, than of the milder, far-away contemplative look, which 
 became familiar to one in later years. Except that he 
 became bald and somewhat grey, he never seemed to change 
 much in other ways, during all the subsequent years that I 
 knew him ; and -if he looked a little older than he was in 
 youth, he retained much of fresh youthfulness in his appear- 
 ance, when he was nearly an old man. I remember being 
 present (then for the first time) at the annual dinner in which 
 the Scotchmen of the University celebrate, or used to cele- 
 brate, St. Andrew's Day, and that Shairp was the life and soul 
 of it, as he was on all similar occasions, speaking with that 
 happy mixture of serious enthusiasm and playful or banter- 
 ing allusion, which best befits convivial oratory. 
 
 When I came up as a freshman a few months later he 
 asked me to his rooms, and I felt pride and pleasure, in 
 the beginning of my career at Oxford, in any kindly notice 
 or encouragement from one who was himself so much of 
 a vir laudatus. But I did not become really intimate with 
 him till the Christmas vacation of 1845, when, for about a 
 fortnight, he, Walrond, and I, were the sole occupants of the 
 College ; he reading for a Fellowship, Walrond and I for our 
 degrees. He had taken his degree, I think, in the Easter 
 term of 1844, and like a large proportion of the men, about 
 that time, of most original gifts, and who have since gained 
 the greatest distinction in literature including Clough, 
 M. Arnold, Mr. Froude, Mr. Freeman, M. Pattison, Sir A. 
 
iv OXFORD UNDERGRADUATE LIFE 41 
 
 Grant and others he was placed in the second class. We 
 dined together daily and sat for two or three hours in one 
 another's rooms in the evening ; and as Walrond generally 
 preferred tennis to a ' constitutional ' in the afternoons, I 
 was sometimes his only companion, as often afterwards, in 
 the] familiar round of walks in the country about Oxford. 
 I can remember the pleasure and the profit with which I 
 used then to hear him discuss speculative questions with 
 serious and animated interest, or chant old ballads, and 
 poems of Wordsworth, then unknown to me. I don't 
 remember that he ever expressed much pleasure in the scenes 
 through which our walks lay. The country about Oxford, 
 as everywhere else, looks very different in January from 
 what it looks in June, and the daily routine of consti- 
 tutionalising is apt to deaden the sense of beauty. But 
 that both his eye and heart did take in the characteristic 
 charm of the place and its surrounding scenery, one could 
 tell afterwards from the way in which he used to speak, of 
 the truth, both real and ideal, with which M. Arnold has, 
 in The Scholar- Gipsy and Thyrsis, made that charm live 
 for all time in English literature. Yet his love of Nature, 
 deep and passionate as it was, was in him intertwined with 
 his affections. In later years he came to love Oxford next 
 after Scotland, from the memory of happy study, and happier 
 friendships formed there. And when he went back to it 
 in those years, I think there were few among the habitual 
 residents in the Colleges more sensible of its beauty. 
 
 The only Fellowship practically open to him then was 
 the Oriel, for which, although sound scholarship was a requisite, 
 the more special refinements of scholarship (such as Greek 
 verse, etc.), which were necessary for the Balliol the only 
 other competition at that time open to Scotchmen were not 
 demanded. General intellectual promise and originality 
 were looked for rather than either large or exact know- 
 ledge. Intellectual originality is a much better and more 
 attractive thing than acquired knowledge or scholarship, 
 if it could only be ascertained by as definite tests. Where 
 there are two or three different kinds of original talent in 
 
42 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 the field, it becomes a matter of individual taste which 
 should be preferred, and it is hardly possible that fortune 
 should not have some share in deciding the issue. Shairp 
 was unsuccessful in the competition ; but it was known that 
 some among the examiners, not the least qualified to estimate 
 mental power, formed a very favourable opinion of his 
 work. 
 
 It became necessary for him to decide on a pro- 
 fession. He never had any inclination, and probably not 
 much aptitude, for the Bar. In many ways he would have 
 made an admirable clergyman, and what he has written in 
 his essay on Keble shows what attraction the beauty as 
 well as the goodness which could be realised in the life of a 
 country vicar had for him. But the English Church was 
 not that in which he had been brought up ; and with neither 
 of the phases of opinion by which the men of most intellect 
 and culture were then characterised the new development 
 of High Church doctrine, and the more advanced theology 
 of the Broad Church was he in perfect accord. 
 
 He went, I think, a certain length with the adherents of 
 the Broad Church, and among his intimate friends were the 
 men of most vivid imagination, and of the greatest specu- 
 lative originality belonging to that school. Some of his 
 other friends, with whom he may have talked more unre- 
 servedly on this subject than he was inclined to do with 
 me, will probably say something about the grounds of his 
 religious convictions, which continued henceforth very firm, 
 and became the chief regulative power in his life. His 
 nature was eminently conservative both in politics and 
 religion, and his conservatism was based on feeling rather 
 than on argument. He had more trust in what he had 
 seen work for good on personal character, than he had 
 expectation of good from novelties of opinion. Eeligion 
 had never been presented to him in his childhood in a way 
 to cloud his happiness, and it was associated with all that 
 was dear to him in his home -life. I think it was to 
 that simple belief, from which he had never gone far, that 
 he returned. So far as he was influenced by doctrinal dis- 
 
iv OXFORD UNDERGRADUATE LIFE 43 
 
 cussion, it was not to the writings of any English divines, 
 but to the works of Dr. M'Leod Campbell and of his friend 
 Mr. Erskine of Linlathen, that he seemed to feel his in- 
 debtedness. So far as my own relations with him were 
 concerned, his religious convictions and his religious life 
 seemed only to add greater seriousness, consistency, and 
 hopefulness, to a character in all its human aspects noble 
 and beautiful." 
 
 In his first long vacation, in the summer of 1840, Shairp, 
 as already mentioned, went up from Oxford to London, in- 
 tending to go on to Germany with two of his cousins, but on 
 arriving in Town he found that they had gone. He thought 
 he might proceed to the Continent after all by himself, but 
 waited for orders from home before doing so, and meanwhile 
 went down to Ipswich, whence, on the 8th June he wrote 
 thus to his friend Henry Douglas 
 
 " MY DEAR HENRY Were I to give you a full, true, and 
 particular account of all my sayings and doings since I left 
 Scotland, I should have to write a book instead of a letter. 
 I shall endeavour, however, to be brief though not ambigu- 
 ous, comprehensive though not diffuse ! I spent two days 
 at Oxford, on one of which I passed my examination, which 
 was somewhat more than I had anticipated. I slept at ' The 
 Nigel/ but fed with my friends. None could be kinder than 
 they were, especially Boyle. 1 ... It is a queer place, quite 
 unlike anything we have been accustomed to I mean the 
 colleges, their forms, etiquettes, etc. Ours is a very crack 
 college, but one is scarcely prepared for the hauteur that 
 many of the men, who consider themselves of the best style, 
 assume. . . . When you come to Oxford I hope to act 
 the same part by you that Boyle did by me. . . ." 
 
 A letter written to his sister from Balliol in November 
 of the same year adds to Mr. Sellar's reminiscences, and 
 gives Shairp's earliest estimate of Carlyle. From this letter 
 
 1 Mr. John Boyle, son of Lord President Boyle, and stepbrother of the 
 present Dean of Salisbury. 
 
44 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 it will be seen that it had been a vision of his boyhood to 
 become a gentleman sheep-farmer in Selkirkshire. 
 
 [Postmark, 1840.] 
 
 "BALLIOL COLLEGE, 18th November. 
 
 " MY DEAREST BINNY One's life here slips away so quietly, 
 and with so few things to tell, especially to those who do 
 not know the place and people, that it makes but a poor show 
 in a letter. After preparing for lectures ... I read a 
 good deal, if I can find time, in my own way and time. 
 My chief study just now is Carlyle's Miscellanies, which I have 
 been extravagant enough to buy. These are a collection of 
 all the papers he has written in the periodicals during these 
 last ten years. There is one on Scott's life, very good and 
 amusing, though not esteeming Scott highly enough, I think. 
 ... I have got hold of Pitscottie's History of Scotland, and 
 am reading it. I shall bring down both these books with 
 me when I come. . . . My sheep-farm vision in Selkirk- 
 shire has not yet left me, and I often turn to it in thought 
 as to another Eden. It will be so much after my own 
 heart, I think. Since I wrote last, I have never been on 
 the river. I fear I am too lazy ever to make a boatman, 
 besides I don't think any of us are aquatic animals. In the 
 mornings after chapel, as I stand at my drawing-room table, 
 I see the pinks flocking out to the ' meets ' in all sorts of 
 ways go-carts, gigs, rover-hacks, etc. and I cannot say it 
 is always without a secret pang. The Christ Church and 
 Trinity Fellows are those who most patronise the 'noble 
 science,' being doubtless of opinion that at this ' seat of 
 science ' (as it is called) this one should by no means be left 
 unstudied. Few Balliol men hunt, though some do, but I 
 don't think we have any out-and-outers. 
 
 Some day soon, on St. Andrew's Day (whenever that 
 may be), we are to have a Scotch dinner. I send you on the 
 envelope a view of the boat-race, and Oxford spires in the 
 distance. The handsome, self-satisfied youth on the right 
 hand is a nobleman, or ' tuft,' as they are here called. That 
 other on the left, perorating with uplifted arm, is a com- 
 
iv OXFORD UNDERGRADUATE LIFE 45 
 
 moner. . There are several Eton fellows, freshmen, along 
 with me nice enough men ; and there is a man Byron, a 
 relation of the poet's, very handsome, a mixture of Johnny 
 Pringle and the Laird. Tell Hetty this. My society is 
 chiefly made up of those of recent standing, as by those who 
 have not known you before, nothing is in less esteem than 
 a ' freshman.' But that is a fault that is always curing 
 
 itself. How are ? Tell them I was ' speering ' for 
 
 them. The weather here is mirk, mirk (as the ballad says), 
 foggy and rainy to-day making a feeble attempt to get up 
 some snow. I suppose it is the same with you, and that 
 most of your day passes indoors now. Yours ever affection- 
 ately, J. C. SHAIRP." 
 
 Another letter from Oxford to his sister Grace may 
 follow the above 
 
 [Postmark, 1841.] 
 
 " BALLIOL COLLEGE, Wednesday, 2d June. 
 
 " MY DEAR GRACE . . . The Schools which I mentioned 
 in my last are over, and have told a tale, which has made 
 my hair stand on end. Every one I know has been so wofully 
 disappointed. Two of our scholars were in. The Balliol 
 scholars are famous, Oxford over, for having been first classmen, 
 time out of mind, every one of them. Of the two in this 
 time, one came out a second, the other a third ; and one of 
 them has the reputation of being the best head Balliol has 
 had for years. Poor Morton has only got a third ; and this 
 is so little worth having, he might almost as well not have 
 gone into the schools. This has made me quake, for he 
 was a better scholar far than I was when he left Glasgow, 
 and has read very steadily since he came here. I am 
 almost shutting my books in despair. If I wish to have 
 a chance of doing any good, I shall have to read seven hours 
 at least every day for the next two years and a half; and 
 such are the chances of war that, after all, it is very likely 
 to go for nothing. I have been trying to put on the steam 
 of late more strongly than I did before. This leaves me 
 
46 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 little more to tell, for Herodotus and Aristotle are poor 
 newsmongers. . . . 
 
 This is the time of the boat-races, which are consider- 
 able fun. All the colleges (not all, only nine, I think) have 
 an eight oar in. They start in a long line, about fifty yards 
 between each, at Iffley, a place a rnile and a half down the 
 river, and pull up to Oxford. When one boat ' bumps,' as 
 it is called, the boat before it, it gets above that one. There- 
 fore every one is trying all it can to catch the one ahead of 
 it. The banks on each side are crowded, and then the 
 bellowing of each college to its own boat is terrific. We 
 are second lowest on the river, as our crew is nothing parti- 
 cular. Boyle pulls in it. ... 
 
 [He describes ' Commemoration/ and the Duke of Welling- 
 ton as Chancellor.] ... I am in a very sane mood at present, as 
 the Schools are beginning to throw their sobering shadow over 
 me, even at this distance of time. But you need not expect 
 from this that I will do anything in them. It is only feel- 
 ing my deficiency in scholarship that makes me so alarmed, 
 and in this I am sure to be floored. . . . Your very 
 affectionate brother, J. C. SHAIRP." 
 
 Again, in a letter from Portsmouth, August 1841, he refers 
 to his friend Seymour's death, and to a sermon by Dr. (now 
 Cardinal) Manning 
 
 [Postmark, PORTSMOUTH, 22d August 1841.] 
 
 "... We are all apt, after a very little time, to forget 
 the dead. I hope I may not forget him. I have seldom, 
 beyond my own family, met such loss as his, so true and 
 steadfast. There was about him a purity which seemed 
 quite unearthly. We, his remaining friends, are going to 
 have a small monument raised to his memory in Balliol 
 Chapel. . . . 
 
 On Sunday last (the Gunpowder Plot Day), Manning 
 preached, and took occasion to speak strongly of Eome, 
 as much as to say, ' Whatever others do, I have made up 
 my mind not to go thither till she abjures her errors.' This 
 
iv OXFORD UNDERGRADUATE LIFE 47 
 
 has astonished and annoyed many of the strongest of the 
 party, and they call him Anglican. Good-bye. Your most 
 affectionate brother, J. C. SHAIRP." 
 
 The following undated letter was written to his eldest 
 sister on the subject of Wordsworth's religion. It is a youth- 
 ful letter, and possibly belongs to the year 1841, but it has 
 an interest of its own : 
 
 " What do I think of Wordsworth's religion ? A question 
 easy to be asked, not so easy to be answered. You could 
 not have asked me one that more interested me. The thing 
 that people generally say is that he is pantheistic. Per- 
 haps he is. Y r ou know how Carlyle answers the same charge 
 made against Emerson : ' Ists and isms are rather becoming a 
 weariness. Such a man does not readily rank himself under 
 isms. 1 Now, without admitting this defence, there is no 
 doubt that people mislead themselves by giving hard names 
 to men and things, and then being alarmed by the name 
 rather than the thing. There is, however, perhaps some 
 little ground (I say it with great diffidence) for saying so 
 of Wordsworth. If Pantheism means a forgetting the person- 
 ality of God, a confusion between the Creator and creation, 
 a thinking of God as ' a motive and a spirit that impels all 
 thinking things, all objects of all thought, and rolls through 
 all things,' rather than as the Father Almighty, there is 
 something like this in many of his poems (see especially 
 that one on Tintern Abbey). And yet it is the tendency 
 more or less of all very imaginative minds, all at least who 
 live in some strong belief of the Infinite and the Unseen, 
 and who feel that what they see is but a veil to something 
 deeper and truer underneath. It is the form that minds 
 of naturally strong devotion take, when they try to represent 
 to themselves God's infinity and omnipresence, and when 
 they feel that all they see is divine. It is the tendency 
 of minds of naturally high devotion, and is the highest form 
 of the religion of Nature. But then Wordsworth had Eeve- 
 lation, and we cannot but wish he had brought in more 
 
48 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP, iv 
 
 Christianity into his poems. The places where this is done 
 most is his Ecclesiastical Sonnets. Still there is one thing 
 never to be forgotten that all Wordsworth's so-called Pan- 
 theism is unconscious. . . . There is a world of difference 
 between a tendency unconsciously creeping in, and a belief 
 consciously held and maintained. . . . One thing is striking. 
 Almost all the best and most tender-hearted people I have 
 ever known have loved Wordsworth. This shows how 
 much more good there is in him than error. Few men's 
 works, I believe, have ever gone deeper, and more impressed 
 men's hearts. There is a large catholic charity in him a 
 charity not of word, but in deed and truth, such as I know 
 not where else to find. The improvement he has made on 
 the poetry of the age before him is his best defence. He 
 teaches me to look on men, and all things, with a kind and 
 loving heart, and with a deep faith in the goodness at the 
 bottom of all things. He leads us far on the way, if he does 
 not quite reach the haven of all Truth. No one ever yet 
 read ' The Churchyard among the Mountains ' with an under- 
 standing heart, and was not the better for it. Therefore 
 read him, love him, J. C. S." 
 
CHAPTEE V 
 
 REMINISCENCES OF OXFORD, AND OF OXFORD INFLUENCES 
 AND FRIENDS 
 
 MANY sketches of Shairp's undergraduate life at Oxford have 
 reached me, from which I select only the most characteristic, 
 although all are full of interest. Lord Coleridge's account 
 of these years will be found in a subsequent chapter. The 
 following is from Dr. Bradley, the present Dean of West- 
 minster : 
 
 " I feel most strongly the impossibility of reproduc- 
 ing, still more of adequately conveying to others, any 
 faithful representation of one in many respects unlike any 
 one else with whom I have lived in habitual intercourse. 
 Shairp was of quite or nearly the same standing at the 
 University as myself ; but we were at different colleges, and 
 only met occasionally in the rooms of common friends at 
 Balliol. I have, however, a vivid recollection of the first 
 time that I was in his company. It was in November 
 1840, when, as a freshman from Eugby, I was asked to 
 join, after dining in my own college hall, a party ' a wine * 
 in Oxford language at A. H. Clough's. Clough was then 
 living in lodgings, on the ground -floor of a small house, 
 near Holywell Church, which I have often in later years 
 pointed out to those who were interested in all connected 
 with his memory. It was my first visit of the kind 
 to one to whom I looked up even then with something 
 more than ordinary schoolboy veneration ; whose Eugby 
 poems I knew largely by heart, and whose countenance, 
 already familiar to me, though I had barely spoken to him, 
 
 E 
 
50 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 still shines to me out of the distance as one of the most 
 impressive, and, in a sense, of the most beautiful, that I have 
 ever seen. I entered the room with a due feeling of youth- 
 ful bashfulness. I can still recall the names and the very 
 faces of some of the few guests whom I found there. 
 Among them was a young scholar of Balliol, fresh from 
 Eton as I was from Eugby, Seymour by name ; we sat, I 
 remember, opposite each other, and were introduced by 
 Clough, and I can still recall the impression made upon me 
 by the striking and refined features and expressive face of 
 one, who, a year before, had easily beaten a large field of 
 candidates, myself included, and who looked, as I said to 
 myself, fully worthy of his boyish reputation. He was the 
 first of those who met that day to be taken ; his bright 
 career was ended by an early death within a year or two 
 of his coming to Oxford. 1 The other guests were Richard 
 Congreve, Blackett of Merton, and I think I am right in 
 saying Coleridge, the present Lord Chief-Justice, and one or 
 two more. The conversation soon became general, and turned 
 shortly to Wordsworth, and from him to S. T. Coleridge and 
 the Aids to Reflection. By my side sat a somewhat large and 
 strongly-built man, with a strong dash of Scottish accent, 
 who seemed to me to be it was a mere blunder of my 
 own but seemed to me to be considerably older than 
 myself, and whom, indeed, I strangely fancied to be not an 
 undergraduate but a visitor of dough's. As the talk went 
 on not exactly in the direction to which I had thus far 
 been accustomed at ordinary ' wines ' I remember my 
 neighbour becoming extremely animated, and talking with 
 such vehemence and gesticulation that my wine-glass was 
 sent flying; and I still can see him pausing for the 
 moment, with perfect and unexpected grace, to apologise to 
 me, and then plunging headlong into the now long-forgotten 
 argument which he was maintaining against all comers. 
 I was startled at hearing either that evening or the next 
 morning that my neighbour was a Balliol man, a Scottish 
 Exhibitioner from Glasgow University, scarcely older than 
 
 1 See Glen Dcsseray, etc., p. 216. 
 
v REMINISCENCES OF OXFORD 51 
 
 myself, and who, as I heard before the term was over, had 
 already won a name, not only as full of enthusiasm and 
 fire on his favourite subjects, but also in circles very 
 different to that in which I had met him, as a hard rider. 
 From that time, however, it was long before I met him 
 again. I had few acquaintances at Balliol during my first 
 year, and at its close was non-resident, owing to a severe illness, 
 for many months. But after my return I met him from time 
 to time in the rooms of Matthew Arnold, Theodore Walrond, 
 and other friends. I was much interested in his poem 
 which gained the Newdigate in 1842 ; and I heard of him 
 often, no more indeed as a riding-man, but as one greatly 
 respected and liked in his own college, the writer of essays 
 which won the special approval of the Master, and as one 
 of the leaders of that energetic and able band of Scotsmen 
 who have so often, I believe, in the history of Balliol acted, 
 as they certainly did then, as links between the two societies 
 of scholars and commoners. We were both examined for our 
 B.A. degrees at the same time, and some disappointment was 
 felt by Shairp's friends at Balliol and elsewhere, among whom 
 the opinion of his abilities and power of thought was exceed- 
 ingly high, at his being placed in the second class. It was 
 accounted for, we always understood, by his deficiency of exact 
 scholarship, and consequent inaccuracy of translation especi- 
 ally of, if I rightly remember, the Greek and Latin poets, whose 
 works were in those days included in the final examination. 
 From after knowledge I can well believe that the laborious 
 study of words and phrases, necessary to the mastery of so 
 large a field of classical authors as was then exacted from 
 candidates for honours, would have been exceedingly dis- 
 tasteful to him. We met after this, as I said, from time 
 to time, for we had many common friends. I was always 
 delighted to listen to his conversation, and we were, both of 
 us, if I may so speak, prepared to be friends ourselves, if 
 ever the opportunity should occur, without perhaps going 
 much farther in our acquaintanceship than this." 
 
 The Dean of Westminster has referred to Shairp's competing 
 
52 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 for and winning the Newdigate prize-poem in 1 842. The sub- 
 ject was Charles XII., and as it was the earliest of his pub- 
 lished verses, and is, as Mr. Sellar remarks, one of the few 
 Newdigate poems that can be read with pleasure in after 
 years, I give the synopsis, and a short extract from the poem 
 itself. 
 
 CHARLES THE TWELFTH 
 
 A Prize Poem, recited in the Theatre, Oxford, 8th June 1842 
 SYNOPSIS 
 
 Charles in childhood Charles after Pultowa The contrast The 
 causes of the change Scene in Pultowa The evening after the battle 
 described Flight into Turkey Sees the last remnants of his army 
 taken by the Russians as he crosses the frontier stream Feelings at 
 this crisis Heroic manner in which he afterwards bears his fall 
 Sustained by hopes of the future, and the remembrance of past glory 
 These remembrances described, including descent on Denmark, 
 Narva, Passage of the Dwina Field of Clissan on the morning of 
 the battle, contrasted with its present aspect The summit of his 
 power The Russian campaign His overthrow as much the effect of 
 the severe winter of 1705 as of the Czar's troops His return to 
 Sweden after long exile Death before Frederickshall Reflections. 
 
 The following is his description of the commanding form 
 of Sweden's hero, as "the cloud-compeller of the rising 
 storm " : 
 
 So have I seen the cloud-rack fast and free 
 Come thronging onward from the distant sea, 
 Along the hilltops till the rising sheen 
 Of morn had spread their parted roof between, 
 And laughed away the masses dark and dull 
 Into a radiance glad and beautiful. 
 
 'Mid fallen potentates he stood 
 Kingly, like Calpe, in his solitude, 
 And earth lay hushed around him ; dark and vast 
 His shadow fell, on many a nation cast ] 
 It swept o'er hummed Denmark, eastward far 
 It flung its terror o'er the haughty Czar : 
 Behind him Poland low in ruins lay, 
 Before him Austria crouching in dismay ! 
 And England, e'en thy chief of proudest fame 
 Paused in the presence of a prouder name. 
 
v REMINISCENCES OF OXFORD 53 
 
 Again, 
 
 Fair the awakening, fair the blush of bloom 
 When springtime bursts on wintry months of gloom, 
 And. loud with song, and glad with sunlight thrills 
 Far through the dark woods and the silent hills. 
 Aye, fair the springtime, but who hath not seen 
 More cloudless splendour, glory more serene 
 Cast on the earth 1 how brightly, briefly cast ! 
 When Autumn paused in love to look its last, 
 Paused on the threshold of the western sky, 
 Lingering at sunset as though loath to die 1 
 
 The most distinguished of Shairp's Oxford friends at this 
 time was undoubtedly Arthur Hugh Clough, the poet who 
 died with greater promise unfulfilled than any other English- 
 man since Keats. Clough was quite as interesting a man, 
 as he was a poet ; and Shairp's sketch of his friend, recorded 
 in the brief Biography prefixed to the last edition of Clough's 
 Poems, is one of the best of his many character-studies. I 
 quote only one or two passages, that bear upon their common 
 life and interests : 
 
 "It was toward the end of 1840 that I first saw A. H. Clough. 
 As a freshman I looked with respect, approaching to awe, on the senior 
 scholar of whom I had heard so much, stepping out on Sunday morn- 
 ings to read the first lesson in Balliol Chapel. How clearly I 
 remember his massive figure, in scholar's surplice, standing before the 
 brass eagle, and his deep feeling tones, as he read some chapter from 
 the Hebrew prophets. At that time he was the eldest, and every way 
 the first of a remarkable band of scholars. The younger under- 
 graduates felt towards him a distant reverence, as a lofty and profound 
 nature quite above themselves, whom they could not quite make out, 
 but who was sure to be some day great. Profaner spirits, nearer his 
 own standing, sometimes made a joke of his then exceeding silence 
 and reserve, and of his unworldly ways. But as he was out of 
 college rooms, and reading hard for his degree, we freshmen only heard 
 of his reputation from a distance, and seldom came in contact with 
 him. 
 
 It must have been early in 1841 that he first asked me to break- 
 fast with him. He was then living in a small cottage, or cottage-like 
 house, standing by itself, a little apart from Holywell. There he used 
 to bathe every morning all the winter through, in the cold Holywell 
 baths, and read hard all day. There were one or two other freshmen 
 there at breakfast. If I remember right, none of the party were very 
 talkative. 
 
54 JOHN CAMPBELL SHA1RP CHAP. 
 
 I have heard that about that time he wrote one day in fun an 
 oracle, in the style of Herodotus, to his brother scholar, who was 
 reading like himself for the Schools. The Greek I forget ; the trans- 
 lation he sent with it ran something like this 
 
 Whereas of Lancashire 
 
 Shall in the Schools preside, 
 And Wynter 1 to St. Mary's go, 
 
 With the pokers by his side ; 
 Two scholars there of Balliol, 
 
 Who on double firsts had reckoned, 
 Between them two shall with much ado 
 
 Scarce get a double second. 
 
 This turned out only too true an oracle. Since the beginning of 
 class-lists, the succession of firsts among the Balliol scholars was un- 
 broken. And few Balliol scholars had equalled, none ever surpassed, 
 dough's reputation. I well remember going, towards the end of May 
 or beginning of June, with one of the scholars of my own standing, to 
 the school quadrangle to hear the class-list read out, and neither of 
 our scholars appeared in the first class. We rushed to Balliol, and 
 announced it to the younger Fellows who were standing at their open 
 window. Many causes were assigned at this time for the failure 
 some in the examiners, some in dough's then state of spirits; but 
 whatever the cause, I think the result for some years shook faith in 
 firsts among dough's contemporaries. It made a great impression 
 upon others ; on himself I fancy it made but little. I never heard 
 him afterwards allude to it as a thing of any consequence. He once 
 told me he was sick of contentions for prizes and honours before he 
 left Rugby. . . . 
 
 In the November of the same year he tried for a Balliol Fellow- 
 ship, but was not successful. Tait, 2 however, was strong in his favour, 
 and, I believe, some other of the Fellows. I remember one of them tell- 
 ing me at the time that a character of Saul which Clough wrote in that 
 examination was, I think he said, the best, most original thing he had 
 ever seen written in any examination. But Oriel had at that time 
 a way of finding out original genius better than either Balliol or the 
 Schools. In the spring of 1842 Arthur Hugh Clough was elected 
 Fellow of Oriel, the last examination, I believe, in which Newman 
 took part. 
 
 The announcement of that success I remember well. It was on 
 the Friday morning of the Easter week of that year. The examina- 
 tion was finished on the Thursday evening. I had asked Clough and 
 another friend, who was a candidate at the same time, to breakfast 
 
 1 Head of St. John's College, and at that time Vice-Chancellor. 
 
 2 Afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, at that time Fellow and Tutor of 
 Balliol College. 
 
v REMINISCENCES OF OXFORD 55 
 
 with me on the Friday morning, as their work was just over. Most 
 of the scholars of the College were staying up and came to breakfast 
 too. The party consisted of about a dozen. We had little notion that 
 anything about the examination would be known as soon, and were 
 all sitting quietly, having finished breakfast, but not yet risen from 
 the table. The door opened wide ; entered a Fellow from another college, 
 and drawing himself up to his full height, he addressed the other 
 candidate : ' I am sorry to say you have not got it.' Then, l Clough, 
 you have ; ' and stepping forward into the middle of the room, held 
 out his hand, with ' Allow me to congratulate you.' We were all so 
 little thinking of the Fellowship, and so taken aback by this formal 
 announcement, that it was some little time before we knew what it 
 was all about. The first thing that recalled my presence of mind was 
 seeing the delight on the face of dough's younger brother who was 
 present." * 
 
 The long vacation of 1842 was spent by Shairp with 
 a reading -party in Wales, when he and Clough again 
 met. 
 
 " In the summer of 1842, while I was reading in a retired part of 
 Wales with two or three others, Clough, then wandering through the 
 Welsh mountains, one morning looked in on us. I took a walk with him, 
 and he at once led me up Moe'l Wyn, the highest mountain within reach. 
 Two things I remember that day one, that he spoke a good deal (for 
 him) of Dr. Arnold, whose death had happened only a few weeks before ; 
 another, that a storm came down upon the mountain when we were 
 half-way up. In the midst of it we lay for some time close above a 
 small mountain tarn, and watched the storm-wind working on the face 
 of the lake, tearing and torturing the water into most fantastic, almost 
 ghostly shapes, the like of which I never saw before or since. These 
 mountain sights, though he did not say much, he used to -eye most 
 observantly." 2 
 
 There are two pictures of undergraduate life at Oxford 
 written by Shairp, which give a better idea of the influences 
 under which he came at the University than any record by 
 his friends. The first is contained in his essay on Keble, 
 contributed to The North British Review, and afterwards pub- 
 lished in his volume of Essays. The second is a paper written 
 at Eugby, describing the difference between undergraduate 
 life at the English and the Scottish Universities. The former 
 may be fitly preceded, however, by some of the reminiscences 
 
 1 Reminiscences of A. H. Clough, pp. 19-23. ~ Ibid., p. 23. 
 
56 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 which the present Dean of Salisbury has sent me, 1 and the 
 latter will be found in the Appendix to this volume. 
 
 " In the year 18381 first saw Shairp. He was then at 
 Glasgow University, and was the intimate friend of some of 
 my family. One of them was afterwards a fellow exhibi- 
 tioner at Balliol, and the intimacy continued without a 
 break until the close of Shairp's life. I was reading for the 
 first time the Lay of the Last Minstrel, and I shall never 
 forget the glow of enthusiasm with which Shairp read aloud 
 the wonderful night-scene in Melrose Abbey. He spoke, too, 
 on that occasion, of the beauty of some of the old Scottish 
 Ballads, and I remember well how I saved pocket-money 
 in order to become the possessor of a copy of Robert Chambers's 
 Ballads of Scotland, and rejoiced to find in ' Kinmont Willie ' 
 and ' The Dowie Dens of Yarrow ' the very stanzas that had 
 struck me so much in his recitation. It was fortunate for me 
 that whenever he came to my father's house he would ask 
 what I had lately read, and many a useful hint have I had 
 from him during the time when, under the leadership of 
 Norman Macleod, he was making acquaintance for the first 
 time with Wordsworth, Lamb, and Keats. . . . 
 
 What always struck me, young as I was, was his loyal 
 devotion to his friends, and his desire to show the full 
 weight of his intellectual obligation to them. During the 
 next ten years of my life, Shairp was often a guest at my 
 father's country-house in Ayrshire, and his visits were 
 indeed to me golden days. I went to an English public 
 school at the time when he was an undergraduate at 
 Oxford, and as he knew some of those who had passed from 
 Charterhouse to the University, he admitted me to great 
 intimacy and told me much of the Oxford I was soon to 
 see for myself. During one of these visits I remember 
 well how, when in company with several others, we had 
 
 1 Dean Boyle wrote a very appreciative notice in memoriam of Shairp in 
 The Guardian of 30th September 1885. I use his valuable paper of reminis- 
 cences in the same way as Professor Sellar's, dividing it into sections. A sequel 
 to the present extract will be given later on. 
 
v REMINISCENCES OF OXFORD 57 
 
 passed an afternoon amongst the woods of Auchans, and 
 suddenly came in sight of the Firth of Clyde, with the 
 peaks of Arran purpling across it in the afternoon sunshine, 
 it was shortly after the publication of the two volumes 
 which fixed Lord Tennyson's place as a poet Shairp re- 
 peated the well-known lines 'Break, Break/ with inde- 
 scribable fervour, and on the way home introduced us to 
 some of the more prominent poems, Dora, The Lord of 
 Burlcigh, and Locksley Hall, by repeating snatches as he 
 could recall them. He had at that time begun to know 
 Arthur Stanley and Clough well, and their names were 
 often on his lips. But as my great interest at that time 
 centred in the sayings and doings of the Oxford school, I 
 listened with the deepest interest to his account of the 
 wonderful sermons at St. Mary's, and all that he had to tell 
 of Oakeley and Ward, at that time Fellows of Balliol. I 
 remember well how I was struck with the fact, that although 
 he took great interest in Oxford, his old tastes and com- 
 panions had still a vigorous hold upon him, and he used to 
 declare that he thought men who came up to Oxford from 
 Eton and Rugby could not appreciate it so fully as those who, 
 like himself, had gone through the Glasgow course. He 
 contended that although men might be better scholars than 
 those who had sat under Ramsay and Lushington, they often 
 lacked a taste for the literary element of the classics. He im- 
 pressed on myself the need of diligent and accurate scholarship, 
 however, and owned his deficiencies in a way which ought 
 to have benefited me more. Shortly before I went to 
 Oxford, I had read with intense interest Carlyle's French 
 Revolution. Shairp thought that I was in danger of deliver- 
 ing myself entirely to the influence of the great Thomas. He 
 was going to the station on foot, and he asked me to walk 
 with him there. During the whole of the three-mile walk 
 he poured into my ear his conclusions as to Carlyle's teach- 
 ing. He talked much of Clough, and said that he believed 
 that Carlyle and Newman had contended, as it were, for pos- 
 session of his mind, and so besought me not to read Carlyle 
 exclusively, but to devote all my energy to Roman 
 
58 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 history, and especially to Arnold's three volumes. I can 
 safely say that his advice was not thrown away. I am 
 afraid that until this time I had thought with something 
 like contempt of Wordsworth. But my reverence and 
 feeling for Shairp was so great that I began to read Words- 
 worth for myself, and soon found that I had acquired a new 
 pleasure in life. From Shairp, who had passed a consider- 
 able part of one long vacation at the Lakes, I heard so much 
 of the charms of the region that I soon resolved to make 
 acquaintance with it, and it was owing to Shairp's introduc- 
 tion to the singular man of genius, Hartley Coleridge, that 
 I spent a whole Sunday afternoon with him, enjoying such 
 a treat as Hartley in his better moments alone could give." 
 
 The account which Shairp gives, in his essay on Keble, of 
 this great religious movement at Oxford, as he knew it, and 
 was influenced by it the movement of which Newman, 
 with many notable men as coadjutors and allies, was 
 the inspiration and the guide is one of the best records 
 we have of that remarkable phase in the religious life of 
 England. In his poem, Balliol Scholars : A Remembrance 
 he writes thus of the central influence of the time 
 
 The voice that weekly from St. Mary's spake, 
 
 As from the unseen world oracular, 
 Strong as another Wesley, to re-wake 
 
 The sluggish heart of England, near and far, 
 Voice so intense to win men, or repel, 
 Piercing yet tender, on our spirits fell, 
 
 Making them other, higher than they were. 
 
 The following are extracts from the essay on Keble 
 
 " The movement when at its height extended its influence far be- 
 yond the circle of those who directly adopted its views. There was 
 not, in Oxford at least, a reading-man who was not more or less indi- 
 rectly influenced by it. Only the very idle or the very frivolous were 
 strictly proof against it. On all others it impressed a sobriety of conduct 
 and a seriousness not usually found among large bodies of young men. 
 It raised the tone of average morality in Oxford to a level which per- 
 haps it had never before reached. You may call it overwrought and 
 too highly strung. Perhaps it was. It was better, however, for young 
 men to be so than to be doubters or cynics. 
 
v REMINISCENCES OF OXFORD 59 
 
 If such was the general aspect of Oxford society at that time, 
 where was the centre and soul from which so mighty a power emanated ? 
 It lay, and had for some .years lain, mainly in one man a man in 
 many ways the most remarkable that England has seen during this 
 century, perhaps the most remarkable whom the English Church has 
 produced in any century, John Henry Newman. 
 
 The influence he had gained, apparently without setting himself to 
 seek it, was something altogether unlike anything else in our time. 
 A mysterious veneration had by degrees gathered round him, till now 
 it was almost as though some Ambrose or Augustine of elder ages had 
 reappeared. He himself tells how one day, when he was an under- 
 graduate, a friend, with whom he was walking in the Oxford street, 
 cried out eagerly, ' There's Keble ! ' and with what awe he looked at 
 him ! A few years, and the same took place with regard to himself. 
 In Oriel Lane, light-hearted undergraduates would drop their voices 
 and whisper ' There's Newman ! ' when, head thrust forward, and 
 gaze fixed as though on some vision seen only by himself, with swift 
 noiseless step, he glided by. Awe fell on them for a moment, almost 
 as if it had been some apparition that had passed. For his inner circle 
 of friends, many of them younger men, he was said to have a quite 
 romantic affection, which they returned with the most ardent devotion 
 and the intensest faith in him. But to the outer world he was a mys- 
 tery. What were the qualities that inspired these feelings ? There 
 was, of course, learning and refinement, there was genius, not indeed 
 of a philosopher, but of a subtle and original thinker, an unequalled 
 edge of dialectic, and these all glorified by the imagination of a poet. 
 Then there was the utter unworldliness, the setting at nought of all 
 things which men most prize, the tamelessness of soul which was ready 
 to essay the impossible. Men felt that here was 
 
 One of that small transfigured band 
 Which the world cannot tame. 
 
 It was this mysteriousness which, beyond all his gifts of head and 
 heart, so strangely fascinated and overawed, that something about 
 him which made it impossible to reckon his course and take his bear- 
 ings, that soul-hunger and quenchless yearning which nothing short 
 of the Eternal could satisfy. 
 
 The look and bearing of the preacher were as of one who dwelt 
 apart, who, though he knew his age well, did not live in it. From his 
 seclusion of study, and abstinence, and prayer, from habitual dwelling 
 in the unseen, he seemed to come forth that one day of the week to 
 speak to others of the things he had seen and known. 
 
 The local, the temporary, and the modern, were ennobled by the 
 presence of the catholic church belonging to all ages that pervaded the 
 whole. His power showed itself chiefly in the new and unlooked-for 
 
60 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 way in which he touched into life old truths, moral or spiritual, which 
 all Christians acknowledge, but most have ceased to feel. 
 
 As he spoke, how the old truth became new ! how it came home 
 with a meaning never felt before ! He laid his finger how gently, 
 yet how powerfully ! on some inner place in the hearer's heart, 
 and told him things about himself he had never known till then. 
 Subtlest truths, which it would have taken philosophers pages of cir- 
 cumlocution and big words to state, were dropt out by the way in a 
 sentence or two of the most transparent Saxon. What delicacy of 
 style, yet what calm power ! how gentle, yet how strong ! how simple, 
 yet how suggestive ! how homely, yet how refined ! how penetrating, 
 yet how tender-hearted ! 
 
 To call these sermons eloquent would be no word for them ; high 
 poems they rather were, as of an inspired singer, or the outpourings as 
 of a prophet, rapt yet self-possessed. And the tone of voice in which 
 they were spoken, once you grew accustomed to it, sounded like a fine 
 strain of unearthly music. Through the stillness of that high Gothic 
 building the words fell on the ear like the measured drippings of water 
 in some vast, dim cave. After hearing these sermons you might come 
 away still not believing the tenets peculiar to the High Church system ; 
 but you would be harder than most men, if you did not feel more 
 than ever ashamed of coarseness, selfishness, worldliness, if you did not 
 feel the things of faith brought closer to the soul. 
 
 On these things, looking over an interval of five and twenty years, 
 how vividly comes back the remembrance of the aching blank, the 
 awful pause, which fell on Oxford when that voice had ceased, and we 
 knew that we should hear it no more. It was as when, to one kneeling 
 by night in the silence of some vast cathedral, the great bell tolling 
 solemnly overhead has suddenly gone still. 
 
 Polemics by themselves are dreary work. They do not touch the 
 springs of young hearts. But he who, in the midst of any line of 
 thought, unlocks a fountain of genuine poetry, does more to harmonise 
 it, and win for it a way to men's affections, than he who writes a 
 hundred volumes, however able, of controversy." J 
 
 Though written several years afterwards, two letters refer- 
 ring to this article on Keble may here find an appropriate 
 place. The first is from Cardinal Newman to the Publisher 
 and Editor of the Review, and the second from Dean Stanley 
 to Shairp himself: 
 
 1 " Keble," in Studies in Poetry and Philosophy, pp. 244-257. 
 
v REMINISCENCES OF OXFORD 61 
 
 " THE ORATORY, BIRMINGHAM, 
 "14/z, September 1866. 
 
 "DEAR SIR On my return from abroad I found on my 
 table your letter and the September number of The North 
 British Review, and I have read, I need scarcely tell you, 
 with extreme interest, the article on Mr. Keble, to which 
 you direct my attention. 
 
 I feel very grateful 'to a reviewer, as the writer of it, 
 who describes with so much real sympathy and truth the 
 characteristics of a religious movement, of which, naturally, 
 I have such vivid recollections, and such affectionate though 
 mournful remembrances. 
 
 And it is an extreme pleasure to read a critique on The 
 Christian Tear which speaks with such depth and exactness, 
 both of the work itself, and of the character of its author. 
 
 As to what the writer says of me, I wish I deserved 
 only half the praise he gives me ; but still I cannot help 
 being gratified at it, though I am not quite pleased with 
 myself for being so. Anyhow I can thank him for what is 
 more than kind, though I do not feel it right to appropriate 
 it. I am, dear sir, very faithfully yours, 
 
 JOHN H. NEWMAN. 
 
 David Douglas, Esq." 
 
 " DEANERY, WESTMINSTER, 
 " 1 9th December 1866. 
 
 " MY DEAR SHAIRP Once more a few words to thank you 
 for your Keble, which I had read before, but less attentively. 
 Most deeply do I sympathise with most of it ; fain would 
 I with all of it. Yet, as I read it, a melancholy feeling 
 crosses me. ' How is the fine gold become dim !' Is it in 
 me ? or in them ? Is it that Keble and Newman have de- 
 generated to the narrow partisanship of the modern High 
 Church leaders, with their worldly polemics, and their bitter 
 personalities ? or that I have changed, and see only these, where 
 once I saw the grace and beauty which you so well describe ? 
 Is it that I myself have become more narrow-minded ? or 
 
62 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP, v 
 
 that there is something more supernatural in Cotton's un- 
 tiring desire to go about doing good, or in Church's calm 
 moderation, or in Temple's unwearying unhasting labour, 
 than in - 's asceticism, or - 's attacks on Colenso, 
 or 's eagerness for proselytes ? Or was there nothing 
 of the earth, earthy, in Keble's repudiation of Arnold's friend- 
 ship ? or Newman's attack on Hampden ? or was there 
 nothing of immortal birth in Arnold or in Eobertson, in 
 Clough, or in the catholic spirits that I have known and 
 loved in other lands ? These are sad thoughts, but I would 
 suggest one point in which you have done injustice to The 
 Christian Year, it seems to me. Besides these four points, 1 
 it has a real openness of mind for the whole large view of 
 the Church and world, quite unlike the later development 
 of the party, or unlike the earlier religious part. It is what 
 I have omitted in the Preface to my second volume of 
 Lectures on the Jewish Church. You have just glanced 
 at it, in speaking of ' the glorious sky/ etc. Farewell, ever 
 yours truly, A. P. STANLEY." 
 
 In connection with this letter, Shairp's appreciation of 
 The Christian Year should be mentioned. He found intense 
 delight in it, and frequently perused it up to the very end 
 of his life. 
 
 1 (1) "Religious feeling;" (2) "Home feeling;" (3) "Reserve;" (4 
 " Descriptions of Nature," referred to in Shairp's essay on Keble. 
 
CHAPTEE VI 
 
 SUMMER HOLIDAYS IN WESTMORLAND AND SCOTLAND 
 
 THE summer of 1843 was spent with a reading-party at 
 Grasmere. In the party were Henry Douglas, and T. D. 
 Harford Battersby, afterwards incumbent of St. John's, Kes- 
 wick, and Canon of Carlisle. They lived in the farmhouse 
 at Pavement End, close by Grasmere Lake. It belonged 
 to the family of Greens, who are mentioned in the seventh 
 book of The Excursion. Arthur Clough lived in a lodging 
 hard by, to the west of Grasmere Church. 
 
 Three of Shairp's letters to the home circle at Houstoun 
 give a vivid picture of these months at Grasmere : 
 
 [Postmark, 8th July 1843.] 
 
 "AMBLESIDE, Friday. 
 
 " MY DEAR BINNY As you are the only one of the family 
 who has seen these places, you will be able to explain all 
 the localities to the rest. 
 
 We reached this on Tuesday by mid-day, and immedi- 
 ately set out lodging-hunting. A lovely day, and as lovely 
 a walk along Eydal Lake, past Wordsworth's. (By the bye, 
 I hope it may not be with him as it was with Sir Robert 
 Peel. You remember I used to say I never could admire 
 him after I had seen him especially seen him eat ! So, 
 though there is not much chance of our ever being admitted 
 to see the Lion of the Lakes at feeding-time, yet when you 
 see his little villa and his one-horse shay, and all that sort 
 of thing, you begin to discover, ' Well, after all, he is only 
 a man '.) 
 
64 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 But to return we walked on to Grasmere, about five 
 miles hence, to see some lodgings we were told of. By 
 chance we inquired of an old farmer standing at his gate, 
 where the said lodgings were, and on getting into a crack 
 with him, we found out that he had a large house, and few 
 in it, so that he would not be loath to lodge us himself. 
 This seemed promising, so we inspected the rooms ; found 
 he could give us five bedrooms and two sitting. We asked 
 him what he would charge ; and after retiring for a while, 
 he and his wife returned, and offered to do everything for 
 us for 30s. a week each (bed and board included). We 
 snatched at the offer. The only obstacle in the way was that 
 he had made an offer to some people at a distance, and we 
 could not get a decisive answer till Thursday morning. 
 Wednesday we employed in walking to Patterdale, at the 
 head of Ullswater, ten miles hence, through the Pass of 
 Kirkstone very steep. We took a boat and pulled 
 down the lake as far as Airey Force. You were there, if 
 I remember right a most sweet, delicate fall, is it 
 not ? Then, dined at Patterdale, and walked home the 
 first part of our journey thundering fearfully, and light- 
 ning whizzing immediately under our noses. Got home 
 here very late, and I, for one, quite done. You know 
 how bad a walker I am, and my condition at present is 
 very bad. 
 
 Yesterday morning concluded the bargain, and to-day 
 we enter on possession. I hope we are very fortunate. 
 Grasmere is a most charming retirement. (By the bye, I 
 am not half so fond of solitude, as I once fancied I was.) 
 The farmer is well-to-do in the world, so I daresay will 
 provide for our creature comforts well enough. The house 
 is close by the lake, and we have a boat at our disposal. 
 Douglas and Proby (an Irishman, but brought up in England) 
 are here. Willock, who was with us in Wales, we met the 
 first day we were here ; and he has gone about with us 
 ever since. He is on his way to Scotland. . . . Battersby 
 joins us from town, I hope to-day or to-morrow, and Lawley 
 from Yorkshire on the llth. To-morrow I hope to fall 
 
vi HOLIDAYS IN WESTMORLAND AND SCOTLAND 65 
 
 to, to the work, and I do hope these three months may be 
 of great use to me. . . . 
 
 It was bitter, bitter^ leaving my rooms, and at the begin- 
 ning of long vacation there is always one or more I am 
 sorry to say good-bye to. You know that Macintosh 
 visited me the last few days I was in Oxford. He is going 
 into the Scotch Free Church. I wish he had been at Oxford 
 these last two years, instead of Cambridge. Did I ever 
 mention Coleridge, one of our scholars ? They have elected 
 him Fellow of Exeter. Certainly they have contrived to 
 pick up some of the pleasantest men going for their common 
 room. . . . Your very affectionate brother, 
 
 J. C. SHAIRP." 
 
 [Postmark, August 1843.] 
 
 "GRASMERE, Monday 14. 
 
 " MY DEAR GRACE . . . And now let me see what 
 I have been doing since I last wrote. Yes, on Saturday 
 week four of us set off for the top of the Langdale Pikes ; 
 there are two of them the 'two lusty twins' described 
 in the second book of The Excursion as making such many- 
 toned music. I had my Wordsworth with me. By reading 
 the description of the Solitary's dwelling, and having got 
 a few directions before, we made out the place exactly. 
 Nothing could be more perfect than the description. We 
 had scarcely got up when a storm came down upon us from 
 the higher hills. We soon bolted down, but such a soaking 
 I never got before. Marriott came on Tuesday afternoon. 
 Till that day the weather, for more than a fortnight, had 
 been very wretched. As a son of Coleridge's, who was 
 here, said, " He did not know whether it is true that ' the 
 king never dies,' but certainly the rain never ends." How- 
 ever, on Tuesday evening, it did end. On Wednesday 
 morning Douglas, Marriott, and I set off for Keswick. It 
 
 was 
 
 One of those heavenly days which cannot die. 
 
 We rowed down Derwent Water, or rather to the beginning 
 of Borrowdale. I am not sure whether I like this, or the 
 
 F 
 
66 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 head of Ullswater best ; this, perhaps but then, the day ! 
 it was such as you may live a lifetime without seeing 
 another like it. We walked up Borrowdale for six miles, 
 through the finest scenery I have seen in the Lakes. 
 Borrowdale runs up from Derwent Water to Wast Water, 
 twelve miles, and at its head are all the highest and wildest 
 hills in this country. I was very anxious to go and stay 
 all night near Wast Water, and go up Scawfell Pike, the 
 highest hill in England; but Marriott, who is not very 
 strong, did not like to stay out all night. So we turned 
 off to the side, after going half-way up Borrowdale, and 
 walked eight miles home, across the hills, without a path. 
 Just as we reached the highest part of our walk we stopped 
 on the hillside and saw the sun go down behind the mul- 
 titude of mountains crowded before us. I do not remember 
 to have seen anything like this. It was beyond- words. 
 I stayed a little after the others. Close opposite was the 
 hill with the fine name, so that I in very deed 
 
 Lay and listened to the mountain flood, 
 Murmuring from Glaramara's inmost caves. 
 
 Then, as we walked down Easdale, we had the full moon to 
 light up our way. 
 
 On Thursday Marriott, Lawley, and I walked over 
 to Patterdale by a short way through the hills. The 
 day was nearly as fine as the other. We rowed four 
 miles down the lake to Airey Force. On the way we 
 read the story about it out of the little Wordsworth Hetty 
 gave me ; and, tell her, I gathered some flowers close by the 
 fall and put them in the book. After dining we returned, 
 not as we came, but over Helvellyn. On the top we saw 
 into Scotland, and the Mull of Galloway; and just below, 
 the hill where the man died thirty-six years ago, about 
 whom Scott and Wordsworth wrote each a poem; Scott's 
 much the best, I think. 1 I forgot, till after I had left it, 
 that once Scott, Wordsworth, and Sir Humphry Davy had 
 been there together. In one of his last poems Wordsworth, 
 speaking of Scott, mentions it 
 
 1 He altered this judgment afterwards. 
 
vi HOLIDAYS IN WESTMORLAND AND SCOTLAND 67 
 
 Old Helvellyn's brow, 
 Where once together in his day of strength 
 We stood rejoicing, as if earth were free 
 From sorrow,, like the sky above our heads. 
 
 But now for a catastrophe ! The cold on the top seized 
 Marriott, and then we drank largely of a well-head up 
 
 there the coldest I ever met with. M could scarcely 
 
 walk; he lay down every yard and wanted to be left 
 alone. Lawley and I of course would not allow this. So 
 we forced him on, supporting him by each arm, and after 
 much ado, and a great fright, by dint of a brandy bottle 
 Lawley had, and by frequent rests, we got him down to a 
 small public at the foot of the hill, Wythburn by name. There 
 we got a conveyance for him, and brought him home quite 
 exhausted. Next morning he was better, and left us. On 
 Sunday Henry Douglas and I walked to Wythburn Church, 
 a small humble one at the foot of Helvellyn, by the way- 
 side. It was quite touching, the simplicity of it. How 
 many people, do you think, were there ? Three men, three 
 women, and thirteen children, besides the parson. I never 
 saw so small a church in Scotland. The clergyman had to 
 act as his own clerk. It was almost a case of 'Dearly 
 beloved Eoger ' a clergyman whose whole congregation con- 
 sisted of himself and clerk, and who would not begin the 
 exhortation with ' Dearly beloved brethren.' ... It is quite 
 melancholy to think of these golden days being in the fells, 
 and our being obliged to stick to in the house. [Speaks 
 of his desire that the whole family should spend a summer 
 there 'before we are all too old.'] . . . Don't think I am 
 getting too sentimental. I am quite sane, I assure you. 
 . . . Your affectionate brother, J. C. SHAIEP." 
 
 To Miss E. B. SHAIRP. 
 
 [Postmark, 19th September 1843.] 
 
 " GRASMERE. 
 
 " MY DEAREST BINNY This is Sunday, but I am not in 
 church. I have sprained my ankle. It was leaping over 
 
68 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 a hedge by the house I got it. ... It keeps me from our 
 delicious walks when they are now not far from an end. 
 So I grudge it excessively. As I lie here on the bed, I can 
 see one outlying ridge of Fairfield, which forms one of the 
 sides of our valley, and I have been amusing myself all 
 morning with watching the comings and goings of the 
 lights upon it. Mrs. Green, our hostess, has been more 
 attentive and kind than I could have expected. I shall be 
 quite ashamed to leave without making her some present ; 
 what do you advise ? Do you think one of those fine plaid 
 or tartan shawls would be very expensive ? If not, I should 
 like one sent. ... It is quite a pleasure to live with 
 such people. John Green is one of the most respected 
 farmers in all this vale. In this country the valleys are 
 almost all originally held by what are called * statesmen,' 
 something like Scotch Bonnet Lairds. There were very 
 few large estates, but almost every householder had a piece 
 of land in the valley, enough to grow hay for the sheep in 
 winter. Every one who has such a piece has a right to 
 turn out his sheep on the hills, which are called ' common.' 
 In many places this primitive state of things this ' more 
 natural and righteous division of land,' as I have heard it 
 called is more or less done away, but in Grasmere there 
 remain as many ' statesmen ' as in most places. Our host 
 is one of these, only he and his fathers before him have, by 
 care and thrift, considerably increased their property. They 
 are very well to do in the world, and are yet as unpre- 
 tending as the poorest. In the second part of ' The Church- 
 yard among the Mountains ' you will see about ' another 
 Margaret Green is come to Gold -rill side.' This was 
 a young sister of John Green ; and he is one of the 
 ' Seven lusty Brethren ' mentioned there. ' Gold-rill side ' is 
 the poetical name of our abode, which in plain prose is 
 ' Pavement End !'...! fear I shall not be able to walk 
 for a week yet. The hills are changing colour now, but 
 this is about their finest time. Such weather as we have 
 been having not a day anything else than lovely. We 
 have all become very well acquainted with this country, 
 
vi HOLIDAYS IN WESTMORLAND AND SCOTLAND G9 
 
 though, had we had less reading, we should have had more 
 time to be out at all seasons, and know the hills at all 
 hours thoroughly, as they deserve to be known no 
 time one goes out he sees something he has not 
 noticed before. Whenever I am out, I cannot help 
 thinking how you all would enjoy this country, for I think 
 you enter more truly into these things than most. The 
 way to enjoy them thoroughly is to live among them, not 
 to tour, though of course this last is better than nothing. 
 I often feel as if I could stay a day at each spot. . . . 
 Wordsworth, I suppose, is extensively devoured now that 
 Hetty has got it. Eead the ode called Intimations of 
 Immortality. Don't mind if you do not quite make it all 
 out only read it. It is one of the highest things which 
 human tongue ever uttered. To-day, from Mrs. Green, 
 I have been hearing the history of several of the characters 
 mentioned in 'The Churchyard.' The churchyard you 
 know is chiefly taken from our churchyard. 
 
 I have been lying on the grass by the house all after- 
 noon till the stars came out, and the owls were holloaing 
 from the hills. I have just this moment come in. It is 
 wonderful what enjoyment there is even in that, with such 
 an amphitheatre to gaze on. I do wish you all, or some 
 at least, were here for a time. Couldn't you come and 
 be with me the last week ? They will all be gone except 
 me. I remain till the end, read for the next three weeks 
 uninterruptedly, and then hope to have a day or two for 
 
 rambling before going back to flat, ugly Oxford. A 
 
 is quite right. It is a poor thing not to let loose one's 
 enjoyment on places worthy of it, because they are not 
 your own a niggard, coward thing. Therefore be it far 
 from us. Lady Farquhar, Mr. Hamilton's widow, has been 
 living all summer, with an old lady, close by this. We do 
 not know them. The Poet is out of the county, in Hereford- 
 shire. I do not know whether he returns before we go. Proby 
 and Battersby went yesterday to spend the day at Hawes- 
 water, and return to-morrow. Lawley leaves us this week. 
 
70 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 Most of the others, if not all, will be gone by the beginning 
 of October. Now write me a long letter. All blessed 
 thoughts be with you. Your most affectionate brother, 
 
 J. C. SHAIRP." 
 
 The following letter, also written by Shairp at Gras- 
 mere, was to his friend, J. Billingsby Seymour, who was then 
 at Venice : 
 
 "GRASMERE, 25th September 1843. 
 
 "MY DEAR SEYMOUR It was delightful to see your 
 hand once more. All summer long I have been looking for 
 it, so you may guess how welcome your letter was when it 
 did arrive. Often at the beginning of last month I thought 
 of that Balliol band, collected under the shadow of the 
 Alps, for I had heard both from Fox and Constantine of 
 the expected gathering at Milan. I trust it did come to 
 pass. If I could but have looked in on you for one hour 
 only! You say you have had times, and high moments, 
 when you wished me by your side. It is no mere tu 
 quoque if I say the same. Yes, Seymour, I have passed 
 such a summer, in such a dear retreat ! Do not laugh at 
 me when you compare Westmorland with Switzerland, for 
 I think there is here enough to satisfy the cravings of any 
 soul that truly loves Nature. Mine it certainly has satisfied. 
 
 It is so very delightful to settle down in a place and 
 see it and its neighbouring retirements in all moods and at 
 all hours. There is something unsatisfying, I always think, 
 in travelling for once only through a very beautiful or grand 
 country. There are so many spots, and single views, which 
 you could brood over for at least a day, that you cannot take 
 them in, you pass on unsatisfied. As it is with all the 
 opportunities which evening after evening has given me I 
 feel as if I had but touched the draught summis Idbris. There 
 is a something about these dales, when twilight has filled 
 them, and taken away all their outstanding lineaments, and 
 when the more distant hilltops are standing out against the 
 golden west, entranced as it were, and pondering, you would 
 
vi HOLIDAYS IN WESTMORLAND AND SCOTLAND 71 
 
 almost think, on the mysteries that have been, or the 
 mysteries yet to be, there is something then that I cannot 
 get at something that disturbs me with its depth of 
 meaning. I know I am ^copta-ros as ever. I cannot explain 
 myself, but it is something real which I hint at, and you 
 may perhaps guess what I mean. But, to be sober, we 
 have all, I think, been very happy, and I go from this 
 country loving it with an exceeding love. 
 
 No one can know how true Wordsworth is till they have 
 been here. He is, as it were, the true utterance of these hills 
 their very voice. I have seen him, but have not been intro- 
 duced, though I should have liked it had it come easily and 
 naturally. I did not make any exertions to be so. By 
 the end of this week our party will have broken up, and be 
 all gone save myself. I stay for a fortnight, and Clough 
 remains with me for a week, to finish some work. You 
 will be astonished, perhaps shocked, when I tell you my 
 summer's work. I have read all my Sophocles, all my 
 ^Eschylus, and hope to finish Thucydides for good history 
 and all. This, with a little Butler, makes good my 
 summer's work. ' The Slows ' are my bane, but I must 
 be courageous and face what remains. My hopes are not 
 high. If I could but secure a second, I should be happy ; 
 and if not, what then ? Why, I don't think it will break 
 my heart ; for, to tell the truth, I fancy that I am getting 
 marvellously indifferent to school reputation. You know 
 I have always looked on it in no higher light than a 
 mercantile speculation. It might advance my worldly 
 interests, and this would be my chief pleasure in success. 
 I do not mean to say that the avpfyepov is the only 
 motive one has to work for. Every one has a duty for every 
 day and every month, and ours, I suppose, is to work for the 
 Schools ; but viewed in the light which many regard it, and 
 which the Oxford tone and system fosters, it is a very puny 
 thing. I agree with you, life is larger than the Schools. 
 They are not the end. There is 'an ampler ether, a diviner air.' 
 
 You have heard C. E. P. 1 speak of Hartley Cole- 
 
 1 Constantine E. Prichard. 
 
72 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 ridge, eldest son of the poet. We know him and have 
 seen a good deal of him. You knew perhaps of his 
 habits, which have been his bane. It is lamentable to see 
 such genius so trampled under foot. His conversation 
 rather his discourse is at times wonderful. I have heard 
 him, when in the genial mood, roll forth his thoughts on 
 poetry, philosophy, life, and all high things thoughts such as 
 you would in vain look for in any books, and which, if one 
 would only remember them, are very precious. At other 
 times inimitably comical and amusing, though of course you 
 cannot always get him in either of these moods. He might 
 do anything he liked in the way of literature, if he would 
 but work, but instead of that he wanders about the country, 
 and does nothing. He tells me that he is preparing some 
 things for the press whether they will ever see the light 
 I should think very doubtful. By the bye, I wish you, 
 when you write me, to give me what you think of Eomanism 
 as you have seen it in men's lives. Tell me this, for it 
 is so much the fashion nowadays to praise it up at the 
 expense of Protestantism one's old feelings are quite shocked. 
 
 Do you know, Seymour, I wish very much you would 
 come home and take a degree without minding the Class 
 Schools ? I think it would take such a weight off your 
 mind, and then, as to Fellowships, etc. etc., you need not be 
 alarmed about that. Look at Coleridge ; by the bye, what 
 gain it was having him up another year; but you have, 
 I doubt not, settled all about this with Constantino the 
 Great. I have just heard that Newman has resigned St. 
 Mary's. 
 
 Only fancy, next term I return, not to my dear old 
 rooms, but to lodgings Mason's if you know where 
 they are. I daresay I shall have some dreary enough days 
 in them before all is over, which would I had you with 
 me to relieve ! All our party go the end of this week. 
 I remain and read a week, and then have, I hope, a few days 
 to ramble about among the more solitary of these hills 
 which I have not yet seen. I do hope this is not my last 
 sojourn here. 
 
vi HO LI DA YS IN WESTMORLAND AND SCO TLAND 73 
 
 Since I wrote the beginning of this letter last night Hart- 
 ley Coleridge has been here, and I heard him talk alone for 
 a quarter of an hour about Shakespeare. It was worth all 
 the commentaries and essays on him I ever saw, but it 
 is always somewhat painful. to hear him. Punch says in his 
 latest intelligence from Oxford, ' The thermometer has 
 taken a very high degree ! ' Write to me soon to Oxford, and 
 tell me all about yourself. I don't at all hail the beginning 
 of term except for seeing one's friends again, from whom I 
 hope to hear all about you. Their society and news of you 
 will tend to console me for exchanging this pleasant land 
 for ugly Oxford. I must not cross this, or you will not 
 be able to read it. Excuse me for having been more ego- 
 tistical than usual, and believe me, ever your affectionate 
 friend, J. C. SHAIKP." 
 
 As Seymour was one of the " Balliol Scholars " com- 
 memorated in Shairp's poem, an extract from a letter written 
 to Shairp by Constantine Prichard, another of these scholars, 
 and an intimate mutual friend, after Seymour's death, may 
 here be given 
 
 "Who, like him, could rejoice when we were glad, 
 and be sorry with our sorrow, and feel with and for us in 
 whatever we were engaged ? . . . How remarkable in 
 him that perception of all laughable things in persons, 
 manners, and characters, without being joined to the slightest 
 disposition to sarcasm, was it not ? What a pleasantness 
 there is about his memory. It is only less gladdening than 
 his presence used to be. I am thankful to say that I can 
 think of him more cheerfully now, and do not need, as at 
 first, to forget him, in order to be cheerful. . . . How con- 
 soling it is to think of Seymour's purity and virtue, and yet 
 how almost more consoling to think of his reverence !"' 
 
 To these letters may be added another section of Shairp's 
 reminiscences of Clough, who was one of the Grasmere read- 
 ing-party 
 
 "Early in the autumn of 1843 Clough came to Grasmere to read 
 with a Balliol reading-party, of which I was one. He was with us 
 
74 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 about six weeks, I think, staying till towards the end of September. 
 This was his earliest long vacation party ; all things on a smaller scale 
 than his later ones by Loch Ness or on Deeside, but still very pleasant. 
 He lived in a small lodging immediately to the west of Grasmere 
 church ; we in a farmhouse on the lake. During these weeks I read 
 the Greek tragedians with him, and did Latin prose. His manner of 
 translating, especially the Greek choruses, was quite peculiar ; a quaint 
 archaic style of language, keeping rigidly to the Greek order of the words, 
 and so bringing out their expression better, more forcibly and poeti- 
 cally, than any other translations I had heard. When work was done 
 we used to walk in the afternoon with him all over that delightful 
 country. His ' eye to country ' was wonderful. He knew the whole 
 lie of the different dales relatively to each other ; every tarn, beck, 
 and bend in them. 
 
 He used, if I remember right, to draw pen-and-ink maps, show- 
 ing us the whole lineaments of the district. Without any obtrusive 
 enthusiasm, but in his own quiet manly way, he seemed as if he never 
 could get too much of it never walk too far or too often over it. 
 Bathing, too, formed one of his daily occupations, up in a retired pool 
 of the stream that afterwards becomes the Rotha, as it comes out of 
 Easdale. One walk, our longest, was on a Saturday, up Easdale, over 
 the Raise by Greenup, Borrowdale, Honister Crag, under the star- 
 light to Buttermere. In the small inn there we stayed all Sunday. 
 Early on Monday morning we walked, by two mountain passes, to a 
 farm at the head of Wast Water to breakfast. On the way we crossed 
 Ennerdale, and up the pass, close under the nearly perpendicular 
 precipices of the Pillar a tall mountain, which is the scene of Words- 
 worth's pastoral of The Brothers. From the head of Wast Water, up 
 past the great gorge of the Mickledore, to the top of Scawfell, then 
 down past the east side of Bowfell towards Langdale Pikes, and so 
 home to Grasmere. As we passed under Bowfell, a beautiful autumn 
 afternoon, we lay a long time by the side of the lovely Angle Tarn. The 
 sun, just before he sunk beside Bowfell, was showering down his light, 
 which dimpled the smooth face of the tarn like heavy drops of sun-rain. 
 Every now and then a slight breeze would come and scatter the rays 
 broadcast over the little loch, as if some unseen hand was sowing it with 
 golden grain. It was as memorable an appearance as that different 
 one we had seen a year ago on Moel Wyn. These things, though 
 Clough observed closely and took pleasure in, he did not speak often 
 about, much less indulge in raptures. 
 
 Some of our party were very good hillmen. One day five or six 
 in all set out on a race from our door by Grasmere Lake to the top of 
 Fairfield. He was the second to reach the summit. His action up 
 hill was peculiar ; he used to lay himself forward almost horizontally 
 towards the slope, and take very long strides which carried him quickly 
 over the ground. Few men so stout as he then was could have matched 
 him up a mountain. 
 
vi HOLIDAYS IN WESTMORLAND AND SCOTLAND 75 
 
 Shortly after this time, at Oxford, somewhere that is between 
 1843 and 1845, I remember to have heard him speak, at a small de- 
 bating society called the Decade, in which were discussed often graver 
 subjects, and in a less popular way, than in the Union. Having been 
 an unfrequent attender, I heard him only twice. But both times, 
 what he said, and the way he said it, were so marked and weighty 
 as to have stuck to memory when almost everything else then spoken 
 has been forgotten. The first time was in Oriel Common-room ; the 
 subject proposed : ' That Tennyson was a greater poet than Words- 
 worth.' This was one of the earliest expressions of that popularity 
 since become nearly universal which I remember. Clough spoke 
 against the proposition, and stood up for Wordsworth's greatness with 
 singular wisdom and moderation. He granted fully that Wordsworth 
 was often prosy, that whole pages of The Excursion had better have 
 been written in prose ; but still, when he was at his best, he was 
 much better than any other modern English poet saying his best 
 things without knowing they were so good, and then drawling on in 
 prosaic tediousness, without being aware where the inspiration failed 
 and the prose began. In this kind of unconsciousness, I think he said, 
 lay much of his power. One of the only other times I heard him 
 speak was, about the same time, when a meeting of the Decade was 
 held in Balliol Common-room. The subject of debate was : * That 
 the character of a gentleman was, in the present day, made too much 
 of.' To understand the drift of this would require one to know how 
 highly pleasant manners and a good exterior are rated in Oxford at 
 all times, and to understand something of the peculiar mental 
 atmosphere of Oxford at that time. Clough spoke neither for nor 
 against the proposition ; but for an hour and a half well on two 
 hours he went into the origin of the ideal, historically tracing from 
 mediaeval times how much was implied originally in the notion of a 
 'gentle knight' truthfulness, consideration for others (even self- 
 sacrifice), courtesy, and the power of giving outward expression to these 
 moral qualities. From this high standard he traced the deterioration 
 into the modern Brummagem pattern which gets the name. These true 
 gentlemen of old time had invented for themselves a whole economy of 
 manners, which gave true expression to what was really in them, to 
 the ideal in which they lived. These manners, true in them, became 
 false when adopted traditionally, and copied from without by modern 
 men placed in quite different circumstances, and living different lives. 
 When the same qualities are in the hearts of men now, as truly as in 
 the best of old time, they will fashion for themselves a new expression, 
 a new economy of manners suitable to their place and time. But 
 many men now, wholly devoid of the inward reality, yet catching at 
 the reputation of it, adopt these old traditional ways of speaking and 
 of bearing themselves, though they express nothing that is really in 
 them. 
 
 One expression I remember he used to illustrate the truth that 
 
76 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 where the true gentle spirit exists it will express itself in its own rather 
 than in the traditional way. ' I have known pleasant men and women 
 in the humblest places, in whom dwelt these faculties as truly as they 
 ever did in the best of lords and ladies, and who were very poets of 
 courtesy.' 
 
 His manner of speaking was very characteristic, slow, and de- 
 liberate, never attempting rhetorical flow, stopping at times to think 
 the right thing, or to feel for the exactly fitting word, but with 
 a depth of suggestiveness, a hold of reality, a poetry of thought, not 
 found combined in any other Oxonian of our time." 
 
 Six years afterwards Shairp returned to Grasmere, and 
 there he wrote the following lines : 
 
 Since our long summer in yon blissful nook, 
 
 Six years, not changeless, intervene ; 
 Those friends all scattered, I return and look 
 
 Down on this peace serene. 
 
 happy vision ! depth of spirit-balm ! 
 
 For hearts that have too deeply yearned, 
 This still lake holding his majestic calm 
 
 'Mid his green hills inurned. 
 
 There dwell, repeated the clear depths among, 
 Hills more aerial, skies of fairyer cloud, 
 
 Hard by, yon homestead, where the summer long 
 Our laughters once were loud. 
 
 Still gleam the birch-trees down that pass as fair, 
 
 Nor less melodious breaks 
 The Kotha murmuring down his rocky lair, 
 
 Between his sister lakes. 
 
 In his article on Wordsworth, in the Studies in Poetry 
 and Philosophy, he thus refers to his visit to the Lakes, in 
 1849- 
 
 "As late as the autumn of 1849, as a stranger came down 
 the road from the back of Eydal Mount, he met Wordsworth 
 walking slowly back towards his home from the highway, to 
 which he had just conducted some visitors. His head leant 
 to one side, and in his hand he carried a branch with withered 
 leaves. He who passed him happened to have on a plaid, 
 wrapt round him in Scottish shepherds' fashion. This attracted 
 his notice, and as the stranger looked round, thinking it might 
 be the last sight he should ever have of him, the poet had 
 
vi HOLIDA YS IN WESTMORLAND AND SCOTLAND 77 
 
 turned round, and was looking back too. There was one 
 long look, but no word, and both passed on. 
 
 Matthew is in his grave, yet now, 
 
 Methinks, I see him stand, 
 As at that moment, with a bough 
 
 Of wilding in his hand. " 1 
 
 Eeturning to Oxford, in the late autumn, for his last 
 term, Shairp gives an account in a letter to his father 
 of a meeting with Lockhart, the biographer of Walter Scott, 
 and of his own thoughts of a curacy, and his chance of a 
 Fellowship at All Souls'. 
 
 [Postmark, 17 th December 1843.] 
 
 " BALLIOL, Sunday. 
 
 [Speaks first of the purchase of a horse at Oxford, 
 and of his paying a visit to Hastings for a week.] " The 
 other day I met Lockhart, the author of Scott's Life, at 
 dinner at the Master's. He is an old Balliol man, a Scotch 
 Exhibitioner, and had come up to enter his eldest son, Walter 
 Scott, at Balliol. The son seemed a nice fellow, and struck 
 me as having a great look of the pictures you see of Scott, 
 but perhaps this might be fancy. Lockhart himself is a 
 very gentlemanly-mannered man, and amusing in his talk ; 
 but he seems 'to be a good deal broken down, and his spirits 
 to be chastened from what they must once have been. He 
 has the remains of very good looks. 
 
 I wish to speak to you of another thing about myself. 
 If I could manage to get into any college here, as Fellow 
 after my degree, I think it would suit both my likings and 
 my interests better than going down immediately into the 
 country as a curate. Besides, a man may make more of 
 himself by remaining and improving himself here for a few 
 years, than he can possibly do by being a solitary curate, 
 left alone in some remote country corner, without anything 
 to improve him but himself. Therefore, liking, interest, 
 improvement being all one way, I think it would be desir- 
 
 1 Studies in Poetry and Philosophy, p. 94. 
 
78 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 able if it could be effected. But then I am a Scotchman. 
 Balliol and Oriel are the only places left except one. 
 These two would suit me best, as they are in themselves 
 a livelihood ; but then at Balliol my chance is nothing, zero. 
 They require so much scholarship. At Oriel it is the 
 faintest in the world ; nothing, in fact, to build and hope 
 upon, as far as I can judge. 
 
 There is another place All Souls'. It is difficult 
 fully to explain the nature of the Fellowships there. I tried 
 to do so to Tom, if he remembers. They have generally 
 been given wholly by interest. The qualifications have not 
 been so much learning, as gentlemanly manners, being well- 
 connected, and being a pleasant fellow. 
 
 The great interest they have generally required, added 
 to the fact that they are not worth more than my Exhibi- 
 tion, and that I cannot hold both together, made me never 
 think of All Souls'. But one of our tutors, who takes an 
 interest in me, has been at me several times lately to get 
 me to stand. He says they are beginning to look a little 
 more to public opinion than they did. They are beginning 
 to be more shy than they used to be of men who, while 
 undergraduates, have been what is called ' fast ' here ; and 
 they pay a little more attention than formerly to the class- 
 list. I believe they would not refuse a first class man, 
 however small was his interest, if he were in other respects 
 unobjectionable ; and a second would have some weight 
 with them. When the tutor spoke to me, I told him that 
 I was afraid it would not do for me, as, after my degree, I 
 must look to my temporalities. He said that, even in a 
 pecuniary point of view, he thought it would be better than 
 the Exhibition, as it went on increasing, and might lead to 
 something else, which the Exhibition does not do. If I am 
 to stand, I know that my interest with the Fellows would 
 be less than that of most who stand, so that I would have 
 to trust to my character, and to how the Schools turn out 
 for me. At present I scarcely know any of the Fellows; 
 but, through some of my friends here, I could get at two 
 or three of them pretty strongly. But there are thirty in 
 
vi HOLIDAYS IN WESTMORLAND AND SCOTLAND 79 
 
 all. . . . There are four vacancies in November next. On 
 the whole I do not know what to think. Jowett, the tutor 
 who is my adviser, says that between the Fellowship and a 
 curacy which I could get, I could keep myself; but I am 
 not sure. I wish you would give me your advice. I can- 
 not explain it to you more fully in a letter. If I do stand, 
 it must be declared soon. My standing there would not 
 prevent my standing elsewhere, if I had any chance ; but 
 Jowett tells me he thinks I have a better chance there than 
 elsewhere. 
 
 A Fellow of All Souls' in the eyes of the world is 
 excellent, and men of the highest family in England are 
 proud to belong to it ; but this is nothing. It is not the 
 opinion of the world we must live by, in any sense. I have 
 not in the least set my heart upon it, and whatever way 
 you decide, I shall not be disappointed. . . . 
 
 I am now out of lodgings, and back into College for 
 the vacation. It costs me less. There are only four in all 
 up. One of them is Proby, who hunted with Tom and me 
 the day from Tiddington, and whom I think he liked. 
 There is nothing I look back to with more entire satisfac- 
 tion than Tom's visit. . . . Your most affectionate son, 
 
 J. C. SHAIRP." 
 
 In the spring of 1844, he was at Houstoun, and the 
 following is an entry in his Journal of that year : 
 
 " HOUSTOUN, Saturday, Qth May, 
 "GREENROOM, 10.45 A.M. 
 
 " Here in the middle of this lovely season I would note 
 down a few things as they pass. ... On Thursday I rose 
 early and left this by eight o'clock to ride to Winchburgh 
 to take the train to town. It is long since I have felt so 
 happy. There was a light, playful breeze from the west, 
 morning sunshine beautified by clouds, and all earth rejoic- 
 ing. As I rode along the road by Green Dykes I could 
 have shouted for glee. The hills looked so delicately veiled 
 with tender light ; and all the vale between, shadowy and 
 
80 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 glorious, under the mingled clouds and sunshine. Then the 
 brairds of virgin green were springing newly in every field, 
 and the larks were busy overhead. . . . All along the road- 
 side I saw the braird springing so freshly, with that 'pur- 
 pureal ' bloom upon it ; and the haughs near Carlowrie 
 were ' made blithe by plough and harrow,' at work in the 
 fallow, or preparing for green crop. Near the viaduct, both 
 going and coming, I saw a swallow the first of the year 
 for me. On Wednesday afternoon (6th May) I heard the 
 first cuckoo. He was among the row of beeches on the 
 meet of the Cannonland Park. . . . Surely the morning is 
 their favoured time. There is such a depth and fulness of 
 light and shadow on them, with an underground of delicate 
 gleaming light, pervading their whole range. Those dear 
 hills. I could not help thinking how much more cheering 
 and beautiful this is to me than any part of England I have 
 seen so free, such scope for the spirit's play. It is 
 interesting to watch the trees in the bursting of the bud 
 (icakvicos ev \o%evjjLa(ri). Many of the planes have nearly 
 completed their foliage, though the leaf is not yet full ; 
 while the fourth, fifth, and sixth, beginning from the east, 
 have scarcely shown any green yet. The willow in the 
 garden is out, but not full-leafed. The three chestnuts in 
 the garden park are full. The larch everywhere out at the 
 loveliest ; and the birches in the wood are past their 
 first virgin look. The thorns are quite green. But the 
 oaks and ashes rise quite dark yet, not a leaf in them. 
 Scarce any beeches are out, though that scraggy one in the 
 middle of Kid's park has burst, and this morning was 
 rejoicing in the sun. ' The limes ' are opening, but scarce 
 show green. My tenement for sleeping and reading is the 
 green room with its cheerful outlook." 
 
 I may be pardoned if I ask the reader, who appreciates 
 this extract, to compare it with what is already published of 
 the Journal of Dorothy Wordsworth, and with what will 
 shortly be published in the first volume of her brother's Life. 
 
 Shairp returned to Oxford in the early summer of 1844, 
 
vi HOLIDAYS IN WESTMORLAND AND SCOTLAND 81 
 
 and in the final Schools obtained a second. He wrote 
 thus of the result to his sister at Houstoun 
 
 " I have got a second. I never calculated on more, 
 though it was just possible. I feel quite happy." 
 
 Again, to his father, 
 
 [Postmark, 24th May 1844.] 
 
 "OXFORD, Thursday. 
 
 " I am glad you are satisfied, though I can assure you 
 that I am not. All along, you will remember, I said a 
 second was my place ; and in saying I am not satisfied now 
 I do belie my former words ; for when I took all things 
 into consideration, I saw that, putting hopes and sanguine- 
 ness aside, it would not be prudent or safe to build on the 
 chance of more. Still I was told that I had a chance of a 
 First, and for this last year I have been working on that 
 chance ; for I suppose I could have got all I have got, with 
 a good deal less trouble. If you have seen the list, you 
 will see that there is a small first class and a larger second. 
 I have been told by one of the Examiners that I was one 
 of three who were the best in the second class ; and I have 
 heard further (though not from the Examiner) that there 
 was a doubt among the four Examiners at one time whether 
 they should make the list four or seven. Had they made 
 it the latter number I should have been there. One can- 
 not always trust these rumours, though I daresay there is 
 something in this. 
 
 However, I cannot wonder at the result, for I was 
 always shaky in my scholarship. I have done a good deal 
 towards it since I came up here, but not enough. Being 
 naturally inaccurate, these long gaps in my classical read- 
 ing were bad for me. In fact, I think now that the four 
 years I was at the Academy were the only ones I ever really 
 learned much in this way. I was as good a scholar at 
 fourteen, when I left the Academy, as when I came up 
 here. Had the scholarship been up to the mark, I believe 
 I knew enough history, and quite enough philosophy, for 
 
 G 
 
82 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 the Schools. However, there is no use running on with 
 ' ifs.' I should have liked a first, in a mercantile, point of 
 view. By a second I feel neither lowered nor raised, but just 
 exactly where I was. What you say about settling my 
 plans before coming down is just what I proposed doing 
 before hearing from you. This last term consists of eight 
 weeks, and as I put on my bachelor's gown on Saturday 
 (which cost me 12 by the bye), I had better keep my 
 term for Master's degree now. It is as well to do it 
 immediately, and besides I shall have time for arranging 
 things. 
 
 The fearful question, ' What next ? ' (which has long 
 been haunting me), the evil of the Schools being with- 
 drawn, has now come to stare me in the face, and must be 
 answered. 
 
 Two plans are open : one, to take orders as soon as I 
 decently can, and go down somewhere to the country as a 
 curate ; another, to try for a Fellowship. As to the former, 
 I must say I do not much like the thought of it. ... As to 
 Fellowships, they are easier talked of than got. All Souls' 
 I have quite ceased to think of. It and I are both too 
 poor to come together. Oriel then is my only chance. 
 Now firsts or seconds are all the same here. They try you 
 for themselves, and judge for themselves. Therefore, as far 
 as reputation goes, my class can do me no harm here. But 
 the same thing that told against me in the Schools will 
 do so at Oriel. They require a fair amount of scholarship, 
 more than at present I have to give. The query comes 
 to be, whether by working at scholarship till next Easter 
 I would have a chance of so far improving in this, as to 
 make it prudent to look forward to trying ? Scholarship is 
 .a thing that boys can get up better than men. You get 
 past the age for it. Nevertheless I feel quite ready to begin, 
 and set to, if I have any chance of making it pay. 
 
 I sometimes grieve that I have not worked at it before, 
 as here in all places it is necessary, and the want of it pre- 
 vents any other reading telling as it would do. However, 
 -at Oriel the philosophy I have read in Scotland would be 
 
vi HOLIDA YS IN WESTMORLAND AND SCOTLAND 83 
 
 of more use than in the Schools, though without the other 
 it would be of little use. At present I am consulting with 
 those here I can best depend on, whether, on the whole, Oriel 
 is the best thing I can think of, or whether it would be 
 advisable to give up the thought. If I do think of trying 
 I must not be idle this summer. If I do try I must see 
 what I can do for my own maintenance between October 
 and Easter. These, and other things, I shall plan as well 
 as I can, and let you know all I hear, in order to have 
 your advice and approval. I am very sorry I shall not be 
 able to go down to Hastings, till after term is over, as by 
 losing one day now I shall lose a term. Good-bye ! I shall 
 hope to have come to something definite before long. In the 
 meantime, if anything of my present suggestions does not ap- 
 pear right to you, I hope you will let me know. I fully agree 
 with your feelings about not trusting to interest. If possible, 
 I should like to steer quite clear of it. I have seen so little 
 good come of it. ... I look forward much to being home 
 once more. Your most affectionate son, J. C. S." 
 
 In the autumn of 1844 he paid another of his de- 
 lightful visits to Houstoun. In October of that year, we 
 find Norman Macleod writing from Dalkeith to John Mac- 
 intosh, at Geddes, thus 
 
 "... Well, I had such a day and night with Shairp. 
 I went to Houstoun. We talked and you know my powers 
 in that part of wordy drizzle we talked the moon down. 
 We talked through the garden, and along the road, and up 
 the avenue, and up the stair, and in the drawing-room, and 
 during music, and during dinner, and during night, and, 
 I believe, during sleep ; certainly during all next morn- 
 ing, and even when one hundred yards asunder he being 
 on the canal -bank, and I in the canal -boat. What a 
 dear, noble soul Shairp is ! I do love him. Would that 
 our Church had a few like him. We want broad-minded 
 meditative men. We want guides, we want reality, we 
 want souls who will do and act before God ; who would 
 have that disposition in building up the spiritual church, 
 
84 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 which the reverential Middle Age masons had, when elabor- 
 ately carving some graven imagery or quaint device, unseen 
 by man's eye, on the fretted roof of a cathedral, they 
 worked in God's house and before God." 1 
 
 From Houstoun Shairp proceeded with his father to 
 Berwickshire ; thence he went alone from Kelso to Flodden 
 Field, and on to Newcastle, whence he took train to Eugby, 
 on a visit to the new head-master, Dr. Tait, Arnold's suc- 
 cessor in the school. The following is his account of the 
 ride through Berwickshire, and the visit to Flodden, in a 
 letter to his sister Grace : 
 
 "KuGBY, Thursday, \lth October. 
 
 " MY DEAR GRACE . . . Here I am, safely harboured 
 in the house of the head master of Eugby. By the time 
 this reaches you my father will have returned. . . . 
 Even dreary Berwickshire looked half interesting. As we 
 'neared Kelso, father illustrated all the country by stories of 
 runs and rides, etc., long ago. When we got past Meller- 
 stain, to the top of the hill between it and Stitchell, he made 
 me look back on it (Mellerstain) with its wooded back- 
 ground of hill gradually rising behind it. I had no notion 
 there was any such view of it. There it was quite an ocean 
 of unbroken wood and immense trees, each tree looking like 
 a little wave when the sea is gently ruffled ; and then 
 they were all touched by the hues of autumn. Father and 
 I parted at Kelso ; thence I pursued my journey alone. 
 Though this road is much more level than the Jedburgh 
 one, I was glad I came. When I passed over Flodden 
 Field I could not help chiming to myself 
 
 Green Flodden, on thy blood-stained head 
 Descend no rain nor vernal dew. 
 
 There it is, a glorious battlefield if ever there was one. 
 On the right (i.e. to the west as you go south) rises a height 
 as high as Dechmond Hill. On this the Scotch were 
 drawn up. This is Flodden Hill. Three miles to the east 
 
 1 Life of Norman Macleod, vol. i. p. 219. 
 
vi HOLIDAYS IN WESTMORLAND AND SCOTLAND 85 
 
 stands Ford Castle upon the Till. These are the two 
 prominent features. . Flodden Hill looks down towards 
 Ford, and Ford looks defiance back on Flodden. All be- 
 tween is plain. The English advanced from Ford. The 
 Scots were too impatient to meet their attack, and rushed 
 down to meet them in the plain. Where the road passes 
 over was the very thickest of the onslaught. On that spot, 
 and for miles round, lie ' The Flowers of the Forest ' 
 
 The prime of our land are a' cauld i' the clay. 
 
 Two miles to the south Garvan Bell and something 
 
 Thor, the most eastern peaks of Cheviot, look down on the 
 Field. Flodden itself is now all cultivated, and divided into 
 fields. We wound along the eastern base of the Cheviots. 
 They look very interesting. I should like to have a wander 
 among them some day. I dined at the ' Tankerville Arms,' 
 near Wooler, got to Newcastle about 8.30. . . . Left by 
 rail at 10.45, and after a frosty night reached Rugby at 
 9.30 A.M.; got to bed, and at 1.30 came to Dr. Tait's in 
 time for luncheon ; then had a short drive with him and 
 Mrs. Tait, and a married sister of his, who is here. For 
 half the week he had only one hour in the day to himself 
 for exercise. The other three days are half-holidays, and 
 then he is done teaching by 12, but has lots to do besides. 
 Certainly this is a place of ' unhasting, unresting diligence,' 
 as Arnold's Life calls it. Nothing but good hard work 
 going, such as only one man out of ten could stand. But 
 then, to a man who is able and active, there are few other 
 places where he could find himself so thoroughly useful. 
 Everything goes on like clockwork. Every moment of the day 
 seems precious. Tait is very kind, and his wife seems a very 
 nice person. Yesterday when I arrived I found a note from, 
 Marriott's sister, saying he could not receive me, owing to 
 another attack of illness. To-day at one I am going to 
 walk over to Cottesbach with J. Douglas to ask for him. 
 To-morrow I hope to go to Oxford, where I shall be very 
 
 glad to see Henry Douglas again. Tell A and B , 
 
 if they can get hold of the Quarterly, to read in it an article 
 
86 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 on Stanley's Life of Arnold. It is by Lake, an old Fellow 
 and Tutor of Balliol, and an old pupil and favourite of 
 Arnold's. I hope Tom is shooting often this fine weather. 
 Tell me how much he gets, and where he goes ; and send 
 a regular bulletin of Pincher's health. Your affectionate 
 brother, J. C. SHAIKP." 
 
 Eeturning to Oxford from Eugby, he was busy for some 
 time in preparing for a competitive examination for one of 
 the Fellowships at Oriel College. 
 
 The following letters to his father and sister show his 
 feelings about this Fellowship, both before and after the 
 examination. The dignified way in which he announced 
 the result and the magnanimity displayed in the letter of 
 9th April 1845, are noteworthy: 
 
 [Postmark, 1 8th March 1845.] 
 
 " OXFOED, Sunday. 
 
 " MY DEAREST FATHER There are just five days for me 
 to work, and then comes the trial. I have tried to work 
 steadily. The candidates are several of them very tougli and 
 hard to beat Park, Arnold, Moberly. You will see one, of 
 them at least, if not more, chosen. There may be others 
 whom I know not of. ... It is snowing now. It cannot 
 blow more drearily over Shotts Moor than it does here. 
 Almost all the men have gone down." 
 
 [Postmark, 2Ist March.] 
 
 " . . . I do not think there is any bread for my mouth 
 here. There is some difficulty about my standing at Oriel. 
 I had an interview with the Provost, and he told me they 
 were only allowed to have a certain number born out of 
 England ; and he was not sure but they had that number 
 among their present Fellows. However, he is to have the 
 statutes examined by a lawyer, and let me know. . . . Don't 
 be troubled about this hitch, for I am not." 
 
vi HOLIDAYS IN WESTMORLAND AND SCOTLAND 87 
 
 [Postmark, 9th April 1845.] 
 
 "OXFORD, Friday. 
 
 "My DEAR FATHER Well, I have not got it. If I 
 could think that all you at home would not be very much 
 disappointed, I would easily make up my mind to it. The 
 thing that makes me chiefly sorry to have failed is that, of 
 course, I must soon leave Oxford, where I should have liked 
 well to have stayed a little longer. I do not think there 
 will soon be another Fellowship open to me; and, though 
 there was, I do not wish to stand again. The two who got 
 in, out of the ten who stood, are Arnold of our College, and 
 Coleridge, a brother of a friend of mine. It is rather singu- 
 lar these two names coming together. Their fathers were 
 such friends. We had four hard days, working from ten to 
 five without stop. Two days we were taken in among all 
 the Fellows, and had to construe Greek and Latin we had 
 never seen before. . . . Your most affectionate son, 
 
 J. C. SHAIRP. 
 
 Many thanks for the description of the Eun. J. C. S." 
 
 The autumn of 1845 was spent as the autumns usually 
 were in the North, and here the concluding portion of 
 Shairp's reminiscences of Clough finds its natural place : 
 
 "It must have been in autumn of 1845 that Clough and I first 
 met in Scotland. One visit there to Walrond's family at Calder Park 
 I especially remember. On a fine morning, early in September, we 
 started from Calder Park to drive to the Falls of Clyde. We were to 
 spend the day at Milton Lockhart, and go on to Lanark in the evening. 
 Besides Walrond and Clough, there were T. Arnold, E. Arnold, and 
 myself. It was one of the loveliest September mornings that ever 
 shone, and the drive lay through one of the most lovely regions in 
 south Scotland, known as ' the Trough of Clyde.' The sky was 
 bright blue, fleeced with whitest clouds. From Hamilton to Milton 
 Lockhart, about ten miles, the road keeps down in the hollow of the 
 trough, near the water, the banks covered with orchards, full of heavy- 
 laden apple and other fruit trees, bending down till they touched the 
 yellow corn that grew among them. There is a succession of fine 
 country houses, with lawns that slope towards lime-trees that bend 
 down over the river. It was the first time any of us but Walrond 
 had been that way ; and in such a drive, under such a sky, you may 
 
88 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 believe we were happy enough. We reached Milton Lockhart, a 
 beautiful place, built on a high grassy headland, beneath and round 
 which winds the Clyde. Sir Walter Scott, I believe, chose the site, 
 and none could be more beautifully chosen. It looks both ways up 
 and down the lovely vale. 
 
 As we drove up, near ten o'clock, we found the late Mr. J. G. 
 Lockhart (Scott's biographer) walking on the green terrace that looks 
 over the river. The laird himself being from home, his brother was 
 our host. Soon after we arrived, his daughter, then very young, 
 afterwards Mrs. Hope Scott, came out on the terrace to say that break- 
 fast was ready. After breakfast she sang, with great spirit and sweet- 
 ness, several of her grandfather's songs, copied into her mother's books 
 by herself, when they were still newly composed. After listening to 
 these for some time, her brother, Walter Scott Lockhart, then a youth 
 of nineteen or so, and with a great likeness to the portraits of Sir 
 Walter Scott when a young man, was our guide to an old castle, situ- 
 ated on a bank of one of the small glens that came down to the Clyde 
 from the west. It was the original of Scott's Tillietudlem in Old 
 Mortality. A beautiful walk thither ; the castle large, roofless, and 
 green with herbage and leafage. We stayed some time, roaming over 
 the green deserted place, then returned to a lunch, which was our 
 dinner ; more songs, and then drove off late in the afternoon to the 
 Falls of the Clyde and Lanark for the night. It was a pleasant day. 
 Clough enjoyed it much in his own quiet way quietly, yet so humanly 
 interested in all he met. Many a joke he used to make about that 
 day afterwards. Not he only, but all our entertainers of that day, 
 Mr. J. G. Lockhart, his son and daughter, are now gone." 
 
 The Eev. Mr. Eobertson of Whittinghame says, that in 
 those conversations at St. Andrews in later years, which 
 went back to his Oxford friends, " the name that most 
 affected him was dough's. He used never to speak of him 
 without special reverence." 
 
 Amongst Principal Shairp's papers was found an elegiac 
 poem on his friend, which he had evidently meant either to 
 recast, or not to publish. It is fragmentary, and it is there- 
 fore inexpedient to print the whole of it as it now stands. 
 It is too intime for that, and the appreciative must read 
 between the lines of the following stanzas, which are signi- 
 ficant, and very characteristic. The whole poem is perhaps 
 too analytical and subjective to show the writer at his best ; * 
 
 1 Compare Professor Palgrave's remarks in his Preface to Shairp's Poem, 
 Glen Desscray, etc. 
 
vi HOLIDA YS IN WESTMORLAND AND SCOTLAND 89 
 
 but it enters, with great truth and intensity of feeling, in- 
 to the struggles through which Clough passed, especially 
 in the stanzas omitted^ when his faith was "from its old 
 centre hurled." 
 
 No Thyrsis them, for old Idyllic lays, 
 
 But a broad-browed, deep-souled, much suffering man, 
 Within whose veins, thrilled by these latter days, 
 
 The ruddy lifeblood ran. 
 
 Warm throbbing from a heart as hero's brave, 
 
 Yet sensitive and tender as a child's ; 
 Stirred with, all human passion glad or grave, 
 
 By shores and mountain wilds. 
 
 A poet wanderer, loving lone to go 
 
 Where long Glenmaly roars with all her pines ; 
 
 Or where Ben Nevis, touched with early snow, 
 Huge o'er his Brethren shines. 
 
 Lochaber, Moidart, Morar, stern delight 
 
 From these he drank, his soul new power received ; 
 
 Stood wrapt, where the Atlantic's swinging might 
 O'er Ardnamurchan heaved. 
 
 Ah ! had he walked aloof in that cool air, 
 
 Braced all his boyhood time, till heart and brain 
 
 Were fully tempered, and annealed to bear 
 Life at its tensest strain. 
 
 Too soon, too soon, the place of early trust 
 
 Constrained to leave, down Thought's strong current whirled, 
 And face to face alone too rudely thrust 
 
 With problem of the world. 
 
 And Voices then the loudest England knew 
 In his distracted ear were thundering. Some 
 
 " Push boldly forward " ; some " lo ! here the haven true, 
 Here rest, or be undone." 
 
 From these he turned ; o'ermastered by the stress 
 
 Of yearning for the myriads of his kind, 
 Who, buried in the city's wilderness, 
 
 Unknown, uncared for, pined. 
 
 Their privilege toil, ignorance, disease, 
 
 To live unhappy and untended die 
 While brother men in gilded pageantries 
 
 Of pomp and wealth went by. 
 
90 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 And of the poor no knowledge had, nor care, 
 
 Nor once stooped from their heights to hear what groans 
 
 The sufferers heaved, no more than if they were 
 Beasts, or insensate stones. 
 
 While they who taught, mid strife of tongues profane, 
 Hurled holy names for wrangle and dispute, 
 
 But drew therefrom no balm to heal the bane 
 That gnawed life's inmost root. 
 
 These things he saw, and felt, as few can feel, 
 
 Nor wotting God's long patience with His world, 
 
 Too deeply questioned, till faith 'gan to reel, 
 From its old centre hurled. 
 
 Soul-sick, he cried, " how long " ! "0 heaven, how long, 
 Shall rich men surfeit the poor die for need ? " 
 
 Still unabashed the kingdom stands of wrong. 
 Is then Christ risen indeed ? 
 
 Ah, when that Day ! we know not where or how, 
 
 Of restitution on the world shall break, 
 friend, shall any gladder soul than thou 
 
 From the long sleep awake ? 
 
 To find thy dark misgivings all at rest, 
 
 All thy deep yearnings at the fountain stilled, 
 
 To see what sage and prophet dimly guessed, 
 Beyond all hope fulfilled. 
 
 Meantime, in peace repose those fevered brows, 
 Where Arno's waters round fair Florence lave, 
 
 And shadows, flung from the grey olive boughs, 
 Chequer thy quiet grave. 
 
 Eeturning to Oxford, after this summer in the North, 
 Shairp made some new friends. In the Michaelmas term 
 of 1845, Coleridge Patteson, afterwards missionary-bishop of 
 Melanesia, came up from Eton to reside at Balliol. He had the 
 same experience of failure that Shairp had recently had, though 
 his was only the competition for an entrance scholarship at 
 Balliol ; he, and Hornby, the future head-master of Eton, 
 were bracketed fifth. Patteson soon made friends with 
 the best men in Balliol Palmer, Kid dell, etc. and Shairp 
 wrote thus of him 
 
vi HOLIDAYS IN WESTMORLAND AND SCOTLAND 91 
 
 ' Patteson, as he was at Oxford, comes back to me, as 
 the representative of the very best kind of Etonian, with 
 much good that he had got from Eton, and with something 
 better, not to be got at Eton, or any other school. He had 
 those pleasant manners, and that perfect ease in dealing 
 with men, and with the world, which are the inheritance of 
 Eton, without the least tincture of worldliness. I remember 
 well the look he then had, his countenance massive for one 
 so young, with good sense and good feeling in fact, full 
 of character. For it was character more than special 
 abilities that marked him out from others, and made him 
 wherever he was whether in cricket, in which he excelled, or 
 in graver things a centre round which others gathered. 
 The impression he left on me was of quiet, gentle strength, 
 and entire purity, a heart that loved all things true, and 
 honest, and pure, and that could always be found on the 
 side of these. We did not know, probably he did not know 
 himself, the fire of devotion that lay within him, but that 
 was soon to kindle and make him what he afterwards 
 became." 1 
 
 A letter from Bishop Patteson to Shairp, on his Essays, 
 the last the Bishop wrote will be found in a subsequent 
 chapter. 
 
 A few extracts from one of his note-books, written during 
 the years 1843-46, will show, better than any letters or com- 
 mentary can do it, the direction which Shairp's thoughts 
 were now taking, both towards Poetry and Philosophy. They 
 show how his Oxford training bore fruit, and confirmed the 
 original bent of his mind, toward those subjects in which he 
 afterwards did his best literary work. 
 
 The first is dated 
 
 " Thursday Eve, 28th November 1844. 
 
 " Whenever we come face to face with truth then poetry 
 begins. To see any truth clearly with our own eyes, to 
 make it our own, inwardly awakens a feeling akin to the 
 
 1 Life of John Coleridge Patteson, vol. i. p. 36. 
 
92 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 poetic one. Whoever, whether by reading or by his own think- 
 ing, has had a truth flashed suddenly upon him, must have 
 felt this. The keen feeling, the evpij/ca which follows 
 on such clear seeing of a truth when we see it for our- 
 selves, not HEAR it only, when all darkening media are 
 swept away, and the bare truth and the bare soul stand 
 fronting each other this keen feeling is poetical; its 
 utterances would be poetry. What does this point to ? It 
 is a fact of consciousness. How is it connected with the 
 true nature of poetry ? " 
 
 From its relation to the foregoing entry, a few sentences 
 written at a much later date (twenty-one years afterwards), 
 may follow it, rather than be reserved for a subsequent 
 chapter : 
 
 "ST. ANDREWS, 1st April 1865. 
 
 "Poetry can never cease, while the outward world, with 
 all its movements, continues fresh and strong, and the 
 human spirit is alive to receive it. The meeting of these 
 two must strike out from age to age some new music. 
 Neither of them are fixed and dead, but both are living 
 entities, and the vibration which one gives out to the stroke 
 of the other is always poetry. Neither is there any fear 
 that it should prove the continual recurrence of the same 
 note. The two forms are not fixed and stereotyped in their 
 relations to each other, but these two change from age to 
 age. Nay, the vibration called forth is not the same in 
 any two human spirits in the same age. Not even is it 
 the same, from year to year and day to day, in any one 
 spirit. I have just come in from a walk in the twilight 
 along the scores. After a charming spring day there was 
 an intensely blue evening sky, and in it the young moon, 
 not yet half full, and the evening star larger than usual, 
 and with the same serene angel light, and a few other stars 
 coming in a moment from the infinite, made me feel as I 
 never felt before. How young, and how infinitely various 
 in its influences, felt the sky, and the sea, and the earth 
 to-night ! To me, there was something in them to-night, not 
 felt before ; and there will be something new, something I 
 
vi HOLIDAYS IN WESTMORLAND AND SCOTLAND 93 
 
 have never felt in them, to countless souls of men, ages after 
 I am gone." 
 
 Eeturning to the Oxford Journal 
 
 "3d July 1845. 
 
 " All earnest thought has been labouring towards one 
 common end, viz. to find some utterance, if possible, in the 
 conscious understanding, for the truth which lies unuttered 
 in the silent and unconscious region of the soul. For even 
 if our own thoughts are ever so relative, if, by the necessity 
 of the case, as soon as anything is moulded into a distinct 
 conception it has ceased to be absolute, and become relative 
 truth, still there is an equal necessity that we should think 
 of an absolute as existing somewhere. It may be external 
 to us or it may be within us somewhere it must be. 
 Else our thoughts are a contradiction. For instance, the 
 conception of right, unless it has some existence independent 
 of all our thoughts about it, is an absurdity. If nothing 
 else that we think of does so, certainly our moral conscious- 
 ness refers us to some absolute truth, independent of our- 
 selves. Apart from this moral consciousness I doubt 
 whether anything else would help us towards the knowledge 
 of God. For it might be demonstrated by the most incon- 
 testible logic that there must be a first cause, that this 
 order of things proves an Orderer. Yet even if these 
 did necessarily prove a Personal God in our conceptions of 
 things (which is at least doubtful), still there arises the 
 feeling from within, all this is very true of our conceptions, 
 but then there is the boundless, mysterious Universe. Our 
 conceptions are no measure of this, we cannot argue from 
 things as they seem to us to the absolute nature of things 
 in themselves. 
 
 But conscience points to absolute truth with a directness 
 which nothing else does. The command the ' Thou shalt ' 
 with which it speaks sends us at once out of ourselves. 
 That which is behind it, and in virtue of which it speaks, 
 must be the truth of the universe. Even though in itself 
 phenomenal, it is a phenomenon which comes straight from 
 
94 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 the absolute. It is the golden thread which links man's 
 being with the harmony of things the absolute in man. 
 Still it seems doubtful whether even from this ground man 
 could ever rise up to know God. . . . That which is 
 behind it is unutterable such as no language, no thought 
 can compass. Or if forced to speak and give it a distinct 
 form, would one not in all probability fall back on ' pan- 
 theism,' or a dreary ' destiny/ or an ' unalterable nature of 
 things,' in the yoke of which it was fast bound. I doubt 
 whether conscience unenlightened could ever arrive at the 
 Divine Personality and Will. A rule of life it is without 
 being a guide to true knowledge. Hence Aristotle wrote a 
 book of morals (wonderfully perfect) without even directly 
 alluding to God's Being or the existence of conscience. It 
 told him what was right, without saying anything about 
 itself, much less about him whom it represents. Plato's 
 knowledge of God (Theaet. chap, xxv.) is wonderful, yet was 
 it not the remnant of a tradition, caught up and purified by 
 his pure soul, or perhaps a direct inward inspiration ? . . . 
 
 It seems as if the whole ancient world, when rightly 
 understood, uttered one cry, ' Shew us the Father.' This 
 inability to find out God was a veil spread over the face of 
 all nations. Man was not able to retain the knowledge of 
 God ; so God lowered himself to meet the needs of man. 
 Here is one great end of the Incarnation. Besides all the 
 manifold other benefits of it we are no longer left in uncer- 
 tainty as to God's nature. No longer fall back in despair 
 from an inability to grasp his infinity. He has become 
 finite (if we may say so), so that the least gifted mind, if it 
 loves truth and goodness, may grasp the nature of God, for 
 that nature is revealed to us in Christ." 
 
 Again 
 
 " Mythology and Natural Religion. 
 
 "2d March 1846. 
 
 " It is probable that the earlier mythologies had a moral 
 meaning, and sprung from a real base of inward truth. 
 
vi HOLIDA YS IN WESTMORLAND AND SCOTLAND 95 
 
 Myths were the shape which the truths of man's moral being 
 took, when projected outward, and mingled with the facts of 
 a nation's origin and early history. In time the myths got 
 detached from this their moral ground, ceased to be the ex- 
 pressions of man's inward convictions, and so grew meaning- 
 less and false. Here we see a process of truth passing out- 
 ward, till it ceases to be true. 
 
 In religion we find just the opposite tendency. The 
 facts of religion are always tending to realise themselves 
 inwardly, and become living ideas. Accordingly, in time 
 men begin to separate the inward from the outward, to 
 analyse all that part of Christianity which has ceased to be 
 mere fact, and has become at once fact and idea, and to 
 call it Natural Keligion, as if man could have got at these 
 truths for himself. Then comes another process. Having 
 organised into a system all of Christianity that has got a 
 moral meaning, they call it Natural Eeligion, and begin to 
 make an opposition between it, and that part of Christianity 
 which has never yet passed inward between man's moral 
 convictions which have been first called out and purified by 
 Christianity, and the Christianity that has so purified them. 
 And then comes the problem of reconciling these two. 
 Having first chosen to make the chasm, we next set our- 
 selves to the task of bridging over it. 
 
 What seems to favour this view of things is that the 
 so-called Natural Eeligion has never yet been found extant 
 as a fact, but where Christianity has gone before. My- 
 thology is the fact ; you nowhere find Natural Eeligion." 
 
 Again 
 
 " Systems of Philosophy. 
 
 "September 1846. 
 
 " What end have the innumerable Systems served ? Age 
 after age has produced its system, or its rival systems, and 
 the next age has swept these away, and replaced them with ones 
 of its own. Have they then been all false and useless, mere 
 cobwebs ? No, say some. They have in their day served as 
 
96 JOHN CAMPBELL SHA1RP CHAP. 
 
 scaffolding for other work for men's thoughts on theology, 
 history for men's practice. . . . Having done this, they 
 have done their work, and disappeared. This is hardly satis- 
 factory. It does not seem reasonable to think that the 
 greatest intellects of each age should have toiled for so 
 little. . . . 
 
 Eclecticism would say that there are certain true 
 points in every system; seize these, reject the others, 
 and put these true points together, and you will have the 
 truth. . . . 
 
 There is still another view, and it is this : Each 
 philosophy has a truth in it, not a truth in its peculiar 
 doctrines, but a truth relative to its age. Therefore the 
 truth of each philosophy lay where its founder least dreamt. 
 They retired from the world, sought to shake themselves 
 free from all the influences of their time, and to think out 
 something concerning the absolute nature of things, wholly 
 irrespective of their own particular age, which would hold 
 true for all ages and all men. But this thought, to get into 
 a region where their time had no influence, was a delusion. 
 Each thinker, however little he dreamt it, is and must be 
 influenced by all the thinkers who have thought before him, 
 by all the circumstances that have gone before him, and are 
 now around him. No man can get out of these. Therefore 
 the true philosophy will no longer strive to rear itself inde- 
 pendently of all previous philosophies. Men are beginning 
 to distrust the possibility of getting at one absolute philo- 
 sophy. These are signs of the coming of a new method. 
 Each of the past philosophies seems to be one movement or 
 step in the great order of thought. This order has gone on, 
 and evolved itself while men were overthrowing each other's 
 systems, and this overthrowing of , systems is part of the 
 order. Each age had some particular quality or qualities of 
 mind, of which philosophy is the exponent. The philosophy 
 is the age systematised and put into its intellectual shape. 
 Therefore a searching criticism of all 'past philosophies is 
 the new method, and this will evolve the particular qualities 
 of mind which each philosophy has uttered, and will (it may 
 
vi HOLIDA YS IN WESTMORLAND AND SCOTLAND 97 
 
 be) ascertain and fix the whole order of thought, which com- 
 prehend these qualities of mind as its portion. 
 
 But is not this new method of ascertaining the moment 
 of thought, and so getting a true philosophy, itself a product 
 of its age, one of the moments ? Will not the next age 
 number their method too with the things which have been, 
 and assign it a truth only relatively to its own age ? " 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 MASTERSHIP AT RUGBY; AUTUMNS IN THE HIGHLANDS, AND 
 ELSEWHERE 
 
 IN the autumn of 1846 when twenty-seven years of age 
 Shairp received an invitation from his friend and former 
 tutor at Balliol, Dr. Tait, then head-master at Rugby, to 
 work along with him in that school. He accepted it, and 
 there he spent the next eleven years of his life. He had, 
 for friends and colleagues in the school, A. Benson, now 
 Archbishop of Canterbury ; G. G. Bradley, the present Dean 
 of Westminster ; Bonamy Price, the late Professor of Political 
 Economy at Oxford ; Theodore Walrond, afterwards Secretary 
 to the Civil Service Commission, and in later years himself 
 a Commissioner ; Dr. Goulburn, now Dean of Norwich, and 
 others ; and amongst his pupils were Dr. Jex-Blake, the late 
 head-master ; Sir Horace Davey, Vernon and Godfrey Lush- 
 ington, Mr. Edward Scott, Henry and James Rhoades, Mr. 
 Kitchener of Newcastle, Mr. Thomson, keeper of the MSS. in 
 the British Museum, etc. Memorial sketches by some of 
 these friends and pupils will be found in Chapter VIII. 
 
 It was a time of eager interest to him in many ways ; 
 but, while he enjoyed the work, the schoolmaster's was not 
 his special vocation. Besides, his strong Scottish sympathy 
 led him to prefer a sphere of labour in his native land ; 
 and during his residence at Rugby his national enthusiasm 
 deepened. It comes out in characteristic fashion in the follow- 
 ing passage in an undated letter to a friend in Edinburgh. He 
 was urging his friend to keep his eye on The North British 
 Review "it any opportunity offers of getting it into your hands. 
 
CHAP, vii MASTERSHIP AT RUGBY 99 
 
 There is one purpose which it might serve. Without wish- 
 ing it to take up ' the Scottish grievance/ it might help to 
 strengthen whatever is best in Scottish National Life. In 
 a wise and temperate way it might advocate Scottish inter- 
 ests even more than it has done. They much require some 
 wise advocacy, both in Religion and Politics. Anglicised 
 Scotchmen are generally poor creatures ; and an Anglicised 
 Scotland will be a contemptible country." 
 
 When Theodore Walrond gave up his mastership in 
 1857, Shairp succeeded to his boarding-house at Rugby, 
 and Walrond remained to the last one of his closest friends. 
 
 Returning to Mr. Sellar's account of this period of 
 Shairp's life, we find it thus described 
 
 " His difficulties as to a profession were settled by his 
 receiving an invitation from Dr. Tait then head-master of 
 Rugby, who had been senior tutor of Balliol when Shairp 
 entered, and as having himself been a Snell Exhibitioner, 
 and probably also a family friend, had from the first taken 
 a great interest in him to accept a mastership in the school. 
 Of his work in the school, and of his personal influence on 
 his pupils, you will no doubt hear from some of his surviv- 
 ing colleagues, and from some younger men, who received 
 from him their first literary and intellectual impulse. I 
 saw a good deal of him in those days, and was often at 
 Rugby once for several weeks at a time sometimes 
 as his guest, and sometimes as the guest of his friend 
 and colleague, Walrond. The routine of work, while making 
 him less desultory, did not seem to me to quench to any 
 degree the ardour of his enthusiasm either for poetry or 
 speculative discussion. He was then, as he always continued 
 to be, an animated and excellent talker, and I can remember 
 some of his encounters with one who only the other day 
 was still a vigorous veteran of controversy, Mr. Bonamy 
 Price, one in particular, at the house of the latter, on 
 some point of doctrinal theology, which almost assumed 
 
100 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 the proportions of an old disputation. Shairp took the 
 first innings and a long and admirable innings he played. 
 The match, however, was drawn ; for Shairp and one or 
 two of those present had fallen asleep long before his 
 keen and clear-headed opponent had made up his score. 
 He had great pleasure in his intercourse with his more 
 advanced pupils ; but he probably grew a little weary of 
 the drudgery of teaching boys in one of the lower forms. 
 He got fully to appreciate the good of the English public 
 school system the friendships which were formed by it ; 
 the manliness of character, the spirit of honour, and the 
 frankness of manner conspicuous in the better type of 
 public school men. He thought, however, that it had a 
 tendency to dwarf originality. It is true that a public 
 school prepares men to live in and act upon the world, 
 rather than to live apart from it and to act upon it 
 from a distance as Wordsworth or Carlyle did. . . . But 
 Shairp would have admitted, I think, that for one genius 
 lost by the training of a public school, a hundred clever lads 
 were improved by having the conceit or eccentricity thereby 
 knocked out of them. It was his appreciation of its 
 good influence on character and manners that made him 
 anxious to realise, and for a time successful in realising, 
 something of the same influence in the College Hall of St. 
 Andrews." 
 
 Shairp's own account of his early life at Rugby is con- 
 tained in letters to the Houstoun circle. To his sister he 
 wrote thus, a month after his arrival 
 
 [Postmark, 2d November 1846.] 
 
 " EUGBY. 
 
 "MY DEAR BINNY This is Sunday evening. . . . This 
 week has been a tolerably busy one, but not more so than I 
 shall have usually. Wednesday and Friday are fagging enough. 
 On these days I am employed from ten to twelve hours. 
 The work in the school with my ' Form ' I like best. Besides 
 the Latin and Greek I teach them (which is of the most ele- 
 
vii MASTERSHIP AT RUGBY 101 
 
 mentary kind), I have History; and once a week I read French 
 with them. Besides my Form, I have nearly thirty private 
 pupils, who come to me three times a week, a little more 
 advanced. What bothers me most is about 1 6 ' copies/ one 
 way or another, which I have to look over, and most of them 
 to correct every week. ... I have dined out once or twice. 
 You may have heard mention of a Mr. Price. He is second 
 master, was here all the time with Arnold, and is certainly 
 a remarkable man, as his wife is a woman. They are a 
 sort of king and queen of Rugby. He is a great politician 
 (Liberal of course), and a great discourser on all subjects, 
 floods of talk, and indomitable energy. The same ap- 
 plies to his wife, with the addition that she has been, 
 and is, a very handsome woman. She is a cousin 
 of Macaulay's. The man and wife keep the whole dis- 
 trict a-stirring. They both ride, and scour the country at 
 full gallop altogether a 'remarkable pair/ one might say. 
 ... I have had two or three pleasant rides. Bradley is my 
 mainstay for companionship, as most of the others are 
 married. He is about my own age, and of the same college 
 standing ; and many of the people in Oxford we know in 
 common, and he is a very good master and amiable fellow. 
 . . . All the people here are Liberals. A Tory or Con- 
 servative does not exist ; but then they differ each in the 
 kind, degree, and form of his Liberality. . . . Good-night, 
 and joy be wi' you a.' Your very affectionate brother, 
 
 J. C. SHAIRP." 
 
 His chief amusement at Eugby, as in earlier days at 
 Houstoun, was that of hunting, a luxury in which, however, 
 he seldom indulged. He had no special relish for any 
 other kind of field sport. He has described the delights of 
 hunting and of curling in two remarkable lyrics ; but he 
 became increasingly indifferent both to shooting and fishing. 
 The only sport which he told me he regretted in later years 
 he had not become proficient in when young, was golf. Living 
 so long in St. Andrews where he had the best opportunity 
 of seeing the effect of this noble game on mind, body and 
 
102 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 character, and of practising the art he used to confess that 
 he had missed something by not having learned it. His 
 appreciation of the hunting-field, however, led him to write 
 the following lyric, which is perhaps the finest poem on hunt- 
 ing in the English language. It is certainly superior to any- 
 thing that Somerville, or Cowper, or Kingsley have given us, 
 and it will recall his former poem on Bannockburn : 
 
 THE RUN 
 
 Hark hollo ! brave hearts ! 
 
 'Twas the hounds I heard ; 
 With the sound of their going 
 
 All the land is stirred. 
 They have made every peasant 
 
 From work stand still, 
 With gazers they've crowned 
 
 Every crag and hill. 
 
 And the ploughman cried loud, 
 
 By my team I stood, 
 And heard them crashing 
 
 Yon old fir-wood. 
 Down yon ash-tree river-banks, 
 
 Where the sunbeams slant and fall, 
 Flashed the dappled hounds, 
 
 Making the dens musical. 
 For sweeter they be, 
 
 Than any chime of bells, 
 The melodies that linger 
 
 All year in yon dells, 
 Till the hounds come by and awake them. 
 
 And the pedlar answered, 
 
 From beneath his load, 
 At noon they went streaming 
 
 Right o'er rny road 
 From the farmsteads the lasses 
 
 Rushed out to see 
 How they skimmed like swallows, 
 
 Over plough and lea. 
 As they went to the hills 
 
 What a head they bare ! 
 Like snow-drift scudding 
 
 On the stormy air, 
 And few were the steeds could o'ertake them. 
 
vii AUTUMN IN THE HIGHLANDS 103 
 
 Forward waved the shepherd, 
 
 They are west away, 
 On the moorlands startling 
 
 The plover grey. 
 Ever on as they sped, 
 
 More mute they grew, 
 And the riders waxed fewer, 
 
 And yet more few, 
 Till only one hunter attended. 
 
 And the widow, as she sat 
 
 On her lone cottage floor, 
 Heard their cry thro' the dark 
 
 On the midnight moor ; 
 And at morn came the worn hounds 
 
 Home, one by one, 
 And the huntsmen knew 
 
 That the chase was done, 
 Never knew how nor where it ended. 
 
 During the autumn of 1847 Sliairp took an excursion 
 on foot, with some friends from Houstoun, to the central and 
 north-western Highlands of Scotland. They went by Eannoch 
 and Loch Ericht to Dalwhinnie ; thence northwards by Corry- 
 arrick to Fort Augustus ; and on to Drumnadrochit, on Loch 
 Ness. So far as the party of friends was concerned, this was 
 the most interesting of his many Highland excursions on foot ; 
 and the separate records of it by several of the friends are suffi- 
 ciently graphic, and supplementary each to each, to warrant 
 their publication, along with Shairp's own letters to Houstoun. 
 
 From Drumnadrochit he wrote to his sister 
 
 " DRUMNADROCHIT, Sunday. 
 
 " We reached this last night, or rather this morning, at 
 three o'clock. ... On Thursday we split, four to the east 
 end of Loch Eannoch for the night, the other two (to wit, 
 Tom Arnold and I) to the west end. Next day the four 
 went along Loch Garry to Dalwhinnie, we two up Loch 
 Erichtside, a long lonely loch, winding under Ben Alder, 
 quite a grand solitude. We passed only two houses all 
 the day, and these two mere bothies of Lord Abercorn's 
 
104 JOHN CAMPBELL SHA1RP CHAP. 
 
 foresters. Loch Ericht is the southern boundary of his 
 forest. At one of these, about six miles from the loch head, 
 we slept, after a long but very interesting walk. It is a 
 most unvisited region. The tourists never touch it ; even 
 men who had lived all their lives on Eannochside knew little 
 of it. On Ben Alder side we saw the cave where Charlie 
 lay hid for the last three weeks, with Lochiel and Cluny 
 Macpherson, just before he left Scotland for good. Nothing 
 interests me more than these haunts of Charlie's. Clough 
 says that it is only a few young ladies and boys and old 
 women who care about the Prince himself ; and the rest infer 
 that I, not being either of the first two, must be one of the 
 third. Yesterday was a long and grand day for four of us. 
 A car from Dalwhinnie to Garvemore, near Speyhead ; 
 then on foot, over Corryarrick. From its ridge a view of 
 every mountain -head from Moray Firth to the Peaks of 
 Skye nothing I ever saw like it. We may live for years 
 ere we see such another. From Fort Augustus we started 
 about half-past nine, and reached this about half-past two in 
 the morning. We go for Skye to-morrow, and are at Fort 
 William we hope by Saturday, and at Houstoun probably 
 by Tuesday. . . ." 
 
 With this may be compared the lines he contributed to 
 Good Words, in August 1874, called The Wilderness also 
 named by himself Loch Erichtside where he writes of the 
 
 . . . Desert dun 
 
 That heaves and rolls endlessly north away 
 By Corryarrick and the springs of Spey, 
 The grand old country of the Chattan clan. * 
 
 Mr. Thomas Arnold gives a vivid account of this excursion. 
 
 " 2 BRADMORE ROAD, 
 "OXFORD, 5th September 1887. 
 
 " I remember that walk by Loch Erichtside very well. 
 We were a pretty large party I daresay it was six when 
 we set out from Calder Park, the Walrond's place near 
 Glasgow; those composing it were Shairp, Theodore Wal- 
 
 1 See Glen Desseray, and other Poems, p. 140. 
 
vii AUTUMN IN THE HIGHLANDS 105 
 
 rond, two cousins of Shairp's, the Scotts (one of them is 
 now Archdeacon of Dublin and Wicklow, and lives at 
 Bray), myself, and I think Lloyd, son of a former bishop of 
 Oxford ; but of this I am not quite certain. We all kept 
 together as far as Loch Kannoch, heavy rain having made 
 us wet through, in crossing the fell from Lochearnhead. I 
 think we slept at a little inn somewhere upon Loch 
 Eannoch, but I have no recollection of the house. Next 
 day some one made out that there was a path along the 
 western shore of Loch Ericht, by which one could go to 
 Dalwhinnie inn. Shairp and I liked the idea of this ; the 
 others did not I forget why ; however it was arranged that 
 they should go the longer way, by Kinloch Eannoch, 
 I suppose, and Dalnacardoch, and meet us at Dalwhinnie 
 that same evening. Shairp and I started. We found it 
 rough and tedious walking through the heather for the first 
 five miles or more, till we reached the foot of Loch Ericht. 
 Then we got upon a well-marked path, but with bends and 
 ups and downs innumerable ; and though we made what 
 haste we could, we saw that nightfall would come on 
 before we could reach Dalwhinnie. The shores of the lake 
 left upon us the impression of a solitude more utter than 
 we should have thought possible within 100 miles of 
 Glasgow. It was Lord Abercorn's deer forest, we had 
 heard ; not a sheep nor a steer was to be seen ; nor a 
 human habitation, except the one which I am going to speak 
 of. Yet there were many spots, we thought, in which humble 
 human lives might have been led ; particularly I remember 
 a lonely strath coming down to the loch on the east side, 
 near its head, which an Australian settler would have 
 deemed positively inviting. But its green bottom and 
 pleasant slopes were silent and tenantless like the rest. 
 About two-thirds of the way along the loch, a place was 
 marked on the map ' Toper-na-fuosich.' I think they told 
 us at Loch Eannoch that this was a forester's hut. By 
 the time we reached it, the sun had set. I remember we 
 saw, just before coming there, on a little ridge on our left, 
 several noble-looking red deer, outlined against the lingering 
 
106 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 light in the west. The forester and his wife, though our 
 appearance was most unexpected, treated us with much 
 hospitality, and let us sleep in the hut. Next morning we 
 went on, and rejoined the rest of the party at Dal whin nie. . . . 
 
 Clough, to whom we told our story, and who was then 
 writing his ' Long Vacation Pastoral ' at Drumnadrochit, chose 
 The Bothie of Toper-na-fuosich for its principal title. This 
 was in the first edition, afterwards he wrote to me that he 
 had been told the word had some unseemly meaning in 
 Gaelic, and that he had altered it to Tober-na- Vuolich. 
 
 I always had a strong affection for my dear old friend, 
 the purity of whose character, when we were all young 
 men together, impressed me with great respect, and 
 made me wish to imitate him. But I know not that I 
 could say anything about him that some other friend has 
 not better said. I have often thought with wonder of his 
 comparatively early death, remembering the healthy tem- 
 perance of his life, and that he was not overworked, nor 
 weighed down by household cares or family afflictions. 
 Herodotus, indeed, tells us that to die early is a mark of 
 the favour of the gods which may be very true but it 
 may also be sometimes a sign that a man has run his 
 mortal course has come to the end of his tether ; that in 
 this world his Maker and Master has no more work for him 
 to do, though much service may be reserved for him la 
 haut. I shall await anxiously the appearance of your 
 Memoir, for it will bring the friend whom I can never 
 forget, in many ways more vividly before my mind." 
 
 The following is part of Mr. Edward Scott's reminis- 
 cences of the same tour : 
 
 "In the summer vacation of 1847 he asked my brother, 
 Archdeacon Scott, and myself to be his companions during 
 a tour in the Highlands. We spent a few days with him 
 at Houstoun, and saw Edinburgh. I remember his meeting 
 us on the platform of Winchburgh station with a check 
 shepherd's plaid across his shoulder, and a huge shepherd's 
 
vii AUTUMN IN THE HIGHLANDS 107 
 
 crook in his hand. This crook was his Pilgerstab during 
 our wanderings. He had dipped it under the waters of 
 every noted stream he had passed, carrying it in his hand, 
 especially Yarrow. It was a sacred stick. 
 
 How racy he was ! how he pointed out customs and man- 
 ners and phrases that were native to the locality and strange 
 to us ! And yet with a sly humour at times, as when, on 
 being asked whether there was an evening service at Uphall 
 Church, he explained that the congregation, and probably 
 the minister too, found it answer to take the two services 
 in direct succession, one after another ! a Scotchman, I felt, 
 yet with a difference that made his companionship the richer. 
 
 On our visit to Edinburgh we spent a night at Dal- 
 keith, in the house of his friend, Dr. Norman Macleod. My 
 brother has added some reminiscences of the evening. I 
 remember well the pipe, and the roll of his stories ; his 
 pride also in ' Deutschland/ his second mother ; and Shairp's 
 delighted pride in him. One story he told of a French- 
 man who had been to the Jardin des Plantes, and was 
 very much struck with the greatness of Cuvier ; ending 
 his remarks by saying that ' if Moses had known Cuvier 
 was to come after him, he would not have written that 
 book of his.' He also took us under his wing to stay 
 a night under the roof of a friend of whom I had often 
 heard him talk, and whose singing he admired greatly 
 Mrs. Murray Gartshore of Kirkintilloch. 1 Mrs. Gartshore 
 stood before the instrument she never sat while she 
 
 1 Mrs. Murray Gartshore was the daughter of Sir Howard and Lady 
 Douglas. She married the late John Murray of Gartshore and Ravelstone, 
 and died at Lymington in 1857. Her friendship was a great interest to 
 Shairp. He often spoke of her and her wonderful singing. After the visit, 
 to which Mr. Scott refers in 1847, he wrote 
 
 Whether thy song hath a wanderer been 
 
 Through green fields echoing childhood's laughter, 
 
 Or overtakes i' the far Unseen 
 Thoughts of the still Hereafter, 
 
 I cannot deem it of the things 
 
 That perish with their brief to-day, 
 It stirs perchance some fountain-springs 
 
 To murmur in our hearts alway. 
 
108 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 played and sang. I had heard some of her songs at 
 Houstoun, where they were favourites. But her singing of 
 them justified all Shairp had told me of them. One was 
 called ' River, Eiver.' Another was the wail of a mad girl, 
 with a refrain, ' Ho ro Mhairi Dhubh turn ye to me ' if I 
 may be forgiven for perhaps mangling a language which I 
 do not know. 
 
 From Kirkintilloch we were to drive to the Broomie- 
 law and catch the Loch Lomond steamer. Alas ! we arrived 
 late. The other members of the party Mr. Theodore 
 Walrond, then a master at Rugby ; Mr. Thomas Arnold, 
 then in the Foreign Office, and on the eve of his journey to 
 the Antipodes ; and Mr. Charles Lloyd, who had been a 
 master at Westminster, and was then a student of Christ 
 Church, and an enthusiastic lover of Scotland, where he 
 spent much of his vacations at Loch Ard had started from 
 Mr. "Walrond's house at Calder Park. They had been more 
 punctual than we, and had gone on. What was to be done ? 
 It was resolved to take the train to Greenock, and catch 
 the steamer to Arrochar. Possibly we might overtake 
 our companions at Inversnaid or the Trosachs. But fate 
 was against us. At the entrance of Loch Long some part 
 of the machinery gave way, and we returned hastily to 
 Greenock, thinking ourselves lucky to escape with no worse 
 mishap. 
 
 The only plan then remaining was to cross to Dum- 
 barton and follow on the steps of our more punctual friends. 
 Accordingly we walked to Balloch, and took the steamer 
 for Inversnaid. Shairp was full of the Highland Girl 
 and the poem Stepping Westward. I believe we slept at 
 Inversnaid, if not at the Trosachs. The idea was to cross 
 the Braes of Balquhidder, and so strike in on the probable 
 route of our companions at Lochearnhead. But fate again 
 was unpropitious. We missed our way, and after crossing 
 the shoulder of Ben Ledi, came down on the Callander road 
 below Strathyre, and had a memorable meeting with our 
 three friends, who were on the road northwards. How I 
 remember Walrond's laugh as he recognised the shepherd's 
 
vii AUTUMN IN THE HIGHLANDS 109 
 
 plaid, and shepherd's crook, and the would-be tourists, who 
 had begun by missing their steamer ! 
 
 Whatever they thought of our unpracticality, they 
 would not hear of going on without us and letting us over- 
 take them next day. We had had enough of it climbing 
 the slopes of Ben Ledi, and were glad enough to make our 
 way to Callander, where we slept. Next day we walked 
 by the coach road, past Loch Lubnaig (where Wordsworth's 
 ' Daffodils ' were not forgotten), to Lochearnhead and 
 Killin. In the morning we took the road over the side of 
 Ben Lawers, and across Glen Lyon. The weather broke 
 before we reached Loch Eannoch, where we separated 
 Shairp and Arnold going westward with the intention of 
 tracking one of Prince Charles's haunts on Ben Alder, and 
 so passing along Loch Erichtside to join the rest of the 
 party at Dalwhinnie. 
 
 Throughout these wanderings Shairp had been keenly 
 interested in anything that bore on the '45. We were 
 bound for Skye, possibly for Glenfinnan all was open to 
 U g ? and any road that led us on to the Prince's tracks 
 would be a welcome one to the head of our party. 
 
 At Dalwhinnie we again separated. . . . The rest 
 went on foot by Corryarrick and Fort Augustus. We 
 arranged to meet at Drumnadrochit, not far from Meal- 
 fourvonie, where Clough had a reading-party. Fortunately 
 for myself, I was one of those who crossed Corryarrick. 
 It was one of those heavenly days (as I think Shairp 
 said of it either then or afterwards) that cannot die. As 
 we reached the summit of the Pass the July sun was 
 setting behind the ranges of the Inverness and Eoss-shire 
 mountains. In the west, serrated like the teeth of a saw, 
 lay the Coolin Hills, our farthest aim. In the rifts of the 
 mountains lay some gleaming lakes : ' the eyes of solitude ' 
 he called them. I have seen distant ranges again and 
 again, from far greater heights in Switzerland, but no view 
 has stamped itself so deeply on my memory. I see it now, 
 and have always been able to recall it, and I know it impressed 
 him at least as powerfully. There was a poetry about it which 
 
110 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 I have not elsewhere felt so consciously. Part of its charm 
 may have been due to its novelty, but I think it was almost 
 wholly drawn from the companionship in which I saw it. 
 
 By the time we reached Fort Augustus it was late ; so 
 we took a carriage, and drove along the shore of the loch 
 to Drumnadrochit. No precise appointment had been made 
 as to the date of our arrival. We were to appear when 
 we could. As it was, we turned up in the small hours of 
 the morning, and did not even know which was the inn. 
 I remember, in the twilight, Arnold climbed in by an open 
 window, and returned with a book which proved to be 
 Consuelo. Assuredly a book from Oxford. Meanwhile 
 Walrond, always practical, had gone upstairs and invaded 
 a bedroom. The occupant started and remonstrated, but 
 Walrond nevertheless had secured his prize, and returned 
 triumphant with a sock on which was marked the name 
 Scott. This was taken as an indication that my brother 
 and Lloyd had arrived, although, as a matter of fact, the 
 garment belonged to another person of the same name, a 
 Christ Church man, who belonged to the reading-party. 
 Putting together these sufficient tokens, we felt justified in 
 rousing the household, and accepting what beds we could 
 get. We stayed three days. It was a visit not to be for- 
 gotten, because the poem of The, Botliie may have been 
 already in contemplation. It was written, if I am correct, 
 in the following summer. Certainly Drumnadrochit formed 
 the background in several marked particulars. ' The grave 
 man nicknamed Adam ' ; ' the kilted Hobbes ' ; ' Arthur, the 
 glory of headers ' all rise before my mind in the persons 
 of Clough himself, Ward Hunt, and Walrond ; while 'Philip' 
 recalls to me traits both of Shairp and Tom Arnold, while 
 there are elements in him that belong to neither. The 
 romance, and the ladies that give rise to it, are, I suppose, 
 imaginary ; there were no visible traces of any such. At 
 the time, Arnold was to go shortly to Van Diemen's Land. 
 The original name of the poem, which has been altered 
 since, was derived from a lonely shieling 'on Loch Ericht 
 where Shairp and Arnold had sheltered themselves, either 
 
vii AUTUMN IN THE HIGHLANDS 111 
 
 for a while or for a night, in their tiring walk along the 
 loch side. I may add that one trifling incident in the 
 poem was a very free rendering say rather a travestie 
 of what had occurred as we crossed Loch Ness, with Clough 
 as our companion, to see the Falls of Foyers. A simple 
 and pretty Highland girl had taken an oar in the boat. 
 Shairp, as I remember, noticed her and asked, with a 
 chivalry that never deserted him, whether she often took 
 her brother's place. I can almost hear him, and see him, 
 now. I need not say the situation was not lost upon Wal- 
 rond, who often chaffed him during our walk, upon the girl 
 he had left behind him at Invermoriston. 
 
 There were other members of Clough's party qui carent 
 vate sacro. Amongst them was Lawrence, the author of 
 Guy Livingstone, who cannot have been a spirit congenial 
 to the ' grave man Adam.' Another was Blackett, a friend 
 of Congreve's." 
 
 The recollections which follow are by the Rev. J. George 
 Scott, Archdeacon of Dublin, written after he had read over 
 the previous paper of reminiscences by his brother : 
 
 " My brother has asked me to read his notes, and add any 
 incidents which might fill up the picture of Shairp's Rugby 
 days." [He gives a detailed account of the pedestrian tour 
 to Drumnadrochit, from which I extract the following.] 
 " Shairp had a volume of Fichte in his pocket on our 
 journey. He was making his first study of Fichte's system, 
 and on entering the house of Mrs. Murray Gartshore, he put 
 the Fichte on the hall table. After luncheon he could not 
 find it ; and when he came in before the evening meal he 
 found that our hostess had seen the volume, and had 
 managed to devour a large portion of it during our after- 
 noon walk. The eagerness of Shairp's conversation with 
 her on the metaphysical problems suggested remains on my 
 memory ; the enthusiasm of Shairp, and the rapid acquisitive 
 power of Mrs. Murray Gartshore's mind, equally arresting 
 my attention and my wonder. 
 
112 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 The subject was one into which at my age I was im- 
 perfectly fitted to enter. But it gave me the first glimpse 
 of a 'characteristic, which afterwards seemed to me so marked 
 in Shairp, viz. an interest in the whole range of human 
 thought, a sympathy with the efforts of men searching in 
 different directions, along with a firm faith and hope by 
 which his soul held anchor, convinced that there were 
 truths for which room must be found in any speculations, 
 whatever ideas formerly associated with these might be set 
 aside. 
 
 In 1849, or 1850, I was with a reading-party at John 
 Green's house at Grasmere the same house in which Shairp 
 had been on that party in his Oxford days with Walrond and 
 Proby and some others, to which my brother has alluded. 
 One day, to my great surprise, Shairp came to seek me out 
 there. He was on his way in a covered carriage to see A. H. 
 Clough in Borrowdale, and he asked me to accompany him 
 in his drive. The weather was very bad, and we drove 
 all the way, and found Clough with two or three pupils at 
 ' The Grange ' in Borrowdale. He persuaded us to stay for 
 the night ; though unprepared, Shairp dismissed the carriage, 
 and we strolled about in the afternoon, for the sky had 
 cleared, and arranged to walk over the Styhead Pass in the 
 morning. While we were in Borrowdale I had not much 
 conversation with Shairp, for I knew that he had come for 
 a long talk with Clough, and I did not interrupt them, but 
 chatted to the rest of the party. But in the morning we 
 all set out together to walk to the head of the Pass. The 
 river was very full after the rain, but when we came 
 opposite to the Yew-trees, ' the fraternal four of Borrow- 
 dale/ Shairp could not be restrained from wading the 
 stream ; and after he had stood for a few minutes under the 
 trees, he came out, and shouted to me to cross over to him, 
 and there he rolled out these majestic lines. I can think I 
 hear him again, as he stood there (it was too wet to lie), 
 and threw himself into the melody of the closing verses 
 
 To lie and listen to the mountain flood 
 Murmuring from Glaramara's inmost caves. 
 
vii AUTUMN IN THE HIGHLANDS 113 
 
 At the head of the Pass, Clough sadly bade him farewell. 
 They returned to ' The Grange/ and Shairp and I walked 
 on down Langdale, and up to the top of the Pass of Lough- 
 rigg, where he told me how, on the last day of his former 
 sojourn with the party in Grasmere, he had walked down 
 from Loughrigg to Eydal Water, as he was about to do again, 
 repeating over and over to himself 
 
 Flow down, cold rivulet, to the sea, 
 
 Thy tribute wave deliver ; 
 No more by thee my steps shall be 
 
 For ever and for ever." 
 
 Shairp's own account is as follows : 
 
 "In the summer of 1847 Clough had a reading.party at Drumna- 
 drochit, Glen Urquhart, about two miles north from Loch Ness, where, 
 about the beginning of August, I, along with T. Arnold and Walrond, 
 paid him a visit. Some of the incidents and characters in The 
 Bothie were taken from that reading-party, though its main scenes 
 and incidents lay in Braemar. One anecdote I specially remember 
 connected with that visit. On our way to Drumnadrochit, T. Arnold 
 and I had made a solitary walk together from the west end of Loch 
 Rannoch, up by Loch Erich t, one of the wildest, most unfrequented 
 lochs in the Highlands. All day we saw only one house, till late at 
 night we reached another on the side of the loch, about six miles 
 from Dalwhinnie. It was one of the loveliest, most primitive places 
 I ever saw even in the most out-of-the-way parts of the Highlands. 
 We told Clough of it, and when his reading-party was over, later in 
 the autumn, he went on our track. He spent a night at the inn at 
 the west end of Loch Rannoch called Tighnaline, where he met with 
 some of the incidents which appeared in The Bothie. He also 
 visited the house by the side of Loch Ericht, a small heather-thatched 
 hut, occupied by one of the foresters of the Ben Alder forest. He 
 found one of the children lying sick of a fever, the father, I think, 
 from home, and the mother without any medicines or other aid for her 
 child. He immediately set off, and walked to Fort William, about two 
 days' journey from the place, but the nearest where medicines and 
 other supplies were to be had. These he got at Fort William, and 
 returned on his two days' journey, and left them with the mother. 
 He had four days' walk, over a rough country, to bring medicines to 
 this little child, and the people did not even know his name. On 
 these occasions in Scotland he told me that he used to tell the people 
 he was a ' Teacher,' and they were at once at ease with him then. I 
 doubt whether he mentioned this to any one but myself, and to me it 
 only came out casually. ... In this year he visited the West High- 
 
 I 
 
114 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 lands, and went through f Lochaber, anon in Locheil, in Knoydart, 
 Moydart, Morrer, Ardgower, and Ardnamurchan.' In the first edition 
 this line was ' Knoydart, Moydart, Morer, Croydart, and Ardna- 
 murchan.' But he discovered afterwards that Croydart was only the 
 way that the Gael pronounce what is spelled Knoydart. During this 
 wander he saw all the country about Ben Nevis westward to the 
 Atlantic 
 
 "Where the great peaks look broad over Skye to the westermost islands. 
 
 He walked ' where pines are grand in Glen Mally,' and saw all the 
 country which, in a few lines here and there, he has pictured so power- 
 fully in The Bothie. The expression about Ben Nevis, with the 
 morning sprinkling of snow on his shoulders, is absolutely true to 
 reality. 
 
 In this expedition he came to Glenfinnan, at the head of Loch 
 Shiel, the place where Prince Charles met the Highland clans, and 
 unfurled his standard. Here there used to stand a nice quiet little- 
 frequented inn, where one could live for weeks undisturbed. But at 
 the time when Clough reached it a great gathering was being held 
 there. The Queen had gone to Loch Laggan, and the ships that 
 escorted her to Fort William were lying at the head of Loch Linnhe. 
 M 'Donald of Glenaladale had invited all the officers of these ships 
 to have a day's deer-stalking on his property of Glenaladale, down 
 the side of Loch Shiel, and to have a ball at the Glenfinnan Inn after 
 their day's sport. Clough came in for the balL It was a strange 
 gathering, the English sailors, officers, a few Highland lairds, High- 
 land farmers and shepherds, with their wives and daughters, were 
 all met together at the ball. Clough and one of his reading-party 
 were invited to join the dance, and they danced Highland reels, and 
 went through all the festivities like natives. The uproar was immense, 
 and the ludicrous scenes not few. He often used to speak of it 
 afterwards as one of the motliest, drollest gatherings he had ever 
 fallen in with. 
 
 Often afterwards he used to speak of his Scotch adventures 
 with great heartiness. There was much in the ways of life he saw 
 there that suited the simplicity of his nature. Even when English- 
 men would laugh at the baldness of our Presbyterian services, he 
 would defend them as better than English ritualism and formality." 
 
 Keturning to Bugby, after this delightful visit to the 
 North, the routine of school work and duty was not broken 
 by any remarkable event, till the long vacation of the fol- 
 lowing year. 
 
 A letter to his sister Grace, in the late autumn of 1847, 
 tells of his intention to spend some part of his next holiday 
 in Germany, and of a visit to Combe Abbey. 
 
vii RUGBY 115 
 
 [Postmark, 1st November 1847.] 
 
 " RUGBY, Sunday night. 
 
 "MY DEAR GRACE You heard of my being at Oxford. 
 The evening I arrived Walrond had a very pleasant party 
 at dinner for me Clough, Matthew Arnold, Eiddell, Sellar, 
 and one or two more. After that came a meeting of the 
 Decade, at which I had to open. Jowett got me a room 
 in college. Balliol looked more inviting than ever. There 
 seem a very nice set of men there now, some very clever 
 ones, with life and health stirring and strong within them. 
 I more than half wished that I were just going up, as this 
 time seven years, especially if I had been as well prepared 
 for it as many who go from this. No doubt the under- 
 graduate time is the most interesting, but even when that 
 is over, Balliol is a very interesting workshop to those who 
 have work there. I know no other so much so. My time 
 was too short. . . . 
 
 I am thinking of spending the first part of the Christmas 
 vacation in Germany, if there be no reasonable let or hind- 
 rance. You know I feel the want of German very much in 
 several ways. In fact it cripples me on all hands. Jowett 
 thinks of going to Bonn, for a month or five weeks during 
 the Christmas vacation, and has asked me to go. It seems 
 a good opportunity, as he knows German well, and in other 
 ways would be an admirable companion. I always liked 
 him, and he teaches you much. Besides he would put 
 me on the right way of mastering German ; and in five 
 weeks I might break the neck of the difficulty. 
 
 During the whole holiday (Friday week) I gave Edward 
 Scott my mare, and rode Arnold's. We went to Combe 
 Abbey ; about nine miles from this Lord Craven's, an old 
 abbey; the cloisters now form part of the house. Even I 
 could not help feeling there was something unhallowed in 
 turning to 'uses base,' what might have served so much higher 
 an end. But in England and Scotland the Eeformation, 
 if it brought much good, was also a scramble for selfishness. 
 The church lands might hav been turned to much better 
 
116 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 and more national purposes than that of fattening certain 
 nobles or lairds. There are many fine pictures there of 
 Charles I.'s family and people. Vandyke's seem to abound 
 in this country. . . . Your very affectionate brother, 
 
 J. C. S." 
 
 Another winter of uniform and strenuous work at Eugby, 
 with the usual Christmas and Easter holidays, made up the 
 record of that season, 1847-48 ; and in the autumn of 1848, 
 Shairp paid a visit to his friends the Scotts, at Delgany, 
 County Wicklow, some seventeen miles from Dublin. 
 
 Of this visit to Ireland, Archdeacon Scott writes : " I 
 remember his thorough enjoyment of our varied scenery, his 
 amusement at the humours of the country people, and 
 especially at my brother John's way of turning off every- 
 thing with a good-natured joke, his enjoyment of the free 
 hospitality at Glendalough, where it happened that there 
 were only children to welcome us the master being absent 
 and his remark that small as the County Wicklow is, it 
 contained every element of variety in natural scenery, and 
 that he could understand our not feeling that we needed to 
 look for pleasure beyond our own resources." 
 
 In another letter Mr. Scott writes : " He was markedly 
 struck by, and often spoke of, the brilliant colouring of the 
 Irish hills. As he drove from Kingston to Delgany, some 
 nine miles, he passed the Little Sugarloaf, and often has 
 he recurred to the vivid impression he then received. The 
 heather, gorse, and bracken were all at their brightest, and 
 the line of demarcation between them was marvellously 
 sharp. It looked almost as if a streak of colour had been 
 drawn by the brush." 
 
 The following are extracts from the Journal written by 
 Shairp during this visit to Ireland : 
 
 "DELGANY, IRELAND. 
 
 "Friday, \Uh July 1848. Eose before 5 A.M. to have 
 my first look of Ireland from the sea. A calm cloudy 
 
vii IRELAND 117 
 
 morning. . . . Looked for some time at the washing waves ; 
 went in a boat to Bray Point, and clambered up to the top of 
 Bray Head. Thence the view lovely seaward, far as the hills of 
 Wales one dimly yet certainly seen ; northward by Howth, 
 Lambay, far as the Mourne Mountains (Slieve Donard). 
 
 Thence descended to the beach a little north of Grey 
 Stones, and bathed just as the sun got behind the hill. . . . 
 We came home quietly through the fields ; had tea near 
 nine ; and then a lovely full moon looking in calmly on 
 the glen from the farther side the night-scented stock 
 filling the air a calm and soothing time. 
 
 Tuesday, 18th July. Breakfast by 8.30. Off by 10 
 to the seven churches through Annamoe. Saw them all 
 seven in the following order: (1) The Church of the Holy 
 Trinity ; and then (2) beyond St. Kevin's Bed on a small 
 landing-place off the west side of the lake. No lonelier place 
 ever chosen for a church nothing but the foundations 
 
 seen. (3) The one below the waterfall called , where 
 
 are buried the O'Tooles, the old Irish kings crosses many 
 on all sides strewn about; this, overgrown with natural 
 wood and graves of a thousand years ago, I think the most 
 interesting of all. (4) Then the one called St. Kevin's 
 Kitchen with its Tower; (5) Then the Cathedral in the 
 middle of the burying -ground with its large cross in the 
 centre; the Eound Tower in a corner of the burying-ground. 
 (6) The Church of our Lady and the great gateway and 
 arch entering on the burying-ground. Last of all (7) apart, 
 the Priory of St. Saviour's, in a plantation by itself, appar- 
 ently with Norman pillars and devices, and not so ancient 
 as the others. I never saw anything like these before. 
 They give you a notion of Christianity as it existed in the 
 loneliest and most savage places, before almost the dawn of 
 civilisation of any kind. Thence over the hills to Drum- 
 goff, the inn of Glenmalure a waterfall at the head of the 
 glen, about three or more miles above the inn, and the whole 
 glen strewn from head to foot with rocks most desolate ; as 
 much so as Glencroe. Soon left desolation behind, and got 
 into the Vale of Ovoca, down which we drove for seven or 
 
118 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 eight miles to the Wooden Bridge at the lower meeting of 
 the waters for there are two. A lovely vale. I know 
 none lovelier. 
 
 19th July. Started after breakfast from the Wooden 
 Bridge down the Vale of Ovoca to Arklow-by-the-Sea. All 
 the vale most lovely, with high stately banks of noblest 
 young wood. I never saw so perfect a vale. The wood 
 has something peculiar about it, or rather the high sweeping 
 curtain-like banks on which the wood grows. Lunched at 
 the Ovoca Inn, near which the first or highest meeting of 
 the waters where the Avonmore from Annamoe and the 
 seven-church stream meet with the Avonbeg from Glen- 
 malure. The lower meeting of the waters is at Wooden 
 Bridge, where the Avonmore Eiver meets with the united 
 stream of Avonmore and Avonbeg. 
 
 The variety and rapid change between undulating hill 
 and glen, and loch and vale and sea, is what most strikes 
 me here. They lie all so close together, and you pass so 
 naturally and enjoyably from one to the other. 
 
 20th July. From the Tent (at Delgany) we watched 
 the cloud-shadows leave the land, and go scudding seaward 
 as I had never observed before. 
 
 21st July. A lovely forenoon through the Down Glen, 
 Sir G. Hodson's place, Kilmacalogue, to the Glen of the 
 Dayle ; most enjoyable glen scenery. Sat watching the 
 stream for some time with its gentle, crisp, and many 
 delicate lines, as it flowed fully yet gently between the 
 stones. Got up as far as the great gateway of Rock, where 
 the stream comes through. 
 
 26th July. We all went down to the sea. Aug. 
 and Robert rowed us out for about half an hour, then got 
 on shore and lay on the shingly beach to the north of 
 
 Grey Stones. E- read his Sheridan. I read to George 
 
 Shelley's Ode to the West Wind, ' Away, the moor is dark,' 
 etc. Returned home about 7.30. After tea E - fell to 
 reading aloud to John Mariana in the Moated Grange, and 
 Mariana in the South. I listened; they two preferred the 
 former, especially the burden. 
 
 
vii DRESDEN 119 
 
 27th July. All day I have felt the farewell feeling 
 like an undertone thrilling every thought and word. I 
 wish there were only another fortnight. May our friend- 
 ship never fail, but be hallowed for ever." 
 
 The visit to Germany referred to in the letter to his 
 sister in November 1847 was postponed till the summer 
 vacation of 1849, when Shairp accompanied Mr. Poste to 
 Dresden. At Dresden they were joined by his colleague at 
 Rugby, Mr. Cotton (afterwards Bishop of Calcutta), and his 
 wife, and together they visited Prague. 
 
 The estimate of Cotton, which Shairp contributed to his 
 Memoir, has much that bears upon their common life at 
 Rugby, and their visit to Prague, etc. The whole is best 
 told in his own words 
 
 " There are few things that I look back to with such pure satisfac- 
 tion as the privilege of knowing intimately the late G. E. L. Cotton. 
 In trying, however, to recall those years of familiar intercourse with 
 him I find it hard to do so. The throng and pressure of that busy 
 time have so jostled the incidents and blurred their outlines. It is 
 only the total impression for the most part that remains. 
 
 Towards the close of 1846, by the kindness of the present Bishop 
 of London, I went, after leaving Oxford, to Rugby, to undertake one 
 of the masterships there. During the few first days, while I stayed 
 as guest at the schoolhouse, Dr. Tait told me a good deal of the new 
 life and work that lay before me, and spoke of the colleagues I should 
 meet with. 
 
 I can distinctly recall the way in which he spoke of Cotton, as 
 one whom it might do any one good to know, whose whole life and 
 work were a great example. Dr. Tait had at that time been a little 
 more than four years head-master, and I could see that he had formed 
 for Cotton a peculiar admiration and affection. 
 
 I cannot quite recall the first impression Cotton made on me, 
 only I think it was of one who stood calm and self-possessed in the 
 midst of a great whirl of work and many more excitable persons. 
 
 In general he received strangers quietly, and it was not at first 
 that they were most taken by him. In due time, by our mutual 
 friend Bradley, we drew to each other, and began to have walks to- 
 gether 011 half-holidays and Saturdays. Having lately left Oxford, I 
 was full of views and thoughts which were then seething there below 
 the surface. In these Cotton was much interested, with firm intelli- 
 gent desire to know what way the currents were set in the University, 
 and from kindly sympathy with young men and whatever engaged 
 
120 JOHA CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 their thoughts. In these conversations two things in him soon struck 
 me : first, the large tolerance, and perfect fair-mindedness, with which 
 he tried to understand and judge ways of thinking that were different 
 from his own ; and secondly, his stability. While opening his mind to 
 new views he was not carried away by them. He held fast without 
 effort by his old fixed moorings those truths, few and simple, which 
 were the roots of his being. 
 
 During these early years of our intercourse I remember a charac- 
 teristic point of his mingled humour and practical downrightness. Mr. 
 Mill's Political Economy had just been published, and several of the 
 masters agreed to read it, and discuss it together afterwards, chapter 
 by chapter. Cotton was one of these. In one walk the early chapter 
 on Productive and Unproductive Consumption formed topics for dis- 
 cussion. The truth was brought out very clearly, that all that was 
 spent in recreation, banquets, etc., beyond what goes to invigorate body 
 and mind for fresh productive labour, is so far wasted, and a loss to 
 the community. With most persons it would have stopped there. 
 Cotton, partly from love of a joke, partly from his earnest practical 
 turn, began to press this truth home. Banquets among the masters 
 had at that time, in some quarters, grown to rather large dimensions. 
 He urged that all banquets should straightway be curtailed within the 
 limits prescribed by political economy. This proposal to square prac- 
 tice by speculation caused much discussion and amusement, and gave 
 rise to one humorous incident. 
 
 Our intimacy, once began, was ripened into friendship by some 
 time spent together abroad in the summer of 1849. We met at 
 Dresden, where Cotton and Mrs. Cotton were staying, two of his sixth 
 form pupils accompanying them. 
 
 Together we all travelled to Prague, spent some days there, and 
 returned to Dresden. 
 
 It would be impossible to find a more delightful travelling com- 
 panion than Cotton was. His entire unselfishness, his perfect temper 
 placid, even, and always interested the continued play of his quiet 
 peculiar humour on all the little incidents and traits of character we 
 met with, his unwearied love of things and places historic, the thor- 
 oughness, the kindliness that pervaded all he said and did, made his 
 society at once calming, strengthening, and exhilarating. 
 
 Prague, I remember, greatly charmed him. He was struck by 
 the Eastern look it had, which was something new to all of us. There 
 was the palace and church of the Hradschin, with its tombs of the 
 Bohemian kings nine centuries old ; the bridge with its crucifix and 
 ever-burning lamps, supported by a fine laid on the Jews ; the mouldy 
 synagogue, one of the earliest in Europe ; while in the shattered win- 
 dows and battered walls of the houses were freshly seen the marks 
 which Winditzgratiz and his Austrians made on the town during last 
 year's revolution. It was the enlargement it gave to his historic sym- 
 
vii AUTUMN HOLIDAYS 121 
 
 pathies that formed to him the greatest charm of travel. One occur- 
 rence at Prague greatly amused Cotton. On the first evening after 
 our arrival we were invited to a party, which turned out to be made 
 up of German-hating Czechs, the name of Sclavonic inhabitants of 
 Bohemia. We had never till that day exactly known of the existence 
 of this small race of Sclaves. But that evening we found ourselves 
 sitting with a number of fierce, patriotic Czechs, toasting in German 
 wine, ' Auf die Bruderschaft der Czech und der Englander.' 
 
 While Cotton was at Rugby, each summer vacation sometimes 
 the Christmas ones too was laid out methodically, not merely for ease 
 and pleasure, but to combine needed relaxation with some increased 
 enlargement of his knowledge of men and of places famed in history. 
 
 In the summer of 1850, while Cotton and Mrs. Cotton were in 
 Germany, he had a severe attack of rheumatic fever, which prevented 
 him from returning at the usual time to his school duties. As I had 
 then no boarding-house of my own, Cotton wrote asking me to under- 
 take the charge of his for a time. After some weeks he was so far 
 recovered as to return to Rugby, still quite unfit for work. He and 
 Mrs. Cotton returned for a week or two, and lived in their own home 
 as guests the name and character he insisted on assuming. After a 
 short stay he left again for the rest of the half year ; but I still 
 vividly remember with what consideration and good feeling he carried 
 the whole thing through, so that he converted what might have been 
 an embarrassing situation into a most pleasant and friendly visit. 
 During the weeks I took this charge I had an opportunity of discover- 
 ing, what I had always heard of, the excellence of Cotton's work as head 
 of a boarding-house. It was a house in all things well ordered, filled 
 with a prevailing spirit of quiet industry and cheerful duty-doing. 
 
 It was early in 1852 that he accepted the headship of Marl- 
 borough. His going from Rugby was the greatest loss it could sus- 
 tain. But he felt that his work there was done, and that he could 
 put forth fresh energy, in a place which he could mould to his own 
 mind. That summer, just before he went to Marlborough, he came 
 down to Scotland and visited at my father's home. 
 
 When we left my father's house he made me lead him through 
 the vales of Tweed and Yarrow. Dryburgh Abbey we visited in the 
 beauty of a summer morning, then Melrose and Abbotsford. In the 
 afternoon I took him up Tweed, through the beautiful woods of Yare, 
 to the ridge of the hill behind it. There, pausing and looking west- 
 ward, we saw beneath us the whole course of the Yarrow, as it winds 
 from the lochs down through the green interlapping hills. The 
 westering sun was streaming down the * bonny braes.' Two nights we 
 stayed by still St. Mary's Lake, and all day we wandered among the 
 hopes and side-glens that come into Yarrow the Douglas Burn, Kirk- 
 hope, by Dryhope Tower, and the rest while I told him the traditions 
 
122 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 and ballads that still haunt the spots, and make more than half their 
 charm. We then walked down Moffatdale, and parted at MofFat 
 Sometimes during this short tour, as we wandered among the green 
 hills, Cotton would begin to discuss some difficult question of educa- 
 tion or scholastic management. The enterprise of remodelling Marl- 
 borough, now close before him, was evidently much on his mind. 
 After one or two conversations I bargained that these topics should be 
 left till we had reached our inn, at night. Savouring as they did of 
 the work-day world, they seemed alien to the dreamy stillness of those 
 green pastoral uplands. To this he readily agreed. In a letter which 
 I received from him soon after we parted, he told me that his enjoy- 
 ment in this short tour had been only second to what he had felt in 
 seeing the two or three great-world sights of his life." 1 
 
 Mrs. Cotton has sent me an undated letter of Shairp's 
 to her husband from Houstoun, which evidently belongs to 
 the year 1850, and from which I extract the following: 
 
 "19^ January. My days have been, most of them, 
 spent in curling, a game on the ice peculiar to Scotland. 
 During these three weeks past I have thought nothing of 
 the late contest, and very little of future prospects. Time 
 and oblivion are better healers I find than one's own con- 
 scious efforts. Being always averse to pushing and pro- 
 motion-hunting, I do not intend to do it now, further than 
 I should probably have done if there had been no change 
 in the head-master. If I see Temple I shall tell him that 
 I do not wish to spend all my best years at Eugby. Further 
 than this, I shall do nothing. ... I rather enjoy this snow- 
 storm, the greatest they say since 1838. . . . ol veo^a^oi 
 will have full time to indoctrinate their brides these snowy 
 days. If my ' Greek Kalends ' ever come, may they fall in 
 summertide !" 
 
 The above was written during the Christmas holidays of 
 1849-50, which were spent as usual in Scotland. During 
 this time Shairp kept a Journal of his daily life, and several 
 extracts from it will reveal another side of his character. 
 There is a curious resemblance between the points noted in 
 almost all of his Journals, and the way in which Dorothy 
 
 1 Memoir of George Edward Lynch Cotton, D.D., Bishop of Calcutta, pp. 
 18-29. 
 
vii HO US TO UN 123 
 
 Wordsworth chronicled the events of the day and the hour in 
 her numerous Diaries. The resemblance is not only in 
 the direct pictures, and simple graphic touches, in recording 
 even the weather changes, and anything unusual in the 
 face of Nature, but also in the minute interest shown in 
 things that to others would be too ^trivial to note. In both 
 cases these familiar jottings are redeemed from commonplace 
 by the way in which they are handled. 
 
 "Houstoun, l$th December 1849. Once more at home, 
 and find all calm and quiet as it has so long been. Let 
 me use this well and thankfully while it lasts, that so 
 using it we may all gain that true inward life which will 
 sustain us when this life of our earthly homes is no more 
 allowed us. 
 
 On Thursday last (13th December), at Kugby, there 
 was a deeply interesting day to me. I never felt before so 
 strongly the interest of my work there. It was the spirit 
 as opposed to the letter, and mechanism, which so often 
 burdens me ; a day of advice and encouragement (a re- 
 buke to one), and of leavetaking, and of words spoken for 
 the journey of life. After second lesson I had a long and 
 most delightful talk with Horace Davey. First I looked 
 over his Philology Paper, which he had done for the 
 Exam., and told him what I could about it; then spoke 
 to him of his being in the sixth next year. Before this I 
 advised him to read some of Cicero's Letters to Atticus, 
 Book XIV., during vacation, but by no means to burden him- 
 self with work, but to refresh body and mind. I had ad- 
 vised him to read the poetry he liked, and then followed the 
 Wordsworth and the Christian Year with his name on them. 
 He seemed calmly delighted and went his way. All this 
 first half-year my affection for him has been growing. My 
 intercourse since ever he came to Rugby has been un- 
 brokenly delightful, and this last half-year I have seen over 
 and above his clear keen spirit. If life and health are 
 given him, my hope for him is high. 
 
 Houstoun, Sunday Evening, 23d December. In the 
 afternoon read Isaiah xxxii., also Keble's most beautiful 
 
124 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 hymn for the first Sunday in Advent (to-day). Then the 
 fifth of Newman's Discourses, a most striking setting-forth 
 of the general worldliness of society, as seen in the worship 
 everywhere of the two great idols, wealth and notoriety; and, 
 contrasted with these (the world's standard of things), the 
 Christian's standard, saintliness. All that he applies only 
 to the Catholic would seem to hold of the real Christian, 
 whatever his church. 
 
 Christmas Day, 25th December 1849. . . . Eead to 
 
 B a part of Newman's Sixth Sermon, and then 
 
 finished it by myself. It is on every man being born for 
 a purpose to do some work not to live by his will but 
 by God's. All but some isolated Eoman sentences seemed 
 true, so deeply true. It is perplexing to read these, and 
 find so much which seems as true as any human words can 
 be, intermixed with other things held by him as equally 
 true, which, to one bred as I have been, it is impossible to 
 believe. One is led to ask whether, between what seems 
 true and what untrue, there is some secret necessary link 
 which I do not perceive. 
 
 Houstoun, Sunday, 30th December. T and I 
 
 walked over to Ecclesmachan. J. Smith preached a very 
 feeling sermon on Psalm ciii. 14-19. It was full of 
 touching thoughts and allusions to the fleetingness of our 
 life here, and the need of a resting-place in God. After 
 church I went and had a long talk with him. Came away 
 about 3.30. The sun was down a calm evening; golden- 
 orange glow in the west, smallest white fleecy clouds 
 overhead, like the ripple on a calm sea. A quiet hour as 
 I walked homeward. . . . Many things haunt me, in the 
 calmness and unbroken flow of my life here. I often wonder 
 whether or not it would be better to give up some of the 
 pleasures hunting for instance ; not that I think it wrong, 
 but I have scruples about it. Perhaps it breaks in on any 
 dawnings of spirituality ; on the other hand it is freshening, 
 exhilarating, strengthening for body and mind. And it 
 does not do to encourage morbid or womanly feelings, nor 
 to begin a life of self-denial from which one may after- 
 
vii HOUSTOUN 125 
 
 wards recede. Better to be slow in beginning than too 
 quick and rash. Still let me try to be honest. 
 
 CatMaw, 1 Wednesday, 9th January. Eead after break- 
 fast some of Bushnell, also a page of German (Goethe's Italian 
 
 Journeys). About 2 went out to meet T and C , 
 
 who had been looking at Charles and the Torphichen curlers. 
 We two walked up by the Silver Mines, and looked at the 
 strata in the lime quarry immediately north of the Knock 
 
 Hill. Then by the Mount E cottages, and down 
 
 alongside of the South Silver Mines or quarry a surface 
 layer of 8 or 1 feet of black blaze ; then the limestone 
 strata over some whinny, mossy ground ; traced the ' tods ' 
 among the snow. Went into a weaver's cottage on the 
 west side of the hill, then across the fields to where the 
 Torphicheners were curling, chill and dark the air, still 
 freezing keenly. Then over the Torphichen Hills to the 
 north side of Torphichen village to have a look at the old 
 Preceptory, very fine with the hills as a background. 
 
 Colder Park, 2 1 Oth January. Got to Calder Park just 
 in time for dinner. Sir Henry Stuart there. A pleasant 
 evening. 
 
 Lochwinnoch Day, Friday, \\tli January. Still cloudy, 
 with bitter wind from south-east. About 11.30 Walrond 
 and I started for Glasgow. At 1.30 we set off by train for 
 Lochwinnoch, and reached rather before 2.30. There was 
 a grand sight. About 150 rinks from all parts of the 
 country Perthshire, Stirlingshire, the three Lothians, 
 Lanarkshire, Eenfrewshire, Ayrshire, perhaps Peeblesshire 
 and Dumfriesshire, assembled, besides crowds of spectators. 
 There were three rinks of ' Upha' chaps.' My father did not 
 go, from his influenza. Two of the rinks won ; the 3d 
 E. Glens was beat by Kilmarnocks only by three shots. 
 Altogether a cheering and most national game. 
 
 Houstoun, Monday, 21. Our last day's curling. In 
 bed in the morning I put together five verses of a bonspiel 
 
 1 A place rented by his brother-in-law, Captain Leckie. 
 
 2 The home of Theodore Walrond's father's family. 
 
126 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 Tuesday, 22d January. I went to Dalkeith. As I 
 passed along in the train there was a still solemn sunset 
 behind the eastern peaks of the Pentland Hills dark ribs 
 of heavy cloud, interlined with deep streaks of crimson and 
 orange. A still solemn background to this bustling moving 
 world. This was over Penicuik, W. Clerk's home. Some- 
 how the stillness and solemnity of it made me think much 
 of him going too, as I was, to Norman's manse. Met 
 Norman, and went home. A calm, quiet evening, with much 
 grave talk; strengthening and elevating. We sat till 
 1 A.M. 
 
 Saturday, 2Qth January.- My father and C - re- 
 turned from the funeral at Wallhouse. Less than a week ago 
 Mrs. Gillon was alive. Not very well this day last week, 
 but better on Sunday last, and in great spirits on the Sun- 
 day evening. And at this moment the moon is shining on 
 her grave in Torphichen churchyard. It is a clear blue 
 night frosty the full moon a little west of the zenith. A 
 few of the greater stars out Orion, the Pleiads, and Sirius 
 (I think) ; the ground thinly covered with snow. And she 
 lies there. Many a Sunday in going out and in to church 
 she passed the place." 
 
 This is the Bonspiel Song mentioned in the Journal, 
 which was written after the Lochwinnoch curling match 
 
 THE BONSPIEL 
 
 Cauld and snell is the weather, ye curlers ! come gather. 
 Scotland summons her best frae the Tweed to the Tay, 
 It's the North o' the Clyde 'gainst the Southern side, 
 And Lochwinnoch the tryst for the bonspiel to-day. 
 
 Ilk parish they've summoned, baith landward and borough, 
 Far and near troop the lads wi' the stanes and the broom, 
 The ploughs o' the Loudons stand stiff i' the furrow, 
 And the weavers o' Beith for the loch leave the loom. 
 
 The braw shepherd lads, they are there in their plaids, 
 Their hirsels they've left on the Tweed side their lane, 
 
vii HO US TO UN 127 
 
 Grey carles frae the moorlands, wi' gleg e'e and sure hands, 
 Braid bannet o' blue, and the big channel stane. 
 
 And the Loudons three, they forgather in glee 
 Wi' tounsfolk frae Ayr, and wi' farmers on Doon, 
 Out over the Forth come the lads frae the north, 
 Frae the far Athole braes and the palace o' Scone. 
 
 Auld Keekie's top sawyers, the lang-headed lawyers, 
 And crousc Glasgow merchants are loud i' the play, 
 There are lairds frae the east, there are lords frae the wast, 
 For the peer and the ploughman are marrows to-day. 
 
 See the rinks are a' marshalled, how cheer'ly they mingle ! 
 Blithe callants, stout chiels, and auld grey-headed men, 
 And the roar o' their stanes gars the snowy heights tingle, 
 As they ne'er did before, and may never again. 
 
 Some lie at hog-score, some owre a' ice roar, 
 
 " Here's the tee," " there's the winner," " chap and lift him twa yards," 
 " Lay a guard," " fill the port," " and now there's nocht for 't, 
 But a canny inwick, or a rub at the guards." 
 
 Gloarnin' comes, we maun pairt, but fair fa' ilk kind heart ! 
 Wi' the auld Scottish bluid beating warm in his veins. 
 Curlers ! aye we've been leal to our countrie's weal, 
 Though our swords now are besoms, our targes are stanes. 
 
 We are sons o' the true men who bled wi' Will Wallace, 
 And conquered at brave Bannockburn wi' the Bruce, 
 Thae wild days are gane, but their memories call us, 
 So we'll stand by langsyne and the guid ancient use. 
 
 And we'll hie to the spiel, as our fathers afore us, 
 
 Ye sons o' the men whom foe never could tame, 
 
 And at nicht round the ingle we'll raise the loud chorus, 
 
 To the land we lo'e weel, and our auld Scottish game. 
 
 While at Eugby, Shairp kept up correspondence with all 
 his Scotch friends, as well as with the Houstoun circle ; and 
 in the following letter to the minister of Kilmalie, his 
 strong Jacobite sympathy, the minute accuracy with which 
 he remembered the places he had visited, and his passionate 
 attachment to his native land, are equally seen. There are 
 signs also of partial weariness with the work he had in hand, 
 and of a preference for the freer life he would have, were he 
 to leave it and return to Scotland : 
 
128 JOHN CAMPBELL SHA1RP CHAP. 
 
 [No year given, but it was probably 1851.] 
 
 " KUGBY, llth September. 
 
 " MY DEAR CLERK I remember Druimchosie quite well. 
 I saw it that day I walked from Glenquoich to Glenfinnan, 
 as I lay on the top of Scour-corry-buy and looked at those 
 piles of Scours which guard the passes down to the Atlantic. 
 Druimchosie is not a Scour, but a long low ridge running 
 westward, and a little south from the head of Loch Quoich, 
 toward Knoidart in fact, towards the head of Glen Barris- 
 dale. If I live, I shall yet see with my own eyes Maam- 
 clach-archaig, and the ravine up which Charlie crawled. 
 
 If Mr. Macdonald of Hunett knows well the country 
 over which Charlie wandered, could he tell you what line 
 he took from Fruich-vein (the hill just over Glenfinnan) to 
 Druimchosie, where he got through the sentinels ? 
 
 You know that from Skye he landed at Malag, on the 
 south side of Loch Nevish ; thence to Bonadale ; thence to 
 Fruich-vein over Glenfinnan ; thence (under the guidance 
 of Glenaladale and Donald Cameron of Glenfean) to Druim- 
 chosie, where he cleared the sentinels. These are the main 
 points ; but if Mr. Macdonald knows the intervening points, 
 or any incidents of this journey, I should be glad to know 
 them. For to me there is none of his journeys more inter- 
 esting than this I don't think even the one with Flora. 
 I have got a book of the Jacobite Memoirs, edited by 
 Chambers from Bishop Forbes's MSS. ; very interesting 
 they are. They give a very detailed account of the cruelties 
 that followed Culloden. History has almost forgotten to 
 record them. I wonder whether Macaulay will. But 
 there they stand, the darkest blot on the Hanoverian 
 line. . . . Will you tell me on what principle these 
 slaughters were carried on, for they seem to have slaughtered 
 in cold blood all whom they knew to have been out, and 
 many who stayed at home ? Also in what districts was the 
 visitation most severe ? and how long did it last ? Was it 
 continued after Charlie had fairly sailed ? These, and any 
 
vii AUTUMN IN THE HIGHLANDS 129 
 
 other traditions of that time especially of his wanderings 
 will be most welcome at any time. . . . 
 
 How well I remember, about fifteen years ago, your 
 repeating to me, for the first time, in the Greek class-room 
 at Glasgow, those lines, ' Or like a ship some gentle day.' 
 It was one of those evening meetings of the Peel Club, after 
 Norman had been holding forth to a full house. They gave 
 me a thrill of delight, such as I have seldom felt since 
 rarely if at all since. Perhaps only when, from the high 
 hills of Moidart, I catch a glimpse of the blue Hebrides far 
 seaward. If we live, I would like to go over some of these 
 places with you. This is as prosaic a place as a man need 
 wish. Perhaps some day I may exchange it (how willingly 
 I would) for a Lochaber sheep -farm. . . ." 
 
 In a letter to Edward Scott (22d August 1859), he 
 said " I used to repine at returning to Eugby, during this 
 bright autumnal weather, which seems to call only to the 
 hills and the sea, where they meet as in the West High- 
 lands." 
 
 K 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 MEMORIAL SKETCHES BY RUGBY FRIENDS AND PUPILS 
 
 IN this chapter are some of the estimates of Shairp sent me 
 by his many friends, and former pupils ; and I must again 
 thank those of them who have allowed me to divide their 
 papers into sections, in order to make the biography more 
 complete, while not overloading it with repetitions. 
 
 The Archbishop of Canterbury writes 
 
 "ADDINGTON PARK, CROYDON. 
 
 "... When I first went as a young master to Rugby, 
 full of reverence and keenness for the place and its tradi- 
 tions, I found that I had come into a remarkable group of 
 men. Besides Dr. Goulburn himself, Canon and Professor 
 Evans with his intense keenness for Greek scholarship and 
 his insight into its finest expression, Dean Bradley with his 
 Latin prose and his devotion to history, Charles Arnold with 
 his German literature, Charles . Evans with his finished, 
 elegant scholarship, Highton with sciences and electric tele- 
 graph, and other most interesting men, were all masters 
 there together, as well as Shairp. And those were days 
 not at all bad (as I venture to think) for the boys, when 
 the masters had time, after Dr. Arnold's example, to have, 
 and to pursue, studies of their own with some ardour. 
 Among them all Shairp was a most delightful presence. 
 Every one loved him, and felt the infection of his perfectly 
 detached interests. His devotion to Scotland and all that 
 was Scottish, his wide knowledge of poetry, and his memory 
 
vni SKETCHES BY RUGBY FRIENDS AND PUPILS 131 
 
 of it, and the quiet, appreciative, moist-eyed repeating out 
 of the very noble and pathetic passages, made him a holiday 
 in himself. He was most kind and warm to me from the 
 first, and for my six years there I knew him intimately. 
 He was very fond of riding a fine horse in the company 
 of a Scotch staghound of great power and beauty, which, 
 as we went along roads or through fields, cleared the 
 highest Warwickshire hedges of that time in steady suc- 
 cession. In these rides, as well as in walking up and 
 down the Close, he would get quite lost in discussing Cole- 
 ridge, points about Wordsworth, defining Imagination and 
 Fancy, etc. etc. 
 
 Others told me of the surprise which was felt when he 
 accepted Dr. Tait's invitation to school-work, and he himself 
 told me how no known relation of his (I think) had ever 
 been anything else but a soldier ; ' but I thought,' he said, 
 1 that there was a manly strong work to be done among 
 English boys, and I love lads, and I never hesitated.' He 
 also, I think, had been keen to work where Arnold had 
 worked, and he was strongly attached to Dr. Tait. He was 
 unconventional in his look, with his cap far back, and his 
 gown carried, till he got into school, over his arm. And 
 besides, there was generally a look-out kept by his Form in 
 the hope that he might be a quarter of an hour late, at 
 which moment the tradition allowed them to depart in all 
 directions. His Form loved at once his genial, fresh, sunny 
 face, and fine stature, and fatherly tone, and the penetrating 
 reverence and gravity with which he spoke of anything 
 serious, or read the Bible with them. He was extremely 
 fond of 'Arthur Stanley,' and the Dean in his turn of him. 
 The Dean told me how once, on a visit to Shairp's home in 
 Scotland, before his father's death, he was taken by him to 
 see the ' graves of the Covenanters ' ; and while he was 
 himself conjuring up facts and traits of the time, Shairp 
 became quite silent, and when, among the graves, Stanley 
 turned to say something fresh, there was Shairp with his 
 hat held before him in both hands, and his face turned up 
 and tears streaming over it. 
 
132 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 His exclusive love of Scotland was delicious when in 
 England. I remember well being one of a committee of 
 four to settle a history subject for our examination, in Dr. 
 Goulburn's study. One suggested one period, and one another ; 
 but Shairp objected to a political period as full of the worse 
 premature lessons for boys, and to the French Eevolution as 
 too horrible, and to the Great Eebellion as to two good 
 causes overthrown each by its own badness, and to French 
 periods as mad or selfish, and to the Conquest because 
 nothing was known about it, and to others as badly or 
 drily told, until we asked him to settle his own subject. 
 When he said : ' So far as boys are concerned, the only real 
 heroic history is the History of Scotland, and the best and most 
 feeling narrative is the Tales of a Grandfather ! ' Similarly, 
 when some one commended in his hearing a fellow-country- 
 man who spoke English so purely, that there was not a trace 
 of northern pronunciation or accent, Shairp said, in the 
 broadest yet most polished of Scotch tones, ' I never (al- 
 most niver) knew the man (almost mon) who deliberately 
 tried to be rid of his natural brogue, but there was some- 
 thing base in the man.' His delight was great when he 
 secured a beautiful copy of Billings's Scottish Castles. We went 
 through- them, and the peculiarities of their architecture, most 
 minutely ; making every place live with tales and legends 
 and family histories about them. 
 
 I wish it "were yet lawful to tell many interesting 
 reminiscences of his Tractarian experiences at Oxford. He had 
 been at one time powerfully affected by Newman, and had 
 known Ward very well. His stories of that time, and his 
 views of its leading people, were as vivid, and as clearly put, 
 as anything in his discussions of poetry and literature, so 
 much of which he has since written out and published for 
 all. He used to speak of Ward's ' sharp logic ever goading 
 on leaders,' who were then ' stepping on, feeling the way, 
 quietly and gently, but anxious to go on alone for a time.' 
 He looked on ' the ideal of a Christian Church ' as having, 
 through its author's impetuous nature and ruthless pursuit of 
 logic, ' revealed tendencies much earlier than was intended.' 
 
viii SKETCHES BY RUGBY FRIENDS AND PUPILS 133 
 
 Of all this I give now no opinion it was Shairp's interest- 
 ing view and talk. At the same time, he admired the 
 ascetic self-denying life of Ward, coupled in such strange 
 combination with extraordinary merriment and enjoy- 
 ment. 
 
 One day in arguing with him Shairp ended by saying 
 to Ward, ' You consider your church and system the essence 
 of Christianity. Now, if I've never seen a real Christian 
 yet among my own Presbyterian relations, I never will see 
 one ; I'm sure of that.' Ward's reply was, ' Shairp Newman 
 tells me' ('he always drew on Newman,' said Shairp, 'for facts') 
 ' that there are no saints to be found outside the Church, no 
 saints you see no character that can lay claim to saintli- 
 ness to be the saintly spirit.' ' Then' said Shairp, ' under- 
 standing what he meant by saintliness, I was overthrown, 
 and could only hold by my own convictions unreasoningly. 
 But afterwards, of course, I saw that if you give an ecclesi- 
 astical definition to saintliness, it is no wonder that you do 
 not find saintliness outside ecclesiasticism.' 
 
 This story was very characteristic in all points of Shairp. 
 With all his love for his boyhood's type of religion he had 
 a very sincere respect for and love of English worship, and 
 no face ever expressed more simple, manly trust and affec- 
 tionateness than his always did, as he knelt, with his eyes 
 closed, and his face upturned, and his hands hanging down 
 clasped, before receiving the Holy Communion. 
 
 He was an admirable element in our very bright happy 
 industrious Rugby life, with its spaces of recreation. Both 
 his enjoyment of country and country life, and his interest 
 in abstract discussions and in non-scholastic literature, came 
 with great freshness over our own work and that of the boys, 
 many of whom, before it was made a part of regular school- 
 course, took a very vivid and original interest in books which 
 then lay off the path of common teaching. 
 
 And, on the whole, I go back to saying that it was the 
 whole man, which was very complete in its type, which 
 impressed one more than any particular things he said and 
 did. 
 
134 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 I wish this fragmentary, broken memory of a most true- 
 hearted friend and bright example were more worthy of 
 him. . . ." 
 
 The Eev. Arthur T. Butler, of Oriel College, Oxford, 
 writes 
 
 " My first acquaintance with Professor Shairp was as a 
 boy at Eugby, nearly forty years ago, when he came fresh 
 from the University to be an assistant-master under Dr. 
 Tait, and the kindness he there showed me laid the founda- 
 tions of a friendship, which has been one of the precious 
 things of my life. All old Eugbians of the time will 
 remember the impression he at once created, as he stalked 
 about, sometimes with a plaid around him, and a long crook 
 in his hand, and a noble deerhound at his side, in earnest 
 talk with one of the masters or older boys, often gesticu- 
 lating, and unconscious alike of the games and of the curious 
 eyes bent upon him by many beholders, for it was at once 
 felt that he was something different from the ordinary 
 schoolmaster. He did his work ; he went through the usual 
 routine of school-teaching and discipline ; he was far too 
 much of a man and a gentleman to fail in keeping a decent 
 order and attention among his pupils, and in his Form ; but 
 it was evident that his mind was often far away, and that 
 the multitude of small details which make up the life of a 
 schoolmaster was not to his liking. 'Boys,' says an old 
 pupil and friend of his, ' want regularity, order, being saved 
 from their own exuberance ; in a word, method. Shairp 
 admired method, but had it not. Inspiration was his gift. 
 He was like a wave of the sea ; wherever he came he brought 
 freshness with him.' If, however, there was any principle 
 of grammar or history to be enforced, or of poetic interest 
 to be noted, there he could be eloquent and instructive, and 
 to a few boys would give a new intellectual impulse in their 
 school-life ; but for the steady, dogged, daily drill at 
 grammar and derivations, as well as for the many devices 
 calculated to keep indolent and inaccurate schoolboys in the 
 
vni SKETCHES BY RUGBY FRIENDS AND PUPILS 135 
 
 path of school-learning, he had, it must be confessed, little 
 taste by nature, and he never acquired it. He was rather 
 a poet and a philosopher, with an intense love of nature and 
 literature ; and he found it difficult and tedious, instead of 
 carrying on his own and others' higher education, to be 
 working only at elements, and giving almost exclusive care 
 to turning a very small wheel in a great machine. It was 
 this in part which led him to say to one of his older pupils 
 that he felt it ' as a knockdown blow, when he reached 
 Carlisle, on his way south.' It was due also, no doubt, to 
 his intense love of Scotland, and his dislike of the tame 
 scenery of an English midland county; but to a poetic mind 
 like his. fond of brooding and leisure, I suspect that the 
 real objection lay deeper. School-life, though full of other 
 and deep interests, is too engrossing to allow of much 
 thought or study, and the constant teaching of rudiments 
 is a burden which to certain minds becomes intolerable. 
 And so Shairp never took kindly to the life of a school- 
 master ; it was drudgery; it was not in Scotland; the 
 country round was poor and unattractive; and a school- 
 master is a dominie. 
 
 And yet it must not be thought that his work at Rugby 
 was a failure. ' Every man,' said one of his colleagues, 
 ' should be a missionary to his pupils : Shairp was a mis- 
 sionary to the masters.' If to this be added his influence 
 among the older and more thoughtful boys, the picture will 
 be complete. He was a missionary, a preacher, not only, or 
 chiefly, of religious truth, but of whatever things ' are true 
 and lovely and of good report.' And he would find a boy 
 here and a boy there on whom his ardour and enthusiasm 
 made an impression never to be effaced. It was through 
 him that we first learnt to appreciate Wordsworth, Newman, 
 and in a less degree Carlyle, as he poured forth his inex- 
 haustible quotations in a fervent stream of affectionate 
 remembrance ; and it is hard for any one who once felt the 
 spell to think of certain passages in those great writers apart 
 from him. His voice then had a fulness and a resonance 
 which it lost in later years, and there was withal a depth of 
 
136 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 earnestness and inwardness in his recitations which made 
 them (even while he himself was filled with the vision of 
 St. Mary's pulpit, or of the poet's haunts at Kydal or at 
 Yarrow) seem all his own. And so if his influence at Rugby 
 be measured by a standard of quality rather than quantity, 
 he did a work there in receptive minds for which many a 
 more successful schoolmaster might sigh in vain. 
 
 With one pleasant reminiscence, sent to me by an old 
 pupil, I will conclude this sketch of Shairp's life at Rugby. 
 His great deerhound, whose name was Gruim, has been before 
 mentioned. Gruim, it seems, was a thief, or at least from 
 being a great favourite with the boys, and often invited to 
 their studies to be fed, he would also go there uninvited; 
 and, presuming on the affection of his friends, in -their 
 absence would help himself, especially to their pats of butter 
 laid out for breakfast. Gruim, however, could do no wrong ; 
 and, loving the dog, the boys learnt, though not understand- 
 ing him, to love the master. Every schoolmaster who is a 
 poet and philosopher should certainly have a Gruim. I have 
 seen the same dog, sitting beside Shairp at breakfast, watch 
 the opportunity, when his master was talking earnestly to a 
 neighbour, and take a cutlet from his plate and bolt it whole. 
 After a time Shairp would look round, and, finding his meat 
 gone, would glance at Gruim. The dog's gravity, however, 
 was equal to the occasion, and instead of the miserable ' not 
 proven' look, which a weaker dog would have exhibited, he 
 stood boldly on his innocence, and was acquitted." 
 
 Mr. Butler has also sent me a characteristic story : 
 
 "When he first went up to Oxford he hardly knew 
 any one, and feeling lonely, determined to indulge himself 
 with a day's hunting. Accordingly, he went to the best 
 livery-stables, and demanded a horse. The proprietor was 
 a knowing man, and, after a little conversation, concluded 
 that Shairp was a safe man, and gave him a firstrate 
 mount. 
 
 There were a great many ' men ' out that day, and the 
 
vin SKETCHES BY RUGBY FRIENDS AND PUPILS 137 
 
 run was a severe one ; and, as it happened, every one was 
 left behind except Shairp and the master of the hounds a 
 young man very well known and much admired among the 
 sporting members of the University. The two got talking, 
 and Shairp proposed that, being near to Oxford, they should 
 return together and dine in college. This was done, and 
 great was the astonishment of Balliol to see the young Scotch 
 freshman walk into hall, accompanied by the dashing young 
 M. F. H - , who was, at least to the sporting ones, the 
 object of so much admiration. 
 
 That evening, Shairp said, one after another of these 
 men dropped into his rooms, and he found himself at once 
 introduced to as much of the college society as he desired." 
 
 The following is a continuation of the reminiscences sent 
 by the Dean of Westminster, Dr. Bradley : 
 
 "Early in 1846 I left Oxford, and entered on the work 
 of a Rugby master. In the summer of the same year a 
 valued colleague died, and as October drew near, the late Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury, then head-master of Rugby, asked me 
 one day 'how I thought that Shairp would do as his suc- 
 cessor?' 1 I was startled for a moment, as I felt that Shairp's 
 ignorance of English school-life, his probable deficiency in 
 such parts of a Rugby master's work as the teaching of 
 Latin and Greek verse, and even his entire and delightful 
 unconventionality, and the freedom with which he would 
 discuss all questions philosophical, social, or theological 
 might prove serious drawbacks. On the other hand, I 
 felt that his high character and active intellect, and his 
 very originality and fervour, the perfervidum ingenium 
 Scotorum, would bring a new element and a most valuable 
 one into our society ; and on asking the opinion of a friend 
 already named, was answered in the characteristic words, 
 ' My dear Bradley, you will all take him to your bosoms.' 2 
 
 1 Dr. Tait had known Shairp well when himself Tutor of Balliol. 
 
 2 Alas ! as I correct the proof of this letter, the grave is hardly closed over 
 the Matthew Arnold whom I quote. 
 
138 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 Dr. Tait, after consulting others who knew Shairp better 
 than I, wisely carried out his purpose, and Shairp began his 
 work, I think in October 1846, in lodgings close to my 
 own house, and from that time we gradually became fast 
 friends. 
 
 The anticipations formed of him by his friends were 
 in the main thoroughly verified. Among his colleagues 
 there was hardly one, I should imagine, who did not 
 regard him with unusually warm feelings of respect and 
 affection. I should think that there was not one among us who 
 did not feel that his character, his personality, his conversa- 
 tion, his mode of looking at things, his very eccentricities and 
 Scotticisms, had about them a savour of originality and 
 freshness, which was of the very utmost value in a society 
 of English schoolmasters ; and his generous, frank, and 
 chivalrous character, his outspoken contempt for all that was 
 petty or ignoble, his genial humour, and his earnest and 
 deep sense of religion won from us something more than 
 respect. 
 
 Among the Rugby masters of Shairp's day I might name 
 such men as Bonamy Price, George Kennedy, Richard Con- 
 greve, H. Highton, Charles Arnold, Canons Charles and Thomas 
 Evans, the present Archbishop of Canterbury, and his Balliol 
 friend, Theodore Walrond, over whom the grave has scarcely 
 closed as I write these lines. But there was no one to- 
 ward whom he was more closely drawn than an older col- 
 league, in many respects singularly unlike himself, George 
 Cotton, afterwards Master of Marlborough and Bishop of 
 Calcutta ; the close friendship between the two men was one 
 that was and might well be greatly valued by each. If Cotton 
 gained much from his younger friend's fervid enthusiasm and 
 almost restless activity of mind, Shairp not only thoroughly 
 enjoyed the quiet and unfailing humour of his older col- 
 league, but greatly valued his calm and wise judgment, 
 and felt imperceptibly, I think, his influence on subjects in 
 which he was always deeply interested the larger and more 
 important questions of Christian theology. On these questions 
 Shairp's mind, as was the case with most thinking young 
 
viii SKETCHES BY RUGBY FRIENDS AND PUPILS 139 
 
 men who had been at Oxford in the years between 1840 and 
 1850, was often much exercised. He had a strong aversion 
 to all ' tests and subscriptions/ as also to all oversubtle and 
 scholastic definitions of things that he thought undefinable. 
 I remember once, in Dr. Goulburn's head-mastership, his con- 
 fiding to Cotton and myself his determination not to read 
 the Litany when it came to his turn to do so (as it did in 
 those days to all masters, lay and clerical alike) in morning 
 prayers in the ' Big School ' not on the ground of any stum- 
 bling at the doctrine of the Church, but because he could 
 not use the fourth sentence, and address in prayer so abstract 
 an idea as the Trinity. I cannot recall the exact solution 
 of the matter which made us both Cotton and myself 
 seriously uneasy for a time. But no doubt the present 
 Dean of Norwich to whom Cotton undertook to speak 
 had already found out how true and earnest a brother 
 Christian he had in a colleague, in whom he soon learned 
 to recognise something far different from a mere academical 
 sceptic, or bold questioner of accepted truths. I mention 
 the story as a not uninteresting trait in the history of one 
 whom many knew only in the full maturity and fixedness 
 of his religious convictions. 
 
 It was not, however, I need hardly say, to theological 
 questions that his interest was confined ; least of all 
 to such an aspect of them as I have just indicated. 
 He was never tired of talking of poetry. It was during 
 his Oxford and Rugby days that Tennyson gained the 
 ear, and absorbed the attention of the rising generation 
 of Englishmen: and Shairp, though the first time that I 
 ever heard him speak 'upon his feet,' was as the upholder 
 of the superiority of Wordsworth to Tennyson before ' The 
 Decade ' a small debating society to which we both had the 
 honour of being admitted was yet a devout admirer of the 
 younger poet. There was a story of some cricketing mem- 
 bers of the school coming to a full decision that the Scotch 
 master ' must be mad ;' for, in addition to other eccentricities, 
 he had walked across ' bigside,' and right through the game, 
 with a new book in his hand, which he was wrapt in reading, 
 
140 JOHN CAMPBELL SHA1RP CHAP. 
 
 quite indifferent to the momentous fact of a game being in 
 full play. The book was In Memoriam, just published, and 
 the temporary oblivion was characteristic of the man. 
 And whatever may have been the merits of his writings or his 
 lectures or his conversation in later life, it was in those days 
 a real treat to hear him at his best on poetry and cognate 
 subjects. Day after day, when he lived on the Hill Morton 
 Eoad, before and after my own marriage, and before his own, 
 he would come in after 'first lesson,' stand with his back to 
 the fire, refuse breakfast, but ' prophecy,' as I used to call it, 
 heedless of time, till I remember saying to myself after 
 seeing him out on his homeward way after one singularly in- 
 teresting half hour ' better than all knowledge that in books 
 is found is the talk of that half-inspired Wordsworthian.' I 
 am speaking, it will be remembered, of days when he had as 
 yet written nothing, and when his mind and spirits were still 
 in their full effervescence of early manhood. 
 
 As was to be expected, he could never thoroughly 
 reconcile himself to the tame and featureless scenery of a 
 midland county. In this the Highlander was strong within 
 him, and the ' voiceless streams and endless hedgerows,' and 
 monotonous undulations of Warwickshire scenery had few 
 charms for him. Though even here he found, as others have 
 found, during a short period in which he occasionally fol- 
 lowed the hounds on an excellent hunter, a certain charm 
 in the great sweep of those widespreading grassy fields, and 
 in the occasional old-world, time-worn, farms and granges, 
 past which he would ride after the hounds, looking, he said, 
 as though they had stood undisturbed in a quiet settled 
 country for centuries. Nor could it be said that his work 
 as a schoolmaster, though carried out with unfailing faithful- 
 ness and sense of duty, was entirely congenial to him. It 
 was not, I think, that he cared in the least for the curious 
 mixture of feelings, with which his holding such an office 
 as that of 'a Dominie' was in those days looked on by 
 some of his friends across the Border. Of this he used to 
 tell us in his best manner amusing stories. One of these I 
 cannot suppress. 
 
viii SKETCHES BY RUGBY FRIENDS AND PUPILS 141 
 
 It was a story of a small Scottish laird, who had 
 known the family of our head -master, who, on hearing 
 that Archibald Tait, Tutor of Balliol, as he then was, had 
 been elected as Dr. Arnold's successor, exclaimed with a 
 groan, ' What ! Craufurd Tait's son made a dominie ! 
 Eh, sirs ! that I should have lived to see it !' Once I 
 remember a touch of the same feeling taking a very different 
 shape on my dear friend's lips. As we came out of school 
 one morning in 1853, a troop or two of cavalry of, I think, 
 the 14th Light Dragoons, rode through Rugby on their 
 way southwards for the Crimea. Shairp got out his horse, 
 and rode with them two or three miles, and came back much 
 interested and excited with his conversation. He came to 
 me on his way to second lesson, and after telling me about 
 it, the old soldier's son gripped my arm, in his way, and 
 said, ' Eh, Bradley, it was as much as ever I could do when I 
 came back not to roll up this gown and throw it away !' But 
 in the main, he was for some time, at least, happy and in- 
 terested in his Rugby life ; and if some parts of his work 
 and of school routine were more or less irksome and dis- 
 tasteful to one of his temperament and habits of thought, his 
 strong common sense and entire conscientiousness preserved 
 him from failure. But valuable as his career at Rugby was 
 both to us, his colleagues, and to not a few of his abler pupils, 
 and much as I believe he himself gained from the discipline 
 and responsibilities of the place, yet others than himself felt 
 that he had a right to look towards a post of a different kind, 
 and that, with whatever grief at parting, we were content to 
 see him installed in the chair of a Scottish professor. 
 
 I will not enter into either the joys or the sorrows of 
 the later part of his Rugby life ; his most happy marriage, 
 or the sad and trying loss of his first child, under which no 
 young mother could have suffered more than he. Both events 
 alike seemed to call him away from Rugby and towards 
 Scotland. His old yearning for his own country became 
 exceedingly strong within him ; and the cares of life, and 
 more settled and decided views on questions on which he 
 had often wavered, took off something from the youthful 
 
142 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 exuberance and freedom with which he would discuss the most 
 momentous subjects. It was a time also of decaying pros- 
 perity at Rugby, and, on the whole, some of his best friends 
 judged with him that the removal to Scotland was a step from 
 which we could no longer dissuade so staunch a Scotsman. 
 
 From that time, though we remained on terms of warm 
 mutual affection, I saw him less frequently. I need hardly 
 say that I read with the greatest interest all that he wrote, 
 and joined with others, who valued him as highly as I did 
 myself, in doing all in our power to promote his election to 
 the Professorship of Poetry at Oxford. 
 
 Many instances might be given of Shairp's unfailing readi- 
 ness to act as the champion in central England of Scottish 
 history, and of the Scottish Church and Nation : one may suf- 
 fice. Once, after dinner in my house at Rugby, at a time when 
 Shairp was in an especially Scottish frame of mind, there 
 sat near him a neighbouring clergyman (of Carlisle by birth), 
 an able man, but rather given to promote controversy by saying 
 disagreeable things. He said to Shairp, 'Your aristocracy, 
 till civilised by England and English force, spent half their 
 time in murdering each other.' I thought Shairp would have 
 let something fly at him, but he merely replied, ' At all events, 
 
 Mr. , we had a church which was not that of the squire 
 
 and landlord, but went down into the very hearts of the 
 people/ Still I was rather afraid of an explosion, and was 
 much relieved by seeing Shairp sound asleep (a weakness of 
 his after dinner) in his chair, while my friend was still 
 talking about the superiority of England to Scotland." 
 
 Sir Horace Davey's reminiscences refer both to the Rugby 
 years, and to meetings in the Scottish Highlands after- 
 wards. He writes 
 
 " I first made the acquaintance of Mr. Shairp when I 
 entered Rugby in August 1848. I was placed by my 
 father in the house of the Rev. R. B. Mayor, who was a 
 mathematical master ; and as Mr. Shairp had at that time no 
 boarding-house, he acted as the classical tutor of the boys 
 
vin SKETCHES BY RUGBY FRIENDS AND PUPILS 143 
 
 at Mr. Mayor's house. I was Mr. Shairp's pupil until I 
 left Kugby, in October 1852. With his name are entwined 
 the brightest memories of my school-life, and to him I owe 
 the best influences of those four years. 
 
 Without being a great scholar, he had a good and quite 
 sufficient knowledge of both Latin and Greek, and whether 
 his heart was in it or not at that time, he spared no per- 
 sonal trouble or pains with his pupils. I cannot, of course, 
 remember all the books we read with him as tutor, but I 
 have a distinct and lively recollection of the Agamemnon of 
 ^Eschylus. I have no doubt he conscientiously instructed 
 us in the construction of the sentences, the philology, the 
 proper emendations of the obscure or corrupt passages, and 
 all the scholarship part of it. But what I remember is his 
 enthusiasm for the poetry and the majesty of diction and 
 rhythm of the masterpiece, and his endeavours to inspire 
 his pupils (not always, I fear, with perfect success) with 
 some appreciation of the greatness of the work we were 
 blundering through, and some spark of his own delight in 
 it. Sometimes, when one of us was wearying his soul with 
 a painful schoolboy's translation of a fine chorus, he would 
 break out and give us a vigorous rhythmical translation of 
 his own. I remember also reading some at least of the 
 Idylls of Theocritus with him. I suspect his heart was 
 more in the poetry, than in what he used afterwards to 
 refer to as the ' gerund-grinding,' quoting from Carlyle's 
 Life of Sterling. Mr. Shairp always attached great im- 
 portance to the writing of Latin prose, which he thought 
 the best foundation for a good English style. He used to 
 encourage me to make written translations from Cicero's 
 letters, and put them by for some weeks, and then retran- 
 slate them into Latin. My own experience confirms his 
 opinion. It was due to his teaching that I learnt to write 
 tolerable Latin prose. 
 
 But it was as a friend, and not as a tutor, that I knew 
 Shairp best. From the time of my first entrance into the 
 school he began to make a friend of me, and I began to 
 love him. We took long walks together, and when I grew 
 
144 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 older we went expeditions beyond the limits of a walk on 
 half-holidays, and sometimes he took me for a ride. I have 
 no doubt we talked on all sorts of trivial everyday subjects, 
 for Shairp was never a pedant, or a prig ; but he also 
 talked much of poetry, and he would recite to me whole 
 poems or long passages, chiefly from Wordsworth, Burns, and 
 Tennyson, and the songs from Scott's poems in a kind of 
 musical chant or lilt. One of my most valued possessions 
 is a copy of Wordsworth, which he gave me in the spring 
 of 1850. He was also, at that time of his life, full 
 of Carlyle, and was fond of quoting some racy or humorous 
 expression of his in conversation. Under his guidance I 
 read the French Revolution. I cannot remember that he 
 ever talked much of Byron or Shelley. He used to tell me 
 about his Oxford life, and friends particularly A. H. 
 Clough, of the influence of Newman's sermons upon him. 
 I do not remember that he ever talked much on contem- 
 porary politics, or social questions ; but I have a distinct 
 impression that it was largely to Shairp's influence (I hope 
 I don't malign his memory) that I went up to Oxford a 
 youthful radical, ready to reform the world at a day's notice. 
 In walking in the flat pastures of Warwickshire, Mr. 
 Shairp would frequently talk of his beloved Scotland, and 
 to my delight he invited me to join him in a tour in the 
 Western Highlands, in the summer holidays of 1850. I 
 joined him at Oban, and thence we went up Loch Linnhe 
 and Loch Eil to Glenfmnan the place (Shairp told me) 
 where Prince Charlie raised his standard in '45. I kept 
 no journal of our tour, and I have found it impossible to 
 trace our route on the map. Only certain parts of it 
 remain in my memory. It was like a new existence to a 
 boy who had been brought up for the most part in London. 
 At Glenfinnan we were joined by Mr. Edward Poste, and 
 Shairp's elder brother, and our first walk was to Arisaig. 
 We were in the country of The Bothie, and I then first made 
 the acquaintance of Clough's delightful ' Long Vacation 
 Pastoral.' In some part of the tour we must have gone up 
 the Sound of Mull, past Ardtornish, round Ardnamurchan, 
 
vin SKETCHES BY RUGBY FRIENDS AND PUPILS 145 
 
 and past the Scuir of Eigg by sea. I remember reading 
 the Lord of the Isles for the first time on board the steamer. 
 We visited Dr. Macleod, ' the High Priest of Morvern,' at 
 his manse on the shores of the Sound of Mull, and spent 
 a night at his house. I remember sitting up to a late hour, 
 listening to his stories of Highland character and marvel- 
 lous tales of second sight. Thence we crossed the Sound 
 and the Island of Mull to the Isle of Alva ; and from 
 there we spent a long summer's day visiting lona and 
 Staffa, in a large rowing-boat which we engaged. Shairp 
 had not been to these islands before. He would not go 
 in the ordinary way in the excursion steamer with the 
 tourists. 
 
 The next thing which lives in my memory is a walk 
 along the southern shore of Loch Hourn, at the end of 
 which we found that the expected inn at Kinloch Hourn 
 had been closed. We were, however, hospitably entertained 
 at Glen Quoich House by Mr. Ellice, whom we met return- 
 ing with his friends from shooting. The next day we 
 started under the guidance of one of our host's shepherds 
 to walk over the hills back to Glenfinnan, but somehow 
 we lost our way, and when night fell were still in the open 
 hillside, far from Glenfinnan, and our guide had left us. We 
 did not get to Glenfinnan till the early morning. I still 
 remember the tender care which Shairp took of me in our 
 walk through the night, and how I at length reached the 
 inn worn out with fatigue. We spent a night at a manse 
 on the shores of Loch Eil opposite Ben Nevis, which was 
 covered with snow when we rowed across in the early 
 morning to Fort William, where we met Mr. Theodore 
 Walrond and a party, and went up Ben Nevis with them. 
 From Fort William Shairp and I made our way southwards 
 by Glencoe, Loch Lomond, and the Trosachs to his beloved 
 home in Linlithgowshire. I stayed three days with him 
 there, and thence returned home. I have visited Scotland 
 since, but the memory and joy of my first tour, under my dear 
 friend's care, have never been effaced. He was, of course, 
 full of anecdotes of the adventures of Prince Charlie, in the 
 
 L 
 
146 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 country where he landed, and whence he escaped ; but I 
 remember he was careful to tell me (so like him !) that he 
 did not really think it would have been to the advantage 
 of the country that Prince Charlie should have succeeded 
 in his enterprise. 
 
 After I went to Oxford I regularly visited Mr. Shairp 
 so long as he remained at Rugby, and on one occasion was 
 laid up in his house by an accident, owing to the fall of a 
 horse, when I received the kindest attentions from himself 
 and Mrs. Shairp. But it became evident to me that his 
 heart was no longer in his Rugby work, and his thoughts 
 and hopes turned towards Scotland, the home of his affec- 
 tions. I was glad, therefore, when I heard that he had 
 been offered, and accepted, congenial work at St. Andrews. 
 The consequence to me, however, was that I almost lost 
 sight of him. My work was in London, and from circum- 
 stances I was unable to pay visits to Scotland. I saw him, 
 however, from time to time on the occasions of his rare 
 visits to London, and later more frequently at Oxford. 
 
 Others can portray Mr. Shairp's character with greater 
 knowledge and greater skill than I can. His relation to 
 me remains that of an older brother and friend to a school- 
 boy, which is outside criticism. I can recall the elevation 
 of his character and his tender affection ; and his very 
 prejudices added a charm and raciness to his conversation." 
 
 Dr. Jex-Blake, lately head-master of Rugby, writes 
 
 September 1887. 
 
 " My first recollection of J. C. Shairp was his appearance 
 in Rugby Chapel as an assistant-master in the autumn of 
 1846. I was then a boy in the Fifth Form, seated very 
 near him ; and his slightly bald head led me to say to my 
 neighbour, ' Much older than old Tait.' For some time I 
 saw nothing of him ; but towards the end of 1850 I was 
 high in the Sixth, and along with Godfrey Lushington and 
 J. H. Bridges who, like myself, were not his pupils, and 
 with Shadworth Hodgson, John Cordery, and Horace Davey, 
 
viii SKETCHES BY RUGBY FRIENDS AND PUPILS 147 
 
 who were his pupils was often at his house. There, or 
 strolling in the Close, he would talk of poetry, politics, 
 morals, and common things of our school-life in a genial 
 simple way ; taking pleasure in a boy's talk, and putting at 
 the boy's disposal the resources of a maftV reading and a 
 man's brain. The very day I left school, he said to me, 
 standing by the east end of the chapel, ' You will find 
 Oxford a place of wonderful opportunities ; and there is no 
 place where real good nature and good temper will carry a 
 man further.' He also said, 'Oxford is a capital place to 
 teach you to ride. You have capital limbs for riding.' It 
 seemed at the moment an odd remark ; for I had no idea 
 that I should do a good deal of riding there to hounds 
 and to the drag with little or no injury to work, and much 
 good in other ways. He had himself hunted a little at 
 Oxford, and had won repute thereby in college, and in the 
 county ; from Sir Algernon Peyton among others. While 
 an Oxford undergraduate, I saw him from time to time at 
 Eugby and at Oxford ; and in our many rides in those days 
 he would talk horseflesh or poetry with equal animation. 
 One talk I remember, that lasted from Hillmorton to the 
 Hempton Hills, seven or eight miles on horseback, wherein 
 he maintained the great superiority of local patriotism and 
 local sentiment over any cosmopolitan or humanitarian feel- 
 ing, as inspiration for poetry. Burns and Scott were quoted 
 on the one side, Shelley and Keats on the other. He would 
 talk too of David and Isaiah, and the strong reverence of 
 the Scotch peasant for the Bible ; but there was in those 
 days a tinge of Oxford Liberalism which wholly vanished 
 long before his death. 
 
 Just when I should have gone in for Greats, I had to 
 leave Oxford through some sort of fever ; and Shairp asked 
 me to come to Rugby to recruit. I stayed a full fortnight, 
 and was treated with extreme kindness by both husband 
 and wife ; meeting with sympathy and patience in per- 
 plexities which then befell me. I can remember no talk 
 except of a personal character ; but I shall never forget the 
 visit. He was little at Eugby in 1858-68, while I was an 
 
148 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 assistant -master ; but I remember well the indignation 
 aroused in him by some cavils at the Books of Kings, urged 
 somewhat irreverently by a young Cambridge man. During 
 my own head-mastership he stayed with me three or four times ; 
 and also stayed with Henry Ehoades and Edward Scott ; 
 and in several walks and rides he spoke with earnestness 
 against the Eadicalism of Oxford and the scepticism which 
 seemed to him rampant ; taking too sad a view, I thought, 
 of men and things. 
 
 Altogether he was one of the freshest and truest natures 
 I have known, sterling, loyal, kind ; a man all over. He 
 believed in breeding, in inherited qualities, in poetry, in 
 Scotland, and he disbelieved in remorseless logic. He did 
 not find in all respects a congenial atmosphere at Eugby, 
 and did not possess all the points needed for dealing saga- 
 ciously with all sorts and conditions of boys ; but he was 
 one of the best men, and, to capable boys, one of the most 
 inspiring men Eugby has known through the last half 
 century. As a writer he seems to me endowed with a fine 
 feeling for poetry, rather than a born poet ; and perhaps 
 some of his prose criticisms on poetry are as good as any 
 poem he has published." 
 
 The following is by Mr. Edward A. Scott, one of the Eugby 
 masters, whose account of the visit to Clough, in Inverness- 
 shire, has been given in a former chapter : 
 
 " I first knew Principal Shairp when he became a master 
 at Eugby in 1846. 
 
 I was a boy in the Sixth Form, not in any way especi- 
 ally connected with him ; and for some reason unknown to 
 me became the recipient of unbounded kindnesses from 
 him. His house, his horse, and his time were always 
 offered for my use. Such intimacy between a master and 
 a boy, now not unusual, was then quite new ; but it always 
 was Shairp's way. jQlis greatest influence at Eugby was 
 exercised through these private friendships. I never had 
 a lesson from hirn, and only knew him as an inspiring 
 
viii SKETCHES BY RUGBY FRIENDS AND PUPILS 149 
 
 friend. What struck me most in him was the combination 
 of enthusiasm, and a certain precision of character, which I 
 may almost call severity. He repelled no question ; gave V 
 his opinions evidently with no reserve ; but made me feel 
 that there were some questions which it was good not to 
 ask, for himself as well as for me. I do not think his 
 opinions were as sharply defined then as they became later; 
 but I felt even then that in the freest discussion he was 
 shaping an opinion, and would have me feel that discussion 
 for discussion's sake was useless. I remember particularly 
 conversations on Spinoza, Shelley, and Byron, if I can speak 
 of a conversation when I can only have been a listener ; and 
 perhaps still more short turns, almost surprises, in which 
 his stern Presbyterian training came to the front, as if it 
 were the rock-substratum of his character. But Wordsworth 
 and Newman were his main themes. I can see him now, 
 and hear him, as he used to roll out lines of the one, and 
 declaim periods of the other : lamenting always that he 
 had not the memory qualified to retain words in their exact 
 order. More particularly Wordsworth's poems written during 
 his Highland tour, and the peroration of Newman's last 
 sermon, delivered in the Anglican Communion, were his 
 favourites. But it is hard to say what Scotch poetrv, or 
 what English writing since 1800, was not opened up in 
 flashes, during walks, and rides, and breakfasts, or teas, 
 which I received such frequent invitations. 
 
 It is not easy to describe, or even to recall, the novelty 
 of such companionship in a boy's life, extending itself over 
 the whole range of his interests, while it opened a new world 
 to him beyond them. Rugby was not a congenial place to 
 him, either then or later. But this uncongeniality only 
 made more attractive the freshness of the new life which he 
 opened to his pupil. 
 
 Nor was this freshening power felt only by his pupils. 
 It was as warmly recognised by his colleagues. Bishop 
 Cotton, whom I knew well, and under whom I lived for five 
 years as my chief at Marlborough, was full of this theme. 
 He spoke of Shairp as a unique force : a fountainhead of 
 
150 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 originality. The present Dean of Westminster, who at that 
 time exercised the most vigorous influence as a teacher, used to 
 say that ' Shairp was a missionary to the masters.' As a form 
 teacher he was never quite at home. Method was foreign 
 to him, as he often said. At a later period, when Dr. Goul- 
 burn gave him work with the Sixth Form, his especial powers 
 had more scope. But I should expect to find that those 
 who owe most to him have incurred the debt from conversa- 
 tion, or incidental remarks, throwing light into dark places, 
 and kindling interests previously dormant, rather than from 
 any systematic or complete map of knowledge laid down 
 for them. The delicate appreciative power combined with 
 firm and definite conviction, which marked his mature writ- 
 ings, I can now trace clearly in my recollections. At the 
 time criticism, enthusiasm, sense of duty, and the warm 
 glow of a poetical imagination drew me by a complex chain 
 that I should not have cared to analyse, even if personal 
 affection had permitted me to do so. I loved him all my 
 life, and wish I could have loved him even more than I did. 
 No man has ever done so much for me, or made me so 
 deeply his debtor. 
 
 The charm of his presence only seemed to deepen, and to 
 throw itself over all who came within its reach. His manner 
 with women was perfect having in it something chivalrous : 
 a combination of freedom and self-restraint, which I have 
 , v not seen equalled in any other person. He seemed to set 
 value upon everything that was sincere and natural, and 
 from my first acquaintance with him always imbued me 
 with something of his distaste for people who ' could not 
 be themselves.' This lay at the bottom of his frequently- 
 expressed admiration for repose of character. It was not 
 the repose of artificial superiority, but the repose of Nature, 
 true to herself, of which he spoke. 
 
 To myself he remained to the last what he had been 
 in 1846. When he was talking nothing was allowed to 
 interrupt his flow, as nothing interrupted my desire to 
 listen. I have often stayed with him as he was 
 dressing or undressing. The last time he was in my 
 
vin SKETCHES BY RUGBY FRIENDS AND PUPILS 151 
 
 house I saw him almost into bed, as I had so often done 
 as a boy." 
 
 The Dean of Salisbury writes thus of the same period 
 
 " It was in 1847 that I spent an evening with Shairp at 
 Eugby, and saw for the first and only time the Close, the 
 Chapel, and the Library, all speaking of the remarkable man 
 whose life, through Stanley's admirable biography, was at 
 that time so often in the thoughts of Oxford men. 
 Shairp was full of the delights of his new life, and spoke 
 much of his intercourse with B. Price, Cotton, and Bradley, 
 in whose house I found him residing during Bradley's honey- 
 moon. He spoke with great admiration of the judgment 
 and skill with which Dr. Tait was managing the great school ; 
 and told me, I remember, that all doubts as to his efficiency 
 had entirely passed out of Stanley's mind and other old 
 pupils of Arnold. With metaphysical questions he was 
 now much occupied. I think that he looked forward to a 
 Chair in some Scottish University, and we had a long con- 
 versation on Spinoza, and a remarkable article contributed by 
 J. A. Froucle to the Oxford and Cambridge Eeview. Froude 
 had turned his back on his old Oxford friends, and though 
 still a Fellow of Exeter College, had begun to show his 
 sympathy with advanced German thinkers. During the 
 period of my undergraduate life, Shairp came occasionally to 
 Oxford, and as I was fortunate enough to enjoy the friend- 
 ship of some elder Balliol men, I had frequent opportunities 
 of meeting him, and enjoying his hearty and enthusiastic talk. 
 
 It was his custom to read some dialogues of Plato, and, 
 when he came to Oxford, to discuss them in walks with one 
 of his dearly-prized Balliol friends, the late C. E. Prichard. I 
 remember he came to breakfast with me after one of these 
 walks. The only other person present was the late Sir 
 Alexander Grant. When breakfast was over, Grant, putting 
 on his gown, said, ' I must go to Jowett's lecture, but I 
 have had one from you, Shairp, already, on the Parmenides;' 
 and, indeed, Shairp had talked of little else. When Grant 
 
152 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 had gone, he remained with me and recited a poem of A. H. 
 dough's, beginning with the words, ' I give thee joy.' I 
 took it down from his lips, wrote it in a commonplace book, 
 where it now stands, and I found it afterwards in the small 
 volume of Ambarvalia, published in the same year by Clough 
 and his friend Burbidge. It is almost impossible for me to 
 say how much I owed at this time of my life to the healthi- 
 ness and high tone of Shairp. I was passing through the 
 period of Goethe worship, which I suppose came strongly 
 upon many Oxford men of my generation, and I greatly 
 wish I had preserved a short letter in which Shairp ex- 
 horted me to read an article in the Edinburgh Review, by 
 Herman Merivale, on the Goethe festival. I obeyed his 
 order, and when we next met in 1 8 5 at Oban, he expressed 
 pleasure at finding that I had, as he said, taken a turn for 
 the better, and had begun to see that Carlyle's idol had some 
 flaws in him. 
 
 It was delightful to see Shairp in the West High- 
 lands. There were many Oxford men at Oban at that 
 time. Some were reading, and among them the present 
 Speaker, with Mr. Jowett. Sir M. E. Grant Duff and I were 
 pupils of a great ethical coach, Mr. Palin ; but we all met 
 together frequently in a way which recalled something of 
 the freedom of Clough's ' Pastoral.' Shairp and Mr. Poste, 
 who had been his fellow-traveller, were full of their ex- 
 periences in Morven, and we heard much of the simple and 
 delightful life of the manse, where one well-known member 
 of the Macleod family reigned like the spiritual chief of the 
 district. It was the year when In Memoriam appeared, and 
 there is an old churchyard not far from Oban, which will 
 ever be associated in my mind with Shairp's recitation of 
 the poem on 'Lazarus.' Jowett had preached a remarkable 
 sermon to the congregation gathered, under the auspices of 
 Bishop Ewing, in an upper chamber, and when the service 
 was over, Shairp, with his plaid round him, walked with two 
 or three others in search of this old burial-ground. As we 
 returned there was a purple hue over Kerrara not unlike 
 the glow on Olivet alluded to by Tennyson." 
 
vin SKETCHES BY RUGBY FRIENDS AND PUPILS 153 
 
 A pupil friend of Shairp's at Eugby, Mr. Shadworth 
 Hodgson, sends me the following : 
 
 " When Mr. Shairp came to Rugby as an assistant-master, 
 it was my good fortune to be in the number of those who 
 were assigned to him as pupils. From that time I date a 
 stimulus and an influence which have been of the greatest 
 value to me, and which were owing, I think, far more to 
 the rare personality of the master than to any special feature 
 in the classical instruction which he imparted in the ordinary 
 course of school studies, excellent as that also was. The 
 schoolmaster of typical excellence, I suppose it would be 
 admitted, is he who is excellent alike in dealing with boys 
 in school and out, alike in the class-room and in the 
 cricket -field, in indoor work and outdoor sports; who 
 encourages boys to work while at work, and to play while 
 at play ; feeding and developing their mental powers, while 
 at the same time maintaining the due limit between the 
 bodily and mental domains, and combining harmoniously 
 the energies proper to both. 
 
 It was not, however, in this direction that Shairp's 
 special excellence lay. To be a typical schoolmaster was 
 not his ambition, though he fully satisfied the ordinary 
 requirements of the type. His unconscious message to us 
 schoolboys was a message from the world of life, not only 
 outside school, but also outside even that larger world of 
 ordinary careers of business or pleasure, for which school is 
 the preparation a spark or ray from the ideal life of man as 
 a denizen of the planet Tellus, haunted and guided by the 
 Eternal Mind. In one word, Shairp was a poet, a poet not so 
 much by the accomplishment of authorship, as by necessity 
 of nature. That great gift was his, by which, when ade- 
 quately supported and subserved by technical skill, the 
 painter, the sculptor, the musician, and the penman produce 
 works in their several departments, which convey, and in a 
 manner express, what is ineffable in the works of Nature, 
 and (ineffable though it be) yet at the same time appeals to 
 and awakens feelings of pleasure and delight, not transitory 
 
154 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 and modish, but permanent and continuously developable, 
 from having their roots embedded and interlaced with the 
 inmost fibres of the human mind. 
 
 This, I think, and have often thought, in looking back 
 upon it afterwards, was the source and secret of Shairp's 
 great moral and intellectual influence upon his pupils. But 
 to describe, or even enumerate the various ways, and countless 
 minute incidents, by which this influence oozed so to speak, 
 and was communicated, is a far more difficult task. One 
 chief mode perhaps was by his quoting, and reciting lines 
 and fragments of poetry, which expressed his own feeling, and 
 by the tone in which he would recite them. He was a 
 great rider, fond of expatiating on the delights of riding to 
 hounds, and of a burst across country. Often have I heard 
 him repeat from a well-known song I think I hear him 
 now as I accompanied him one day in a somewhat tamer 
 ride, when staying with him at Rugby as his guest in my 
 undergraduate days 
 
 When lie leaves his care on his bed behind, 
 And the world is all fresh before him. 
 
 One of his most marked and striking characteristics was 
 the deep-seated chivalry of his disposition and temperament ; 
 and in perfect harmony with this was not only his delight 
 in all country scenes, and especially mountain scenery, but 
 also his strong nationality and love of Scotland. The mere 
 outward and accidental vehicles of all this such as were the 
 two beautiful engravings from Turner (one of Loch Coruisk 
 enveloped in cloud), which adorned his lodgings when first 
 he came to Rugby, later on his great Scotch deerhound, and 
 even the partridges cooked Scotch fashion on toast, with 
 which he feasted us occasionally at breakfast were all vivid 
 and delightful impressions to us boys, and made us apt 
 recipients for that influence which I have striven to delineate. 
 Nor must I omit his keen pleasure and appreciation of 
 physical prowess in any of his pupils, and indeed in any 
 one, at cricket, football, or any kind of athletics. One in- 
 stance I particularly remember in the case of a pupil of 
 
vni SKETCHES BY RUGBY FRIENDS AND PUPILS 155 
 
 his, and then and since a very great friend of my own, 
 whose name I may perhaps be pardoned for recalling, now 
 that death has unhappily taken him from us, John Frederick 
 Gosling, who at cricket, but chiefly at football, was superb ; 
 morally superb also, as I think Shairp then saw. 
 
 Naturally, however, the pupil-room, or ' Private Tutor,' 
 as we used to call it, was the chief occasion and means of 
 irradiation, the classical authors there studied offering the 
 most frequent opportunities for genial criticism or illus- 
 trative quotation. He treated the ancients as our own flesh 
 and blood, ancestors wise or unwise as the case might be, 
 but always engaged on the same world of experience, the 
 same problems of life as ourselves, though seeing them from 
 different sides, and consequently seeing in some respects 
 more, in others less, than equally wise moderns. Plato 
 would be illustrated from Coleridge, and more especially 
 from Wordsworth. I remember the impressive way in which 
 he once read to us Shelley's Hymn of Pan, beginning 
 
 From the forests and highlands 
 We come, we come. 
 
 The Shelleyan word 'daedal* was a great favourite of his, 
 and he would enlarge gladly on its expressiveness. But 
 Wordsworth was the poet from whom he chiefly delighted to 
 quote, and whose meaning he brought out by his most im- 
 pressive recitation. In those days, it should be remembered, 
 Wordsworth was not the universally acknowledged classic 
 that he now is. It was always the specially Wordsworthian 
 passages in Wordsworth that he dwelt on. The shorter and 
 less renowned was the piece, provided it was specially 
 Wordsworthian, the more, it seemed, he was inclined to 
 dwell on it. I remember one day particularly, in conversa- 
 tion, his reciting Glen Almain to me, and insisting on its 
 wonderful charm, and on the combined depth and delicacy of 
 its sentiment 
 
 It is not quiet, it is not ease ; 
 
 But something deeper far than these : 
 
 The separation that is here 
 
156 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 Is of the grave, and of austere 
 Yet happy feelings of the dead ; 
 And therefore was it rightly said, 
 That Ossian, last of all his race ! 
 Lies buried in this lonely place. 
 
 Several other instances I could recall were it desirable, 
 but all that I could say would still leave my faint and frag- 
 mentary reminiscences utterly inadequate to give anything 
 like a living picture of him whose teaching they are intended 
 to commemorate. Still they may serve to add a grain to the 
 heap contributed by others. Fortunately, however, I am 
 able to conclude them by transcribing a letter which I 
 received from him, I think in the year 1853, the subject of 
 which is still of general interest, and which will do more to 
 paint the true wisdom and sincere kindness of the writer 
 than any words of mine could do. It should be noticed 
 that when Shairp wrote me this letter I had left Rugby for 
 some time, having gone up to Oxford after the Easter Vaca- 
 tion, 1851." 
 
 "HOUSTOUN, UPHALL, LINLITHGOWSHIRE, 
 "6th January [1853]. 
 
 " MY DEAE HODGSON I was concerned to see when you 
 were at Rugby that your mind was painfully occupied with 
 thoughts suggested by Carlyle's Life of Sterling. That this 
 book, and most of Carlyle's, should suggest such thoughts to 
 one of your temperament is nothing wonderful. Without 
 thinking that I could answer all these questions, even if I 
 knew them, I would wish, being myself hand ignarus mali, 
 to suggest one or two practical considerations. I will not 
 tell you not to read Carlyle, for I have read him myself for 
 twelve years now, perhaps too eagerly. Almost everything 
 he has ever written I know more or less. And perhaps no 
 writer living or dead has ever so thrilled me. To this hour 
 I cannot read him without having a thousand unutterable 
 thoughts stirred within me. But he carries one off one's 
 legs like a hurricane. While his power is on you, you cannot 
 see nor think but in his way. Therefore one learns in time 
 
vin SKETCHES BY RUGBY FRIENDS AND PUPILS 157 
 
 that if one is to judge fairly and not allow oneself to be 
 quite overmastered by any one man, however strong, one 
 must, after reading him through, lay him down, get out from 
 under his shadow, and get calmed again. Then when he 
 and others are removed to an equal distance from oneself, 
 one may look at them fairly, judge of their relation to each 
 other and to oneself, of Carlyle's relation to existing 
 opinions, and to whatever other truth one has found in one's 
 own experience to be true. If you feel that Carlyle does 
 not put forth all sides of the truth equally though no man 
 puts his own large side so powerfully then one should 
 pause before giving oneself over to his entire guidance. 
 And I think you will feel that there are some very needful 
 tempers of soul which have no place in his thoughts. 
 
 The fact is, there are many difficulties, critical, his- 
 torical, metaphysical, connected with religion which you 
 cannot answer now, which you probably will never be able 
 to answer. Make up your mind to this at once. On the 
 other hand, there can be no doubt at all about goodness, 
 about the Christian standard of life and temper, which rises 
 before us in the New Testament. There is no speculative 
 difficulty at all here, none but the great practical one of 
 realising it. If we could but keep this honestly in view, 
 and do earnestly the good that is right before us, I think we 
 would find all things simplify themselves. Then opinions 
 would in time grow within us what opinions are necessary 
 not as a system gathered from without by the head, but as 
 the result, the reflex, of life. 
 
 I remember that at your age I had what I daresay 
 you now have a strong desire for a consistent system, for 
 some standard and principle of knowledge within, by which 
 to measure and adjust all things without. Long one felt 
 this, and searched philosophical systems in hopes of finding 
 it. But now one feels that his knowledge is something far 
 more fragmentary and imperfect, that it would be enough 
 if he were given not a consistent intellectual system of all 
 things, but a consistent and single-aimed life one that was 
 at harmony with itself. 
 
158 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 I should not have written to you thus, but that I have 
 found, when in a like frame of mind to yours, some such 
 suggestions as these from others give me some help and com- 
 fort. Believe me, your very sincere friend, 
 
 J. C. SHAIRP." 
 
 A previous letter, written in June 1851 to the same 
 pupil and friend, if not so characteristic, has an interest of 
 its own. He speaks of being " knee-deep in examination 
 papers," but refers to his friend's essays in The Rugleian, 
 which he praises, " not so much for the results at which 
 they arrived, as from the marks they contain of patient 
 thought, and the attempt to look at things from your own 
 point of view, without repeating the sayings of books and 
 men. This when natural, and not much striven after, is 
 always good." At the same time he found the papers " in- 
 complete and obscure. This I hardly regard as a fault in 
 one of your age. It is almost the necessary condition of 
 any attempt to think or write for oneself. Perhaps the 
 Plato and Coleridge you have read encourage this, as in all 
 those who take to them they call up ' thoughts beyond the 
 reaches of their souls/ Therefore I never find fault with 
 obscurity, if a fellow really strives to speak as plainly as he 
 can, and makes conscience of doing so. But if one lets 
 oneself get into a habit of leaving things cloudy, from 
 carelessness, or a belief that therefore they are grand and 
 deep, this is a bad fault. Hence it is good for all those 
 who love the idealists to read some of the hard definite 
 realists, as Aristotle and Mill. This last, with much that 
 is unsatisfying, has this great excellence, that whatever he 
 has to say, he makes a duty of putting it as clearly as he 
 can. It really amounts to a moral virtue in him, akin 
 (d$e\<f>d, as Plato would have it) to honesty and thorough- 
 ness of character. ... I think if some time in your first 
 year 1 you would finish The Republic, making a short 
 analysis of it, you would find it an excellent introduc- 
 tion to the Ethics and Politics of Aristotle." 
 
 1 At Oxford. 
 
vin SKETCHES BY RUGBY FRIENDS AND PUPILS 159 
 
 One important part of his work at Rugby was his 
 Sunday evening Addresses to the boys in his house. They 
 illustrate his own ideal, and are simple, direct, earnest 
 appeals, going straight to the point as an arrow to its mark. 
 There was nothing artificial or morbid in the style of these 
 religious addresses. I select one delivered in November 
 1852- 
 
 " To-day, left alone while all of you were in church, and some 
 were at the Holy Communion, the thought, often present, again re- 
 curred, whether five years hence, when you who are in this house now 
 are scattered over the face of the earth, some of you perhaps in every 
 quarter of the globe, you will be able to look back with thankfulness 
 to this place and feel that it has indeed been good for you to have 
 been here. By that time, of those who may be spared to see it, all of 
 you will have fixed on, most of you will have already entered on, your 
 profession. Probably many of you have fixed on it now. . . . 
 
 But on all of you, whether you have already chosen your profes- 
 sion, or whether you have yet to choose it, two things I long to im- 
 press first, the duty and the blessedness of work for every human being ; 
 secondly, the right spirit in which to enter on our appointed work on 
 earth, and the encouragements so to enter, whatever may be its 
 nature. 
 
 Now the duty of work the world is not slow to acknowledge, but 
 when you go on to speak of its blessedness it will laugh at you out- 
 right. According to its view, they only are the blessed who inherit 
 a fortune, and can be ' men of pleasure.' Work it regards as a hard 
 necessity, incumbent on the many in order to get a livelihood, to be 
 endured for a time till we can make ourselves affluent, then to be flung 
 aside that we may live at ease. Is it to be wondered at that men or 
 boys who hear such maxims from their childhood should soon become 
 hard and selfish, mere money-getters or fortune-hunters, or at best 
 wholly given over to ambition ? . . . But there is a higher and truer 
 view of life than this. No man, whatever his circumstances, whether 
 born to a fortune or born to nothing, can live long and not devote 
 himself to some determinate line of duty without greatly injuring his 
 own character. A profession, a fixed line of duty, is the moral frame- 
 work in which our lives are cast. ... It disciplines a man, brings 
 him into intercourse with his fellow-men. 
 
 But we are apt to think of our profession as one thing, of our 
 religion as quite another, as if these two things had each their own 
 distinct sphere, wholly apart from and independent of each other. 
 Christianity knows no such distinction. Nay, it is one of its chief 
 objects to destroy this distinction. It tells us of a Kingdom not far 
 away, and in eternity only, to be entered on when we shall have put 
 off the body, but a Kingdom actually here and now, though we see it 
 
160 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 not ; a Kingdom which even you cannot see, but our hearts can feel 
 and partake of : for it cometh not with outward show, but is among 
 us and within us ; a Kingdom which, established on the earth by 
 Christ Himself, has never failed, but has gone on leavening mankind ; 
 a Kingdom not to be measured nor confined by this Church nor that, 
 nor by all the Churches, but which will surely recognise as its own 
 whatsoever is pure and good in humanity ; a Kingdom which rejects 
 nothing but what is evil, but which claims for its own, to be used in 
 \\& service, all gifts of body, mind, and spirit, all strength and health 
 and manliness, all intellectual gifts, all moral force, all spiritual de- 
 votion and self-sacrifice. This is the Kingdom for whose coming we 
 daily pray. ... It is an awful thought, but at the same time a 
 thought of joy, that every one here may, by his life and character, be 
 either helping forward this invisible Kingdom, or by his selfishness 
 doing what he can to defeat its advance. 
 
 Try then to think of this kingdom of God and of Christ, not as 
 a poetic image, nor as a thing you merely read of in the Bible, but 
 as a simple truth, and that every good deed, every holy disposition of 
 yours, now and in time to come, is part of it, helps it forward, and 
 that every selfish deed and worldly thought so far hinders it ; if you 
 can but act on this, it will give a meaning and a dignity to all your 
 work, here and elsewhere, which nothing else in the world can 
 give. 
 
 If I were asked what was the best thing that this School in 
 times past had done, I should at once answer, not that it has made 
 scholars, nor literary men, nor clever professional men, but that it 
 has sent into the world men impressed to the very core with the con- 
 viction that they had a work to do in it, and that the way to do it 
 was in the spirit of Christ. That great man who was so long the 
 soul of this place, and whose memory is now its best inheritance, lived 
 and laboured in this faith as perhaps none other in our time did, 
 and from him many hearts caught the inspiration. There are many 
 who were formerly boys here who could tell you that but for this 
 place and Arnold, they had never known what were the duty and the 
 blessedness of a life of earnest, unselfish labour. Why should not 
 you go forth, as they have done, to live and labour in this same 
 faith? ..." 
 
 One of the most interesting estimates of the Rugby 
 period is by his old pupil, Mr. Godfrey Lushington, now 
 permanent Under- Secretary in the Home Office, London. It 
 is contained in a letter written shortly after the Principal's 
 death, in 1885- 
 
 " I had many kind and good friends as a boy at school, 
 but he gave me what no one else gave, and taught me what 
 
vni SKETCHES BY RUGBY FRIENDS AND PUPILS 161 
 
 I have never had to unlearn, but, on the contrary, wish to 
 remember and to value more and more. I don't quite say 
 that but for him I should never have cared for poetry, 
 though certainly I was, more than others of my own age, 
 dull and insensible to it ; but it was he who kindly took 
 me by the hand, and led me into what was then to me the 
 new world of poetry, kindly and affectionately, like an elder 
 comrade inviting me to come and enjoy with him the happy 
 and beautiful things he enjoyed and prized so deeply. 
 
 But it was not poetry only, or even poetry chiefly. 
 Bather, I should say, he kindled in me, as in others, an in- 
 terest in the best things that appeal to feeling and the 
 human heart things which lie at the bottom of all society, 
 and every individual human life, but which are apt to be 
 forgotten or unheeded in the world of business or pleasure, 
 or the pursuit of mere knowledge ; and this he did, not by 
 teaching or preaching, but by giving expression, with such 
 a charming frankness and enthusiasm, to his own native 
 feelings and meditations, and trusting to find a sympathetic 
 response. 
 
 Everything about him interested and delighted me, his 
 love of his own home, his own country, its nobility and its 
 peasantry ; his reverence for ancestors, and the Covenanters ; 
 his appreciation of native worth of every kind ; his love of 
 horses, and stories about them and their riders ; his righteous 
 pride, and complete unworldliness ; his beautiful natural 
 feeling ; and all his natural and vivid expressions that laid 
 hold upon me and many others, like Davey, and Hodgson, 
 and Gosling (now no more), Arthur Butler, etc. 
 
 I remember with pleasure so many of the things he 
 said to me : his description of his early terms at Oxford, and 
 his making friends there what he thought of Clough and 
 Jowett ; his last words to me on my leaving Rugby the 
 old Scotch ballads, and passages from Burns, and Words- 
 worth, and Keats that he used to recite to me, his dis- 
 courses about Carlyle, etc. I can remember too very clearly, 
 and always with pleasure, all my times with him at Rugby 
 and elsewhere his stay at Dresden with Bishop Cotton in 
 
 If 
 
162 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 1849, our visit with the Dean of Westminster to Yarrow, 
 and Tibby Shiels, and Burns's home at Ellisland (and how 
 he took up the ladle there, and said, ' Many a good bowl of 
 punch has been in that, too many and too good '), and his 
 visits to my father in Surrey, and how he enjoyed the rides 
 we had together, and gave us the unexpected compliment 
 that he had not known there was such beautiful scenery in 
 the South. Latterly I saw him, to my great regret, but 
 very little; but I much enjoyed it when he occasionally 
 looked in upon me, at the Home Office, when passing through 
 London. . . ." 
 
 To this I may add the remark of another Rugby pupil, 
 to whom, after Shairp's marriage, a large share in the 
 management of the boys in his house was left. 
 
 " To him I am sure that I owe whatever success I 
 achieved at Oxford, mainly owing to the strong taste for 
 Latin prose composition with which Professor Shairp in- 
 spired me. His plan consisted of making one translate 
 Cicero into English, retranslate it back into Latin from 
 memory, correct it by the original, and finally learn it by 
 heart," 
 
 This is the more interesting from the fact that the 
 writer says, in another part of his paper, " There was great 
 sympathy between us, for which I can hardly account, for 
 how could you look for much sympathy between a poetic 
 Scotchman and an English public schoolboy, whose heart 
 was in football, cricket, and athletics ? " 
 
 The following memoranda are from Dr. Tait's successor 
 at Rugby, the present Dean of Norwich. Dr. Goulburn 
 writes 
 
 "DEANERY, NORWICH, 18th August 1887. 
 
 " I am glad of the opportunity of bearing my testimony 
 to the nobleness of a character, which no difference of early 
 associations, views, and habits of thought at all prevented 
 my appreciating. One seemed, while in his company, to 
 
vni SKETCHES BY RUGBY FRIENDS AND PUPILS 163 
 
 breathe a purer and fresher atmosphere, both moral and in- 
 tellectual. . . . The only direct connection which I had 
 with Principal Shairp was when he held an assistant-master- 
 ship in Rugby School, now more than thirty years ago. 
 Judging from the general cast of his character, he would 
 find the drudgery of instilling rudiments too irksome to do 
 it well. . . . While I hardly think him to have been well 
 qualified as a teacher of boys, he had high gifts as a tutor 
 and moral guardian that sensitive conscientiousness and 
 deep religiousness of feeling which, in the intercourse of 
 older people with the young, cannot fail to inspire, and 
 to impress them. I remember, even at this distance of 
 time, his reporting a boy to me for some serious fault, it 
 was so different from the common run of such reports, and 
 was made with such unusual seriousness and earnestness : 
 ' I have said to him the utmost I can say ; and now I feel 
 that I have nothing left me to fall back upon.' Those who 
 knew him will be able to imagine the intense earnestness 
 of face and manner with which he said these words. The 
 incident will never pass from my memory. I should add 
 that the sterling worth and nobleness of his character tran- 
 spired among his pupils and attracted them. All the better 
 and more discerning among them loved him. ' Dear old 
 Shairp ' was his constant and familiar appellation." 
 
 Archdeacon Palmer of Christ Church, Oxford, writes 
 
 "When I came into residence at Balliol in Michaelmas, 
 1842, John Campbell Shairp had already been two years in 
 Oxford. What struck me most in those days was the 
 enthusiasm with which he quoted poetry or spoke of high 
 subjects. Though he seemed to hold himself in, and 
 attempt to put a restraint on the tones of his voice and , 
 the expression of his feelings, there was something about 
 him which gave me the notion that he had the mind and 
 heart of a poet. I never knew a man in whose nature 
 veneration seemed to play a larger part. For great men, 
 noble thoughts, noble actions, his reverence was unstinted. 
 
164 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 He was no bookworm or recluse student. It is true that 
 he was unknown in the cricket-field and on the river. But 
 Shairp had established his character early in his under- 
 graduate life as a fearless rider, and stories of his perform- 
 ances in the hunting-field were current when I came up. 
 It was in consequence, perhaps, of this that he was on 
 friendly terms with the few Balliol undergraduates who 
 hunted, as well as with those who lived a studious and 
 economical life. His manhood was recognised by men 
 who did not care for his literature or his enthusiasm. He 
 had intimate friends who thought little of books or book- 
 worms. Of course my awe of him vanished as I grew 
 older; my admiration never diminished. I had become 
 intimate with him just in time to regard him, and be re- 
 garded by him, through life as a friend made in under- 
 graduate days. But I saw him often enough to keep 
 alive my feeling of intimacy with him, and to give me 
 opportunities of observing the permanence of his early 
 characteristics. Whether he came back to us as a Rugby 
 Master, or as Principal of the United College at St. 
 Andrews, or to lecture us on that subject which I had 
 always thought peculiarly his own as our Professor of 
 Poetry, he brought with him the same generous enthusiasm, 
 the same love of all things noble, the same freshness and 
 unworldliness which had distinguished him in early life. 
 He was profoundly religious, but there was not a trace of 
 formalism or of austerity about him. Perhaps it is for this 
 last reason that I do not remember to have looked upon 
 him as in any special sense or degree a religious man in 
 undergraduate days ; and to the end his religion was free 
 alike from affectation and from narrowness. But, as years 
 went on, his love of Nature saved him from being dried up 
 by study and reflection, or hardened by experience of human 
 folly and wickedness. We were very sensible of it in his 
 lectures as Poetry Professor. It became almost a proverbial 
 saying in Oxford that he seemed to bring with him a 
 breeze from his native heaths and mountains. I could 
 not refuse to contribute a stone to his cairn, as I believe 
 
vin SKETCHES BY RUGBY FRIENDS AND PUPILS 165 
 
 that few loved him better, or more heartily mourned his 
 death." 
 
 Mr. Henry Ehoades once a pupil of Shairp's at Rugby, 
 and afterwards warden of the College Hall at St. Andrews, 
 and assistant-professor of the classical languages there, now 
 a Master at Rugby sends the following recollections : 
 
 " RUGBY, 3d September 1887. 
 
 " You ask me to give you some of my recollections of 
 Principal Shairp, and I will try to do so as far as his work 
 at Rugby is concerned. I was his pupil there for ten 
 years, and the impression he made on me as a boy is so vivid 
 that I do not think I am in danger of confusing it with 
 the more intimate knowledge I gained of his character in 
 later life. 
 
 He was not perhaps especially successful as a form- 
 master, but many of his private pupils must look back to 
 their tutor lessons with him as giving the most stimulating 
 and ennobling influence they ever received from the outside. 
 Accurate work and preparation were always exacted, but we 
 were early made to feel that beyond and above this we 
 had to try to grasp the writer's thought. This was more 
 and more enforced as we rose in the school. A boy must 
 have been dull indeed, who did not catch some spark of his 
 enthusiasm for poetry, history, and philosophy. It was like 
 a revelation to read with him such books as the Agamemnon, 
 the Life of Agricola, and the Phcedo. Most valuable of all, 
 perhaps, were the hours when some passage in the day's 
 work stirred a train of thought, and the books were laid 
 down, while he talked as few but he could talk or read 
 to us from his favourite authors. In this way Coleridge's 
 Aids to Reflection and Bwgraphia Literaria, Scott's Border 
 Minstrelsy, and, above all, Wordsworth, found places of 
 honour on our study shelves. Once a week his Sixth Form 
 pupils were required to translate at sight passages of Lucre- 
 tius, or Cicero, or Plato, or Aristotle ; and though we were 
 often floundering out of our depth, the practice in his 
 
166 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 hands was most useful, and many a great thought was thus 
 brought home to us. When to this is added a high-bred 
 courtesy, a lofty scorn for what was mean or base, a trans- 
 parent unselfishness and unworldliness, deep reverence 
 for sacred things, and a centering of thought and aim on 
 all that was high and pure, his unique influence at Rugby 
 becomes intelligible. This influence extended to his col- 
 leagues. More than one of them in after years has spoken 
 to me of it. One in particular who has achieved distinc- 
 tion as a scholar and a teacher (I hope the Dean of West- 
 minster will forgive my quoting him) said, ' It was not 
 Arnold or Rugby or Oxford that educated me, but John 
 Campbell Shairp.' 
 
 I cannot bring myself to write of the time when I was 
 associated with him at St. Andrews, and enjoyed his inti- 
 mate friendship. In many a walk on the sands, or ' twa- 
 handed fireside crack,' as he would have called it, he 
 poured out his thoughts with such unreserve that I feel it 
 would be a breach of confidence if I were even to attempt 
 to play Boswell to his Johnson. Let me conclude by apply- 
 ing to him to the man more than to the writer the lines 
 of his favourite Wordsworth 
 
 Blessings be with them and eternal praise, 
 Who gave us nobler loves and nobler cares, 
 The poets, who on earth have made us heirs 
 Of truth and pure delight by heavenly lays." 
 
 Mr. Kitchener of Newcastle, Staffordshire, writes thus of 
 Shairp as a Rugby Master 
 
 " I first came under him in the Fifth at Rugby, then 
 taken by Bradley (now Dean of Westminster). When Shairp 
 took us in the Odes of Horace, we knew we would have 
 an easy hour compared with the severe if stimulative rule 
 .of our ordinary master. Later Mr. Shairp took the lower 
 Sixth, and I again came under him. All the boys liked 
 him. His rule was genial ; but the idle fellows escaped 
 him, and only the clever boys learned much. At one time 
 
viii SKETCHES BY RUGBY FRIENDS AND PUPILS 167 
 
 he helped Dr. Goulburn with the composition (English and 
 Latin essays) of the Sixth. Our essays would accumulate. 
 Then the boy would have to go to him, and rapidly read 
 essay after essay. They were as rapidly marked and done 
 with, till some essay would suggest a train of thought, and 
 then a talk might spring up, which, in my case, was worth 
 more than all the essay-correcting he could have given me. 
 Words dropped out by him, in his dry manner, seemed to 
 work in one's brain, and set one thinking." 
 
 Another, who knew him. well in his later Oxford and in 
 his Eugby days, though he was not at Eugby with him, 
 Lord Lingen, writes : " He was keenly alive to the beauty 
 that there is in the world, whether of human character or 
 of nature. Classical learning had produced that effect upon 
 him which is happily described by the old academic word 
 ' humanity.' In conversation he was simple and gentle ; 
 but, through the impression thus conveyed, a certain Scotch 
 humour and shrewdness were always coming to the surface. 
 He was quietly but intensely attracted to everything Scotch ; 
 fond of field-sports, and good at them. He was, according 
 to my experience, universally popular among his contem- 
 poraries, and respected by them as one of the pleasantest 
 of companions, and as a man in whose sense of honour the 
 most absolute confidence could be reposed." 
 
CHAPTEE IX 
 
 DOMESTIC LIFE AND INCIDENTS YARROW 
 
 IN November 1852 Shairp attended the funeral of the 
 Duke of Wellington, and described that thrilling event, first 
 in a letter to his father, which has been preserved, and 
 secondly, in another to the late Dean of Westminster, which 
 has unfortunately been lost, but of which Dean Stanley who 
 was also a spectator of the event said, in replying to it, 
 that it was " almost more impressive than the funeral 
 itself." 
 
 This is the letter to his father 
 
 " RUGBY, 22d November 1852. 
 
 "MY DEAR FATHER Ever since Thursday last I have 
 not ceased to regret that I had not tried to get you and 
 
 T to come to London on that day. Had one been on 
 
 the spot bedrooms and tickets could have been easier man- 
 aged than seems, even at this distance. And for any trouble, 
 you would have had overpayment in the intense interest. 
 Even the dullest Cockney was thrilled by it, and what would 
 you have been ? It would have served you with recollec- 
 tions while you live, as I think it will serve me. 
 
 No one out of the Cathedral had a better place than I 
 had. In the front nook of the front balcony of the Oxford 
 Club, about fifty yards east of St. James's Palace, I could 
 see them as far as Trafalgar Square. The procession and 
 the funeral in the Cathedral were two distinct things. The 
 chief interest of the one was military, the other more solemn 
 and saddening, I suppose. There were four things which 
 
CHAP, ix DOMESTIC LIFE AND INCIDENTS 169 
 
 specially struck me in that long array, which took one 
 hour and threequarters to defile past the place where I 
 stood. 
 
 1. After long waiting, when no sign had been given 
 except the faint far-off minute guns at starting, suddenly 
 the advanced guard of 1st Life Guards wound slowly round 
 the corner, close followed by the first band playing that 
 most mournful music with their muffled drums. We had 
 not been expecting them, and in a moment every voice was 
 hushed and the music was almost too sad. It made you 
 turn away. 
 
 2. When the car came with the coffin lying on the 
 top of the immense pile, the bier strewn with all its decora- 
 tions, and with palm-wreaths and laurel, which seemed all 
 so useless now, there was a deep silence and every head 
 unbared you felt that here was the very last of him we 
 should ever see. 
 
 3. The horse touched every heart large, and upwards 
 of sixteen hands, dark brown, like a powerful hunter ; 
 saddle and saddle-cloth of blue and gold; the field-mar- 
 shal's boots, with their spurs in the stirrups reversed ; and 
 this fine animal as meek as a lamb, with his head drooped 
 low to the ground, as though he felt it all. 
 
 4. When all was past, and the blues closed in the 
 whole, as the car faded from sight down Trafalgar Square, 
 and the last of that most mournful music died on the ear, 
 there was a strange vague pain, for one felt that there was 
 passing not only the grandest pageant one would ever see, 
 but the last vestige of the greatest epoch of England's 
 history was going down to the grave with him who 
 made it. 
 
 One who was in the Cathedral described to me the 
 thrilling effect of the sacred music pealing within, blended 
 with the military music without, as each band successively 
 marched up to the same spot outside and played the same 
 dirge of the ' Dead March.' And then, as the coffin went 
 down into the grave, he said he could distinctly see several 
 of the old Peninsular generals in tears Lord Seaton weep- 
 
170 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 ing like a child, Lord Anglesey and others holding up their 
 plumes to their brows to hide their manly grief. 
 
 Of all the military in that long procession no cavalry 
 looked better, hardly any so like work, as the Greys ; no 
 infantry marched half so proudly as the few representatives 
 of the Highland regiments. Every one remarked these last ; 
 and in the Cathedral I heard that one tall Highlander was 
 the most striking figure there. I would not have missed it 
 for anything else in the world, for I never can see anything 
 half so historical. 
 
 Only I do wish you had been just where I was, or in 
 the Cathedral." 
 
 The following is Dean Stanley's reply to the lost letter 
 of Shairp's to him, descriptive of the same event : 
 
 " CANTERBURY, 23d November 1852. 
 
 " MY DEAR SHAIRP Many thanks for your letter, which 
 was to me almost more impressive than the funeral itself. 
 By this time you may perhaps have heard that through 
 night and day, by sea and land, horses and steam, foam and 
 spray, I arrived at London at midnight on the 17th, passed 
 in the grey dawn through those vast streets of amphitheatre, 
 and fought my way by nine o'clock to the Deanery of St. 
 Paul's ! Under these auspices I was fortunate enough first 
 to see the procession advance up Ludgate Hill from the 
 balcony of the Cathedral, and then, entering, to share in 
 the actual service from the galleries within the dome. I 
 never have been so much struck by the estrangement from 
 English feeling produced in travelling partly for good, 
 doubtless, and partly for evil as on that day. Great as 
 the pageant was, yet the long and varied succession of 
 scenes which had passed before me, between it and the 
 Duke's death, made it extremely difficult for me to look 
 upon it, as I suppose many others did, as the climax of a 
 long-sustained consciousness of one great event. It seemed 
 to me a magnificent pageant hardly the burial of a man. 
 
ix DOMESTIC LIFE AND INCIDENTS 171 
 
 Yet my reason every day convinces me of what my imagin- 
 ation still fails to convey that I have indeed witnessed, as 
 you truly say, a universal movement, such as we shall see 
 no more again, in the heart of our country, and the close 
 of a world.- wide power and glory. For this reason alone 
 I am thankful to have come there would have been some- 
 thing painful in feeling that one had no share in such a 
 celebration. 
 
 Such honours Ilium to her hero paid, 
 
 And peaceful slept the mighty Hector's shade. 
 
 I confess this thought of his shade did from time to time 
 cross me during the service. It was the one feeling which 
 was left unexpressed. ' Where what whither is he 
 gone, for whom these tens of thousands are sitting round 
 in grim and awful silence ? ' Has he indeed passed from 
 us, and we from him, so that we have nothing to 
 say or do for him henceforth and for ever. Ami/ 
 acf>(,\ov is the first impression, yet I know not. . . ." 
 
 In 1852 Shairp became a candidate for the Chair of 
 Moral Philosophy in Edinburgh, then vacant by the resigna- 
 tion of Professor Wilson (Christopher North) ; and although 
 he was not successful in obtaining it, the testimony borne to 
 him by his numerous Oxford friends, twenty-eight in all, was 
 a very remarkable evidence of how he had impressed them 
 with a sense of power and originality, of freshness and 
 force of character, and fitness for such a post. It is rare, 
 indeed, that so many men, distinguished in so many different 
 ways, unite in bearing testimony to any one. Their names, 
 given in alphabetical order, were C. T. Arnold, Balliol ; 
 Matthew Arnold, Oriel, Inspector of Schools ; G. E. Bradley, 
 now Dean of Westminster ; Professor Buchanan, Glasgow ; 
 A. H. Clough, Oriel, Professor of English Literature, Uni- 
 versity of London ; John Connington, University College, 
 Oxford ; G. E. L. Cotton, Ptugby, afterwards Bishop of 
 Calcutta ; Professor Fleming, Glasgow ; E. M. Goulburn, 
 Head of Eugby, now Dean of Norwich ; B. Jowett, now 
 
172 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 Master of Balliol ; W. C. Lake, Balliol, now Dean of Dur- 
 ham ; H. E. Liddell, Head of Westminster School, now 
 Dean of Christ Church, Oxford; E. W. Lingen, Secretary 
 to Educational Committee of Privy Council, now Lord 
 Lingen ; Principal Macfarlan, Glasgow ; Norman Macleod, 
 Barony Church, Glasgow ; C. Marriott, Oriel ; F. E. Pal- 
 grave, Balliol, now Professor of Poetry, Oxford ; Edward 
 Poste, Oriel ; Bonamy Price, Rugby ; C. E. Prichard, Balliol, 
 Vice-Principal of Wells Theological College ; James Riddell, 
 Balliol ; W. Y. Sellar, Oriel, now Professor in the University 
 of Edinburgh ; A. P. Stanley, afterwards Dean of West- 
 minster; A. C. Tait, Rugby, afterwards Archbishop of 
 Canterbury ; T. Temple, Balliol, now Bishop of London ; 
 T. Walrond, Balliol, afterwards one of the Civil Service 
 Commissioners. 
 
 These testimonies are much more interesting than testi- 
 monials usually are, from the way in which they refer to that 
 force and elevation of character without which the keenest 
 intellect and the amplest learning are (for the purposes of 
 teaching) of little use. From one or two of them quotations 
 may be made. Mr. Matthew Arnold spoke of his " thorough 
 knowledge of the subject, and a remarkable faculty for 
 imparting that knowledge in an interesting manner." Clough 
 spoke of his power of appreciating and mastering the 
 theories of others, with original thought and feeling of his 
 own, his careful study of Aristotle and Plato, and "the 
 probability of his uniting in a rare degree knowledge of 
 various and differing schools of mental and moral science." 
 Cotton based his testimony on his being a thorough Scotch- 
 man, but educated partly in Scotland and partly in England, 
 on his genius for ethical study, helped by classical know- 
 ledge, and by his imaginative and poetic power, on his power 
 over young men, his unselfishness, his industry, and his 
 strong sense of duty. Professor Jowett referred to his living 
 interest in philosophy, and his power of communicating to 
 others the freshness which its problems had to himself, and 
 his power of personally attaching others to himself, " which is 
 perhaps half the secret of success as a teacher." " No one 
 
ix DOMESTIC LIFE AND INCIDENTS 173 
 
 can be with him without feeling that he has higher aims 
 and higher views than the majority of even good and able 
 men. His perfect disinterestedness, as well as his never- 
 failing enthusiasm for intellectual subjects, are very remark- 
 able qualities." He would " add literary eminence to any 
 university in which he was appointed Professor. But I 
 should expect him to be more than a mere lecturer, and to 
 exercise, by his character, a lasting and beneficial influence 
 over the minds of his pupils." Dean Stanley wrote of his 
 "faculty of throwing life into dry systems, and of present- 
 ing in a vivid and intelligible form the thoughts and feelings 
 of past ages. Such a faculty, valuable in any department 
 of science, seems to me, when combined, as in his case, with 
 largeness of mind and patient industry, almost certain to 
 ensure success in a Professor of Moral Philosophy. I may 
 also be permitted to say that there are very few men to 
 whose teaching and influence I could look forward so con- 
 fidently as likely to guide young men rightly, through the 
 many complicated questions arising out of the relations of 
 philosophy and religion ; because there are very.fkw who fc 
 so happily combine the spirit of criticism with the gift of M 
 imagination, true reverence for what is good, with an honest / 
 inquiry after what is true." Others say that the lecture-room 
 is his true place for the exposition of the thoughts of the 
 great men of the past, and the discouraging of the conceit of 
 knowledge without its power; that he would promote the 
 study of ancient philosophy in the original authors, but the 
 spirit in which he would approach the study would be mainly 
 a modern spirit ; so said Connington. Many others spoke of 
 what Wordsworth calls the first great gift, the " vital soul,"] 
 that would give new life and freshness to familiar thoughts. \ 
 T. Walrond writes thus " Great vigour and originality of 
 thought, imagination of a high order, habits of patient in- 
 vestigation, an ardent spirit of inquiry, tempered by reverence 
 for truth and consideration for the doubts of others, a power 
 of looking below words and phrases into the meaning that they 
 contain ; these qualities combined in Mr. Shairp with great 
 practical sense make me confident that he would, if elected 
 
174 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 become really distinguished among the moral philosophers of 
 the day." 
 
 On the 23d of June 1853, Shairp married Eliza Douglas, 
 daughter of the late Henry Alexander Douglas, and grand- 
 daughter of Sir William Douglas, Bart., of Kilhead, Dum- 
 friesshire. She was a sister of his college friend, Henry 
 Douglas, afterwards Bishop of Bombay. The marriage took 
 place at Bute House, Petersham. They went to Dumfries- 
 shire for a short time, and spent the rest of the Rugby 
 summer holidays in Scotland. 
 
 Just after their return to Rugby in September 1853 his 
 mother, the Moira of Kilmahoe, died she who, " through all 
 the strain of life," was " strong to do and bear." The son's 
 description of her last years at Houstoun, in the first section 
 of that poem, entitled Ingathering, is so delicately drawn 
 that some stanzas may be quoted here 
 
 . . . To all so loving ; when, keen-eyed 
 To other's faults, some hastened to condemn, 
 Her kind heart still some hidden good descried, 
 
 And gently pled for them. 
 
 And country people whenso'er they spoke 
 Her name, by farmer's hearth or cottar's shed, 
 Would call her " the Gude Leddy," and invoke 
 A blessing on her head. 
 
 At length, as in a garden one night's frost 
 Comes down, and blights the flowers in the fall, 
 A sudden ailment fell on her ; almost 
 She heard the angels' call. 
 
 But God to her life's book one little page 
 In mercy added, that her own might see, 
 Who early seek him, in declining age, 
 How beautiful they be. 
 
 As one, who long laboriously going 
 Beneath a sultry sun up sheer hill slope, 
 Finds the path easier, fresher breezes blowing, 
 Just ere he reach the cope. 
 
 Her sister playmate earliest and latest friend came 
 
ix DOMESTIC LIFE AND INCIDENTS 175 
 
 to her house to tend the evening of her days, and found in 
 her aged eyes 
 
 A far-off spiritual range, 
 A pensive depth of peace, a resting on 
 Things beyond time and change, 
 Yet full of human tenderness that drew 
 All hearts to her. 
 
 Of Shairp's outward life for the next few years there is not 
 much to record. Continuous labour through the school 
 terms at Eugby, and autumn holidays in Scotland, came 
 and went. His aim as a master at Eugby was to carry 
 out the spirit by which Dr. Arnold had governed and guided 
 the school, to perpetuate the traditions and the influence 
 of that educationist with whose name Eugby must always 
 be chiefly associated. 
 
 His Christmas holidays as well as summer vacations 
 were usually spent in Scotland. On the 13th of January 
 1854, writing from Grangemuir, Pittenweem, to Mr. Erskine 
 of Linlathen, he refers to a recent visit to that delight- 
 ful home, where many kindred spirits were wont to 
 gather round one of the most remarkable Scotsmen of this 
 century. In September 1854 we find him at Loch Shiel 
 and Kilmalie (as Norman Macleod notes in his Journal). 
 Then, and ever afterwards, when Macleod mentions his meet- 
 ings and occasional trips in the Highlands with his old friend, 
 it is of " dear Shairp " that he speaks. This was invariably 
 the feeling with which he inspired his friends. The follow- 
 ing is part of a letter from Mr. Erskine : 
 
 "SHANDON, 3d September 1853. 
 
 "... You cannot think that you have been absent from 
 my thoughts during all this eventful time of joy and sorrow 
 in your history. . . . Your mother has left behind a most 
 sweet savour beyond the circle of her attached and devoted 
 family, of a most lovely and pure spirit. If ever woman 
 possessed the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit she did. 
 From my childhood I have associated her name with 
 singular beauty of face and form, which were in delightful 
 
176 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 harmony with her character as wife and mother, which she 
 inherited from her mother. My whole memories of her are 
 perfect sunshine. . . . Thus rapidly, as we advance in life, 
 does the majority on the other side increase." 
 
 In the beginning of the following year he wrote thus to 
 Mr. Erskine 
 
 [Postmark, 1854.] 
 
 " GRANGEMUIR, PITTENWEEM, 
 January. 
 
 " MY DEAR MR. ERSKINE I cannot longer delay writing 
 to say how much I enjoyed my visit to Linlathen, and to 
 offer my sincere thanks for your great kindness. It is not 
 often that such a visit, and such intercourse, is allowed to us; 
 but when it is, it revives and strengthens all that life within, 
 which, from one's own fault and the worldly atmosphere we 
 generally meet with, is ever ready to droop and die. 
 
 Linlathen I shall ever look back on as a resting-place 
 beside the way; and I trust that the refreshment there 
 received will not quickly fail, but remain to strengthen me to 
 go on my journey with a more single will and more steadfast 
 purpose. 
 
 Forgive me if I say that over that door I shall in 
 thought seem to see inscribed those lines of Homer's, which 
 I once saw applied to Bishop Wilson 
 
 yap 
 
 68w 
 
 Tt oi/aa vatcoi/. 
 
 I have often thought much over all the conversations I 
 had with you. I do not think I ever heard from any one 
 so much that recommended itself, as far as I could judge, to 
 y feeling and conscience. There were, of course, some 
 things you said, which I could not so entirely make my own 
 as to know rightly whether I agreed. 
 
 With the main principle and starting-point of all you 
 said I mean the criterion of truth to every man within 
 himself, as distinguished from outward authority I think I 
 
ix DOMESTIC LIFE AND INCIDENTS 177 
 
 entirely agree. The conclusion of your book you lent I 
 have nearly finished, and I find it very valuable in recalling 
 and fixing much of what you said. 
 
 This inward standard, which must apprehend the 
 righteousness of any truth before the man can be said 
 to believe it, is the thing which I had long been feeling after ; 
 but one difficulty always remained out of which I saw no 
 escape. It seemed to end in making avOpwiros perpov 
 irdvT(ov, as Plato accused some Greek Sophist 1 of doing ; 
 and this was confirmed by observing that so many who 
 started from this inward principle ended by rejecting the 
 teaching of the Bible and all other outward help, and by 
 taking their stand (in a proud isolation) on their own shallow 
 and hard sense of what they thought right and wrong. 
 
 But the answer to this which you give, I mean the 
 finding in the Bible a historic record of conscience, and in 
 Christ the universal conscience of the race, this though I 
 had caught some glimpses of it before was, in the broad, 
 clear light in which you placed it, quite new. I trust I 
 may go on more and more to apprehend it, and find it 
 practically as well as theoretically true, and to turn it to 
 some good use. . . . The remembrance of your kindly house 
 will long be with me as a thought of peace. Yours very 
 sincerely, J. C. SHAIRP." 
 
 Another letter to Mr. Erskine, written during the summer 
 vacation of 1856 (which was spent at Moffat), may fitly 
 follow the above^ 
 
 [Postmark, 1856.] 
 
 " LANGSHAW COTTAGE, MOFFAT, 
 July. 
 
 " MY DEAR FRIEND If you will allow me to call you so r , 
 it is long since I have heard anything of you, but often 
 during the long winter now past I thought of you, and 
 wished but did not write. It has been a dark winter for 
 us. Last autumn we were blessed with a son. For some 
 
 fj.tr pov /ca<rros, the maxim of Protagoras. 
 
 N 
 
178 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 months he grew, and promised to be very healthy. He was 
 a more than commonly beautiful boy, with a face of rare 
 intelligence for so young a child. The blessing was great, 
 and seemed to open new life to us both. All at once he 
 was smitten with sickness, and for three months, the 
 darkest of the winter, we had to watch his much suffering 
 and gradual decline. He lived just till the verge of spring, 
 and was then taken from us. A year ago I could not 
 have imagined how great this trial would be. The months 
 that followed were very dreary; and though we felt sure it 
 was well with him, yet the sense of what we had lost and 
 the remembrance of his long, mute, unrelieved suffering were 
 very overpowering. Often I fear they have shut out 'all 
 other light from my mind. The darkness I had seen was 
 often stronger than the brightness I had not seen. 
 
 I know not why I did not write to you, except that I 
 wrote little to any one; but certainly there is no one I 
 should more have wished to converse with, during these long 
 months of depression, as now, than you. We have retired to 
 this very pleasing neighbourhood for our holidays, and have 
 been both refreshed by the change from Eugby. As far as 
 these outward things go, few places could have suited us so 
 well. I have lately read Mr. Campbell's book. 1 Few books 
 I have read are so suggestive, and have opened up so many 
 great y deep, and true thoughts on that and like subjects. 
 There is just one thing I don't feel quite sure of, that his 
 view meets the full meaning of many of the Scriptural 
 expressions ; but I never have seen any book which opened 
 up so much that the mind could dwell in on that subject. 
 
 I am sorry that from being so seldom in Scotland, I have 
 so few opportunities of deriving benefit from conversation 
 with you and with Mr. Campbell. If you and I are both 
 well in winter, I shall hope that we may meet. . . . Yours 
 very sincerely, J. C. SHAIRP." 
 
 The bereavement referred to in this letter gave rise to 
 the following lines, which tell their own tale : 
 
 1 Doubtless The Nature of the Atonement, by J. M'Leod Campbell. 
 
ix DOMESTIC LIFE AND INCIDENTS 179 
 
 1st March 1855. 
 Violets on earth and laverocks in the sky, 
 
 And children's voices on the vernal air ; 
 But our sweet darling all unheeding lies, 
 
 While light and life are moving everywhere. 
 
 Around his new-born head fell last year's leaves, 
 
 He did not stay to see them reappear ; 
 The swallows that last autumn left our eaves, 
 
 Are flying back but not to find thee here. 
 
 Only one breeze that forward stole to tell 
 
 The spring was coming kissed that wasted cheek ; 
 
 Only one sunbeam through the window fell 
 Upon that pale face, meek. 
 
 Ah, darling sweet, the world impressed not thee 
 Save with its primal pain nor thou the world, 
 
 No more than blossom from some orchard tree 
 
 This flowering springtime by the rough winds whirled. 
 
 Mr. and Mrs. Shairp went from Moffat for a two days' 
 change to Yarrow, and this visit gave rise to another poem, 
 from which one or two stanzas may be quoted. The first 
 stanza contains a sort of invitation to his wife to visit Yarrow, 
 after their " winter dark with dool and sorrow." He then 
 says 
 
 It's not that these green hills are fair, 
 
 And calm the lakes beneath them sleeping, 
 
 There's nothing there can e'er repair 
 The sorrow we have long been weeping. 
 
 Though lambs are bleating far and near, 
 And plaintive pipes the moorland plover, 
 
 A tenderer cry still haunts our ear, 
 We shall no where on earth recover. 
 
 And yet, if any place has felt 
 
 The mellowing touch of human sorrow, 
 
 And into woe-worn hearts could melt 
 
 Like healing balm, 'twere braes of Yarrow. 
 
 There lies " St. Mary's," tranced and lone, 
 'Mid the old hills, their darling daughter, 
 
 And songs of dim old ages gone 
 Sing on for aye in Yarrow water. 
 
180 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 During this visit to Yarrow, Shairp first made the ac- 
 quaintance of one who afterwards became a very close friend, 
 Mr. John Veitch, now Professor Veitch of Glasgow Uni- 
 versity. He has supplied me with a specially interesting 
 paper of reminiscences, which, with his permission, I have 
 used in the same way as I have treated Mr. Sellar's. 
 
 Mr. Veitch says 
 
 " In the early part of July 18561 met him for the first 
 time at Tibbie Shiels's cottage. He had been making that 
 charming spot as rich in natural beauty as in associations 
 with the best Scottish poetry and life of the last half-cen- 
 tury, with Scott, Wilson, and Hogg a residence for some days. 
 He was then one of the masters of Eugby, and would be 
 in his thirty-seventh year. I had come up Moffatdale, by 
 Birkhill and the Loch of the Lowes, through a day of sun- 
 shine, and by hillsides flecked with shadow, and it was now 
 the 'gowden afternoon.' Passing through the gate which 
 leads to the arbour of peace and quiet beauty, to me an 
 oft -resting haunt, known as Tibbie Shiels's, the friend 
 who was with me, pointing to a figure before the door, 
 said, ' There is Shairp.' I had in my ear dim rumours of 
 him, but had not met him . before. A fair-haired, ruddy- 
 faced, and manly man with open light gray-blue eyes 
 frank and affable, with ready recognition. But what attracted 
 me most was that he was very wet trousers, stockings, and 
 boots all fairly soaked. There was no waterproof trash of 
 gearing in those days, or more probably he despised it. He 
 had just come in from the upper hills, and had waded from 
 one glen to another, with a delightful sovereign contempt 
 for the plashing of the burns through which he had made 
 his way. This went to my heart at once. I was not gener- 
 ally at that time inclined to respect a Rugby master. But 
 looking at this Eugby master, I said little, but in my soul 
 thought this must be a good fellow, and he was. This was 
 my first sight of and introduction to Shairp, and, though 
 I spoke but few words with him, I marked him inwardly 
 as a congenial and lovable man. Yet how little can we judge 
 
ix DOMESTIC LIFE AND INCIDENTS 181 
 
 of the inner feeling of a man from outside appearance and 
 casual greeting ! After that time long after I learned that 
 he was under the shadow of a family sorrow. Mrs. Shairp 
 was with him brought, I imagine, for the first time to 
 Yarrow, a hope in him, I suppose, and well founded, that 
 she would share in its spirit in the inner chord of sympathy 
 with the pathetic feeling of the place perhaps find some 
 solace there." 
 
 Eemaining at Moffat for the summer, in the following 
 month Shairp paid another visit to Yarrow with his sisters. 
 The following extract from an occasional journal kept in 
 the year 1856, tells of a drive to St. Mary's and a meeting 
 with Dean Stanley and Mr. Godfrey Lushington : 
 
 "20th August 1856. Started up Moffatdale 10 
 minutes to 10 A.M. Helen riding Grace in dogcart with 
 me. Strong east wind blowing against us all the way. 
 Sunshine till we got to Polmoodie then darker. Eeached 
 St. Mary's about 12.30 or so. Waited more than an hour 
 for Stanley and Lushington. They did not come, so we 
 three started for Chapelhope, up the burn, till we came to 
 the cleaving of the burns, up the ' South Grain till/ a sheep 
 round, near which we got a view of the moss hags out 
 towards Loch Skene. I gathered blaeberries. Then Grace 
 returned the same way. Helen and I up the hill towards 
 the head of the North Grain. Came among a flock of cloud- 
 berry bushes on the hillside ; found only four or five berries 
 really large and fine ; pulled many leaves ; crossed the 
 burn ; a gleam of finer sunshine for about half an hour 
 on to near the top of the Summerhope Hill. Looking 
 back, a grand view up the head of the south branch of 
 Chapelhope burn, spread the wide moor of the moss hags 
 in which the Covenanters lay ; behind this wide dark 
 wilderness a grand screen of mountains the mountain-heart 
 of the south of Scotland shutting it in ; the Loch Craig at 
 the head of Loch Skene sloping down to the Talla north, 
 and a precipice over the loch to the south, then the Mid 
 
182 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP, ix 
 
 Craig, then the Great White Combe, and beyond it, to the 
 left, Black Combe, separated from White Combe by a hollow 
 down which comes Polmoodie Burn. The Mid Craig, on 
 the west side of Loch Skene, bounding it, separated from 
 it by a burn called Moodlaw Burn ; as fine a mountain 
 view as any in the south of Scotland. The brown, dusky 
 moors with dreamy sunshine over them, ' the wilderness 
 wherein there is no man/ and the thought of the Cove- 
 nanters singing psalms and praying there, present as we 
 gazed over that wilderness. The Watch Hill, out towards 
 Loch Skene, was visible by a cairn, though it only seems 
 a little rising ground in the moor- wilderness, and in a line 
 south it ends in the Broad Law beyond it, seen on the tops 
 of the mirk side of Polmoodie. Started from where we 
 had the view in haste, ran down the brae by Ox Cleuch, 
 and met Stanley and Lushington. Dined and left St. 
 Mary's. Stopped and saw Dobbs's Linn. Home here 
 9.30 P.M." 
 
 On the following day Shairp left Moffat, with Stanley 
 and Lushington, on a visit to Dumfries. Their interest in 
 this place was both historical and topographical. They also 
 doubtless wished to see the spot where Burns spent his last 
 days. The visit was one of great delight, often referred to 
 afterwards, although no detailed record of it survives. 
 
 In writing to his friend Edward Scott about his child's 
 grave at Eugby, and the tombstone over it the erection of 
 which Mr. Scott took charge of he said he desired some 
 permanent creepers put round the rails : " only do not think 
 of keeping up a supply of flowers : for, sooner or later, that 
 must come to an end, and it is well to put it as nearly as 
 possible in the way it will permanently remain." 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 FIRST HOME AT ST. ANDREWS, AND THE PROFESSORSHIP 
 OF LATIN 
 
 SHAIRP must have got leave of absence from Rugby in the 
 late autumn of 1856, for in the November of that year he 
 taught Professor Lushington's class in the University of 
 Glasgow. For some time his mind had turned towards the 
 subject of the Scottish Universities ; and his friend, the 
 head-master of Rugby, having spent an autumn holiday in 
 St. Andrews, thought of the Latin Chair in the College of 
 St. Salvator and St. Leonard as one for which Shairp was ad- 
 mirably suited. It was through Dr. Tait's influence that this 
 chair was afterwards secured to him. If Shairp cherished 
 any dominant ambition during his Rugby life, it was that 
 he might ultimately work, in some capacity or other, in one 
 of the Universities of his native land. Meanwhile, in October 
 1856, he wrote a pamphlet entitled The Wants of the Scottish 
 Universities, and some of the Remedies. This pamphlet was 
 published before the reforms in the Scottish University 
 System were carried out by the Commission, over which the 
 present Lord Justice-General presided. It is an elaborate 
 and admirable discussion, and although it has long since 
 shared the fate of every pamphlet for the hour, one or two 
 extracts from it will be interesting at least to University 
 men since it deals with a question of no temporary or 
 trivial interest. 
 
 " During the last fifty years Oxford and Cambridge have made such 
 rapid progress as greatly to alter their relative position with regard to 
 Edinburgh and Glasgow Universities, and within the same period the 
 
184 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 London University has come into being. Doubtless there was more to 
 be done, greater need for change in the southern ancient seats of 
 learning than ever existed in our own. But, perhaps, one chief cause 
 of our altered relative position is, that while we have been complacently 
 calling ourselves the best educated people in Christendom, and there- 
 fore not careful to improve what we thought so nearly perfect, England 
 and other countries have fully confessed their defects, and striven 
 honestly to find the remedy. We may well be apprehensive lest, in 
 our case, the old fable prove true, and while the hare sleeps the tortoise 
 win the race. For if at the opening of the century the English 
 Universities were asleep and the labouring population unable to read or 
 write, no country ever did more in the same space to take away such 
 a reproach. Within the last twenty years the efforts made for the 
 education of the English people, in town and country, have been vast, 
 and are ever increasing ; while within the same time the old Univer- 
 sities have sprung to life, and have thrown down, and are daily 
 more throwing down the old encumbrances, and now combine the 
 venerableness of many centuries with fresh vigour as of yesterday. 
 
 What is that weak point ? you may ask. Not any want of mental 
 vigour and activity in our students. Of a loose, discursive intelligence, 
 which can deal readily with things in general, there is abundance ; of 
 power to write plausibly on almost any subject in a fluent, semi- 
 metaphysical, semi-rhetorical way there is no lack : but it is when 
 brought to book that our weakness comes out, when not crude views 
 of things in general are called for, but accurate knowledge of some 
 things in particular, combined with careful reasoning on these ; when 
 some accuracy of scholarship and some definite historical knowledge is 
 required, it is here that our students fail. And without a groundwork 
 of these, which few of our schools afford, and which the professorial 
 system alone cannot supply, no man, however great his natural powers, 
 can ever do well in any examination. Yet this arises from no inherent 
 defect in the national intellect. The character of the Scottish mind is 
 definiteness, exactness, even rigidity. 
 
 ' University Reform ' is not a cry that will ever be heard from 
 the hustings. There is absolutely no political capital to be made 
 out of it. 
 
 A country which, from the first, amid many natural and material 
 hindrances, has held her own mainly by the moral energy of her 
 people, energy which, in the old warlike times, made of them hardy 
 unconquerable soldiers ; in peaceful modern times, solid workers and 
 intelligent thinkers ; such a country more than any other ought to 
 prize highly, and dread decay in, her places of education, and most of 
 all in those central ones from which the life-blood of the others flows. 
 
x THE ST. ANDREWS PROFESSORSHIP OF LA TIN 185 
 
 But it has been the honourable characteristic of our Universities, 
 that from them no class has been excluded, but that they have opened 
 their lecture-rooms to the humblest and poorest of the people. 
 
 Indeed, in Scotland, more than any other country, the vast 
 majority of the men whom we remember with pride, have risen from 
 the lowliest places, and they have owed their rise scarcely more to the 
 sterling stuff they are made of than to the institutions in which that 
 stuff has been moulded and tempered. So it has been in past times. 
 
 It is the interest of every Scotsman, the humblest as well as the 
 highest, indeed of the humblest even more than the highest, that our 
 Universities, while they preserve their unexclusive character, should 
 also do something in an age of change to maintain the pre-eminence 
 that formerly was theirs. 
 
 For the lower and more general education of any country must 
 needs follow in the wake of its higher intelligence. 
 
 If the springs on the high hills are dry, what will become of the 
 streams in the valleys ? 
 
 These springs of Scottish thought, let us hope, will never dry, 
 although they may be suffering at present from a protracted drought. 
 
 A pause no doubt in the succession has come, but why should 
 this be the prelude of perpetual barrenness ? 
 
 Leave the literary circles in the towns, and visit the farms and 
 cottar-homes in corn-growing, and especially in pastoral districts, and 
 see if the men you find there are less muscular in body, less vigorous 
 in mind than their fathers were. If they are, then we may well despair. 
 
 It was in the homes of the peasantry that in past times many of 
 Scotland's best and greatest were reared ; and from them as education 
 spreads wider and strikes deeper, we may look for a still larger and 
 richer harvest not of men like Burns and Scott, perhaps even Chalmers 
 and Wilson. Such men education cannot create, and can do but little 
 to foster. On them has fallen that diviner fire, which men call genius 
 and inspiration, because they feel that it cannot be forged in their 
 workshops, but it is in some peculiar way the direct gift of God, be- 
 stowed by Him, for purposes of His own, on certain men in certain 
 generations, according to laws which we cannot fathom. 
 
 Genius is exceptional. How and when it will come no man can 
 divine. Talent is calculable. You can trace the process of its forma- 
 
186 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 tion almost as certainly as you can any natural growth. The stuff out 
 of which such men are formed is around us in abundance. 
 
 That in the special faculties many branches are unrepresented by 
 professors is not denied ; and even in the literary department it is 
 obvious that some most needful subjects are wholly omitted. There 
 is, practically, no study of history, either ancient or modern, in any of 
 our Universities, a fact almost incredible in a country which has pro- 
 duced so many good historians. 
 
 Whatever other changes it may be desirable to introduce, there 
 are four main points which cannot be passed over in any thorough 
 scheme of University improvement. These are 
 
 1. The standard of admission to the Universities must be raised, 
 or rather a standard of admission must be, for the first time, instituted. 
 
 2. The professorial instruction must be supplemented by the 
 appointment of sub-professors or tutors to do that part of the work 
 which the professor himself cannot overtake, but without which his 
 teaching cannot thoroughly educate. 
 
 3. A final examination for literary degrees must be established, 
 which shall be imperative on every student preparing for any of the 
 learned professions ; and this examination must be made such that it 
 shall guarantee some substantial education, some real mental training. 
 
 4. It is 'much to be desired that if possible the four Universities 
 should combine for the purpose of granting literary degrees, and only 
 for this purpose ; and that one board of examiners be appointed from 
 among the professors and graduates of the four Universities, who shall 
 preside over the yearly examinations and grant all Scottish degrees. 
 
 For philosophy, the best of all preparations is the thorough study 
 of language ; and this to be thorough, and accurately grammatical, must 
 begin with the dead languages. 
 
 Classical preparation is, I believe, the beat; classical, with the 
 addition of a due portion of mathematical. 
 
 No doubt, the proi'essorial is the highest furm of teaching. A 
 function it has of its own, not to be accomplished so well by any other 
 agency, to stimulate thought, to open up larger, more far-reaching views 
 than either the school or the study can suggest ; by the living voice of 
 a gifted man to awake within the heart fresh springs of interest, which 
 the words of a dead book can never reach. This is the prerogative of 
 the professor ; this function our Scottish professors have fulfilled, 
 and still fulfil, and with it no change should be allowed to inter- 
 meddle. Taken as a body, our Scottish professors have been, at least, 
 as eminent as any other educational corps in Europe. 
 
THE ST. ANDREWS PROFESSORSHIP OF LA TIN 187 
 
 Indeed, in classical learning, if either were to be dispensed with, 
 the professor could be omitted with less loss than the schoolmaster. 
 
 If the function of the classical professor is to open up the life and 
 thought of the two great nations of antiquity, and to illustrate and give 
 interest to their literature and their history, how can he do this to any 
 save to those who have won some solid footing on ancient ground, by 
 having mastered the whole, or, at least, large portions of some of the 
 greatest classical authors ? 
 
 Compared with this * impudent knowingness,' this intelligence from 
 the teeth forward, the blankest ignorance, the densest impenetrability 
 to all such inquirers is an excellent gift. 
 
 And even without getting to this extreme of emptiness, are we 
 not all prone to accept without question the abstractions handed down 
 to us by former thinkers, to take them up into our minds unrealised, 
 and, adopting them into our vocabulary, to reason on them as if they 
 were facts of nature or necessary first principles ? " l 
 
 For the causes which led to Shairp's removal from 
 Rugby to St. Andrews, and the details of his earlier years 
 there, I have recourse again to Professor Sellar's paper of 
 reminiscences 
 
 " Though he found in his Rugby life a sphere of useful- 
 ness, and had much enjoyment in his intercourse with his 
 colleagues and his older and abler pupils, yet he longed for 
 more freedom to develop the speculative and poetical faculty 
 within him. I had heard him say long before that he 
 would rather use his practical power of work in Scotland 
 than anywhere else. When, accordingly, in the year 1857, 
 Dr. Pyper, the Professor of Latin in St. Andrews, was per- 
 manently disabled by bad health, Shairp, though at a great 
 pecuniary sacrifice, applied for and accepted the position of 
 his assistant. The position which had held out most 
 attraction to him when he was at Oxford was that of a 
 Scotch professor ; but he thought then more of a Chair of 
 Moral Philosophy, for which he was admirably qualified, 
 had he been appointed to one while the speculative impulse 
 
 1 The Wants of the Scottish Universities, pp. 4-30. 
 
188 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 was still strong upon him, than of one of the classical 
 chairs. 
 
 He had -a genuine appreciation for the great Greek and 
 Roman writers, and he held that there was as yet at least 
 no other equally humanising discipline for those who were 
 able and willing to profit by it. Still the classics were, as 
 he said, not ' his first loves ; ' and I have heard him humor- 
 ously complain of the weariness of the daily round of 'vocables,' 
 a word much in the mouth of one of our colleagues in look- 
 ing over the papers in the Bursary Competition, at which 
 lively occupation, which he keenly enjoyed himself, he used 
 to keep us out of bed, though hardly awake, till four in the 
 morning. But he recognised and availed himself of the 
 greater scope afforded in a professorial class for vitalis- 
 ing the reading of the classics, developing the literary in- 
 terest of the subject, and for that unsystematic ethical 
 teaching, -the teaching of ' humanity ' involved in it. The 
 work of teaching the language in a sound scholarlike way, 
 I need hardly say, he performed faithfully. I think the 
 Professors in the Arts Faculties of the Scottish Universities 
 would feel along with me how much the pleasure and useful- 
 ness of their work depends on their colleagues in the subject 
 cognate to their own ; how it takes half the heart out of 
 their work if their yoke-fellow pulls the other way, teaches 
 what they feel called on to unteach, and unteaches what they 
 feel called on to teach ; or if he is one between whom and 
 himself there exists no personal or intellectual sympathy. 
 
 I had gone to St. Andrews three or four years before 
 Shairp came there, as assistant to the Professor of Greek, 
 who was incapacitated for work for several years be- 
 fore his death. Shairp and I worked together for six or 
 seven years first as assistants, doing all the work of the Pro- 
 fessor and afterwards as professors : he of Latin and I of 
 Greek. It would have been impossible to have had a col- 
 league more loyal and sympathetic, one with whom one 
 could work in more perfect harmony and mutual confidence, 
 an advantage which, if I may be allowed to say so here, I 
 again enjoy in the fullest possible measure. None of his 
 
x THE ST. ANDRE WS PROFESSORSHIP OF LA TIN 1 89 
 
 colleagues took a warmer personal interest in the students 
 than Shairp, especially in some of the poorer among them, 
 and those who had enjoyed fewest previous advantages, in 
 whom he recognised some finer traits of character. From 
 his sense of responsibility and from the influence of his 
 English experience, he wished to exercise a more direct 
 moral influence among them than was in accordance with 
 the traditions of student life in the Scotch Universities ; and 
 this had a tendency to rouse in some of the rougher set the 
 nemo me impune lacesset sentiment, which is perhaps stronger 
 in the Scotch student than in any other members of the 
 community. With the same view he co-operated most 
 cordially with Principal Forbes in the establishment of the 
 College Hall, which for two or three years, under the first 
 Warden who had the happy tact of hitting the right mean 
 between freedom and restraint, and of being himself both 
 the companion and the guardian of those under his charge 
 promised to be a most successful experiment, an experi- 
 ment which, for some reason or other, failed to maintain 
 itself; and which, though often talked of, has never been 
 renewed in any of our universities. Perhaps the much- 
 dreaded danger of the ' Anglification ' of our indigenous 
 customs and manners is an obstacle to the introduction of 
 such alien institutions. 
 
 We were most fortunate in our colleagues, and in the 
 social circle which their families and other families in the 
 town then formed. There was first the veteran Scottish 
 representative of science, Sir David Brewster, who to us 
 newcomers, though we were quite unfit to enter into his 
 special pursuits, was always the most simple and delightful 
 of associates. When he removed to Edinburgh, his place 
 was filled by another representative of science, equally illus- 
 trious, Principal Forbes. Between him and Shairp there' 
 was for a time some friction, arising chiefly out of difference 
 of opinion about College matters. They were both men of 
 a pure and disinterested type of character, but they were 
 essentially different in temperament. Shairp was, beyond 
 almost all other men, warm and open ; Forbes was out- 
 
190 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP, 
 
 wardly cold and reserved, perhaps even suspicious, till he 
 knew well those with whom he was dealing. Gradually, 
 however, as they worked together in College business, Shairp 
 came to recognise the single-minded devotion to duty, and 
 the warmth and sensitiveness of feeling which lay under 
 that outward reserve ; and, with the generosity native to 
 him, he grew into an appreciative admiration and trust, all 
 the warmer and firmer because he had at first misjudged 
 him. Tulloch was Principal of St. Mary's, still a young 
 man, in the vigorous prime of his intellectual force and 
 genial companionship. Not to speak of some others among 
 the professors, with whom Shairp was always in friendly 
 relations, we had for one year among us the eminent Cam- 
 bridge mathematician and discoverer, Professor Adams. 
 The Logic Chair was filled at first by Professor Spalding, 
 an earnest and successful teacher of his subject, and a man 
 of fine literary accomplishment ; but his bad health, though 
 it did not prevent his doing his work faithfully till the last, 
 prevented our seeing much of him socially. He was suc- 
 ceeded in 1860 by Veitch, now Professor of Logic in Glas- 
 gow, and he soon became one of Shairp's most valued and 
 sympathetic friends. The intellectual bond of sympathy 
 between them was partly, I suppose, speculative agreement, 
 though Shairp's speculative interest was directed mainly 
 to ethics, and to some ultimate problems of metaphy- 
 sics connected with theology, and not much to the pro- 
 vince of logic and psychology ; but the chief and most 
 lasting bond was a common love of ballad -poetry, and the 
 Border country, both of which were probably better known 
 to them than to any other men of their time. 
 
 But the centre of all the intellectual and social life of the 
 University and of the town was Professor Terrier. He inspired 
 in the students a feeling of affectionate devotion as well as 
 admiration, such as I have hardly ever known inspired by 
 any teacher ; and to many of them his mere presence and 
 bearing in the classroom was a large element in a liberal 
 education. By all his colleagues he was esteemed as a man 
 of most sterling honour, a staunch friend, and a most 
 
x THE ST. ANDREWS PROFESSORSHIP OF LA TIN 191 
 
 humorous and delightful companion. Shairp, though he 
 had no pretension to original humour, had a great enjoy- 
 ment in it, and in all lively and harmless fun ; and there 
 certainly never was a household known to either of us, in 
 which the spirit of racy and original humour and fun was 
 so exuberant and spontaneous in every member of it, as that 
 of which the Professor and his wife the most gifted, and 
 brilliant, and most like her father of the three gifted 
 daughters of Christopher North were the heads. Our 
 evenings there generally ended in the Professor's study, 
 where he was always ready to discuss, either from a serious 
 or humorous point of view, with him or any one else (not 
 without congenial accompaniments) the various points of 
 his metaphysical system till the morning was well advanced. 
 Grant too was much there in those days, taking his part 
 in the philosophical, literary, and humorous talk of his 
 future father-in-law, and bringing to us reports of the 
 latest developments in the ever-shifting phases of Oxford 
 taste, opinion, and educational machinery. 
 
 One source of pleasure in the life Shairp felt I think 
 more than any of us the delight in the place itself, in its 
 picturesque shores and ruins, and its historic memories. 
 During his summers he continued his wanderings over the 
 more familiar and some of the wildest parts of the High- 
 lands, and it was chiefly in these wanderings that he had 
 gradually shaped the poems, expressive of the characteristic 
 sentiment, both as regards outward nature and the spirit 
 of the people, of Highlands, Lowlands, and Borders, which 
 were given to the world in 1863 in the volume called, from 
 the principal poem, Kilmdhoe." 
 
 It was in October 1857, after eleven years' school work, 
 that Shairp finally left Eugby, and settled in St. Andrews. 
 Professor Sellar has referred to the great pecuniary sacrifice 
 involved. The income of the assistant to the Professor 
 of Latin was only 200 a year. This obliged him to 
 take private pupils for some years, and his work, both 
 in and out of College, was laborious. If the taking of pupils, 
 
192 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP, 
 
 however, was a necessity, it was also very interesting to 
 himself, and of real service to the University; and he had 
 the promise of the Chair, whenever it should become 
 vacant, from the Duke of Portland, in whom the patronage 
 was vested. 
 
 On the death of Dr. Pyper, in 1 8 6 1 , he became Professor 
 of Latin, and the most important part of his life work began. 
 He held the Chair for eight years, doing admirable work, 
 which made no noise, but which enriched the lives of many 
 students ; and on the death of Principal Forbes, in 1868, he 
 was appointed Principal of the United College of St. Salvator 
 and St. Leonard, which office he held till his death in 1885. 
 
 His introductory lecture as Professor of Latin in the 
 United College, delivered in November 1857, was on The 
 Uses of the Study of Latin Literature, and was published 
 at the request of the students, and dedicated to them. It 
 is a clear, forcible, and fair-minded appeal, not advocating 
 an education in classical scholarship as the best for every 
 student, but only for those who have scholarly aptitude ; 
 yet vindicating its claims on the ground of the highest 
 utility, as well as the intrinsic excellence of the discipline 
 itself. It is to be hoped that this lecture, as well as the 
 paper on Oxford and the Scottish Universities, may yet be 
 republished. The following is one paragraph from it : 
 
 " Here on our foam-fringed promontory, withdrawn in 
 some measure from the hurry of to-day, and looked down on 
 by those many-centuried towers, breathing a very atmo- 
 sphere of antiquity, and hearing for ever that roar of ocean, 
 which whoso hears, 
 
 Must think on what shall be, and what has been, 
 
 whatever others may do, we surely cannot forget the past. 
 There is enough here to remind us how greatly our lives are 
 the creation of foregone civilisations, that we are of such 
 stuff as the past has made us, and that, if we would under- 
 stand ourselves, we must learn to know ourselves in our 
 
x THE ST. ANDRE IVS PROFESSORSHIP OF LA TIN 193 
 
 causes, not only in our own immediate Teutonic and Celtic 
 forefathers, but in those who stamped on the youth of 
 Europe the impress of their language, their customs, and 
 their laws. No need for us to insist on these things here 
 to those who are already convinced. And small chance of 
 any argument reaching those busy but shortsighted poli- 
 ticians, who, dazzled with the material achievements of 
 to-day, find more mental food in one edition of the Times 
 newspaper than in ' all the works of Thucydides.' . . . 
 Three things, then, will occupy our special attention in this 
 classroom ; each so far distinct, yet all mutually connected, 
 the Language, the Literature, and the History of Borne 
 and each of these will yield its own special gain, which gains 
 I shall now attempt briefly to indicate." 
 
 The most important letter, which the publication of this 
 lecture called forth, was one from Dr. John Brown of 
 Edinburgh (the author of Rob and his Friends), then un- 
 known to Shairp, but who soon became one of his best friends. 
 He wrote as follows : 
 
 " EDINBURGH, 23 KUTLAND SQUARE, 
 "27th January 1858. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR Let me, though a stranger to you, thank 
 you from my heart for your noble lecture. I have not been 
 so moved with any words for months. You took me by 
 the heart, and held me there from first to last. It is an 
 odd sort of praise, but it is at least an honest one, when a 
 man says to another man, ' These are exactly my ideas ! ' 
 I cannot help saying for myself this much that it was 
 almost ludicrous, the nicety with which some of your 
 thoughts, and, indeed, the whole scope and spirit of your 
 argument and its enforcement, was felt by rne to be the 
 expressions of my own old but somewhat amorphous con- 
 victions. I trust the lecture will be largely circulated. I 
 meant forthwith to send forth a covey of the pamphlet 
 to all sorts of people. I said to myself, and you must 
 pardon me for repeating it to you, ' Give me twenty such 
 
 
 
194 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 men in our Scottish Universities, and I'll engage to " reform " 
 them, without much more of public meetings and commis- 
 sions.' This is a Scottish Arnold, the real spiritual son 
 (not the ape or imitator) of ' Black Tom,' like yet dif- 
 ferent, being more like himself than any one else. May 
 God spare you for much good. I was specially delighted 
 with all you say about style. That is a fine bit of French 
 from Buffon, and involves the whole truth, 'The style is 
 the man.' Good writing, like good breeding, comes from 
 keeping good company. Excuse all this. It is your own 
 fault. You have kindled me up, and set me a-thinking. . . . 
 Yours very truly, J. BROWN." 
 
 Professor Shairp, corresponding with an Edinburgh 
 friend as to the publication of his Inaugural Address, 
 said : " The University has suffered of late years from 
 having been taught by old or infirm professors. But they 
 are now laid aside ; and I sincerely believe (not to speak 
 of my own Department) that in none of the Scottish Uni- 
 versities are the Greek, Logic, and Moral Philosophy clearer 
 and better taught than here." [The professors were Mr. 
 Sellar, Mr. Veitch, and Mr. Ferrier.] "The place, too, has 
 far more of a University air and aspect than any other town 
 in Scotland. I thought so long before I thought of com- 
 ing here." 
 
 His first literary work, during the years of his profes- 
 soriate, was a series of historical papers on St. Columba, 
 Queen Margaret, St. Ninian, and Kentigern, written for 
 Good Words. Then followed a more important series of 
 articles in The North British Review on " Wordsworth," 
 "Coleridge," "Keble," and "The Moral Motive Power," 
 afterwards republished in his volume of Studies in Poetry 
 and Philosophy. Three years after his election to the Chair, 
 he published his one volume of Verse, though not his sole 
 poetical work, which he called Kilmahoe, and other Poems. 
 
 His work, as Professor of Latin, left its impress on 
 many minds; not on the mass of the students, so much as 
 on the select few, who came under his more immediate 
 
x THE ST. ANDRE WS PROFESSORSHIP OF LA TIN 195 
 
 personal influence. It is thus that one of them, Mr. Bayne, 
 now at Helensburgh, wrote a few weeks after his death, in 
 1885, in a magazine article in Merry England, in memoriam 
 of his teacher 
 
 " Those who studied under him when he was a Professor 
 of Latin knew him at his very best. They can hardly, 
 forget his acute and suggestive expositions of Horace, his 
 vigorous and impressive criticisms of Lucretius, and above 
 all his delicate, keenly appreciative and altogether masterly 
 prelections on Virgil. It will always be matter for regret 
 that many of these did not take permanent form, as they 
 would certainly have constituted a valuable addition to the 
 literature of standard criticism. It is not too much to say 
 that many a youth, in these ten years, learned for the first 
 time what is implied in a truly generous culture. Pro- 
 fessor Shairp was anything but a mere etymologist. He 
 did not rejoice in roots for their own sake, nor find exclu- 
 sive pleasure in the mechanical process summarily compre- 
 hended in the expression ' gerund-grinding.' He disliked 
 dwelling over the mere dry bones of scholarship. There 
 was always a vitalising process at work in his teaching ; he 
 felt, according to his own lights, that he too, like Socrates, 
 was privileged to enrich the present by means of the past, 
 as a preparation for the onward journey. If, indeed, his 
 professional work was defective at all, the weakness was 
 due to the energetic quality of his special philosophical 
 bias. Yet it has to be said that there are now among the 
 foremost scholars in England men whose pure scholarship 
 owes much to what they imbibed in the sixties at St. 
 Andrews. And let it be put on record here also that there 
 are others who, while caring less for the mere technicalities 
 of philology, can point to Professor Shairp as the man that 
 first gave them stimulus towards the study of comparative 
 literature. This will become intelligible to those who did 
 not know him, if they will read carefully his Culture and 
 Religion, and such a suggestive and vigorous essay as that 
 entitled ' The Homeric Element in Scott.' Few men had a 
 
196 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 better sense of literary definition and comparative literary 
 method. Just two years ago a casual reference to the 
 minor Scottish poet, Hew Ainslie, drew from him, on a 
 railway journey, a disquisition on the poet's three distinct 
 styles, with apt quotations, delivered in the fervid, emotional 
 way peculiar to him. 
 
 His volume of poems came as a revelation to those that 
 knew little of the man. It was not that he had written 
 poetry ; he was generally believed to be capable of that, 
 and the wonder was that he had not published sooner ; the 
 surprise was due to the novelty and strength of what had 
 been at last produced. 
 
 The real outcome, however, was both in the manner of 
 Wordsworth and at the same time something other and 
 different. It was found that the poet, with all his rever- 
 ence for the master he had long followed, was able to speak 
 for himself and to sing in his own way." 
 
 The same appreciative writer says 
 
 " Students entering College for the first time naturally 
 made the acquaintance of Professor Shairp before coming 
 to know any of his distinguished colleagues. The hour at 
 which he met his junior class being early in the day, gave 
 him the opportunity of introducing the new ' citizens of the 
 University ' to their academical routine. Those who were 
 privileged to listen to the wise and weighty introductory 
 addresses, with which for several years he began the work of 
 the session, cannot fail to have a vivid and a grateful recol- 
 lection of the strict and manly purpose with which he strove 
 to inspire his hearers; his earnest appeal, his strong admoni- 
 tion, and the stirring note of his encouragement. He stood 
 there a comparatively young man, addressing younger men, 
 charged with a deep and noble sympathy for them in their 
 new position, and ready to help them on the path he had 
 just trod before them. It needed but a small penetration 
 
x THE ST. ANDRE WS PROFESSORSHIP OF LA TIN 197 
 
 to discover in the speaker a tender and sensitive observer, 
 a wise and anxious adviser, and a true and steadfast 
 friend. . . . 
 
 The highest qualities Principal Shairp displayed in the 
 Professorial Chair his rare power of exposition, his ready 
 appreciative sympathy, and his consistent moral earnestness 
 are likewise the qualities by which he will continue to 
 be known in literature. Curiously enough, there is but 
 little trace in his writings of that vein of genuine humour 
 from which he could pleasantly draw, both in his lecture-/' 
 room, and among his friends. When he took pen in hancl^ 
 he was almost invariably dominated by the deep serious- 1 
 ness of his deliverances. He hoped that his published J 
 lectures and essays would reach 'some of the thoughtful 
 young.' He never forgot the lessons impressed on him by 
 Wordsworth that we are all steadily ' stepping westward.' 
 This " generation probably recognises less fully than its 
 successor will do how much the doctrine of ' plain living 
 and high thinking ' owes to the earnest advocacy of Prin- 
 cipal Shairp. ... It is astonishing how closely and minutely 
 he knew the writers who had really attracted him." 
 
 Again 
 
 " When Principal Shairp was Professor of Humanity in 
 the College at St. Andrews, one of the points of his teaching 
 most valued, next to his range and accuracy, was his extem- 
 pore translation, into glowing English prose, of some flowing 
 ore rotundo passage from one of the poets. Lucretius, 
 Horace, and Juvenal were all thus covered with glory; 
 but the charming metaphors and the tender descriptions of 
 Virgil were^treated with special sympathetic touch and deli- 
 cate grace. As an instance, we may. mention the simile in 
 the fifth book of the jflneid, line 215, where a pigeon is 
 described as fluttering out of a cave, and then skimming 
 away through the air on outstretched noiseless wings 
 
 Fertur in arva volans, plausumque exterrita peniiis 
 Dat tecto ingentern, mox aere lapsa quieto 
 Radit iter liquidtim, celeris neque commovet alas. 
 
198 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 There is an echo of this passage in Principal Shairp's poem 
 KilmaJwe, in the lyrical division entitled The Glen 
 
 With laughter and shout the rock-doves will flout, 
 
 Till, flapping the loud cave-roof, 
 They 'scape overhead, and their poised wings spread 
 
 To the calm heavens aloof." 1 
 
 In a letter to the writer of the article, from which the 
 above is an extract, Principal Shairp said, in December 
 1875- 
 
 " In really good translation, whether into English prose 
 or verse, there is quite an education in itself. The longer 
 I live the more I value the rendering of the best Latin and 
 Greek authors into English, at once accurate and idiomatic, 
 nervous, elegant, and refined." 
 
 The following extract from the letter of an Oxford tutor, 
 once a St. Andrews' student, written after Shairp's death, 
 bears alike upon his work at St. Andrews, and afterwards : 
 
 " I have never known any one like him. Every time I 
 saw him he raised my mind above the dull routine, to show 
 me the nobler side of life, to put a more living interest into 
 questions. When we talked to him we got beyond plati- 
 tudes and party cries. He seemed to give to others for the 
 time some of that spiritual insight which he had himself so 
 deeply. . . . He filled a place which none of my other 
 teachers ever approached. . . . His most endearing side 
 was his wide sympathy. Those who drank of his spirit 
 could not be narrow partisans. We seemed to lose our 
 passions, our prejudices, our factious aims when he spoke 
 to us. We found good in opponents, and even when we 
 still contended, all the bitterness of conflict seemed to be 
 taken away." 
 
 The present Lord Aberdeen was a student in the United 
 College at St. Andrews under Shairp, and speaks, as all his 
 friends do, of the " healthful and breezy freshness " of his 
 teaching and influence. 
 
 1 St. James's Magazine, November 1875. 
 
x THE ST. ANDRE WS PROFESSORSHIP OF LA TIN 199 
 
 " The charm and benefit of his personality," he says, 
 " was always within reach, not only because he was ever 
 accessible as a sympathetic adviser and friend, but from the 
 tone and method which characterised his teaching in the 
 lecture -room. 
 
 It may be thought that to a man of his poetic and 
 eager temperament the teaching of Latin, so far as regarded 
 his junior classes, would sometimes seem irksome. Whether 
 this was so or not, I have little doubt that those who at- 
 tended his lectures would join with me in testifying that 
 his treatment of classroom work never became a thing of 
 drudgery or dull routine. There was plenty of animation, 
 and, not seldom, playful humour. With all this, and in 
 harmony with that true and high keynote of his teaching 
 and motives to which allusion has been made, he occasion- 
 ally introduced (when it would naturally and appropriately 
 occur) some helpful word or suggestive thought in relation 
 to the spiritual and religious aspect of life. 
 
 I recollect, for example, how, when in the course of 
 our reading we had gone through a passage where Tacitus, 
 alluding incidentally to the subject of death, deals with it 
 in the somewhat cynical style of his period and school, 
 the Professor asked us to contrast with this the words 
 of another writer, and then read to us the well-known pas- 
 sage in the last chapter of Ecclesiastes. Whilst writing 
 this I can almost fancy I hear the rich tones of his voice as 
 he walked to and fro, reading with solemnity and pathos 
 the words, f Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden 
 bowl be broken. . . . Then shall the dust return to the 
 earth as it was : and the spirit shall return unto God who 
 gave it.' " 
 
 The following letters from Shairp to his old Rugby 
 friend, Edward Scott, tell their own tale : 
 
 "ST. ANDREWS, 28^ January 1859. 
 
 "... A Scotch Chair, though not very lucrative, is a 
 very nice thing, to my taste the most desirable of all 
 
200 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 educational posts. ... As to schoolniastering, the worst of 
 it is that, unless in the case of a head-mastership, all the best 
 comes first, and before you are thirty-five you find yourself 
 drinking the lees. . . . We like our life here, on the whole, 
 very much. Latin and Eoman history which I teach, is by 
 no means my pet subject ; but I greatly prefer a university, 
 and that in my own country, to any school. Here we have 
 no Donnism, nor any stiff academic air, but quiet easy 
 family life. The University is too small, the place too 
 retired, and Scotland altogether not the soil for Donnism 
 to flourish. This is great gain, for the more we cease to 
 see men and things through academic blinkers the better. 
 Scotland this week has been in wildest most enthusiastic 
 uproar about Burns. There never was such an outburst of 
 love for any poet in any land ; and that because no poet 
 ever so took the heart of a whole people, from the highest 
 to the lowest, and the low more than the high. There is 
 but one other worthy of being named with Burns ; of course 
 I mean Shakespeare. And Burns thrills me more than the 
 Englishman. The Times, I see, has been scoffing and jeer- 
 ing at it. It won't jeer us out of our nationality 'for a' 
 that and a' that, and twice as much as a' that! The Crystal 
 Palace affair, I grant, was vulgar and cockney enough ; but 
 that was only a catchpenny travestie of what was real earnest 
 here. The day was a holiday from Tweed to Johnny 
 Groat's, and not a village but kept festival." 
 
 "Sx. ANDREWS, 6th May 1859. 
 
 " I was delighted to hear of your transplantation to 
 Eugby. . . . The intimate playfellow relation with boys 
 may be very natural for a few years after leaving College, 
 but it cannot last. It must needs pass, just as our child- 
 hood passes, and our teens, and all beautiful things. You 
 may feel Kugby cold and chill after the warm companion- 
 ship with coevals at Marlborough. But that too must needs 
 be. Eugby is the place for middle life. Our friendships 
 lie all on the other side of thirty ; and what life has of 
 warmth and love this side thirty is to be found by one's 
 
x THE ST. ANDRE WS PROFESSORSHIP OF LA TIN 201 
 
 own hearth, and by making a home of one's own. . . . Make 
 the best of all men. Bear, as much as you can, with 
 blemishes, and be as hearty as you can be. Analysing and 
 fastidiousness, which all University men are prone to, makes 
 life painful, wounds us at every turn. The best way of 
 getting over the disagrdments of life is to flood them with v 
 as much heartiness as we can pump up something that will 
 turn the small ills of life as a duck's back does the rain. 
 This is in great part the secret of the abundant and life- 
 giving strength that Temple bears with him wherever he 
 goes. . . ." 
 
 Again, in January 1860 
 
 " . . . It is so good to pick up and carry on the thread 
 of old friendships. And really this is best done by meeting ; 
 because, as you get on, the power of really keeping up com- 
 munion by letter leaves one. . . ." 
 
 To the same friend he wrote in May 1860 about the 
 materials he had collected for a series of papers on Scottish 
 Song. His wish was to contribute to a magazine, such as 
 Macmillan's, " three short papers, five or six pages each, 
 the first, ' Scottish Song before Burns ' ; the second, ' Songs 
 of Burns '; the third, ' Scottish Song since Burns.' " These 
 were not published. 1 In the same letter he states his 
 opinion of the volume of Essays and Reviews just published. 
 It is characteristic, and may be quoted : " I have only 
 read Temple's, which I greatly like. It had been better 
 elsewhere " (than in the volume). ..." Jowett's is probably 
 the only other I shall care to read. Williams's seems 
 feather-headed. Of B. Powell we know what he has to> 
 say already. . . . However, it is a great thing, the free " 
 ventilation of opinion. JSTo honest belief without it. 
 
 1 In a subsequent letter (in June of the same year) he speaks of another 
 division of the subject of Scottish Song. " Smith's essay would by no means 
 clash with mine. His subject was the historical Ballads, mine the Songs quite 
 another region ; the one speaking of the chivalric time, the other of later 
 more rustic life ; as different, in fact, as ' a' the airts ' is from ' Sir Patrick 
 Spens.' " 
 
202 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 Say it, all ye who think it, 
 Say it, and never blink it. 
 
 Say it, only don't compel me to swallow more of it than I 
 see to be wholesome." 
 
 In the year 1860 Professor Veitch became a colleague 
 of Shairp's in the University of St. Andrews, and renewed 
 the acquaintanceship which was begun in 1856 at Yarrow, 
 and which soon ripened into an intimate friendship. Mr. 
 Veitch filled the St. Andrews Logic Chair from 1860 to 
 1864, and writes thus of the years he spent with Shairp as 
 a colleague 
 
 " In those years, from 1860 to 1864, talks and walks with 
 Shairp were constant during the winter months, on the 
 sands, and by the eastern shore, and of an evening say 
 Friday or Saturday there were delightful quiet (linings 
 and discussions when the lamps were lit, now but gleams in 
 a far-back memory. He was one of the most copious and 
 richest talkers I have known. It was a kind of talk at the 
 same time ever fresh and interesting, with keen insight, 
 pointed speech, frequently happy summary phrase, suffused 
 with feeling, and often glowing with imagination. The 
 range of topics was widely varied. At this time, as I 
 remember, he would discuss Newman and Keble, Walter 
 Scott and Scottish story especially the history and fate 
 of the Douglases, the old ballads, and the Minstrelsy 
 of the Border especially chanting with fine feeling stanzas 
 of the best. Then passing perhaps to Kant and the Eela- 
 tivity of Knowledge, but luxuriating with fullest soul in Words- 
 worth. The influence he had caught at Oxford seemed to 
 me to have come, not so much from the studies of the place, 
 as from the accident 4 of the Anglican Church movement, 
 which had been going on there from 1834 to 1843. During 
 the latter part of this period Shairp had been an under- 
 graduate, and seen the notable men who were the leaders of 
 the new ecclesiasticism. . . . Scotsman and Presbyterian as 
 
x THE ST. ANDRE WS PROFESSORSHIP OF LA TIN 203 
 
 he was by birth and training, these men touched him on 
 the moral and imaginative side, which was far stronger in 
 him at all times than the power of any definite theological 
 creed, or set of formulae, for which I rather think he had a 
 distaste. 
 
 It occurred to me also that there was in him a 
 sympathy with Newman in his early restlessness and grop- 
 ings in his despairfulness regarding human reason in the 
 theological sphere, his refuge and solace in Authority, his 
 reverence and submission, and his love of Spiritual Order, 
 for History and its teachings, the accepted results of struggle 
 through generation after generation with the problems of 
 man and God, especially the work and lives of men who 
 had passed through the highest and noblest spiritual trials 
 and experience, formed always a strongly modifying and con- 
 straining power in Shairp's intellectual and moral convic- 
 tions. Moral truth moral rules of action consecrated by 
 history and time, -the continuity of this truth, its having 
 been shared in by successive generations of men, touched 
 him, and bent him to the side of Church authority and 
 order. Yet I never observed that Shairp had accepted any 
 distinctive part of Newman's final creed, or indeed of what 
 is known as Anglican High Churchism. It was the spiritual 
 character of the man, the form of the transcendent truth 
 that was in him, which mainly influenced Shairp, just 
 it happened in other cases. He had a curious catholic 
 sympathy for different sides in Church and ecclesiastical 
 discussions a desire to find what was good, true, inspiring, 
 in the varied views and systems. It was thus that he would 
 be found in partial sympathy with various, even opposite 
 men in the Churches, from Newman and Keble to the fervid 
 Highland preacher, and representatives of the diverse sec- 
 tions of evangelical dissent. Towards the close of his life 
 his sympathy was certainly greatest with the doctrines of 
 Atonement and Eedemption, as these have been put in their 
 less extreme forms, and with a recognition of a moral basis. 
 Hence his attraction towards the person and writings of his 
 friend, the late Thomas Erskiue of Linlathen. 
 
 
204 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP, x 
 
 But there was another line or rather series of cognate 
 subjects on the imaginative side in which Shairp took the 
 strongest interest. He had been drawn in his early youth 
 even to two great men, opposite in several respects yet 
 truly concurrent Walter Scott and Wordsworth. He 
 seemed to me to be as strongly attracted by the robust 
 sense, the graphic picturing, and the chivalry of Scott, as by 
 the naturalism, the meditative depth, and the spiritual symbol- 
 ism of Wordsworth. Shairp was an intensely patriotic Scot ; 
 but he always seemed to me to look at Scotland through the 
 eyes of the author of Waverley and The Lay of the Last 
 Minstrel. 
 
 At the same time, looking back on the Scottish life of the 
 past, he saw more fully into its religious element than Scott 
 ever did, and had a greatly more enlightened appreciation 
 of it. He has touched the subject only slightly in several 
 of his poems, as in Thrieve Castle, and The Good Lord 
 James. 
 
 One suggestion from Scottish, more particularly Border 
 history, and Scott, was a theme to which about this time 
 he used frequently and' fervently to refer the House of 
 Douglas, and its tragic story, the family whose ' coronet for 
 long counterpoised the Crown/ This he thought afforded a 
 subject for a drama, or dramatic poem, unequalled in our 
 history. Its feudal splendour, its heroic episodes, its tragic 
 close, and the unworldly ending all earthly ambition fore- 
 gone in the retirement of the last direct representative of 
 the earlier line in the Abbey of Lindores. These stirred 
 him as no other historical themes seemed to do. Somehow 
 the ideal never took shape in performance." 
 
CHAPTEE XI 
 
 LITERARY WORK AND FRIENDSHIPS : MR. ERSKINE AND 
 DR. JOHN BROWN 
 
 IT was after his settlement in St. Andrews that Shairp be- 
 came personally intimate with Mr. Erskine. He had been 
 at Linlathen during the Rugby Christmas holidays of 1854, 
 and they had occasionally corresponded since then. He 
 now visited frequently at Linlathen, and the friends met in 
 Edinburgh, where Mr. Erskine usually lived from December 
 till April, down to 1870. 
 
 His winters were devoted to the teaching of his class ; 
 his summers to literary work, and visits to friends, or 
 residence in Highland retreats. The summer of 1859 was 
 spent, with pupils, under the Ochils at Montague Cottage, 
 near Blairlogie ; that of 1860 at Pitlochrie, from June to 
 September ; that of 1862 between London, Houstoun, and 
 Dumfriesshire. Later on he spent a week by himself in the 
 Highlands, of which the only record in his Journal is " went 
 to Eort William and Corpach, September 3 ; stayed one 
 week." It was a checkered year. His brother-in-law, 
 Colonel Hugh M. Douglas, had returned from India, and 
 died in the prime of life. His Journal is full of allusions 
 to the happy childhood of his son Campbell, and to events' 
 connected with it. 
 
 In 1861, on hearing of Arthur Clough's death, he wrote 
 thus 
 
 " Heard of the death of A. H. Clough, first by the paper 
 in the forenoon, then in the evening by letter from his 
 wife, elated 17th November. How many unspeakable 
 
206 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 thoughts this calls up. One of the noblest men of his 
 time, so true, so deep, yet gentle-hearted too, and tender. 
 And then what a battle ! what a sore spiritual struggle his 
 has been." 
 
 "Monday, 16th December 1861. 
 
 " This day at ten o'clock in my classroom Thomas the 
 janitor told me of the death of Prince Albert. 1 The College 
 and Church bells tolled from eleven to twelve o'clock noon 
 on Monday. All day the thought was with us of the great 
 loss to the whole nation. It has been felt with a hearty 
 home-sorrow such as I never before remember for any public 
 man. A fine afternoon and sunset." 
 
 "22d August 1862. 
 
 " Started from Linlithgow at seven o'clock for Stirling. 
 Met Stanley and Mr. Pearson in Gibb's Hotel. Eain cleared 
 at 10.30. Then drove out to Bannockburn. Went over the 
 field, and on to the well, and mill where James III. was 
 killed. Stirling Castle; views to the Bens so blue; one yearned 
 to be among them. Parted at 5.15. I back to Lithgow, 
 where I had a most pleasant evening with Donald Macleod." 
 
 The mention of Shairp's growing intimacy with Mr. 
 Erskine of Linlathen will make way for a further portion 
 of the Dean of Salisbury's reminiscences, and for some of 
 the letters from Mr. Erskine to Shairp. 
 
 Dean Boyle writes 
 
 " I must pass over various occasional meetings, but I 
 remember well, very shortly after Shairp had begun to know 
 Mr. Erskine of Linlathen, I met him accidentally in Edin- 
 burgh, and he poured into my ear many most interesting 
 particulars of his intercourse with Erskine. He was delighted 
 to find that in consequence of Maurice's dedication of one of 
 his books to Mr. Erskine, I had begun to read all that 
 
 1 Compare his poem on The Death of Prince Albert. 
 
xi LITERARY WORK AND FRIENDSHIPS 207 
 
 Erskine had written with avidity, and he told me many 
 interesting details of his conversations on various doctrinal 
 subjects. When I read Shairp's recollections of Mr. Erskine, 
 first published by Dr. Hanna, I recognised at once the old 
 conversations with which Shairp had made me so familiar. 
 He used to say that Mr. Erskine enabled him to put things 
 in their right place, that his culture was always subordinated 
 to his religious feeling, and he often expressed a wish that 
 Stanley, who, he said, had much in common with Mr. 
 Erskine, could see him frequently, and learn to love him. 
 In after years it is well known that wish was fully gratified. 
 Lady Augusta Stanley had a most tender affection for the 
 laird of Linlathen, and the Dean has recorded in his own 
 delightful style his own appreciation of Mr. Erskine's varied 
 gifts and delightful character. After I had taken orders, my 
 visits to Scotland were necessarily brief, and for many years 
 I saw little of Shairp. Whenever we met, however, he was 
 at once ready to take up the old familiar strain. I think 
 that his feeling regarding Bishop Cotton increased and 
 strengthened. His intercourse with his brother-in-law, the 
 lamented Henry Douglas, Bishop of Bombay, .had a marked 
 effect on Shairp's character. He began by degrees to dis- 
 trust some of the tendencies of his old Oxford friends. He 
 makes no secret of this in his remarks on Matthew Arnold 
 in his Religion and Culture. But I confess that, in all my 
 intercourse with him, I hardly ever saw anything like 
 asperity, and the heat and din of controversy were odious to 
 him. When the Essays and Ee views battle was at its 
 height, he spoke of the way in which Dr. M'Leod Campbell 
 had lifted the whole question in his Thoughts on Revelation 
 into a diviner air, with a degree of delight I shall never 
 forget. Is it wrong in connection with this to say that he 
 sometimes regarded the comprehensive schemes of Dean 
 Stanley as utterly ' unworkable ' ? and that he would some- 
 times say, ' Dear Stanley is doctrine-blind, as some people 
 are colour-blind.' Shairp was as intense in his feeling about 
 religious questions as in all literary matters. Some who 
 heard him speak with real enthusiasm upon Scott or Words- 
 
208 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 worth, might be led to fancy that he was opening out his 
 whole .nature. But it was only in moments of most familiar 
 converse with old and trusted friends, that he gave indica- 
 tions of the intense occupation of his inner spirit with the 
 deepest problems of faith and speculation. A relation of 
 mine had offered a prize for the best knowledge of Scott to 
 Harrow boys, and I had the pleasure of being associated with 
 Dean Stanley in the work of examination. This led to a 
 visit to the present Master of Trinity, and when I arrived at 
 Harrow I found to my delight that Shairp, who had now 
 became Principal of St. Andrews, was at Harrow, engaged in 
 the general examination of the school. There are very few 
 persons who are capable of treating a younger, who has 
 owed much to their encouragement as an equal, when the 
 time of youth has passed away. Shairp was, however, one 
 of these. I had at one time looked on him as a mentor, but 
 during the last few years of our intercourse I found that he 
 was always ready to forget any difference of age. We 
 generally met in Scotland in autumn, and I have the pleasure 
 of remembering many and many a conversation on the books 
 and men we had a common interest in. 
 
 From the year 1872 until the year of his death my 
 occasional intercourse with Shairp assumed a deeper and 
 more interesting character. He used often to say that to 
 V Awo men Thomas Erskine and Arthur Stanley he owed 
 Xmuch of the same influence which he had derived from the 
 writings of Wordsworth and Coleridge. What attracted 
 him most in Mr... Erskine was the delightful harmony between 
 his deep spiritual nature and the thoughts of the great 
 writers who were Mr. Erskine's constant companions. Stanley 
 had always had a great delight in Scottish history, and no 
 one admired and loved the genius of Walter Scott more than 
 he did. This made a strong tie between him and Shairp. 
 They had explored together the region where Scott delighted 
 to wander in his early days, and Shairp was fond of telling- 
 how thoroughly the spirit of the Borderland had penetrated 
 Stanley. It would be unfair to omit mention of a growing 
 disinclination on Shairp's part during his latter years for 
 
xi LITERARY WORK AND FRIENDSHIPS 209 
 
 some of the Dean's expressions and opinions in theology. I 
 especially remember one long conversation, as we wandered 
 on the banks of the Almond, near a house with which I had 
 been very familiar all my life, and where I often in later 
 years had the privilege of meeting Shairp during my autumn 
 holiday, when he lamented what he called a departure on 
 Stanley's part from the position he had maintained, as the 
 biographer of Arnold and the champion of a form of Christian 
 belief, apart from the ecclesiasticism of Oxford, ' a debtor,' 
 as he said, 'to German theology, but not a slave.' Cotton 
 he looked upon as a more true exponent of Arnold's thought 
 and belief than Stanley. But although there was this grow- 
 ing difference, his delight in Stanley's company was as fresh 
 as ever, and on the evening of the day I am calling back 
 into memory, when the Dean arrived at Methven Castle, I 
 spent such an evening as it is now almost mournful to recall. 
 Stanley had the delightful faculty of imparting to others his 
 keen interest in all literary and historical subjects. The old 
 castle at Methven led him to talk of the story of Mary 
 Queen of Scots. From one topic of Scotch history to another 
 he and Shairp passed rapidly, and the evening was concluded 
 by a most interesting review of the influence exercised by 
 J. H. Newman during the days when the sermons at St. 
 Mary's were making their marks on the minds of many 
 Oxonians. I do not think it is too much to say that the 
 two men exercised upon each other a sort of subtle fascina- 
 tion, so that all that was highest and best in the natures of 
 both, seemed to be drawn out in vivid conversation. One 
 remark about the power of Scott as a novelist and writer I 
 well remember : ' After all/ said Stanley, ' if he had only 
 given us Jeanie Deans and Bessie Maclure, I think it is- 
 enough to put him very high, indeed, as a great Christian 
 writer.' ' Yes/ said Shairp, ' to make sisterly unselfishness, 
 delightful was even better than to write Marmion.' " 
 
 A very interesting letter of Shairp's to Mr. Erskine has- 
 been already printed at p. 176. Mr. Erskine replied to it 
 as follows: 
 
210 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 " LINLATHEN, 4th October 1859. 
 
 "MY DEAR SIR . . . Let me say a few words on the 
 subject of your letter. I never intended to say that our 
 confidence toward God was to be grounded on anything 
 which we could discern in ourselves, or any agreement, for 
 example, between our own consciousness and the feeling 
 expressed in the concluding verses of the 139th Psalm. 
 I meant to say that the confidence expressed in these verses 
 was evidently founded on the belief that God was a Father 
 whose desire with regard to us was to train us into a parti- 
 cipation of his own character and blessedness, and that such 
 a belief must produce such a confidence. If I know this 
 purpose of God toward me, if I know that it is his unchang- 
 ingable purpose, I cannot but trust him. I cannot but 
 invite him to look into my heart, and do his gracious work 
 there, delivering me from everything that is evil, and lead- 
 ing me in the way everlasting. The difficulty is when the 
 evil within us has got so close to us, and has sent its roots 
 so deep, that the removal of it must necessarily be most 
 painful, when we have come to love our sin and to disbelieve 
 in any love that should separate us from it and it cannot be 
 removed without our will. Our will must be gained to God's 
 side. But I believe that God will strive with us till he 
 succeeds. With much regard to Mrs. Shairp, ever truly yours, 
 
 T. ERSKINE." 
 
 The following letters from Mr. Erskine have not been 
 ^published, and since they are as characteristic of him, as 
 illustrative of his friend, they are now given in series, accord- 
 ins to date. 
 
 o 
 
 [Postmark 1863.] 
 
 " POLLOK, GLASGOW, 2d June. 
 
 " BELOVED SHAIRP I thank you for your love, which I 
 return with my whole heart. I knew that you wished to 
 .see me, and that it was only by the frustration of your plans 
 
xi LITERARY WORK AND FRIENDSHIPS 2H 
 
 that you did not come to tryst. I hope we may meet 
 quietly some time this summer or autumn, and talk easily 
 and freely over matters which are better understood by our- 
 selves, when we have uttered them to another. One of my 
 earliest convictions, when I first apprehended the meaning of 
 Christianity, was that, however much we might learn truth 
 from the Bible, as soon as we^ had learned it, we found that 
 we held it on a much deeper -and more unshakable ground 
 than the authority or the Bible, namely, on its own discerned 
 truthfulness. This idea was the origin of my first publica- 
 tion on * The Internal Evidences of Christianity,' although I 
 failed in bringing it out, because I did not fully understand 
 my own thought. This is really the question of the day, 
 and the right answer to it is the only true defence against 
 Essays and Eeviews, and Colenzo' and Eenan, and all the 
 tribe of pickers and stealers. 
 
 I am paying a visit to my friend, Sir John Maxwell, 
 who is a great sufferer from pains and aches, produced by 
 long past falls in the hunting-field, which have left their 
 mark, although they were smoothed over at the time. It is 
 like sin, which never goes away of itself. Every sin com- 
 mitted must be deleted by being brought under the action 
 of the sin-condensing love of God. It may be forgotten, but 
 it remains till that operation expunges it. Yours ever truly, 
 
 T. ERSKINE." 
 
 [Postmark 1863.] 
 
 "13 CHARLOTTE SQUARE, 24:th December. 
 
 "My DEAR MR. SHAIRP I did not answer your last 
 letter in proper time, as I ought to have done, waiting for 
 some definite and distinct information as to the days of 
 Stanley's sojourn with us. These days, however, still re- 
 main amongst the unrevealed things, and may remain so 
 for some time longer, although, in his new circumstances, I 
 am sure such mistakes are not likely to happen again. . . . 
 He was married yesterday, and he has got a wife who will 
 do him good, and not ill, all the days of his life. I had a 
 call from your friend Lushington to-day, inquiring about 
 
212 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 you. I could give him no information, but his inquiries 
 stirred me up to write, and to keep up habit and repute 
 with you. 
 
 Have you looked into Kenan's Life, of Christ ? It is 
 a curious book, worthy of being thoroughly considered, as 
 pointing out the way in which men of the present thought 
 are to be met. I should like to see it fully met. 
 
 Theism is something distinct from the laws of Nature. 
 Free Will belongs to a province distinct from the laws of 
 Nature. Miracles are not the external evidences a la mode 
 de Paley, but declare a Being who deals with us in that 
 higher province. They declare what we call a Personal 
 God. But I must stop. Happy Christmas and New Year 
 to you and Mrs. Shairp. Ever truly yours, 
 
 T. ERSKINE." 
 
 "13 CHARLOTTE SQUARE, 27th January. 1 
 " MY DEAR SIR ... I read every word of Keir's address, 
 and with much pleasure. It was cordial and earnest, and 
 evidently connected with personal consciousness, and personal 
 history, without which all such addresses must be false, just as 
 pulpit discourses ought to be, and yet are not, except very 
 rarely. His concluding counsels and warnings to young 
 theological students show that he has not thought of these 
 things so much as the other parts of self-education, and he 
 evidently views them and speaks of them as an honest man 
 who feels the importance of not making engagements which 
 he cannot keep. If I had in youth entered into any church, 
 I should certainly never hold myself in the slightest degree 
 fettered by such engagements, so as either to restrict my 
 speculation or preaching as to make me feel that I ought 
 to leave the church to which I had joined myself. I 
 should have considered that I did it wrong if I did not 
 believe that it would be ready to adopt any truth, however 
 alien from its articles, if they were clearly set before it. It 
 
 1 The year was probably 1864, as Sir W. Stirling Maxwell of Keir was 
 elected Rector of the University in 1863, and delivered his rectorial address 
 in January 1864. 
 
xi LITERARY WORK AND FRIENDSHIPS 213 
 
 might depose me, but I would press upon it that it pro- 
 fessed, above all things, that it was a Church of Christ, more 
 a great deal than of England or Scotland, and that those 
 who entered into it had engagements to God, paramount to 
 any he could make with it, as it had also engagements to 
 Eternal Truth. . . . 
 
 I liked Tulloch's little pats of butter exceedingly. 
 They were discriminating, and not overdone. Yours always, 
 
 T. ERSKINE." 
 
 [Postmark 1864.] 
 
 " LINLATHEN, DUNDEE, 8th September. 
 
 " DEAR MR. SHAIRP How I should like once more to 
 smell a Highland mountain and breathe its bracing breeze, 
 but I feel as if all that were past for me, and ' Lochaber no 
 more' must be enough for me, as substitute for Lochaber 
 itself! I have got some heavy weights upon me too an 
 accumulation of deaths beyond common so that 'I go 
 mourning all the day long,' as King David said a good 
 many years ago, and as many have said and done since. 
 
 Your letter to Mr. Stirling has been forwarded, though 
 it had been preceded by one from Jowett in favour of 
 another candidate, Mr. Green, whom I had seen in Edin- 
 burgh this winter, and who paid me a visit a few days ago. 
 I rejoice that there are amongst the Scotch clergy such men 
 as you describe Flint to be. I shall hope to know whether 
 he is elected or not. I am the better of meeting with right 
 men, especially if they have that interest in their own sub- 
 jects which leads them to seek sympathy from others. All 
 my metaphysical interest is really theological. I care for 
 metaphysics simply as an instrument; but our relation to 
 God and his spiritual kingdom is the true Supernatural. . . . 
 Ever truly yours, T. ERSKINE." 
 
 " MOORE'S HOTEL, 2 TORRES STREET, 
 "22d November 1867. 
 
 " . . . I am now in my eightieth year. It is wonderful to 
 myself to discover that I am so old. I seem all at once to 
 
214 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 have made a start forward, without passing through the 
 intermediate stages. I know, however, that I am on the 
 boundaries of the unseen world, and that I must soon enter 
 that untried state. . . . 
 
 There is much of cloud and weakness in human life, 
 and we need to have something in which we can always 
 rejoice. There is that something, but we do not seem 
 always able to- rejoice in it. When you come to town, 
 look in upon me. Ever affectionately yours, 
 
 T. ERSKINE." 
 
 [Postmark 1867.] 
 
 " MOORE'S HOTEL, 2 FORRES STREET, 
 " 28th November. 
 
 " MY DEAR MR. SHAIRP I hope you will dine with me 
 one of these days, and I shall try to get Dr. Brown to meet you. 
 
 It is a great duty to cultivate an habitual state of 
 hopefulness, founded on the assurance of the fatherly char- 
 acter of God, and of his purpose to overcome evil with 
 good in everything. . . . Yours affectionately, 
 
 T. ERSKINE." 
 
 [Postmark 1868.] 
 
 " 2 TORRES STREET, 18th February. 
 
 "MY DEAR PROFESSOR I have an answer from Keir, 
 saying that his name is at your service as Patron, or rather 
 one of the Patrons, of the Eamsay Scholarship. . . . 
 
 So is at last withdrawn from this scene of things, 
 
 and his end seems to have been a peaceful one. I had never 
 known him intimately, but I had been acquainted with him 
 above fifty years. His energies had chiefly gone out in 
 scientific speculation, but he seems also to have, at least 
 latterly, waged a successful war with the difficulties of his 
 temper. However, no one can tell what internal wars are 
 carried on by another. Without such wars no real advance 
 is possible, and if the asperities of temper are merely soft- 
 ened by age, little is really gained. . . . Yours affection- 
 ately, T. ERSKINE." 
 
xi LITERARY WORK AND FRIENDSHIPS 215 
 
 The following letter of Shairp's to Mr. Erskine is sent 
 to me by his nephew, Colonel Erskine of Linlathen : 
 
 " 3d December [Year not given]. 
 
 " MY DEAR MR. ERSKINE The last two times, as I have 
 said good-bye to you, you have told me that you would be 
 glad to have a line from me. I have not written, mainly 
 because my reflections contained nothing I thought worth 
 writing about to you. But I have lately read two papers 
 by Matthew Arnold, my old friend, on St. Paul's doctrine, 
 which, I am sure, would interest you, and on which I should 
 much like to have your judgment. They occur in the 
 CornhUl Magazine for October and November, entitled ' St. 
 Paul and Protestantism.' Arnold has not hitherto paid 
 much attention to theology. A man of great ability, Goethe 
 and the Greek Poets have been his chief studies. . . . 
 ' The old faiths are welcome, the new faith has not yet 
 been born' such has been the burden of his song. . . . 
 Now he grapples boldly with St. Paul. . . . He is not 
 wanting in admiration for the great Apostle. He thinks, 
 however, that Protestantism has claimed him as its founder, 
 but has sadly distorted, indeed wholly misrepresented him. 
 With you, he lays his hand on righteousness as the central 
 thought of all the Apostle's teaching, the longing to be really 
 intrinsically right in heart and will, not with a forensic or 
 artificial Tightness, but with a Tightness real and deep as 
 the universe. So far I think you will agree with him in 
 that he discards, with much impatience, all the glosses 
 and substitutes of a merely forensic Tightness, as altogether 1 
 below and apart from the thing St. Paul longed for. In 
 his positive statement as to what St. Paul considered light- 
 ness to be, you will find some defect, because he regards it 
 as harmony with the eternal order, but does not, I think, 
 recognise this harmony as consisting in sympathy with the 
 nature and will of God. . . . 
 
 But I need not describe these papers at greater length. 
 ... To me it has been a great pleasure to find an old 
 
216 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 friend, generally believed to be more Hellenic than Christian, 
 and to care for none of these things, yet a man of evident 
 ' culture/ and looked up to by all the young men of so- 
 called culture, at last recognising, and stating in his own 
 eloquent way, that St. Paul saw further into, and spoke 
 more to the Eeality, than any one of all the poets and 
 philosophers. . . . Ever very sincerely yours, 
 
 J. C. SHAIRP." 
 
 None of the character-sketches written by Shairp are 
 finer or more discriminating than that which he supplied to 
 Dr. Hanna of their common friend, Mr. Erskine. The 
 following are selected portions of that sketch : 
 
 " Although it was as a spiritual teacher working by voice and pen 
 that Mr. Erskine was known to the world, yet one cannot fully under- 
 stand his mind and influence without taking some account of his 
 human temperament and earthly circumstances. 
 
 He himself would have been one of the last to underrate what he 
 owed to his ancestry. On either side he was sprung from a far- 
 descended and gracious race, and among these, his kindred, he passed 
 a childhood and youth sheltered from those early shocks and jars 
 which probably lie at the root of much of the unkindness and asperity 
 there is in the world. Equally on his father's and his mother's side 
 e came from what the late biographer of Walter Scott used to call, 
 ith so much satisfaction, ' a fine old Scottish family.' 
 
 Out of the carse of Falkirk, that great dead level plain that 
 stretches from Falkirk to Stirling, which, as the great battlefield of 
 Scotland, holds in Scottish history, as Dean Stanley has suggested, the 
 same place which the plain of Esdraelon held in the history of Israel, 
 out of that carse, about a mile inland from the Links of Forth, rises 
 a scarpment or ridge of sandstone abruptly breaking from the surround- 
 ing flats. On the edge of that scarpment stands the old castle, origin- 
 ally a square peel tower with pent-house roof, like those common all 
 over Scotland. To that tower has been built, on a long high line of 
 building, with crowstepped gables, a steep roof, and dormer windows 
 projecting from it. This range of building forms the later dwelling- 
 house, all that was there in Mr. Erskine's childhood ; though since 
 then there have been made quite modern and not very congruous addi- 
 tions. This long building, flanked on the west by the older tower, 
 looks down, over a small precipice, on a quaint garden beneath, and 
 
xi LITERARY WORK AND FRIENDSHIPS 217 
 
 beyond the garden are old trees and a lazy stream lingering towards 
 the Forth. The house fronts southward, and across the dead level 
 carse the windows look far away to the rising ground of Falkirk muir, 
 the scene of two great battles. Contiguous to the house, on the north- 
 east side, is the old churchyard, full of ancient graves and grey tomb- 
 stones. A church must once have stood there, but it has disappeared. 
 Behind the house, to north and west, long straight avenues and park 
 trees stretch on towards the grounds of Dunmore Park. It is almost 
 an ideal abode of an ancient Scottish family, like those Walter Scott 
 loved to picture. Such outwardly was the place and neighbourhood 
 where Thomas Erskine drank in his first impressions of a world in 
 which he was to abide for fourscore years, for the associations of a 
 mere town-house in childhood go for little compared with those of 
 the first country home. 
 
 Airth, Kippenross, Keir, Ochtertyre, Cardross, with occasional 
 visits to Ardoch, his grandmother's home, and to Abercairney, the 
 summers of childhood and boyhood spent in these melted into him 
 with associations of beauty and ancestral repose which were indelible, 
 and the warm atmosphere of human life that then surrounded him, 
 sweetened his whole nature to the core. It had, no doubt, much to 
 do with drawing out that deep and tender affectionateness which made 
 him all life through the much -loving and much -beloved man he 
 was. 
 
 In this he was very unlike most men. Hearts more or less, I 
 suppose, most of us have, but we keep them so close-cased and pad- 
 locked, we wear an outside so hard or dry, that little or none of the 
 love that may be within escapes to gladden those around us. And so 
 life passes without any of the sweetening to society that comes when 
 affection is not only felt but expressed, for to be of any use to others 
 it must be expressed in some way. Mr. Erskine was in this happy 
 above most men, that, being gifted with a heart more than usually 
 tender and sympathetic, he had brought with him from childhood the 
 art of expressing it simply and naturally. So it was that the loving- 
 kindness that was in him streamed freely forth, making the happy 
 happier, and lightening the load of the sorrowful. It was as if inside 
 his man's understanding he hid, as it were, a woman's heart. And 
 though this is a thing no early training could have implanted, yet 
 when it was there the warm affection that surrounded his boyhood was 
 the very atmosphere to cherish and expand it. 
 
 If this had been all it might have led to softness, but the society 
 of his childhood, though based on affection, had enough of the old 
 Scottish verve and intellect in it to keep it from degenerating into 
 sentimentalism. His own busy intellect, too, was early stirring, and 
 the winter home of his mother in St. David Street was pervaded by 
 that old-world simplicity and frugality which is so bracing to character. 
 Besides, even if the boy's early years had been too tenderly nurtured, 
 
218 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 school-life, as it then existed, especially in the rough old High School 
 of Edinburgh, was sure to give scope enough for the hardy virtues. 
 
 Although I had long known Mr. Erskine by reputation and 
 through mutual friends, it was not till the year 1854 that I became 
 personally acquainted with him. As I happened to be in Scotland in 
 the winter of that year, his cousin, Miss Jane Stirling, wrote to him 
 that I was anxious to meet him, and he at once invited me to visit 
 him at Linlathen. 
 
 It was, I think, on a Saturday afternoon, the 7th of January in 
 that year, he received me in that library in Linlathen which his friends 
 so well remember. I had not been any time with him before he 
 opened on those subjects which lay always deepest in his thoughts. 
 Often during that visit, in the library, or in walks after dark up 
 and down the corridor, or when the weather allowed in walks about 
 the grounds, those subjects were renewed. The one thing that first 
 struck me at that time was his entire openness of mind, his readiness 
 to hear whatever could be urged against his own deepest convictions, 
 /the willingness with which he welcomed any difficulties felt by 
 'others, and the candour with which he answered them from his own 
 experience and storehouse of reflection. He exemplified that text 
 which he often quoted, ' The heart of the righteous man studieth to 
 answer.' This was a characteristic of him which is not found in 
 men so religious. Commonly the statement of any view, very unlike 
 that which they have been accustomed to hold, shocks them ; arid 
 younger inquirers, seeing that they are thought impious or give pain, 
 cease to reveal their thoughts, and intercourse is at an end. With 
 Mr. Erskine it was just the reverse of this. His whole manner and 
 spirit elicited confidence from younger men. No thought could ever 
 have occurred to them which, if they were serious about it, they need 
 have hesitated to tell him. And it would seldom be that they did 
 not find in his replies something either really helpful, or at least some- 
 thing well worth their pondering. 
 
 It would be no inadequate representation of Mr. Erskine, as he 
 appeared among men, to conceive of him as confining all his conver- 
 sation to religion and theology. Yet these, no doubt, were his favourite 
 subjects, those that lay nearest his heart ; and when he met with a 
 sympathetic listener he poured himself forth unweariedly. It was 
 not any mere speculations about theology, any mere dealing through 
 the intellect with what is called scientific theology. That was to 
 him the mere outwork, the shell of something far more inward and 
 vital. In that inner region that lies beyond all mere speculation you 
 felt that his whole being was absorbed, that he was making it his own, 
 not with the mere understanding only, but that his heart, conscience, 
 and spirit were wholly in it. And whether his listener understood 
 all he said for sometimes it was hard to catch for its subtlety and 
 whether he agreed with it or not for sometimes it was novel and 
 
xi LITERARY WORK AND FRIENDSHIPS 219 
 
 even startling no one, who could feel what spiritual-mindedness was, 
 could come away from his converse without feeling that in his society 
 they had breathed for a while a heavenly atmosphere. To return from 
 it to common doings and everyday talk was like descending from the 
 mount of vision to the dusty highway. 
 
 It used to be a strange feeling to walk about his place with 
 him, wearing, as he did, to the outward eye, the guise of a Scottish 
 laird, while all the while his inner spirit, you felt, was breathing the 
 atmosphere of St. John. It was something so unlike anything you 
 met with elsewhere in society. 
 
 For when left alone to himself he was a man absorbed in the 
 thought of God. 
 
 And combined with this went another tendency I mean the 
 absolute conviction that all true thought about God would be found 
 to harmonise with all that is truest and highest in the conscience and 
 the affections of man. It was the desire himself to see and to make 
 others see this harmony, to see that Christian doctrine was that which 
 alone meets the craving of heart and conscience, it was this desire 
 which animated him in all the books he wrote, and in all the many 
 conversations he carried on. 
 
 Over the social circle that met within his home at Linlathen 
 his Christian influence showed itself in many ways, and though 
 differing according as it met with different characters, yet was always 
 in harmony with itself. Among the many relatives of all ages and 
 characters who visited him, and the guests who, especially during 
 summer, were welcomed to Linlathen, there were of course those who 
 could not sympathise with him in his deepest interests. If, however, 
 they cared for literature, in Mr. Erskine they found one who was at 
 home in all that was finest and most soul-like in literature, ancient 
 and modern, and his bright and sympathetic remarks or questions 
 drew out the stores even of the most reserved. The Classics he knew 
 and loved to speak of, Shakespeare he knew only less well than the 
 Bible, and his conversation was edged with many apt quotations from 
 him. Even when sportsmen were his guests, men whose chief de- 
 lights lay at Melton Mowbray, he found some bond of sympathy with 
 them, something that made them take pleasure in his society. He 
 had a wonderful art of setting every one at ease, and drawing out the 
 best side of every character. 
 
 I remember calling one summer afternoon at Mrs. Paterson's 
 house in Morningside, about the year 1863 or 1864, I think. Mrs. 
 Paterson, Mrs. Stirling, and her sister-in-law, Mrs. James Erskine, 
 were alone together in the drawing-room. For an hour I sat while 
 they talked of the things nearest their own hearts and their brother's, 
 
220 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 in a natural yet most unworldly strain, such as conversation seldom 
 attains. Mrs. Paterson perhaps spoke most, but all three took part. 
 It was early summer, and the western sun was shedding a soft light 
 along the green slopes of the Pentland Hills, visible from the drawing- 
 room window. When the hour was ended I came away, but a sooth- 
 ing sense remained long after as though for a brief while I had been 
 allowed to overhear a high pure strain of heavenly music. I felt 
 that all three were, not by natural kinship only, but by the kinship 
 of the heart, spiritual sisters of their gifted brother. 
 
 With any of his guests at Linlathen who cared for it, Mr. Erskine 
 used to continue his talk, not only in his library and along the cor- 
 ridor, but in walks about the place, or in a longer walk to the 
 bare bleak links of Monifieth, where the outlook was on the eastern 
 sea. 
 
 During those winters his appearance, as he passed along Princes 
 Street to and from his afternoon visit to the New Club, must have 
 struck most passers-by, with his broad hat or wide-awake, and his 
 quaint, antique, weather-fending guise. Walking with him on one 
 such occasion, I observed that he stopped and spoke very cordially 
 with a distinguished ecclesiastical leader of the time, who was well 
 known to disagree with him, and strongly to disapprove of his views. 
 
 ' You seem very cordial with Dr. .' With a smile he answered, 
 
 'He tries to cut me, but I never allow him. I always walk in 
 before him and make him shake hands.' On another occasion as I 
 walked with him, we foregathered with Dr. John Brown, and we three 
 stood talking to each other for some time. When Dr. Brown passed 
 on he said : ' I like him ; he is a fine vernacular man ; he can speak 
 to you in a whisper. Have you ever observed it is only Scotchmen 
 who speak in a whisper ? The English cannot do it.' 
 
 Among the last occasions on which he was allowed to receive his 
 friends in Edinburgh was in the spring of 1866, when his old and 
 much-valued friend, Mr. Carlyle, after a long absence, revisited Edin- 
 burgh to be installed as Rector of the University. Many will still 
 remember the wise and gracious courtesy with which he then per- 
 formed the duties of hospitality, on the one hand securing for his 
 guest the repose he needed and desired, on the other, according to as 
 many as possible the coveted privilege of meeting the sage of Chelsea. 
 On the day on which Mr. Carlyle addressed the students in the large 
 Music Hall, Mr. Erskine, knowing how great was the effort for a 
 retired man of Mr. Carlyle's years, and anxious how he might feel 
 after it was over, had asked no one to dinner for that day. When the 
 address was well achieved, and Mr. Erskine found that Mr. Carlyle 
 was none the worse but rather the better for the deliverance, he asked 
 two or three of his intimate friends to come and join a quiet dinner- 
 
xi LITERARY WORK AND FRIENDSHIPS 221 
 
 party. That evening Sir William Stirling Maxwell sat at the foot of 
 the table, and with nice tact gave such turn to the conversation as 
 allowed fullest scope to the sage who has praised silence so well, but 
 fortunately does not practice it. Released from his burden, Mr. Carlyle 
 was in excellent spirits, and discoursed in his most genial mood of his 
 old Dumfriesshire remembrances, of the fate of James IV., and other 
 matters of Scottish history, and of the then Emperor Napoleon, of 
 whom, as may be imagined, he was no admirer. Those days when 
 Mr. Erskine received Mr. Carlyle as his guest were among the last of 
 his hospitalities in Edinburgh. 
 
 The last visit which I remember having paid to him at Linlathen 
 was on the sixth day of July 1868 a beautiful summer day. 
 
 It was a day of delightful sunshine, and as we drove to Mains the 
 genial air seemed to touch the springs of old feeling and memory with 
 him. He went back in retrospect to early companions the large 
 cousinhood who used to meet at Airth and Kippendavie. 
 
 After we had returned from our drive, we sat for some time on 
 the lawn just over the Dighty Water, which ran underneath the bank 
 on the top of which the house stands. It was about six o'clock P.M., 
 and the sun was shining warm on us as we sat, and beautifying the 
 landscape near and far. After talking for some time, he asked me if 
 I remembered Mr. Standfast in the Pilgrim's Progress, and his words 
 when he came to the bank of the stream : ' The thoughts of what I am 
 going to do and of the conduct that waits for me on the other side 
 doth lie as a glowing coal at my heart.' . . . And then looking across 
 the Dighty to its farther bank, he added, ' I think that within a year 
 from this I shall be on the other side.' 
 
 He then, I think, spoke of the awful silence of God, how it some- 
 times became oppressive, and the heart longed to hear in answer to its 
 cry some audible voice. Then he quoted that word, ' Be not silent to 
 me, O Lord, lest if Thou be silent to me, I become like them that go 
 down into the pit ; ' and then I know, he added ; ' but it has not always 
 been silence to me ; I have had one revelation. It is now, I am sorry 
 to say, a matter of memory with me. After it I did not know any- 
 thing which I did not know before. But it was a joy for which one 
 might bear any sorrow, Joie, Joie, Pleurs de Joie, as was the title of a 
 tract I used to read at Geneva. I felt the power of love, that God is 
 love, that He loved me, that He had spoken to me,' and then, after a 
 long pause, ' That He had broken silence to me.' As he spoke he 
 touched me quickly on the arm, as if to indicate the direct impact from 
 on high of which he had been aware. As he walked away, leaning on 
 my arm, round the west end of the house, towards the door he added : 
 ' I know many persons in the other world, and I would like to see 
 
222 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 them again.' This was, as far as I remember, the last visit I paid him 
 at Linlathen." * 
 
 As the notice " In Memoriam " of Mr. Erskine in the 
 Scotsman of 3 1st March 1 8 70 was written by Principal Shairp, 
 the following extracts from the letters of his physician 
 friend, Dr. John Brown, referring to the closing hours of 
 Mr. Erskine's life, have a special interest. 
 
 On the 16th March he wrote: "God only knows what 
 an awful thing it is to be so near Heaven as I am when 
 near him. He is past all fear and darkness. He is falling 
 asleep, as a child in its mother's bosom perfect peace and 
 speaks out his dreams, such utterances of love and tender 
 and subtle thought ; bits of his essential self, the perfected 
 flower of a life with God. ... It is, indeed, an awful thing 
 to be privileged so to see the spiritual movements of the 
 soul, and such a soul, in its supreme time. When he dies, 
 it will be a heart dying. He was a power among men to 
 make them feel. You knew and loved him ; and he loved 
 you, as he loved few. He said to me often, ' He is a ver- 
 nacular man, I love him.' I think he will hardly get through 
 the night, and he is fain to go. He is cared for, as if he 
 were a weaned child. Ever J. B." 
 
 1$ th. Our dear friend still lingers; at times saying 
 kind deep words ' thoughts that wander through eternity.'" 
 
 2 1st. Half-past ten. He is gone. I have just been 
 with them. Nothing could be more gentle. . . ." 
 
 Dr. Brown and others had urged their friend to write a 
 memorial notice of Mr. Erskine for the Scotsman; and on 
 the 30th March, after it appeared, Dr. Brown wrote of it: 
 "It was well we were importunate. Nothing could more 
 greatly express his nature and manner of man. It is 
 perfect in form, expression, turn of thought and feeling. I 
 have read it at least four times over. ... No one could 
 
 1 Letters of Thomas Erskine of Linlathen, pp. 347-378. 
 
xi LITERARY WORK AND FRIENDSHIPS 223 
 
 have said it as you have ; and you will be glad all your 
 days that we got you to do it. That word ' inwardness/ is 
 the very word. The whole has the specific flavour of his 
 very essence. It will give a deep and tender pleasure to 
 those to whom he was a man greatly beloved, loved because 
 loving. That is fine about the spoken doctrine being made 
 lucid, and revealing the immediate God ; but it is all fine. 
 You have done nothing more full of truth and beauty. . . . 
 I know it is in the very key he would have liked. J. B." 
 
 Amongst the friends of later years mention should be 
 made of the Rev. John Smith of Ecclesmachan, the parish 
 adjoining that of Uphall. He was one of those somewhat 
 remarkable men whom the Church of Scotland has num- 
 bered amongst her rural clergy, a calm, reflective, unam- 
 bitious, self - abnegating man full of interest in many 
 things, intellectual, literary, and religious. Conversations 
 with this clergyman were a great resource to Shairp when 
 at Houstoun, and he was much missed when he passed away. 
 A reference to him occurs in one of the Journals written 
 during a holiday visit from Eugby. 1 
 
 Of all the friends, however, whom he numbered in his 
 later years friends not of his boyhood or early manhood 
 by far the most intimate was Dr. John Brown, the author 
 of Rdb and Ms Friends. With such a colleague as Pro- 
 fessor Veitch, he may have been (and doubtless was) more 
 familiar, than with a man of kindred genius and originality 
 such as Dr. John Brown. But the radiant friendships of 
 middle-life are rare ; and one that began when both men 
 had crossed the watershed of life, and were going down the, 
 western slopes to face the sunset, deserves a special mention. 
 The best way to record it is to give some extracts from the 
 letters of Dr. Brown, unique as a literary genius among the 
 modern physicians of Scotland, and one of the truest and 
 best of men. 
 
 Writing on 28th February 1875, after the publication 
 
 1 See p. 124. 
 
224 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 of Mr. Erskine's letters, Dr. Brown said : " Yes, Mr. 
 Erskine's letters are wonderful noble in their very incon- 
 sistency and halfness. He had an intense rather than a 
 wide mind, and brought the rays of his intellect to a focus, 
 making one thing very bright, and the next thing very dark, 
 as with a burning lens. You will make a book as 
 delightful as Alexander Knox's Remains (more so, for there 
 is more genius). Do you know the ' Cherry and the Sloe ' ? 
 I was struck with this stanza 
 
 Leave sin, ere sin leave thee, do good, 
 
 And both without delay 
 Less fit he will to-morrow be 
 
 Who is not fit to-day." 
 
 Going back, however, to an earlier date, Dr. Brown 
 writes thus 
 
 " 23 RUTLAND STREET, EDINBURGH, 
 "I7th June 1861. 
 
 "MY DEAR SHAIRP . . . Thanks for what you say 
 about the Saturday Review. Four years ago this would 
 have mortified and vexed me. Now it does not. This is 
 one of the uses of a great steady calamity it sobers a 
 man, and keeps him from being depressed or uplifted by 
 passing things. . . . 
 
 Do you know ? If not, you should introduce 
 
 yourself upon the strength of knowing me. Things that 
 are equal to the same are equal to one another. . . . What 
 are you doing about your Poems ? Don't hang back too 
 long. . . . Did you see my blast against that idiotical 
 Wallace monument ? Yours ever truly, J. BROWN." 
 
 [Postmark, 6th January 1862.] 
 
 " I like this more and more. 1 It has an unspeakable 
 charm, the true pastoral melancholy of the region and 
 these long satisfying lines, like the stride of a shepherd 
 
 1 The Bush aboon Traquair. 
 
xi LITERARY WORK AND FRIENDSHIPS 225 
 
 over the crown of Minchmoor. Why not send it to 
 Thackeray for the CornUll ? I will be its godfather. I 
 wish you had another word than ' winsome ' for the 
 summer. . . . Thank you again for this exquisite song. I 
 would rather have been the man to write it than Gladstone 
 with all his greatness and goodness. Ever yours, 
 
 J. B." 
 
 Again (5th February) "My dear Poet, do let me send 
 the ' Buss ' J to Thackeray for the Cornhill ! J. B." 
 
 " llth August [No year given]. 
 
 " I had a walk yesterday with Syme across Minchmoor 
 from Kailzie in Tweed to Yarrow. Such a sweet Sabbath 
 among the hills. The immense landscape, dappled with 
 sunshine and shadow and white clouds, as it were the very 
 tabernacles of light. It is a place to be thankful for having 
 come under the power of. JSTow you must write out that 
 song for me to show to Syme, who is as romantic and soft- 
 hearted as you or I. I think you say ' high ' Minchmoor. 
 Now how would dark do ? It is the special feature of the 
 hill. It always looks swart, or swarthy, among the other 
 green fellows indeed it looked almost black. . . ." 
 
 "4th March 1863. 
 
 " Ecce iterum Minchmoor ! You will laugh at my 
 inveteracy, but it haunts me like a ' mission,' and you know 
 me too well to care a straw for saying No in the most 
 decided manner. The cause of this fresh and final outbreak 
 is that Edmonston and Douglas have induced me to get up a 
 new volume of Odds and Ends, with ' Pet Marjorie ' in it, 
 and ' Minchmoor.' Now it would be delightful to end the 
 piece with ' Will ye gang wi' me ?' telling of course where I 
 got it, and a word or two more, which would not displease 
 you. . . ." 
 
 1 The Bush aboon Traquair. 
 Q 
 
226 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 Again 
 
 "14th October 1863. 
 
 " I had hoped to be where you are, but this is impos- 
 sible. There are so many people very ill. I don't say I 
 envy you, much less do I say I don't. What a wonderful 
 Highland cateran and his wife you are living with. ... I 
 was at the Physicians' dinner to the Prince, Lord Brougham, 
 . . . Mr. Gladstone, and the other Sauls. The Prince 
 is a modest, manly, happy fellow, with much more capa- 
 city than his elder brother. Gladstone made a short but 
 most beautiful speech, in which he referred to the Prince 
 and Brougham, who were sitting together, as the Dawn and 
 the Evening of Life. Spoke of the Association as a 
 congress of love, emanating from the ever blessed God, the 
 fountain of all love and goodwill. It was simply but 
 greatly done. I was much with him on that Monday. 
 There is a wonderful intensity and sincerity about him, 
 and a sort of boyishness. . . ." 
 
 The following extract is from an undated letter to an 
 Edinburgh correspondent, evidently belonging to the year 
 1862 or 1863. Shairp had been urged to become a can- 
 didate for a Chair in another University : 
 
 " The whole spirit of the Town-Councillor mind is so anti- 
 pathetic to mine that I never wish to have anything to do 
 with it. I mean that I should never volunteer myself for 
 a contest in which they or their delegates were the electors." 
 
 His correspondent was about to visit the English Lakes, 
 and Shairp alluded to Wordsworth thus : " He was one of 
 my earliest and profoundest loves among the poets. This 
 of course increased my interest in his country. Hardly any 
 scenery has such soothing beauty. He was, as it were, those 
 old dumb fells become articulate." 
 
 To the same correspondent he wrote of Macaulay : 
 " The man who spoke, as he does in his letters, of both Scott 
 and Wordsworth, deserves the truth to be said about him, 
 namely, that he was the lineal representative of Jeffrey, and 
 all that tribe of Edinburgh reviewers, who to all that is 
 
xi LITERARY WORK AND FRIENDSHIPS 227 
 
 best in our highest poetry were simply blind as moles. . . . 
 As for the critics, I don't care what they say. I fear there 
 is something in me that would rather enjoy setting their 
 backs up." 
 
 Again, speaking of some of his papers, which he preferred 
 sending to a magazine, rather than making a book of them : 
 " They are very far from my standard of a book style, too 
 flabby, flashy, lectury, not condensed, simple, and sober, as I 
 think a book style should be ;" and, in the same letter, 
 referring to a biography which his friend had, or was to 
 have in hand, " Oh ! don't be too diffuse. Everything now- 
 adays errs this way. Nobody condenses,,because the steam- 
 press goes so fast. If you wish the Life to be read, don't 
 let it be a line longer than ; and for his works, don't 
 sweep his writing-desk, but only publish what is really good, 
 and likely to be permanently read." 
 
 It is not the part of one who is writing a Memoir to 
 give a critical estimate of the works of the author whom he 
 is trying to memorialise. Some account of successive writ- 
 ings may be given, but the judicial appraising of them must 
 be left to others. This much, however, may be said of 
 Shairp, that it is with his volume of Studies devoted to 
 Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keble, and the Moral Motive Power 
 that his name will be chiefly associated. It is the belief ^Tij 
 of the present writer that no estimate of Wordsworth written 
 within this century can be compared witb Shairp's, for com- 
 prehensiveness, fairmindedness, and adequacy. Wordsworth's 
 place in literature is now so well defined, as one of those 
 
 Stars pre-eminent in magnitude, 
 Which from the zenith dart their beams, 
 
 that appreciative estimates of him are now less needed than 
 once they were ; but no' one, not Clough, nor Henry Taylor, 
 nor Lowell, nor De Vere, nor Stopford Brooke, nor Leslie 
 Stephen, nor Hutton, has given so full, so thorough -going, or 
 judicial a study of him as Shairp has done. It is a study not 
 for contemporaries only, but for the generations of the future. 
 
228 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 The essay on Coleridge is also one of the best reviews of 
 his philosophy and poetry that we possess ; while, in point 
 of finish and delicacy, the study of Keble is perhaps the 
 richest of the three. It deals with much besides the poet 
 of The Christian Year; it touches the whole religious move- 
 ment, of which Newman was the preacher, and Keble the 
 poet. 
 
 There is little doubt that Shairp was greater as a critic 
 of the poets than as a writer of verse, and that as a de- 
 lineator of character he was better than either; while as 
 himself the embodiment of one of the finest types of modern 
 character, he was b.est of all. 
 . . To say what he contributed to Ethics, in his essay on 
 the Moral Motive Power, would lead me too far a-field from 
 Ji the path of biography. Suffice it. to say that if the sphere 
 of Ethics be divided into four provinces the first unfold- 
 ing the facts of our moral motive, the second tracing its 
 ancestry and evolution, the third determining its authority 
 and credentials, and the fourth essaying to explain the 
 process by which its ideal can be realised there is no 
 contribution to the last of these problems in our English 
 Ethical Literature that is more suggestive or helpful than 
 this one. 
 
 Of the article on Wordsworth, his old Rugby pupil and 
 friend, Vernon Lushington, wrote to him 
 
 " 12 KING'S BANK WALK, TEMPLE, E.C., 
 October. 
 
 " MY DEAR SHAIRP I read in one of the newspapers 
 that the article on Wordsworth in The North British was 
 yours, and this afternoon I read it. Thank you for it ! 
 Thank you also for reminding me, though indeed I little 
 wanted the reminder, that it was by you I was first led to 
 read Wordsworth, and to drink joyously of his pure stream. 
 It was at Rugby, years now ago ; one of those lucky 
 moments which lead to much, one of those kind gifts which 
 bring so much more than the giver or receiver contemplates. 
 
xi LITERARY WORK AND FRIENDSHIPS 229 
 
 ... I recognise in the quotations passages you have 
 quoted to me ; and surely the stranger in the plaid, who 
 turned and took his gaze at the Poet, was no other than 
 J. C. S. 
 
 I heartily agree in your view of Wordsworth's noble 
 character and noble work. The only serious disagreement f 
 I have is with your last two pages. That lies rather deep ; 
 but it seems to me indisputable, and full of deep meaning, 
 that not only Wordsworth's later orthodoxy was dull, almost 
 lifeless, but his general poetic power became deadened 
 thereby ; and this, too, in the very prime of his life as a 
 man. I rejoiced in your full reference to The Prelude, which 
 I have read and re-read many times, admiring it beyond 
 The Excursion. I also welcomed all your passages and 
 references to poems. If I missed anything, I knew so well 
 that want of space must have been hampering you at every 
 moment; and yet I did miss a fuller reference to the 
 Matthew Poems, The Brothers, and Michael. And if there 
 was anything unsaid, which I wished particularly to be 
 said, or said which I wanted to be said more, it would be, 
 I think, these three things: (1) That Wordsworth's feeling 
 for landscape is essentially manly ; Nature, he always insists, 
 gives gladness to the glad, comfort and support to the 
 sorrowful, of which numerous instances must occur to you. 
 
 (2) The wondrous depth of his feeling for the domestic 
 affections, and more especially the constancy of them. 
 
 (3) That he must be considered a leader in that grandest 
 movement of modern times, care for our humbler brethren ; 
 his part being not to help them in their sufferings, but to 
 make us reverence them, for what they have in common 
 with us, or in greater measure than ourselves. But all this 
 is carrying coals to Newcastle. . . . I am affectionately 
 yours, VERNON LUSHINGTON." 
 
 In 1864 Shairp published a small volume of verse, which 
 was immediately recognised as a distinct contribution to the 
 literature of Scotland, and which gave him a place of his 
 own amongst the minor poets of the Victorian age. In the 
 
230 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 first and longest poem in the book, Kilmahoe, which gives its 
 name to the volume, we have a bright picture of west High- 
 land scenery, of the moorlands, the hills, and the shores 
 of Kintyre ; and it is all indigenous, a native growth of 
 the Scottish muse, and much finer than the story contained 
 in the poem. It may be that in Kilmahoe we miss the magic 
 touch, and the high ideality of these poems that are for all 
 time, and for all men ; but we have the strong breeze of 
 the western sea, coming to us over heathery moorlands, and 
 we hear the burns rushing down the corries to the shore, 
 and the living creatures of the earth and air are around us 
 a sense of life and joyousness everywhere diffused. Along 
 with these touches of pure nature, we have pathetic stories 
 of old Highland life, a strong affection for antique customs, 
 and the simple ways of a past state of things. The life 
 of a bygone time is reproduced for us, alike in the 
 laird's house and in the cottar's sheiling, at gatherings 
 for worship on the hillsides, and at the haymaking in old 
 Kintyre ; and throughout there is no strain, and no affecta- 
 tion of simplicity. It is all perfectly natural, and it is 
 national (Scottish) from first to last. 
 
 Shairp's dedication of Kilmalwe to his Father is note- 
 worthy every way : " To my Father, this poem, intended to 
 illustrate a manner of life which prevailed in the lower 
 Highlands during his youth, but has now passed away, is 
 dutifully and affectionately inscribed." 
 
 The following is a sample of the poem, taken from the 
 opening of Canto VI., entitled The Glen : 
 
 In the glen by the shoreland 
 
 It is blythe to-day, 
 O'er ocean and o'er land 
 
 In flows the May : 
 
 Come, sisters, sweet sisters, with me ! 
 The burn from the hillside is falling 
 Down the deep dell from linn to linn ; 
 Merl and mavis aloud are calling 
 From the heart of the hazels within. 
 
 Come, children, to our green home ! 
 And the cuckoo wandering from height to height 
 
xi LITERARY WORK AND FRIENDSHIPS 231 
 
 Thro' the hills is shouting his lone delight, 
 Come, children, for Spring hath come. 
 
 The mixture of Scotch and English phrases in this poem 
 is, however, not always successful ; and it is the way in which 
 they are woven together in the poem that makes Kilmahoe 
 inferior in many ways to the shorter lyrics in the volume. 
 
 It is in The Bush aboon Traquair, The Moor of Rannoch, The 
 Run, Flie Bonspiel, The Dream of Glen Sallach, Lost and 
 Found, and The Blue Bells, that Shairp is seen at his best. 
 Of The Bush Dr. John Brown wrote : " It is a tidy little free- 
 hold. We would wish to live as long after we are dead 
 as the author of this felicity is sure to do ;" and of The 
 Moor of Rannoch he wrote : " That touch of the pipers com- 
 ing up Glen Etive at midnight is of imagination all compact." 
 
 In these Scottish lyrics, the distinctive feature is not so 
 
 I much a description of Nature, as the subtle way in which 
 
 / human feeling is introduced and dealt with. We find in 
 
 \tjhem impressive traces of the way in which the spirit of their 
 
 native land has impressed itself upon the character of the 
 
 Scottish people, giving to the latter an indelible shape and 
 
 form. It may certainly be doubted if any poet has felt the 
 
 whole sentiment of Scottish scenery more truly than Shairp 
 
 has done, or even as truly ; and especially if any one has ever 
 
 inwoven the traditions of the land with the peculiarities 
 
 of its scenery more deftly than he did, or recognised the 
 
 spirit of the past lingering on in the present. 
 
 The following are extracts from letters of Dr. Brown in 
 reference to the volume of Poems : 
 
 " Sunday Night [January 1864]. ' 
 
 "MY DEAR FRIEND I am delighted quite with The 
 Moor of Rannoch, with The Run, with Lost and Found, 
 and Balaclava (both of them like trumpets), with The 
 Losing Time, with Prayer, The Weird Wife (magnificent 
 and iveird), and many others. Indeed I think we have had 
 nothing since Wordsworth and Campbell, for there is a 
 curious mixture of these two, or rather likeness, with far 
 
232 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 more of your own, nothing so fresh and caller, with the 
 strength of the hills, the sweet music of the burns, and the 
 native wood-notes wild, for many a long year, so open-air 
 and native. God bless you for them, and above all for 
 The Moor of Eannoch. My Bush remains exquisite and 
 
 perfect. is delighted with Eannoch and the pipers 
 
 coming up Glen Etive. ... J. B." 
 
 In a subsequent letter he said : " I have kept down my 
 enthusiasm sternly, perhaps too sternly. The book will give 
 great pleasure to all it is worth pleasing." 
 
 Again 
 
 "17th March. 
 
 "MY DEAR POET . . . In The Bush aboon Traquair, 
 I prefer ' high ' to ' dark,' and I like c down to the Tweed ' 
 better than ' to the Vale of the Tweed,' both for the euphony 
 and for the idea. It is the Quair singing down to the 
 Tweed, not to its vale ; but in all this you are lord para- 
 mount." 
 
 "23 RUTLAND STREET, EDINBURGH, 
 " 22d October. 
 
 " MY DEAR SHAIRP I have read Kilmahoe parts 
 of it over and over, and I need hardly tell you I like it, 
 that it has held me, and that it made the old Laird and them 
 all, from the sisters to ' Shepherd Colin, canty carle,' come 
 into my ' study of imagination,' and live and move and be. 
 By my mild markings you will see the bits I least liked. 
 What I least like are Paul Jones, The Garden, and 
 Moira to Marion ; what best, The Sacramental Sabbath, The 
 Glen, Marion to Moira (as finely touched and as musical 
 as The Bush), Ingathering, and Return, especially its 
 later stanzas. I don't like ' doth ' and ' goeth,' and some 
 of the lines are rugged, even harsh, and some obscurish; 
 but it is delightful altogether, and as autochthonous, as 
 original in the true sense, as your own voice and tone, or as 
 
xi LITERARY WORK AND FRIENDSHIPS 233 
 
 the glorious Bens and Glens you sing. I heard your voice 
 through it all. As to its being popular, if the public were 
 a vast conduplication of me there could be no fear, and I 
 would risk 2000 on it if I had it; but it is too simple, 
 too unforced, relies too much upon the deep, constant affec- 
 tions, is too virtuous, too humble and unsubjective for the 
 jaded public. I would greatly desire, however, to see it 
 tried. I send you this rich note. I had a great critique in 
 my hat (where my head was) all day, but it was not worth 
 giving you. Made esto tu ! . . . Ever affectionately, 
 
 J. BROWN." 
 
 In a letter from Mr. Theodore Walrond, to whom Kil- 
 maJioe was sent in MS., the other side of Shairp's poetic 
 faculty was acutely noted : " I have read your poem twice, 
 with great and increasing interest. I would certainly say, 
 Publish it. You must not expect a very large public. It 
 is too peculiar in subject, tone, and language for that. But 
 its fulness, truth, originality, and beauty will be sure to 
 charm many. There are, however, a great many roughnesses, 
 both of diction and of rhythm, which it would be well to alter. 
 You poets get into the habit of crooning lines over to your- 
 selves, till you have found them to run smoothly as read by 
 yourselves. But when they get away from their master's 
 tongues they are as rough as ever." 
 
 Another Rugby friend, Mr. Shadworth Hodgson, wrote 
 thus of KilmaJioe in March 1864 
 
 " The poem is certainly a new thing, a subject treated in 
 a new way, because in a more complete way than I remem- 
 ber elsewhere. Family life, the life of the family centred 
 round a home, exhibited with sufficient detail, and carried 
 out into several branches. . . . 
 
 I should think you could not have found a country or 
 a time in which such a life existed in such completeness, 
 under such favourable conditions, as those of the poem. 
 Sheltered from the distractions of the ordinary social life of 
 modern crowded society, the family life develops itself in its 
 full glory. . . ." 
 
234 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 To this letter Shairp replied 
 
 "ST. ANDREWS, 23d March [1864]. 
 
 " MY DEAR HODGSON . . . It was a great pleasure to see 
 your handwriting once more. It is a pleasure, too, to find 
 that you like Kilmalwe, and so entirely understand its mean- 
 ing and aim. I don't think that any one has expressed this, 
 either of those who have reviewed it, or of those who have 
 written to me privately about it. Some of the inner har- 
 monies of structure which I had hoped were there, you seem 
 to have caught in a wonderful way. On the whole, I have 
 good reason to be well content with the way the little book 
 has been taken both by friends and by reviewers. One thing 
 (I may say to you) I shall always remember with gratitude, 
 my father was allowed to see it and read it and find much 
 pleasure in it, before his illness came." 
 
 Of all the press notices of Kilmalioe that in the Scots- 
 man of 18th February 1864 was the most discriminat- 
 ingly just. " This is a spring of genuine poetry not 
 a cistern or a pump. It is of Nature's own gift and 
 cunning workmanship. Mr. Shairp's strains are as native 
 and unforced, as tunable as the notes of a lark or mavis. 
 It is not philosophical or intense poetry much less does it 
 belong to the convulsive or the Satanic schools. It is the 
 expression of the imaginative affections of the heart of 
 a refined, fervent, and leal-hearted Scotchman. Sometimes 
 there is a little overmuch heart and expression, the head 
 having at times hardly its due ; but it is a delightful book 
 fresh and ' halesome,' sweet, strong, and gentle as its own 
 men and women, and as the moors and glens, the mountains 
 and ' fairy water-brooks that murmur on for ever,' the un- 
 speakable solitudes he wanders through and sings. . . . He 
 does two things, either of which few men do well, and fewer 
 better, he is a passionate pilgrim through God's beautiful 
 world . . . and he makes his readers share his love for the 
 Great Mother, for he is a genuine child of Nature, with 
 Wordsworth for his master." 
 
xi LITERARY WORK AND FRIENDSHIPS 235 
 
 During the years that followed the publication of 
 Kilmahoe, Shairp's Highland wanderings gave him material 
 for fresh poetic work, while many contemporary events 
 stirred the fire within him ; and from time to time fugitive 
 verses appeared in the magazines in Macmillaris and Good 
 Words. The best of these have been gathered together and 
 recently published under the editorial care of the present 
 Professor of Poetry at Oxford. Mr. Palgrave's Preface deals 
 so admirably with the features of Shairp's poetic work and 
 genius, as to render further comment almost superfluous. 
 I would only remark that we have sometimes to forget 
 the political, or politico-economic teaching of the poems, 
 in order to appreciate to the full the imaginative beauty, 
 and truth which underlie them. Glen Desseray the longest 
 of the poems in the new volume should not, however, be 
 read as if it were meant to teach any truth as to the clear- 
 ances in the Highlands. In one of his letters to Dr. Clerk, 
 Shairp wrote, " Tory as I am, the native people don't owe the 
 lairds much." There is no doubt that the emigration of the 
 hardy peasants of the north has, in the immense majority of 
 cases, been by far the best thing for themselves, for the 
 colonies they have entered, and for the mother country they 
 have left ; but one who believes this may still recognise 
 with Shairp the element of sadness that mingled with the 
 clearances. It is the present solitude of the glens, and 
 the few memorials that now survive of the hardy race that 
 once peopled them, that is the very source of the pathos with 
 which that region is now invested in the semi-elegiac poem 
 of Glen Desseray. We need not now wish these glens re- 
 peopled by a starving peasantry, while we recognise the many 
 stern virtues of the forefathers of the clans. 
 
 When the Cry from Craig-EllacMe, composed after 
 travelling for the first time in the Highland Eailway to 
 Inverness, was published in the Scotsman newspaper, Dr. 
 John Brown wrote to Shairp as follows: 
 
 " MY DEAR SHAIRP You are a sweet-blooded man. I 
 was just going to sit down to tell you how poor and shabby 
 
236 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 I felt my notice to be, when in comes your note. The truth 
 is that I was not in a condition to praise or relish anything. 
 I had got out of my blessed state of thankfulness, and into 
 one of harsh discontent. Man delighted me not, nor woman, 
 nor poetry, nor any pleasant thing, and certainly not poetry 
 as yours, spoken of out of the fulness of the heart. . . . 
 My small quarrel with your ' head ' is in the matter of the 
 railway and Killiecrankie. You hold with Wordsworth. I 
 hold with what is called ' the spirit of the age,' the locomo- 
 tive with its glorious trail of steam, its wild scream, its re- 
 sounding thundering roar ; and I think it is as needless to 
 lament the injuring the beauty of an apple in eating it, as to 
 do the same by the birks and braes. Besides, it is amazing 
 as in Cumberland now how Nature repairs and beautifies 
 her wounds. I am rejoiced at the notices I have seen. 
 Never you fear. Yours is a book to go into the hearts of 
 men and women, and live there, and make you beloved and 
 remembered. ... J. B." 
 
 In connection with this Cry from Craig-Ellachie, those 
 who think that the Highland Railway has not really injured 
 Speyside may sympathise with the underlying spirit of the 
 protest contained in it, viz. the ruthless invasion of Nature's 
 solitude by the noise of steam engines, and all their et cseteras. 
 Shairp was always ready to join the ranks of those who 
 opposed such desecration, whether in the district of the 
 English Lakes, or down Glencoe. One has only to imagine 
 a railway to St. Mary's Loch, and a station at Tibbie Shiels's, 
 to realise the irreparable injury that would be inflicted on a 
 district where the whole secret of the charm is 
 
 The silence that is in the starry sky, 
 The sleep that is among the lonely hills. 
 
 Similar in character, though totally different in result to 
 his Cry from Craig-Ellachie, was Shairp's indignant protest 
 in the Times, against the introduction of tramcars in the High 
 Street of Oxford, and the changes it necessitated, in the 
 removal of old Magdalen Bridge. His deep conservative 
 
xi LITERARY WORK AND FRIENDSHIPS 237 
 
 instincts were outraged ; but whatever may be said in re- 
 ference to the latter change whether it is to be a permanent 
 improvement as well as an immediate utility in Oxford 
 the consensus of all educated opinion throughout the country 
 is with him in the effort he made to preserve the national 
 sanctuaries of the land unviolated by the roar of machinery, 
 and unpolluted by the atmosphere of great cities. 
 
 There are several of Shairp's poems left in MS. un- 
 dated, which we cannot connect with any special year. The 
 following must have been suggested, if not composed, at 
 St. Andrews ; and although written in a Scottish dialect, it 
 has some characteristic qualities, which warrant its repro- 
 duction. It shows its author in a light that may be alto- 
 gether new to some of his friends : 
 
 THE FISHWIFE'S ADVICE TO HER BAIRN. 
 
 Ken the kintra, 1 Kirsty, 
 
 Ken it wide and weel, 
 Ere ye cry a codlin, 2 
 
 Ere ye back a creel. 
 
 Mini 3 be wi' the leddies 
 
 Words are easy spaired 
 Selling flukes 4 or haddies 
 
 Bargain wi' the laird. 
 
 Cosh be wi' your kimmers, 5 
 
 Whether auld or young ; 
 But wi' flyting limmers 6 
 
 Mind your mother tongue. 
 
 Let the auld and needy 
 
 Ken ye hae a creel ; 
 But the grippen 7 greedy 
 
 Pit it 8 to them weel. 
 
 Freely birl your bodle 9 
 Whan the wark gaes weel ; 
 
 1 Know the country. 2 A young cod-fish. 
 
 3 Silent. 4 Flounders. 
 
 5 Be quiet with your gossips. 6 Scolding women. 
 
 7 Avaricious. 8 Put it. 9 Spend your money freely. 
 
238 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 But ne'er lade * your noddle 2 
 'Till ye've toomed 3 your creel. 
 
 Learn to blaw 4 and blether 5 
 
 Baitli wi' lad and lass 
 Gie your tongue nae tether, 
 
 Lang's it brings the brass. 
 
 Sae ken the kintra, Kirsty, 
 
 Ken it wide and weel, 
 Ere ye cry a codlin, 
 
 Ere ye back a creel. 
 
 The. summer of 1865 was spent at Luib Inn, Perthshire, 
 where the article on Coleridge was written. Dr. John Brown 
 wrote to him thus in the autumn 
 
 "21s August [1865]. 
 
 " I have been away in Warwick and Derbyshire, and 
 finally at Ambleside, where I had not been for thirty-three 
 years ! ' Oh, for the change 'twixt now and then.' I was 
 in Wordsworth's house, saw the room he died in. ... I 
 drove to Grasmere, saw the grave, and went into the church, 
 and called on Lady Eichardson, and then drove down along 
 the other side of the Lake, by Eed Bank, into Langdale. 
 Glorious ! It is a holy land all that region, and you have 
 helped to make it still holier. I read the conclusion of 
 your paper 6 on Saturday with gladness, and deep joy, and 
 much thankfulness. Douglas tells me Coleridge is quite as 
 good. . . . You must see Dovedale before you die. . . . 
 Happy fellow, falling asleep under the shadow of Ben 
 More ! " 
 
 In 1866 the Chair of Ethics in the University of Glas- 
 gow became vacant by the death of Professor Fleming, and 
 while still Professor of Latin at St. Andrews, Shairp be- 
 came a candidate for it. The testimonials he now received 
 were not less interesting than those sent to him fourteen 
 
 1 Load. 2 Head. 3 Emptied. 4 Brag. 5 Chatter. 
 
 6 The paper on Wordsworth. 
 
xi LITERARY WORK AND FRIENDSHIPS 239 
 
 years before, when a .candidate for the same chair in the 
 University of Edinburgh while still a master at Bugby. 
 In his own application to the electors he speaks of Moral 
 Philosophy and its kindred subjects as what have " always 
 been my favourite department of study," and of his en- 
 deavour, if elected, to bring that great subject to bear " with 
 power both on the minds and characters of the students." 
 Mr. Matthew Arnold's testimony may again be quoted in 
 full :- 
 
 "... My acquaintance with Mr. Shairp began many years 
 ago at Balliol College, Oxford. He had brought there from 
 Scotland a familiarity with philosophical writers and sub- 
 jects which is not common among University students in 
 England. By the warmth of his interest in these matters, 
 by his energy in discoursing of them, and by the living and 
 stirring aspect he made them wear, he certainly gave a new 
 and beneficial stimulus to their study in the circle of young 
 men amongst whom he was thrown at Oxford a circle 
 which included the greater number of the most promising 
 students then at the University. All of these who are now 
 alive would bear witness, I am sure, to the fruitful and 
 stimulating effect of Mr. Shairp's companionship in awaken- 
 ing or promoting in their minds an interest in the great 
 men and great matters with which Moral Philosophy deals. 
 
 Since that time Mr. Shairp has pursued other studies 
 also, and has thus given more firmness to his hold upon his 
 main study, Moral Philosophy. His recently-published 
 essay on Coleridge seems to me as remarkable for its clearf*^ , 
 and well-ordered exposition of a very difficult subject, as for 
 the ardour the same now as Mr. Shairp's friends remem- ' 
 ber it in his more youthful days which gives to that ex- 
 position attractiveness and vitality. I think that, both as a 
 writer and as a teacher, Mr. Shairp would fill with distinction 
 the Moral Philosophy Chair at Glasgow." 
 
 The present Bishop of London spoke of his having 
 " the true fire of genius which would give animation to 
 
240 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 whatever lie touched." The present Archbishop of Canter- 
 bury said, " Whatever doctrines he held were absorbed 
 into his life, and that which he lived he could not help 
 uttering ; " and Sir Alexander Grant, the late Principal of 
 the University of Edinburgh, wrote : " There are peculiar 
 capacities which he possesses far more eminently than most 
 other men, which render him in an uncommon degree fitted 
 to be a Public Teacher of the Abstract Sciences. The 
 faculties I allude to are those of imagination and of expres- 
 sion. It is known to all how intimately philosophical 
 thought has been in many cases connected with poetical 
 imaginativeness, and how the abstract letters of Plato, Bacon, 
 and Coleridge have received light and beauty from the 
 forms with which they have been invested. A similar 
 faculty to that possessed by these great men I venture to 
 attribute to Mr. Shairp. There is no man I have ever 
 known to whose mind a poetical imaginativeness is so 
 habitual and natural. Connected with this is his peculiar 
 power of diction, and his great charm of oral delivery, which 
 has caused him to be looked up to with reverence by a 
 large number of those younger than himself." 
 
 As it is a well-known fact, in some academical elections, 
 that the unsuccessful are as worthy of office as those who 
 win, I do not say more worthy, it is often extremely 
 interesting to note who the defeated candidates were, in the 
 light of their subsequent work ; and, as Carlyle was a 
 candidate for the Moral Philosophy Chair vacated by 
 Chalmers, and was supported by the recommendation of 
 Goethe, it may be interesting to note the grounds on which 
 Carlyle's friend, Thomas Erskine of Linlathen, supported 
 Shairp, more especially as his letter deals with questions of 
 greater import than an election to a University chair. 
 
 Mr. Erskine wrote several letters to his friend about 
 his candidature one on 3d May, and two on 6th May 
 apparently telling him to use the letter he preferred. In 
 one of them he said 
 
 "Most assuredly my appreciation of your fitness to fill 
 
xi LITERARY WORK AND FRIENDSHIPS 241 
 
 the Chair of Moral Philosophy is high, and I shall endeav- 
 our to write down what the grounds of that appreciation 
 are. In the first place, since ever I have known you, your 
 tastes and speculations have all been in that direction. All 
 your reading, whatever the subject, has been made to 
 minister to it, and these cogitations have not been with- 
 out fruit, as your articles on Wordsworth and Coleridge 
 testify. 
 
 In the second place, I would say (what may appear to 
 some minds almost insignificant, because in their estimation 
 absolutely to be assumed and taken for granted, with regard 
 to all candidates for such an office) that you have a real 
 faith in the existence of such a thing as Moral Philosophy, 
 and that your interest is in it still more than in general 
 metaphysics. This is, I conceive, rather rare ; and the 
 proof that it is so lies in this fact, that the lectures in 
 Moral Philosophy classes are generally occupied very little 
 with the proper subject of the class, but fall away into 
 metaphysics, or logic, or rhetoric. Men for the most part, 
 even thinking men, take it for granted that the knowledge 
 of what is right, together with the honest desire to do it, 
 is all that is needed, and indeed all that is to be had, in 
 order to enable any one to do it. And yet their own ex- 
 perience might have taught them that there are many 
 things within them which they not only feel to be blots 
 but miseries, and which they therefore wish to get quit of, 
 but cannot by the most conscientious efforts. They can, 
 by effort, shirk the experience of almost any evil, but they 
 cannot cast it out. Now I would say that if there is no 
 remedy here, then there is no real philosophy of morals. 
 And certainly the man who believes that there is no re- 
 source in such cases, beyond earnest effort, is not the man 
 for the Moral Philosophy Chair, as he really has nothing 
 available to say on the subject. I think you believe that 
 there is a remedy, that there does exist a moral centre of 
 gravity and a moral law of gravitation, which are equal to 
 any emergency of the kind. 
 
 These I conceive are considerable qualifications, and I 
 
 R 
 
242 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 would merely add that you have always appeared to me to 
 possess a remarkable capacity both for giving and drawing 
 out sympathy, which I conceive to be of the very essence 
 of what is required in any teacher, but especially in a 
 teacher of Moral Science. Wishing you success, I remain 
 yours, etc. T. ERSKINE." 
 
 In the second letter he speaks of the belief " that there 
 exist relations and principles in the spiritual world corre- 
 sponding to the centre of gravity and the law of gravita- 
 tion in the material world, which, if known and accepted, 
 would produce order and harmony in that higher sphere, 
 but which remain powerless until thus known and accepted," 
 as saving a teacher of Ethics from " making his class a class 
 of rhetoric and eloquence ; " and he speaks of the subject- 
 matter of " this branch of teaching if it can be called a 
 branch, and ought not rather to be considered the stem, 
 and trunk, and root of all true knowledge." 
 
 In the third he says : " Although you may have read 
 and understood what Aristotle, Butler, Adam Smith, and 
 others have written on the subject, you will not consider 
 that you are really teaching your class when you repeat 
 over what the thoughts of these men have been ; but you 
 will feel it necessary, in the first place, to arrive at some- 
 thing which satisfies your own mind as reason and truth in 
 the matter ; and in the second place, you will make your 
 students understand that they have to go through a similar 
 process, to use lectures and books not as substitutes for, 
 but as helps to, their own knowledge of Moral Philosophy." 
 
 Dr. John Brown wrote of his candidature thus 
 
 "When I say that it has long been my conviction that 
 Professor Shairp was better fitted for the Chair of Moral 
 Philosophy than for that of Humanity, I perhaps express as 
 fully and strongly as I can my sense of his remarkable 
 qualifications for the honourable place he now aspires 
 to, for we all know how excellently and efficiently he has 
 
xi LITERARY WORK AND FRIENDSHIPS 243 
 
 fulfilled his St. Andrews duties, and how much he has 
 influenced for the best his attached scholars. 
 
 Professor Shairp, as is well known to his friends, has 
 long devoted himself to the study of Ethics. They of all 
 others have to him the deepest and most abiding interest. 
 As he thinks and feels, so would he speak ; his person, 
 cordiality, freshness, and deep seriousness of nature could 
 not fail to make his discourses, and all his intercourse with 
 his students, most successful with young men, by not only 
 instructing them in the whole doctrine of duty, but impress- 
 ing on them their own deepest obligations to themselves, to 
 their fellow-men, and to their Maker. 
 
 He has already, in his profound and exquisite essays 
 on Wordsworth and Coleridge, given evidence of the true 
 philosophic faculty, and of his power of discussing, at once 
 with depth and clearness, the great problems of moral 
 obligation. 
 
 He likewise has had long experience of, and a singular 
 aptitude for, the Socratic method of teaching by questioning, 
 and by the frank reaction of thought between master and 
 pupil. I earnestly trust his great powers may find their 
 full exercise by his being made Professor of Moral Philo- 
 sophy in his old and much-loved University. 
 
 JOHN BROWN." 
 
 Writing from London (30th May 1866) Brown said to 
 his friend : " I am sorry, and indeed surprised ; but not 
 altogether sorry, as it gives us a chance of you now ; and if 
 you were to lose, you could not have lost less than by Caird 
 getting it. I am kept in this huge and prostrating place. 
 . . . Yes, we must get into the solitudes and be comforted. 
 This place excites and depresses me. I shall be glad when 
 I turn my back on it. I was at Stanley's on Monday, and 
 had a long visit at Carlyle's. He was prostrate and dumb 
 at first, but soon revived, and got quite cheery and full of 
 talk. It was wonderful to hear him." 
 
 Several letters from Principal Shairp to his old Rugby 
 
244 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 friend, Shadworth Hodgson, have reached me while these 
 sheets are passing through the press. As they refer mainly 
 to the philosophical aspects of experience, and are a series in 
 themselves, I place them together at the end of this chapter. 
 But a letter from Mr. Matthew Arnold, belonging to the 
 year 1866, and referring to his own poem Thyrsis, must 
 precede them. 
 
 "2d April 1866. 
 
 "... It gives me great pleasure that you and Sellar 
 like Thyrsis. Multi multa loquuntur : ideo fides parum est 
 adhibenda, says Thomas a Kempis; but the voices I do 
 turn to are the voices of an old set, now so scattered, who, 
 at the critical moment of opening life, were among the same 
 influences, and (more or less) sought the same things as I 
 did myself. What influences those before and after us 
 have been or may be among, or what things they have 
 sought or may seek, God knows. Perhaps the same as we, 
 but we cannot know, cannot therefore be sure of under- 
 standing them and their criticisms on what we do. 
 
 Thyrsis is a very quiet poem, but I think solid and 
 sincere. It will not be popular, however. It had long 
 been in my head to connect Clough with that Cumner 
 country, and when I began I was carried irresistibly into 
 this form: you say truly, however, that there is much in 
 Clough (the whole prophet side, in fact) which we cannot 
 deal with in this way ; and one has the feeling, if one made 
 the poem as a memorial poem, that not enough is said about 
 Clough in it. ... Still Clough had this idyllic side, too to 
 deal with this suited my desire to deal again with that 
 Cumner country ; any way, only so could I treat the matter 
 this time. Valeat quantum" 
 
 "ST. ANDREWS, 14th December 1865. 
 
 " MY DEAR HODGSON . . . Your Aladdin's Lamp is a 
 precious document, not only as containing your answer to 
 that grave question, but also as containing the starting-point 
 of your philosophy in a nutshell. If one grants your 
 
xi LITERARY WORK AND FRIENDSHIPS 245 
 
 main premiss, the .rest follows of necessity. But I still 
 demur to your main principle that the ' lamp ' or any other 
 object consists of feelings and nothing else. As at present 
 advised, I accept the duality given in every perception, and 
 believe that the non ego given in perception (the lamp) is 
 something independent of me. I do so for two reasons : 
 that if one explains away these ultimate distinctions given 
 in consciousness we cut away all ground of certainty about 
 everything. 
 
 (2) Because your out-and-out phenomenalism, if one 
 were to believe it, would make one walk about as it were in 
 a nightmare world of shadows that have no substance 
 no meaning. However, though not accepting the first prin- 
 ciple of the solution, viz. that external objects are feelings 
 and nothing more, yet I must compliment you on the 
 clearness of your exposition and the vivacity thereof a 
 vivacity that puts one in mind of Ferrier. Do you know 
 that I think it would be a great thing if you could intro- 
 duce more of this style into your philosophic writing. The 
 philosophy would not lose one whit in exactness, and would 
 gain greatly by the added vividness and impressiveness. 
 
 Then as to what you say of Coleridge. I grant that he 
 was not great as an analyst a weakness in which I 
 share. But still though analysis is required in philosophy 
 I do not allow that it is everything, or even the greater part. 
 Coleridge did great service to philosophy by calling attention 
 to facts long forgotten. The nature of the will as opposed 
 or different from physical sequence, and the existence of the 
 Eeason, of something, call it what you will, which brings us 
 into contact with spiritual truth. The latter, no doubt, 
 needs further analysis, but as to the former, the will, I doubt ' 
 whether analysis can get much further. When you have 
 eliminated all that is intellectual, and all that is emotional in 
 an act of will, there will still remain over that which is TO 
 ibiov in the act of will, which must be, I take it, an ultimate 
 and unique element. At least it can never be accounted for 
 by Time and mere feeling. It contains in itself an ultimate 
 and peculiar element, and in fact I believe that when 
 
246 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 analysis has done its utmost, it will, instead of reducing 
 thought to fewer elements than the old division of faculties, 
 resolve it into more numerous. Then again, after analysis 
 has done its work, there is surely another work remaining 
 for philosophy the synthetic to exhibit the working 
 of the several elements in combination. In fact it would 
 seem that it is in order to see this more fully, intelligently, 
 and discriininatively, that the preliminary work of analysis 
 is chiefly valuable. 
 
 Don't, please, reduce all philosophy to analysis, or I fear 
 I must abjure it. For oh it is 
 
 Life, not death, for which we pant, 
 More life, and fuller, that we want. 
 
 . . . Ever most sincerely yours, 
 
 J. C. SHAIRP." 
 
 "HousTOUN, UPHALL, LINLITHQOWSHIRE, 
 "2(2 June, 1866. 
 
 "MY DEAR HODGSON The Glasgow attempt has mis- 
 carried ; but my thoughts have been set for some time on 
 the primary questions of morals. And knowing that you have 
 J / been investigating these, I want to have a chat with you 
 about them. No doubt you will more tuo treat them in 
 the most thorough analytic method ; but I hope your analysis 
 will not be so abstract as to be unintelligible to my more 
 round-edged and concrete mind. I hope that though we get 
 the matter reduced to its last elements, there may yet remain 
 in it the vital power. 
 
 What I want to ask you is, If you have determined 
 what it is that makes an action what we call ' right ' or 
 ' good.' Or to put it in a more practical way : As actions 
 are the result of character, and from this must take their 
 colour, what is it that constitutes the righteous man, the 
 virtuous character ? You remember, I daresay, how Adam 
 Smith, at the end of his book, classifies the possible answers 
 to this last question. He says they are three. The virtuous 
 
xi LITERARY WORK AND FRIENDSHIPS 247 
 
 temper, he says, may consist either : (1) In a proper balance 
 and government of all the affections and impulses, making 
 a well-adjusted and rightly -subordinated whole. This is 
 Plato's Sifcaiocrvvr), Aristotle's ^eaor^, and Butler's Consti- 
 tution. (2) There is the theory which places the virtuous 
 character in Benevolence on the proper exercise of the un- 
 selfish affections. Such was Hutchison's and others. (3) 
 There is the prudence theory, which makes virtue to consist 
 in the judicious pursuit of our own best happiness. 
 
 Now, whichever of these theories be the true one, there 
 is one practically fatal objection to them all, except perhaps 
 the last. They, none of them, have any dynamic power, and 
 they don't show how men are to get it. They are like a 
 perfect clock, which, however, won't go. 
 
 It may be quite true that the virtuous character is an 
 even balance of the affections. But my affections are all 
 disordered, and what is to put them into order ? Where 
 am I to get the power adequate to do this ? 
 
 Again, it may be that the self-forgetting temper, self- 
 sacrifice, is the only right one. But I am a most selfish, 
 self-centred dog. What is to make me forget this self, and 
 learn to love others, and think of them ? Above all, whence 
 am I to get the power really in heart, and not in act only, 
 to love those who do not love me who perhaps in them- 
 selves are not lovely ? 
 
 The prudential theory of virtue, no doubt, has the 
 dynamic power ready-made to its hand. There is an 
 abundant supply of self-love in all men. It requires no 
 stimulant, only right information, enlightenment, to know 
 what will make for one's own happiness. 
 
 When this theory, however, is transformed, as it is in 
 Mill's hands, to the wider form of making the greatest 
 happiness of all men the end of all action, then the want 
 of the dynamic force is felt as strongly as in either of the 
 two first. The simplicity and plainness . of the utilitarian 
 theory disappears, and you are involved in as many hard 
 questions as in any of the other systems. 
 
 My questions, then, resolve themselves into three. 
 
248 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 1. What does your analysis give you as the element or ele- 
 ments which constitute Tightness in actions and in character ? 
 
 2. What do you say as to the dynamic power which 
 seems to me the great desideratum in almost all philosophical 
 moral systems? 
 
 There are some good thoughts in one of the chapters of 
 Ecce Homo as to the need of an inner heat an inspiration 
 to make morality vital. 
 
 3. Can you tell me of any portion of Comte, or any 
 French or other modern writer, which would be helpful in 
 these inquiries ? . . . Yours very sincerely, 
 
 J. C. SHAIRP." 
 
 "ST. ANDREWS, 26tfi July 1867. 
 
 " MY DEAR HODGSON I have been a great defaulter, 
 and must confess it with contrition. For your long and 
 valuable letter on Ethics last summer deserved other treat- 
 ment. I have read it and re-read it, over and over. . . . 
 
 But I am now trying partly to give you some reply in 
 a paper I am writing for the North British on the " Dynamic 
 Power " in morals, or on " Morality and Eeligion." I am 
 not sure which it will be called. It is an effort to throw 
 together into something like shape many thoughts I have 
 long had. It will contain a survey perhaps too tedious 
 a one O f the motive power which some of the greatest 
 moralists have offered, and then will proceed to my own 
 theory, which finds the true dynamic, mainly by opening a 
 passage from jnoralff into religion, and letting in the living 
 powers of the latter into theTiard and somewhat empty 
 forms of the former. In the way I slightly touch on your 
 view that Pleasure is the universal dynamic. I cannot agree 
 with this view. I wish I could mention you by name in 
 adverting to it, but as you have not published on it I cannot. 
 If I have misapprehended your view you must tell me. . . . 
 Probably I may have committed some mistakes from not 
 having read many modern books on these subjects, for I 
 think more than read about them. I hope, therefore, you 
 
xi LITERARY WORK AND FRIENDSHIPS 249 
 
 will accept this paper, which will, I trust, appear in the 
 next North British, as in some sort an answer to your letter. 
 For as I told you, I could not answer it by a common 
 epistle, but only by a treatise. It was so wide and so 
 systematic. Merely to take up small points in a letter 
 seemed of no use. And now before the N. B. article appears 
 give me a line to tell me of yourself and your work and 
 doings. How far has your ethical opus advanced, and when 
 shall we have it in our hands ? I look forward to reading it 
 with pleasure. For Ethics, especially in connection with 
 Eeligion, are more interesting to me nowadays than Meta- 
 physic pure. I think that while Ethics require further 
 analysis, they also require much to be brought back to life 
 and nature, and to be enriched by new facts taken straight 
 from life and experience, and not repeated from books. Also 
 they ought surely to be so far practical as to afford men 
 some help in the many practical moral problems that meet 
 men, and will meet them more and more in our highly com- 
 plex modern life. . . . 
 
 I read Godfrey on strikes, and thought him excessive. 
 No doubt the working-man ought to have equal laws, but 
 there is no use making a god of him as has been done lately. 
 He is just as selfish as the rest of us, with less check to it 
 from cultivation and restraints of society. . . . Yours most 
 sincerely, J. C. SHAIRP." 
 
 "Sx. ANDREWS, 23d December 1867. 
 
 " MY DEAR HODGSON You must put down my seldom 
 writing to the great exertion which I find it to be to carry , 
 on a philosophic discussion by letter. Indeed, I seldom can 
 get myself up to the sticking pitch to do so. And yet I 
 greatly relish having your philosophic thoughts, which 
 always set me a-thinking. Your last argument to prove 
 that pleasure is the universal motive power does not satisfy 
 me. 
 
 You say that a man is benevolent for the specific plea- 
 sure of being so, and in being so he secures the more general 
 
250 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 pleasure of a good conscience. But I should deny that a 
 man is benevolent for the pleasure of being so. The plea- 
 sure is the result and not the cause of his being benevolent. 
 If he is benevolent for the pleasure of being so that is, if 
 it is the pleasure thus to be gained that urges him to be 
 benevolent, then I should say he is selfish, not benevolent. 
 I quite accept Butler's account of the outgoing emotions. 
 If you say that a man is urged to be benevolent by the 
 feeling of pain at seeing objects of compassion, I should 
 reply that this may be part of his- motive. But then that 
 the feeling of pain arises from an anterior judgment of con- 
 science that he ought to relieve misery. 
 
 I greatly like your name 'Newman's Law,' and agree 
 with you that his beautiful statement of it deserves that 
 it should be so named. You will find it in his volume of 
 sermons called Sermons on Subjects of the Day. The sermon 
 is entitled ' Sanctity the Token of the Christian Empire,' 
 and in my edition, which is the second, it occurs at p. 276. 
 
 I still adhere to what I said about analysis not being 
 the whole work of philosophy. The LIFE in every analysed 
 entity which escapes you in the analysis is surely to be 
 taken account of. If this is a real element which the 
 analysis fails to catch (as it does), then after the analysis, 
 let the whole matter be placed before the reader in syn- 
 thesis, and then the living nexus which held all together will 
 in the synthesis reappear. 
 
 I do wish you would in your Ethics try to give this side 
 as well as the other. If you give merely analysis, your 
 book will be read by the few professional metaphysicians 
 there are somewhere under 100 in Great Britain. If you 
 throw the life into your book, it will probably be read by all 
 thinking and educated men. 
 
 Another way of giving interest and vitality to your 
 book is to take care that you apply it to actual problems 
 of the time, to the felt needs of men. You won't be the 
 worse philosopher if you give us some of the poet too. I 
 know there is the poet in you, if you did not keep him so 
 sternly under. Plato was not worse philosopher for giving 
 
xi LITERARY WORK AND FRIENDSHIPS 251 
 
 his imagination (which is the truth -realising faculty) 
 play. 
 
 Do thou likewise. All good things of this season be 
 with you ! A great shadow is thrown over our Christmas 
 by our expecting to hear every hour of the death of my 
 brother-in-law, and that under very distressing circum- 
 stances. 
 
 Write to me. I do like your letters, though my long 
 intervals of silence scarce deserve them. 
 
 I heard you were recommending Maudesly's Mental 
 Pathology. I have only seen a review of it. It seemed too 
 materialistic to much interest me. Ever yours, 
 
 J. C. SHAIRP." 
 
 "Sx. ANDREWS, 20th March 1868. 
 
 "MY DEAR HODGSON ... I shall look forward to 
 reading your thoughts on Space and Time. Though I have 
 given up Metaphysics as a primary study, I still take great 
 interest in them. We much need some more spiritual 
 philosophy than Mill's, which the Saturday Review vaunts 
 as all-sufficient, and which (along with Grote) Oxford teaches 
 as its one modern book. If I had had your leisure time I 
 should have probably spent a good deal of it on Metaphysics. 
 But Rugby work made that impossible for more than ten 
 years, when the appetite for these subjects is keenest. When 
 more leisure came, I found that I was past the age when I 
 could ever become really learned in philosophy. 
 
 By that time, too, I had come to feel quite distinctly 
 that there is that within us which Metaphysics cannot 
 satisfy that in the pressures of life they are cold and 
 distant ; that one needs something nearer to us, more in- 
 timate, in which the heart may find its home. This at least 
 was what I felt. 
 
 But if this central stay for our being has once been 
 found elsewhere than in philosophy, then philosophy may 
 render great service by introducing harmony into all one's 
 thoughts and aims, and helping out consistency of life. I 
 
252 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP, xi 
 
 mean that philosophy, as I understand it, cannot originate 
 the-first truths, the foundations on which our being must 
 lean. These it must receive from.fajtji, or from the moral 
 and spiritual side of our being, call it what you will. It 
 may, however, take them up, show their reasonableness, 
 make them good intellectually, and so be of great 
 service. What I mean is that philosophy is not TO 
 rjyovfjuevov of life, but must work in subservience to this. 
 Of course it must be a reasonable service. It must satisfy 
 itself that it is the right ^ov^evov which it serves. But 
 I prose, and so shall stop. Do you see much of H. Davey ? 
 I should like to know about him, and how far he is on his 
 road to the woolsack. Tell me, too, about Gosling. Ever 
 most sincerely yours, J. C. SHAIRP." 
 
CHAPTEE XII 
 
 THE HIGHLANDS AND THE BORDERLAND 
 
 THE Glasgow election over, Shairp seemed to realise that to 
 St. Andrews the remainder of his lifework was to be chiefly 
 confined. In May 1866 he removed from Gillespie Ter- 
 race to Edgecliffe, 1 then just erected on the Scores ; and in the 
 late summer he took an excursion with his friend, Professor 
 Veitch, to the Braemar Highlands. Of this expedition one 
 vivid memorial remains in a letter written to Mrs. Shairp. The 
 Wells of Dee have nowhere been more accurately described. 
 
 " BRAEMAR, 25th July 1866. 
 
 "... We started at half-past eight o'clock the day 
 fine, with a nor'-east wind, just enough to make it not sultry. 
 By eleven o'clock we had reached the highest house in 
 Glenlui, and there we left the pony carriage. We then 
 started to walk up through Glen Derry, a regular forest of 
 pine, some fresh, many decayed, many broken over with the 
 storms, many bleached skeletons. After this the ascent 
 began, and lasted for two hours. About 3.15 we reached 
 a great field of snow, and lunched at the bottom of it, by 
 a fine cold granite well. 
 
 It was four when we reached the top. A mist was 
 coming over Cairngorm and hid Strathspey and all the north. 
 But south and west we saw the whole mountain group of 
 Scotland, from Ben-y-gloe to Ben Nevis. He was clearly 
 visible. Afar to the nor'-west high peaks, which I took to 
 
 1 I believe the word was originally spelt without the final e, but when I 
 became tenant of the house I found that the landlord had changed it as above. 
 
254 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 be the Sgor-nan-Ciche at the Head of Loch Nevis and Loch 
 Hourn. 
 
 At half-past four we began to descend, not as we came, 
 but in exactly the opposite direction. . . . We were deter- 
 mined to see the Wells of Dee. A sheer descent over 
 granite boulders it was. Very strange they were. It would 
 take long to describe them. Suffice it, they are four little 
 cup-shaped lochans which are fed by one cataract that comes 
 sheer down from Ben Muichdhu out of wreaths of snow. 
 This torrent falls right over a precipice, then disappears from 
 sight, runs for a quarter of a mile under granite debris, re- 
 appears in the first cup or lochan, which is about twelve 
 feet in diameter; then comes another mass of debris, the 
 water from the first well is lost under this to reappear in 
 the second lochan or well, and so on through all the four 
 wells. It then bursts away down a wild glen between Ben 
 Muichdhu on the east and Braeriach and Cairntoul on the 
 west, joined at every few yards by new feeders, and before 
 it has got ten miles down its glen (Glen Dee) it is a full 
 river. I should say that the first well is at the very head 
 of Glen Dee, just before you come to the watershed, down 
 to Eothiemurchus and the Spey. 
 
 Coming down the glen from its wells for several miles 
 we had to the east the great summit of Ben Muichdhu, red 
 with bare granite, on the west side the rugged corries and 
 awful precipices of Braeriach and Cairntoul. I have never 
 seen anything in Scotland more awesome than these last. 
 Out of Glen Dee, about four miles below its Wells, we 
 crossed a ridge, got into the pines of Glen Luibeg, and 
 reached the keeper's house by nine o'clock. . . ." 
 
 An undated paper amongst Principal Shairp's MSS., 
 which gives an account of a September walk in that magni- 
 ficent moorland and mountain country between Ben Alder 
 and Ben Nevis, may follow this 
 
 "To those who can from morning till sunset support its 
 weight, it has a stern delight which awes the soul yet 
 
xii THE HIGHLANDS AND THE BORDERLAND 255 
 
 kindles the imagination, nowhere else to be found. I have 
 heard one who had travelled much among mountains, and 
 felt them deeply and truly, say that it was these great 
 mountain moors and their peculiar character in which the 
 Highlands most excelled Switzerland, and which to his mind 
 more than made up by their utter solitariness for the want 
 of glaciers and peaks of eternal snow. 
 
 It is well before undertaking a long solitary ramble to 
 have been for some little time in the Highlands. It takes 
 time before your mind gets attuned to their spirit, so dif- 
 ferent from that of the rest of the world. To plunge at once 
 from the throngs of men, and the hurry of some great capital 
 or commercial centre, into these calm and idle solitudes is 
 too sudden a transition. The sights and sounds and thoughts 
 of the streets and the railways are here only a hindrance. 
 We require to get rid of these, to let the scent of the wild 
 myrtle, the cry of the curlews, and the sighing of the wind 
 through the long muir grass, enter into us, and put out the 
 others. ' The world ' must not be ' too much with us ' if we 
 are thoroughly to take in the mountain spirit. That world is 
 full of a busy, changeful present, and an anxious future. 
 These solitudes are given over to leisure, the same yesterday 
 as a thousand years ago. Only the present speaks of a past 
 of old battles now all but forgotten, of songs of a ruder more 
 primitive time, and of sheiling life and pastoral virtues now 
 for ever vanished. 
 
 Before our minds can open themselves to these things 
 they must have sloughed off the film of a too pressing 
 present. 
 
 Many such rambles I can call to mind, undertaken 
 during the summers or autumns of the last twenty years. 
 One of the latest I shall now try to put on record. 
 
 It was a clear bracing September day, the wind blow- 
 ing from the north-west that clear bracing wind that with 
 most gives promise of steady weather and strings the frame 
 to its fullest vigour that I left the west end of Loch 
 Eannoch, and held away nearly due north. The region 
 that lay before me was quite unknown to me. I had 
 
256 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 never travelled it before, though I had looked on it far off 
 from the hilltops. All I knew was that some twenty miles 
 to the north lay a loch, whose name occurs several times in 
 old Gaelic songs of four hundred or five hundred years since, 
 and that at the south end of that loch I should find shelter 
 for the night in a keeper's house. The whole way I was 
 told I should pass no human dwelling but one shooting- 
 lodge lately built there. After climbing the low heights 
 that skirt the upper end of Loch Eannoch, and starting the 
 black cocks and gray hens that shelter in the natural woods 
 that fringe it, I lost sight of the loch, and found myself in one 
 of those vast, seemingly boundless, rolling moors of which I 
 have spoken. Near the head of the loch I loitered for some 
 time in one of those old half-deserted burial-grounds, so 
 common in the Highlands, called by the name of the primi- 
 tive Inch or lona saints who have left their names all over 
 the Highlands. The people still bury there, though the 
 chapel that once hallowed it is gone the graves are many 
 of them centuries old, with no inscriptions or headstones 
 there is generally a blue stone or two with a warrior and 
 broadsword roughly sculptured on it; and some of them 
 the more modern have Gaelic inscriptions and verses 
 legible on them. All the names one saw were Highland 
 Stewarts, Macgregors, Robertsons, and MacDonalds of the 
 neighbouring hills. Once on the open and expansive 
 elevation of the moor the view on every side was most 
 exhilarating. Near me for miles lay the wide storm-gashed 
 waste, with its moss hags of every shape and size, over- 
 strewn with countless gray granite boulders. 
 
 The tops of its mounds and knolls were covered with 
 mosses, which the storms have bleached from green to gray. 
 
 All round this vast moor was girdled by great moun- 
 tain ranges. Far to the south-east was the peak of Schi- 
 hallion, like a craggy speck thrust into the deep blue sky, 
 westward from him the hills that close Glenlyon with their 
 sheer precipiced summits, westward still the long line of the 
 Brae Lyon mountains, ending in the three-topped Ben Douran. 
 
xii THE HIGHLANDS AND THE BORDERLAND 257 
 
 Of these three the most nor' westerly, which terminates 
 the whole range, is the most peaked, and between the tops 
 lie, in deep shadow, three great corries or hollows, loved of 
 the deer, in which doubtless Duncan Ban many a day plied 
 his deer-hunting, and which he has sung in that matchless 
 poem beginning 
 
 Honour o'er all Bens 
 To Ben Douran be, 
 Of all hills the sun kens 
 Beautifullest he. 
 
 Very far west, down on the farthest horizon, in in- 
 tensely clear and spiritualised blue, the three peaks of 
 Cruachan so distant now, looking up as if peering in on us 
 from another world. West and a little north Corrie-Ba, 
 the highest peak of the Black Mount Deer Forest, with its 
 great dark corrie turned toward it, and the cataract down 
 its side gleaming white in the sun ; and farther north the 
 Buachaill' Etives, ' Shepherds of Etive/ and the mountains 
 thronging round the head of Glencoe. Nearer mountains, 
 immediately to the north of me, shut out Ben Nevis and 
 all his range. One great mountain only to the east, the 
 southern precipices of the lonely Ben Alder towering 
 over Loch Ericht, one long white cataract falling sheer 
 down his precipiced side. On the nearer and southern 
 edge lies the cave, the last that sheltered Prince Charlie in 
 his wanderings, where, when hunted and banished from 
 every other place, he found quiet with Cluny MacPherson 
 and Lochiel for two months before he sailed from Scotland 
 for ever. The northern side of Ben Alder runs away till 
 it loses itself in a wilderness of glens and corries infinite." 
 
 This September excursion is doubtless the one referred 
 to in the following letter to Dr. Clerk at Kilmalie : 
 
 "TIGHNAULT, ABERFELDY, 17th September. 
 
 " Your Us dat qui cito dat cuts me to the quick. I fear 
 you will say now Hand semel dat qui tarde dat. But your 
 
 s 
 
258 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 letter found me at Inveroran, where we are for a week. 
 ' The power of hills ' was far too strong in me then to read 
 anything, excepting Donach Ban's songs, for it is his 
 country. I sat with reverence in the ' Carach,' where his 
 house once stood. 
 
 Bha mi 'n d 'm Beinn Dorain. 
 
 Yes, I clomb to the top of it, through Corrie-dhu, and looked 
 for and found many of the places named in the great poem. 
 Then I learned by heart almost all the names of the peaks 
 and corries of the Moua Dhu, that the most glorious brother- 
 hood I have ever made the acquaintance of. I also found 
 one of the old foresters there, a man of about sixty-eight, 
 who is a poet full of ' Dana ' of his own making. They say 
 they are only second to Donach Ban's. We must try some 
 day to get him before you ; and if you find them good, we 
 will get them written' and printed. It was a glorious time. 
 From one of the hills I saw your Ben, and Scour Eilt, 
 . . . and all the rest of them. Don't be daunted by 
 what Norman says against * Bens.' Use it ; only using 
 your own discretion. Norman wished me to substitute 
 1 Sacramental Sunday ' for ' Sabbath ' in Kilmahoe. And 
 now even Englishmen have told me it would have been 
 a great blunder. Don't desert literality ; only add what 
 smoothness and music you can, consistently with this. Be 
 sparing of your 's, in the genitive, and never use it with an 
 abstract noun, as compassion's smile." 
 
 An undated letter, also written to Dr. Clerk, after a visit to 
 Kilmalie, and a walk south by Loch Treig to Eannoch, supple- 
 ments the description of that district. 
 
 "WEEM HOTEL, ABERFELDY. 
 
 " Here is a ' latha fuasach fluich,' which has kept me here 
 instead of leaving the hielan's for the lowlands to-day. . . . 
 Whenever I get into Lochaber the power of hills comes on 
 me so strongly, and makes me so filled with the love of 
 them, and eager thirst after old Celtic lore, that after I 
 
xii THE HIGHLANDS AND THE BORDERLAND 259 
 
 come away I often fear that I have been selfishly absorbed 
 in my own subjects. To me, coming fresh to them, every 
 old hill and corrie, itself and its name, has an indescribable 
 charm ; and by knowing their names I feel that I have 
 fairly got acquaintance with them, so that when I return 
 and meet them once more, we meet as old friends. ... Of 
 all my Highland splores none beats this last, unless it be 
 that one by Loch Hournhead, Barrisdale, and Mam-clach- 
 ard. . . . After leaving you, Angus M'Intosh, a shepherd, 
 a nice youth, quite a gentleman in manners, walked with 
 me up most of the east side of Loch Treig, and told me the 
 names of all the hills and corries visible on each side the 
 loch. By the side of Allt-coire-mheadhu (pronounced 
 veear) I saw the remains of the Bethana-n-airedh of the 
 olden time. It is a burn coming out of a corrie on the east 
 side of the loch, and within one and a half or two miles 
 from the south end. A shepherd at the end of Loch Ossian 
 gave me all or most of the names of the hills visible thence. 
 Beached Corrour just at the darkening. Adam M'Intosh, 
 the head keeper there, a tall handsome man (Eoman Catholic), 
 having heard of my being a night at his house, received me 
 like an old friend, offered me all refreshment, and sent his 
 brother with a pony three or four miles to see me across 
 Allt-each, which is hard at times to cross. He wished that 
 I should not give him or his brother any money, as he 
 meant it as a compliment. There are three brothers of them 
 employed as keepers in the Corrour ground Adam at the 
 head of Loch Treig, John lives all year at Corrour, and 
 Donald at Coire Chreagaidh on Loch Ossianside. Another 
 brother is young, and is a gillie there. I made friends of 
 them, and they are fine fellows. They both, the one at 
 Corrour and Adam at Loch Treig, offered voluntarily to put 
 me up if I came that way any summer before the shooting 
 begins. ... I walked over the Moor of Eannoch, east side, 
 under clouded moonlight ; a more utter loneliness, more 
 weird and eerie place to be in at night, I don't believe Scotland 
 holds. About half-past ten I got down to the west end of 
 Loch Rannoch. 
 
260 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 In the course of these solitary Highland wanderings his 
 interest in the moors and mountain corries was not greater 
 than his interest in the people, in the shepherds and 
 gillies and their families. He would sometimes write 
 minute accounts of them to his friends, and take trouble to 
 benefit them afterwards. 
 
 Much later, in May 1880, writing to the same friend 
 Dr. Clerk of Kilmalie from Eannoch Lodge, he says : " I 
 had several fine looks over my old friend the Moor of 
 Eannoch, with Cruach, Loch Loyden, and as far as Corrie- 
 Ba. Mrs. Shairp and I thought at one time of going on 
 ponies to Loch Treig, and so coming down on Glen Spean 
 and the Braes of Lochaber. One day by way of pioneer- 
 ing I rode to Corrour, and was most hospitably received by 
 Mrs. Lucy (the late Monzies's daughter), who promised to 
 do all they could to help our journey. I had a grand view 
 over the dusky wilderness, saw the lochs of the black water 
 glistening over the desert down to Kinloch Leven, my old 
 friend Beinn-a'-Chreich and Creag Cruach (so often mentioned 
 by the old bards), at the head of Loch Treig. It is certainly 
 the greenest, loveliest hill in the Highlands." 
 
 Shairp's appreciation of the distinctive features of the 
 West Highland scenery, and of the great Central Moors and 
 Bens of Scotland, comes out in these letters, and in many of 
 his poems ; but his appreciation of the Border country was 
 no less thorough and intense. In a former chapter we 
 have seen how he drank in the spirit of the south, of 
 Yarrow and Moffat, in other years. To this district he 
 returned in the autumn of 1867, when he rented the farm- 
 house of Castlehill in the Manor district of Peeblesshire. 
 In a poem written in that year, his Song of the South 
 Countree, 1 he has caught the spirit of the place, and 
 embodied it in memorable lines its scenery, its still 
 chastened beauty, its pathos, its weirdness, its historic charm, 
 the witchery of dale and stream and holm and lea. 
 
 The subtle interchanges " of sunshine and of shadow " in 
 
 1 See Glen Desseray, and other Poems, p. 198. 
 
xii THE HIGHLANDS AND THE BORDERLAND 261 
 
 autumn, over the hillsides and the meads of that " enchanted 
 ground," with the " sheen " of the bracken, and the heather 
 on the heights, are described in another poem on Manor 
 Water, also included in the recent volume. But the poem 
 which deals most deftly with this region is as yet un- 
 published, and which from its minute topographical detail 
 is perhaps unsuited for publication in extenso. Much of it 
 is in the realistic strain of the Potyolbion ; but the fol- 
 lowing extracts are as characteristic of the poet as they are 
 of the country he describes : 
 
 THE HERSTANE OF BROADLAW. 
 
 This morn the great south-west wind is alive, 
 Blowing sunshine and shadow down the vale. 
 Come, let us take the morn, and rise, and go 
 To the great summits where the streams are born. 
 
 One hour of straining limb and panting breath, 
 Past the last heather, past the highest streams, 
 And we are out upon the great heights, free 
 Of those broad-backed long level altitudes 
 That league on league sweep endlessly away, 
 The central barrier of the Border land. 
 
 The bent grass grows not here ; only the moss, 
 The short smooth moss, all weather-bleached to gray 
 Was soft beneath our feet, as miles on miles 
 "We walked, companioned by no living thing 
 Save startled plover, and the shearing wind. 
 
 One more brief ascent, and we have won 
 The supreme summit of the Border land ! 
 No soaring peak, but a broad ample round, 
 A table, whereon heavenly guests might dine ; 
 How meet for beings more than man to tread, 
 Majestic amplitude, reposeful strength, 
 And meekness that amid his great compeers 
 Would rather hide than vaunt his majesty. 
 O Sovereign Hill ! us children of a day 
 Thou from thy heights one moment dost allow 
 To look abroad, and the great Vision take 
 Which thou inlieritest since the hills were born. 
 
262 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 Before the blast the moving Heavens stooped 
 Nearer the hills, and gave them majesty, 
 In solid blackness brooding far to south. 
 
 But all between, the flanks of cloud outspread 
 Tweed's upper Vale, even to his moorland springs, 
 With all his multitude of vassal glens. 
 Kidge rolled on ridge tumultuously away, 
 Dusky and desolate, with some stray fleck 
 Of sun on hillside, here and there a glint 
 Of the great river, wan beneath the gloom. 
 
 In all that mighty round, but one sole Life 
 One Presence, the vast movement of the heavens 
 With the answer of the sympathetic hills." 
 
 Professor Veitch, than whom no one better knows the 
 Border country, writes thus of his friend's first introduction 
 to its recesses 
 
 "It was in this same summer (1867) that Shairp first 
 became acquainted with what may be called the inner and 
 highest reach of the Tweeddale hills. One day in July of 
 this summer, he and I passed up Hall Manor Glen, and 
 reached a point beyond the Scrape on the shoulder of Pyke- 
 stone. Here we were allowed, through a passing rift in the 
 mist and rain, to see for a few seconds the Polmood Crag, 
 which flanks Broadlaw to the east. Gray -gleaming and 
 grand, it stood silent and motionless beneath the hurrying 
 black driven rack of the sky overhead. He seemed unaware 
 that our hills enclosed so rugged and impressive a crag. 
 He stood for some moments with a rapt look in his face, 
 then said, ' We must be there, another day.' The ' other 
 day ' came soon afterwards and more than once in sub- 
 sequent years. On the first occasion, the ascent was made 
 from the Manorside, by Kirkhope and Long Grain Knowe ; 
 on another, from Tweed to the Crook and up Glenheurie 
 ' The Dark Glen.' One of these walks the earlier, I think, 
 in the autumn of 1 8 6 7 impressed him powerfully, and led 
 him to express his feeling in some lines, which, though left 
 in their original rough state and unfinished, are worth quot- 
 
xii THE HIGHLANDS AND THE BORDERLAND 263 
 
 ing to show how well he could catch, in a single day's walk, 
 the characteristic features of a scene. They give a full and 
 highly realistic picture of the walk, the Law itself, and the 
 wondrous waves of hills to be seen from its summit 2764 
 feet above sea-level." (The lines referred to are those on 
 The Herstane of Broadlawj 
 
 In another part of his papers of reminiscences, Pro- 
 fessor Yeitch remarks 
 
 "Above all ... he sought out for himself constantly 
 the scenes of Scottish song and story, legend and tradition, 
 got a familiar knowledge of them, through long and ever- 
 recurring days and nights of walking amid the Southern Up- 
 lands and the Highlands of his native country. This was 
 his holiday work and delight, and it was for him the truest 
 and most natural education. It was those scenes, met face 
 to face, acting on a poetical soul, and strong historical and 
 patriotic sympathies, which, by their own features and their 
 power to such a mind of an ever-thrilling suggestion, made 
 Shairp what he truly was, as poet and even prose writer. 
 It was perhaps this side of him, which, while I knew him 
 at St. Andrews, drew me towards him with the strongest 
 attraction. Of the strength of this influence, and the mould- 
 ing of him through Border scenery and story, he was him- 
 self well aware. He felt, as others have done, that the Border 
 land comes, to the dweller in its midst, closer to the heart 
 less sensuously grand, no doubt, but more pathetic in its 
 solitude and suggestions than the scenery of the Highlands., 
 After he had fixed his summer residence near Aberfeldy, I 
 have known him, with all his love for that district, allow a 
 half-articulate regret to escape him that he had not readily 
 found a spot in which to settle in the valley of the Tweed 
 or the Yarrow. . . . No one in this century has loved that land 
 with a more intense love, and no one, I believe, has from 
 an early period of life, and even down past middle age, 
 walked its glens, moorlands, and hills more frequently, and 
 with a finer eye for its natural beauty, and a heart more 
 
264 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 attuned to its stirring traditions, and the music of its ballads 
 and songs. In his wanderings over the Border country, he 
 took in the breath of song which pervades it all, as naturally 
 and rejoicingly, as he did the breeze of the hills." 
 
 Although it may have been on a year considerably later 
 than this, an excursion which Shairp took one September 
 day with a party of three friends, including Dr. John Brown, 
 may be mentioned here. They started from Abington up 
 Camps Water and went down Glen Breck into Tweed. 
 Dr. Brown has recorded it in his paper on " The Enterkin," l 
 " a gray demure day, gentle and serious, ' caught at the 
 point where it stops short of sadness,' the clouds well up 
 and curdled, lying becalmed 
 
 O'er the broad fields of heaven's bright wildernesse. 
 
 What of sunshine there was lay on the distant hills, mov- 
 ing slowly, and every now and then making darker the 
 depths of some far-off Hope. There is something marvellous 
 in the silence of these upland solitudes. The burns slip 
 away without noise ; there are no trees, few birds : and so 
 it happened that day that the sheep were nibbling else- 
 where, and the shepherds all unseen. There was only the 
 weird sound of its own stillness as we walked up the glen. 
 It was refreshing and reassuring, after the din of the town, 
 this out-of-the-world, unchangeable place." 
 
 They went over to Tweedsmuir and down to Bield, by 
 Logan Water and Mossfennan " yett," on to Broughton. 
 Dr. Brown relates that, as they walked on, Shairp recited 
 to the party his Cry from Craig-Ellacliie, referred to in a 
 former chapter. 
 
 In a letter to Shairp in July 1872, Dr. Brown wrote 
 thus of a visit to Dumfries, and of a journey he had just 
 taken from it back to Edinburgh past Abington : " Sweet- 
 heart Abbey 2 is really a glorious protest by the past against 
 being forgotten. What a wonder it must have been when 
 
 1 See Horce Subsecivce, vol. iii. p. 361. 
 
 2 The Abbey, near Dumfries, sometimes called New Abbey. 
 
xii THE HIGHLANDS AND THE BORDERLAND 265 
 
 it stood all by itself within its Cyclopean precincts, with its 
 full ministry. But ours is a more excellent way. ... I 
 swept past Abington, and thought of us four taking to the 
 hills, and you reciting the lament of the ' majestic soli- 
 tudes.' . . . Yours ever, J. B." 
 
 It was when Shairp was staying at Castlehill, Manor, 
 Peebles, in September 1867, that his article on "Moral 
 Theories and Christian Ethics " appeared in The North 
 British Review, the article afterwards republished in his 
 volume of Studies, under the title of " The Moral Motive 
 Power." On reading it, Dr. John Brown sent him the 
 following letter : 
 
 " I have just finished your noble paper. ... It is just 
 what was needed; it justifies your claim as a moral philo- 
 sopher in the true sense. It shows you can apprehend 
 the very life of the theories of others, and develop your own, 
 so as to stand in the front of those who assert that mind 
 is higher than body, that duty is higher than either, and 
 that love is highest of all, is the fulfilling of them all. This 
 resolution of all morality into love Godlike love seems 
 to me to give a true originality to all you have now written. 
 I don't know any nobler piece of thought and expression 
 than the thirty-ninth page. I wish the paper had been much 
 longer, and that you had taken up Cudworth and Hutcheson, 
 and some others. I think all upon Kant is wonderful for 
 elevation and appreciation of the grandeur and solitude and 
 skill of the categorical inspiration. I am sure this will do 
 good. All true morality merges in, runs up into, religion : 
 all true religion blossoms and breathes out into morality, 
 and practical immediate goodness and love. What is the 
 whole duty of man, but his entire special morality, and 
 what is man's whole duty love to God and love to 
 man, not excluding himself as being a man. But I have 
 written more than enough. . . . The language strikes me as 
 very wonderful, expressive, homely, elevated, easy, earnest, 
 unaffected, impersonal ; full of sudden felicities, ' empty of 
 context,' ' penetrate into Nature, whenever he may, Thought 
 
266 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 has been there before him.' All upon M. Arnold is most 
 admirable, perfectly true, and infinitely important, and just 
 (indeed generous) to him. . . . Perhaps after all the most 
 sincere praise any one ever gives, if not the highest, is 
 when an author, exactly, arid infinitely more beauti- 
 fully and powerfully expresses your own most cherished 
 thoughts." 
 
 As Mr. Arnold is referred to in this letter, another un- 
 dated fragment from the same pen, bearing on his work and 
 on other things, may follow it 
 
 " I think Homer is untranslatable, and should now be 
 left in peace to his own majesty, and simplicity, and perfect- 
 ness. Did I tell you how delighted I was with M. Arnold's 
 Arthurian poem, Tristram and Iseult ? It is as Homeric 
 ^as I suppose the nineteenth century can make itself, and 
 fuller of native and open-air free strength and sweetness 
 than anything of Tennyson's." 
 
 A letter from Lord Coleridge, enclosing one from his 
 father, on the article on Keble, which was published in 
 the same volume of Studies, may close this chapter 
 
 "HEATH'S COURT, OTTERY ST. MARY, 
 " 24/j, September 1866. 
 
 " MY DEAR SHAIRP On my return here from Wavetree 
 I brought with me your article on Keble, which I read 
 and then handed on to my father, who read it also. It is 
 capital quite the best thing I have seen about Keble ; and 
 the introduction about J. H. N. is delightful. To me, at 
 least, there is not a syllable too much, and it says (much 
 better) what I have been saying all my life as to his in- 
 fluence and the effect of its withdrawal on the University. 
 . . . Ever affectionately yours, J. D. COLERIDGE. 
 
 My father sends you his paper and a note with this. 
 Keble was younger than my father in years, though senior in 
 University standing. I think Keble was seventy-three when 
 he died in March my father was seventy-eight in July." 
 
xii THE HIGHLANDS AND THE BORDERLAND 267 
 
 " HEATH'S COURT, OTTERY ST. MARY, 
 "30^ December 1866. 
 
 "My DEAR PROFESSOR SHAIRP I have to thank you 
 very sincerely for your kindness in sending me a copy of 
 your essay on the author of The Christian Year. I need 
 not tell you again what I think of it. I am very glad 
 that it is put into a form in which it may not only obtain 
 more general currency, but a sure enduring place in our 
 literature ; it deserves the latter, and may do much good 
 in the former respect. I hope you will not give up your 
 design in respect of the papers on Wordsworth and Cole- 
 ridge the Keble, besides its own independent importance, 
 has an interest of a temporary kind which a publisher 
 would be very much alive to ; but those two papers, in a 
 critical point of view, and with reference to our general 
 literature, have an enduring importance, which makes it 
 desirable that they should be disinterred, and appear by 
 themselves. Believe me, truly yours, and much obliged, 
 
 J. D. COLERIDGE. 
 
 P.S. Should you be preparing the two papers I speak 
 of for publication, if you would let me know, I might be 
 able to suggest something and if I could, I gladly would." 
 
 In the Life of John Coleridge Patteson, Missionary-Bishop 
 of the Melanesian Islands who was an old Oxford friend 
 of Shairp's, and whose death at the post of duty was so 
 tragic we find a letter, dated 8th March 1871, in refer- 
 ence to the Studies, which had been sent out to him, in 
 which he says 
 
 " I am delighted with Shairp's Essays. He has the very nature to 
 make him capable of appreciating the best and most thoughtful writers, 
 especially those who have a thoughtful spirit of piety in them. He 
 gives me many a very happy quiet hour. I wish such a book had come 
 in my way while I was young. I am sure that I have neglected poetry 
 all my life for want of some guide to the appreciation and criticism of 
 it, and that I am the worse for it." 
 
268 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP, xn 
 
 The last letter the good bishop wrote was to Shairp. 
 The next day, 20th September, he was killed by the Nukapu 
 (Polynesian) Islanders 
 
 "Southern Cross MISSION SCHOONER, 
 
 "Ix THE SANTA CRUZ GROUP, S. W. PACIFIC, 
 
 " IWi September. 
 
 ". . . You won't remember my name, and it is not likely that you can 
 know anything about me ; but I must write you a line and thank you 
 for writing your two books (for I have but two) Studies in Poetry 
 and Philosophy, and Culture and Religion. 
 
 The Moral Dynamic and the latter are indeed the very books I 
 have longed to see ; books that one can put with confidence and satis- 
 faction into the hands of men, young and old, in these stirring and 
 dangerous times. 
 
 Then it did me good to be recalled to old scenes, and to dream 
 of old faces. 
 
 I was almost a freshman when you came up to keep your M.A. 
 term ; and as I knew some of the men you knew, you kindly, as I 
 well remember, gave me the benefit of it. As John Coleridge's cousin, 
 and the acquaintance of John Keate, Cumin, Palmer, and dear James 
 Kiddell, I came to know men whom otherwise I could not have known, 
 and of these how many there are that I have thought of and cared for 
 ever since ! 
 
 You must have thought of Riddell, dear James Biddell, when you 
 wrote the words in page seventy-six of your book on Culture and Religion, 
 ' We have known such.' Yes, there was indeed about him a beauty 
 of character that is very, very rare. Sellar is in the North somewhere. 
 I think I have seen Essays by him on Lucretius. . . . 
 
 Indeed, you are doing a good work, and I pray God it may be 
 abundantly blessed. I remain, my dear friend, very sincerely yours, 
 
 J. C. PATTESON." 1 
 1 Life of John Coleridge Pattcson, vol. ii. pp. 336, 377, 378. 
 
CHAPTEE XIII 
 
 THE PRINCIPALSHIP OF THE UNITED COLLEGE 
 
 ON the death of Principal Forbes, John Campbell Shairp 
 was elected by the Crown to the Principalship of the 
 United College at St. Andrews. He was urgently re- 
 quested, however, by a majority of the Professors of the 
 United College, not to resign the Chair of Latin, but to 
 continue to hold both offices for a time. 1 He had been an 
 excellent Professor, and there were some doubts as to the 
 consequence of his resignation of the Chair, which was not 
 by statute obligatory. It is unnecessary to refer to any 
 incident connected with this matter, or to the steps taken 
 by others in regard to it, which should be now entirely for- 
 gotten, and which the Principal was the first to forget. It 
 ought, however, to be said that Principal Shairp acted 
 throughout a somewhat painful and lengthened case with 
 an exclusive eye to the good and the honour of the College 
 over which he presided. 
 
 Many things came under iny own notice after I became 
 one of his colleagues in the University (and others have been 
 told me by senior colleagues, and by our excellent and 
 ever faithful janitor, Mr. Hodge), of Principal Shairp's special 
 interest in the students that came to St. Andrews. It is one 
 of the advantages which a small University has over a large 
 one, that the students come into much closer personal relations 
 to the teaching staff; and, when he ceased to teach, Shairp 
 did not cease to care for, or to interest himself in the 
 students. He had a special regard for Highlanders, and 
 
 1 See Professor Campbell's remarks on this at pp. 381, 382. 
 
270 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 sympathy with them ; but it was his aim to get to know and 
 to help all whom he could benefit in any way. Of course it 
 was impossible to know all of the 150 to 200 students who 
 spent the winter in St. Andrews equally well, or even to 
 see them all at his house or elsewhere. Over and over 
 again, however, Principal Shairp asked me to give him a 
 list, not of the cleverest or most promising students, but 
 of those who would be most encouraged by being asked to 
 his house, and who would be most helped by means of it. 
 It was those who were least likely to be asked elsewhere, 
 whom he desired especially to befriend. 
 
 In after years it fell to Principal Shairp to write the 
 larger part of the Life of his predecessor, Principal Forbes ; 
 and as the preparation of that Memoir led him to speak at 
 some length of St. Andrews itself, and of incidents and 
 events in which he had himself to take a prominent part, 
 a portion of one of its later chapters, descriptive of the 
 University and its work, and of the College Hall, which 
 Principal Forbes was the chief instrument in founding, 
 may be given here. The personal part of this Memoir of 
 Forbes will be referred to at a later staire : 
 
 " The University over whose oldest and largest College Principal 
 Forbes was now called to preside, is one of the few fragments 
 which survived the wreck of the Scottish mediaeval Church. What- 
 ever the shortcomings and corruptions of that Church for two centuries 
 before the Reformation may have been, it ought not to be forgotten 
 that it is to her that we are indebted for our Universities. Three 
 out of the four Universities of Scotland had Catholic Bishops for 
 their founders. This was pre-eminently true of St. Andrews, the 
 most ancient of them all. A Bishop it was Henry Wardlaw who, 
 near the opening of the fifteenth century, founded that University, 
 and the accomplished First James smiled upon its infancy. Each of 
 the three Colleges which were successively incorporated into it owed 
 their origin to a separate prelate. The oldest of the three Colleges, 
 that of St. Salvator, was founded and endowed by the successor of 
 Wardlaw, Bishop James Kennedy, kinsman of the king, and the wisest 
 man of his time both in Church and State ; a prelate of such pure 
 and beneficent character that even George Buchanan, prelate-hater 
 though he was, has no word but praise to speak of him. To him, in 
 the old sea-tower at St. Andrews, his cousin, the Second James, turned 
 
xiii PRINCIPALSHIP OF THE UNITED COLLEGE 271 
 
 for counsel when the violence of the three banded earls, each almost 
 a king, had all but driven him from his throne. 
 
 The next College in order of time was that of St. Leonard, 
 founded by the youthful Archbishop of St. Andrews, Alexander 
 Stewart, and by John Hepburn, prior of the monastery. One of the 
 charters of the foundation was signed by the young archbishop, and 
 confirmed by his father James IV. the year before they two, father 
 and son, fell together on the field of Flodden. The foundation of 
 St. Salvator's College by Bishop Kennedy was one of the many efforts 
 made by that prelate to counterwork the corruptions of his Church, 
 and to reform those abuses which he saw were eating out its life. . . . 
 
 This last College was scarcely founded when it became the 
 nursing mother of many of those ardent spirits who bore a chief 
 part in working that Church's overthrow. To have drunk of St. 
 Leonard's Well was another expression for having adopted the prin- 
 ciples of the Reformation. When the Reformation had got itself 
 established, George Buchanan became Principal of St. Leonard's, which 
 he adorned by his scholarship more than by his character. He received 
 one pension from Queen Mary, and a second from Queen Elizabeth 
 for slandering his first benefactress ; so that, as has been said, though he 
 did not serve two queens, he at least took wages from two. 
 
 With the Reformation these two Colleges, which had been founded 
 mainly for the rearing of clergy and the teaching of theology, were so 
 far secularised that they were devoted exclusively to instructing 
 students in classical literature, science, and philosophy. Instruction 
 in theology was handed over by the Reformers exclusively to the 
 younger College of St. Mary's, which, having been founded and en- 
 dowed chiefly for this purpose by the ,last three Roman Catholic 
 Archbishops, James Beatoun, David Beatoun, and John Hamilton, 
 was soon after the Reformation presided over by those two stout anti- 
 prelatists, Andrew Melville and Samuel Rutherford. 
 
 The two older Colleges, restricted to the more peaceful pursuits 
 of classics, mathematics, and philosophy, were less heard of in the 
 turbulent conflicts of the seventeenth century than their younger 
 theological sister. 
 
 About the middle of the eighteenth century the finances of St. 
 Salvator and the tenements of St. Leonard's having fallen equally into 
 disrepair, the more flourishing finances of the one were transferred 
 to the better buildings of the other, and the two Colleges were by 
 Act of Parliament conjoined, under the prosaic name of the United 
 College. From that time, 1747, there have continued to be two in- 
 stead of three Colleges in the University ; and at this time St. Andrews 
 remains the only place in Scotland where native Scots have an 
 opportunity of learning the distinction between a College and a 
 University. . . . 
 
 These historic details are not out of place in the account of the 
 life of Forbes. For him the ancient records, monuments, and tradi- 
 
272 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 tions of his newly-adopted University possessed a peculiar charm, and 
 called out a faculty and taste which had hitherto lain dormant 
 within him, only because it had nothing to feed on. Among the 
 predecessors of Principal Forbes for more than a century, no distin- 
 guished name is to be found till we reach that of the venerable Dr. 
 Hunter, famous in his day as a scholar and philologist, who, after 
 filling with great success the Humanity Chair for nearly sixty years, 
 was, towards the close of his long life, raised to the Principalship of 
 his College. Him followed, after a brief interval, Sir David Brewster, 
 who, during his twenty years' tenure of the office, if any remains of 
 the family system still lingered, scattered them, somewhat turbulently, 
 to the winds. The reputation of Sir David's name was, of course, an 
 honour to St. Andrews as it would have been to any University ; but 
 he laboured under a delusion, of which he could not dispossess himself, 
 that it was the peculiar calling of St. Andrews to train practical men 
 of science, especially engineers, for the whole nation. So illusory was 
 this idea, that it may be doubted whether so much as one student ever 
 came to St. Andrews in quest of training for this profession. Prin- 
 cipal Forbes, devoted though he was to his own subjects, did not 
 share this delusion. He saw clearly enough that in St. Andrews these 
 could have no special prominence ; that it must continue, as in the 
 past, to give a general education to young men meant for any one of 
 the professions, and that if it had a specially professional calling at 
 all, it was to prepare ministers for the several churches, and teachers 
 for the borough and parish schools. But to Sir David's unflinching 
 opposition to all jobbery in choosing Professors, and his determination 
 to elect the best men that could be found, Principal Forbes owed it 
 that he found his College equipped with a staff of Professors not then 
 surpassed by the staff of any other Scottish University. Prominent 
 among these was the late Professor Ferrier, who, by his subtle philo- 
 sophic genius, expressing itself in a perfect style, not only adorned his 
 own chair, but maintained for another generation his country's ancient 
 fame for metaphysical genius. . . . 
 
 Just before leaving Edinburgh to reside at St. Andrews, Prin- 
 cipal Forbes had wound up a letter to a friend with this remark : 'All 
 things become solemn when the past perspective of life is the pre- 
 dominating object. . . .' 
 
 The time at which he entered on his new sphere was a momentous 
 one for St. Andrews as well as for all the other Universities. The 
 Scottish University Commissioners were in full session, busily framing 
 ordinances which should control the course of study, the University 
 finances, the library privileges, and the Professors' salaries for a long 
 time to come. 
 
 To supply the Commissioners with the information they required, 
 and to offer his own suggestions for their guidance, was one of Forbes's 
 earliest tasks. 
 
 The finances of his own College he found in a confused and 
 
xin PRINCIPALSH1P OF THE UNITED COLLEGE 273 
 
 dilapidated state ; and to understand these, and devise measures for 
 their restoration, he first addressed himself. At whose door lay the 
 largest share of blame for this confusion need not now be inquired. 
 Suffice it that it mainly arose from, a long habit of dividing among 
 the Professors the annual rents of the College lands, without laying 
 by a reserve fund adequate to meet the necessary outlays for repairing 
 farm-steadings or other such contingencies. To unravel the tangled 
 mesh Forbes applied himself with characteristic diligence, method, and 
 business faculty ; and it was mainly owing to his exertions that the 
 Commissioners were enabled to place the finances of the United 
 College on a footing which, if somewhat burdensome to the present 
 generation of Professors, promises to provide for their successors 
 ampler incomes than those now living are likely to enjoy. 
 
 The next subject he had to tackle with was the University finances, 
 or the contents of the University chest. These he found in a much 
 more flourishing condition than those of his own College. But this 
 prosperity was mainly owing to a source of revenue which the Univer- 
 sities' Commissioners were understood to regard with no friendly eye. 
 This source was the granting of medical degrees a function which St. 
 Andrews, though it possessed no thoroughly equipped medical school, 
 had yet, in virtue of its original charter, been accustomed to exercise 
 time out of mind. It is said that there had been a time, extending 
 down to the early years of this century, when these degrees had been 
 granted, without sufficient examination, to persons but poorly qualified. 
 
 This practice, indefensible if it ever existed, had, however, long 
 ceased, and under the able management of the late Dr. Reid and the 
 late Dr. Day successive occupants of the Chair of Medicine in the 
 United College a system of examination had been instituted in which 
 the candidates were thoroughly tested, and the granting of degrees to- 
 none but duly qualified persons was adequately secured. With the 
 St. Andrews Medical Professor as Chairman, a Board of able examiners, 
 sanctioned by the University, had been got together, consisting of the 
 best of the extra-academical medical lecturers in Edinburgh and 
 Glasgow. . . . 
 
 In later years the candidates were numbered by hundreds, of 
 whom, while a sufficient percentage were rejected, not a few out of 
 the majority who passed now stand high in the medical world of 
 London and elsewhere. . . . 
 
 The result in the end was, that the Commissioners sanctioned a 
 compromise, limiting greatly the exercise of the right in future, but 
 allowing it to continue under certain very definite restrictions, which, 
 while they meet an acknowledged need in the medical profession, are 
 still a source of some revenue to the University. 
 
 A third project which early engaged the attention of Principal 
 Forbes was the founding of a College Hall. In St. Andrews, as in 
 other Scottish Universities, it had long been customary for students 
 to live where they chose in lodgings in the town. All that the 
 
 T 
 
274 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 University requires of students is regular attendance at the Professors' 
 lectures, good conduct within the College walls, and without them 
 to keep the peace. In old times St. Andrews had been resorted to as 
 a place of education by the sons of many persons in the higher ranks. 
 Indeed the shields attached to the silver arrows in the old College 
 attest how largely it was frequented by the sons of the oldest and most 
 honourable families in Scotland. This had, however, almost entirely 
 ceased more than thirty years before Principal Forbes's advent to St. 
 Andrews. The Professors who had once been in the habit of taking 
 boarders had ceased to do so, and the general set of the educational 
 tide southward had borne from St. Andrews to England almost all who 
 could afford to go thither. It seemed to Principal Forbes and others, 
 that the idea of a University, as originally held in Scotland, was not 
 fulfilled unless it contained students of all ranks ; and it occurred to 
 them, whether by providing a fitting place of residence under proper 
 superintendence, some of those who had left it, to the loss of the 
 University and of themselves, might not be lured back. St. Andrews, 
 with its noble historic memories, its academic aspect, its healthy 
 climate, and its fine Links, which have been for ages the elysium of 
 golfers, seemed to offer peculiar outward advantages for the trial of 
 such an experiment. But for the energy and business talent of Prin- 
 cipal Forbes, this idea of a College Hall might have continued till now 
 only a dream. As soon as it was mentioned to him, he adopted it with 
 all his energy, and less than his usual caution, and straightway set 
 himself to realise it. The result of his exertions was the formation of a 
 company, whose members subscribed for a sufficient number of shares 
 to set the institution on foot. Within two years from Forbes's ap- 
 pointment the College Hall was opened, with twelve students in the 
 first, and an increasing number in the following session. These lived 
 in a hired house, one of those which occupied the old site of St. 
 Leonard's College. Over them was a warden, an Oxford graduate, 
 who superintended the discipline and management, presided at the 
 common meals, and assisted the students in preparing their College 
 work. During the first four or five years the College Hall prospered 
 so well, and attracted so many desirable students, that Principal Forbes 
 conceived the more ambitious project of building a large Hall, which 
 should be specially fitted for its purpose, and should accommodate a 
 greater number of students. As the institution itself possessed no 
 funds except those necessary to carry it on from year to year, and as 
 no University revenues could be used for this purpose, the venture 
 was a bold one. There were some who thought that it was too bold 
 that the institution had not yet struck its roots deep enough to war- 
 rant so large an experiment. But Principal Forbes was not to be 
 turned from his purpose. By his almost unaided advocacy the old 
 shareholders were induced to take more shares, and new shareholders 
 were added, and by the joint contributions of these a sum was raised 
 which proved nearly sufficient to erect a large and commodious Hall 
 
xiii PRINCIPALSHIP OF THE UNITED COLLEGE 275 
 
 within what was the ancient Garden of St. Leonard's. The com- 
 pletion of this structure will be noted in due time. Whether the 
 venture was altogether prudent or not, is a question which time has 
 not finally answered. 
 
 A fourth project which deeply interested Principal Forbes was 
 the restoration of the College Chapel of St. Salvator's. This chapel 
 is not only the oldest unruined fragment of ancient St. Andrews, but, 
 along with the noble tower of St. Salvator's, which rises above it, 
 forms the earliest piece of University building still extant in Scotland. 
 Tower and chapel had both been built by the good Bishop Kennedy, 
 and are the only remnants of his workmanship. The original roof 
 of the chapel is said to have been of a peculiar and rare construction 
 massive blue stone, deeply engroined. Within the chapel is the 
 tomb of the founder, a Gothic structure wrought in Paris, of blue 
 stone, in the middle of the fifteenth century, which originally must 
 have been of wonderful beauty, since even in its cruel defacement it 
 still shows so fair. As the old stone roof is said to have been nearly 
 flat, the Professors, about a hundred years since, either themselves 
 conceived, or were persuaded by some architect, that it would one day 
 fall in and crush them. They therefore resolved to have it removed, 
 and a common lath and plaster ceiling placed in its stead. So solidly, 
 however, was the old roof compacted, that the workmen in order to 
 remove it had to detach it from walls and buttresses, and let it fall 
 en masse. The fall is said to have shaken the whole city. But how- 
 ever this may be, it is only too certain that it shattered the richly- 
 wrought columns, canopies, and pinnacles of the founder's tomb. A 
 maimed and mutilated fragment that tomb now stands, beautiful still 
 in its decay, proving that Professors of the eighteenth century could 
 be more ruthless and insensible to beauty than were the ruder Re- 
 formers of the sixteenth or seventeenth. But besides the mutilated 
 tomb of which no restoration was possible, parsimony and Philis- 
 tinism had combined to make the rest of the church hideous. High 
 bare fir pews, an unsightly gallery at one end, lath, plaster, and 
 whitewash, floods of harsh light from many windows, ugliness could 
 no farther go. To the removal of these deformities and the restora- 
 tion of the church, not to its ancient beauty that was not possible 
 but to somewhat greater seemliness, Forbes gave his undivided 
 attention for one whole winter. . . . 
 
 As the result of all these exertions the College Church, if it has 
 not re-attained its pristine beauty, has certainly lost its former repul- 
 siveness, and been rendered one of the most soothing and attractive 
 places of worship in which Presbyterians at this day meet." 1 
 
 As the years of his Principalship advanced, while engaged 
 in various literary labours, Shairp not only watched over the 
 
 1 The Life of James D. Forbes, pp. 394-404. 
 
276 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 fortunes of the College which he adorned, but took part in 
 many wider educational movements. He became President 
 of the Educational Institute of Scotland, and in that capacity 
 delivered a brilliant lecture in Edinburgh. He addressed 
 University Clubs, and Literary and Scientific Societies in 
 provincial towns. He delivered a course of lectures, in con- 
 nection with a University-extension movement in Dundee. 
 He made speeches, of no trivial or passing interest, at meet- 
 ings in Edinburgh, in connection with the Border Counties 
 Association for the encouragement of students, and at gather- 
 ings of old Edinburgh Academy pupils and friends. To 
 some of these detailed reference will immediately be made. 
 There are two short papers, however, with which I have 
 been favoured, that may here find a more appropriate place, 
 in the first instance. The one is the reminiscences of a 
 Highland student, now a parish minister in Scotland ; the 
 other, a very characteristic sketch by Mr. Cotterill, of Eettes 
 College, Edinburgh. 
 
 The Highland student is the Eev. Mr. Sinton of Glen- 
 garry, Inverness-shire. He helped Professor Palgrave with 
 some notes to his recent edition of Shairp's Poems ; and the 
 following remarks are the concluding part of an address 
 which he delivered to the Gaelic Society of the University 
 of St. Andrews : 
 
 " In addressing you, it would be strange indeed were I 
 to omit all reference to one lately passed from our midst, 
 who, by his writings and personal influence in society, did 
 much to awaken renewed interest in the race, language, 
 and literature of the Gael, at a time when it seemed as 
 though they were about to sink into oblivion. . . . 
 
 In the Highlands, Principal Shairp felt completely at 
 home. He had visited many glens and corries where few 
 tourists find their way. The solitudes of Loch Arkaig, and 
 the wild grandeur of the remote Loch Treig, with the great 
 Moor of Rannoch treeless and houseless stretching be- 
 yond, supplied to his mind solemn and never-to-be-forgotten 
 thoughts. He frequently surprised students from the north 
 
xni PRINCIPALSHIP OF THE UNITED COLLEGE 277 
 
 by showing that he possessed a much more accurate and 
 extensive knowledge than themselves of the scenery and 
 lore of districts in which they had been reared. One inci- 
 dent of his life, although but a trifle, was so entirely char- 
 acteristic of the man, that I cannot forbear relating it. 
 Near twenty years ago when wandering among the Gram- 
 pian and Monadh Liath mountains, he entered an old- 
 fashioned parish school mindful that it was then presided 
 over by a St. Andrews student. I shall never forget that 
 tall and stately stranger who slowly made his way among 
 the crowded forms. We all felt that he belonged to the 
 great mysterious world, of which as yet we had no experi- 
 ence. On the same day he met one who, though a con- 
 siderable tacksman, was still a shepherd in all his tastes, 
 and whose forbears, like many of his class in the Highlands, 
 had herded on the Teviot. The poet's eye had no doubt 
 been arrested by the gray plaid, the hazel crook and the 
 collie, without which accompaniments that excellent yeoman 
 rarely went abroad. In the course of conversation he 
 alluded to these, and spoke in glowing terms of the striking 
 situation of a solitary farmhouse which he had passed that 
 morning far up in the country, and which he soon discovered 
 was the home of his companion. The latter, proud of the 
 interest taken in a place very dear to himself, gave the 
 Principal his crook, and the two went their several ways 
 never more to meet. But long afterwards, when Principal 
 Shairp discovered among the first year students of St. An- 
 drews a son of that farmer, he at once became the lad's 
 friend, and never ceased to manifest the kindliest interest 
 in his welfare. He took the first opportunity of showing 
 his protege the simple gift of a parent then dead ; and rei 
 lated the manner in which it had come into his possession 
 many years before. That student will always retain as a 
 cherished memory his intercourse with this good man, the 
 kindness he received at Edgecliffe and in that beautiful home 
 in Strathtay, and the holy counsels to which he listened 
 there. Nor will he ever forget how, within an hour of 
 leaving St. Andrews, he was guest for the last time in the 
 
278 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 house of his benefactor, when, with an assurance of continued 
 friendship, and a warm shake of the hand, he bade him fare- 
 well. When his young friend was far away in a beautiful 
 Highland parish classic ground in Gaelic song and lore 
 he wrote to him repeatedly, and proposed a visit, which 
 year after year was still fondly looked forward to, until the end 
 came. 
 
 The saintly Archbishop Leighton wished to die in an inn, 
 and so it was at length granted unto him to depart. The 
 scene where Principal Shairp breathed his last was strangely 
 appropriate. In death surely he had his desire. In a dis- 
 trict whose quiet pastoral spirit so harmonised with the tenor 
 of his soul, where in early life he had wandered and com- 
 muned with nature, within sight of the hills he loved, and 
 near the wild Atlantic that rose and fell around many an 
 isle his ancestors frequented of yore, after life's work was 
 done, and with the simple faith of a child, he ' fell on sleep/ 
 
 et dulcis moriens reminiscitur Argos" 
 
 The following extract from a letter from the late Dr. 
 Irvine of Pitlochry will be read with interest iri^ connection 
 with Mr. Sinton's paper 
 
 " He took the most lively interest in poor students, about 
 several of whom he from time wrote to me. I can recall 
 occasions when he accompanied me to visit some of them, and 
 I was much touched with the warm sympathy and kindly 
 words of encouragement he expressed. These visits were an 
 evident satisfaction to the poor invalids, and are among the 
 pleasantest incidents of my long professional life." 
 
 Mr. Cotterill writes 
 
 "My acquaintance with Principal Shairp began in 1872, 
 when he sent his son to my house at Fettes College. The 
 acquaintance thus begun soon passed into an abiding friend- 
 ship. I became very intimate with him. 
 
 The impressions of his character left upon my mind by 
 this intimacy are very clear, as I now review them. First 
 
xiii PRINCIPALSHIP OF THE UNITED COLLEGE 279 
 
 and foremost, penetrating and permeating his whole nature, 
 stands the instinct of poetry. No estimate of his character 
 can, I believe, be other than misleading which is not based 
 upon this as its primary conception. His attitude towards \ ! 
 all questions was, primarily, that of the poet. His character 
 was portrayed with singular faithfulness in his countenance 
 and his whole bearing, in the very movements of his body, 
 in the tones of his voice, and the pronunciation of his words, 
 and even in his dress. This is, of course, true of all men, to 
 some extent, but it was so, I think, of him to a very unusual 
 degree. All his features were eloquent. In his long, large 
 forehead there was evident the habit of brooding thoughtful- 
 ness which he brought to bear upon all subjects. In his mouth 
 was to be seen a set determination which at times was apt 
 to pass into something very like obstinacy the same 
 characteristic being shown in the square and resolute jaw. 
 His mouth also, when he smiled, revealed a peculiarly win- 
 ning attractive sweet softness, such as which of us that has- 
 seen it can forget, but who describe ? But not in one or in 
 all of these lay that which made him what he was. This 
 lay in his eyes. The real man, the inner man, was there. 
 The dreamy, far-away, wistful gaze of them ; their unworldly 
 innocence and gentle goodness ; here at last was the real 
 man. You could be with him but for a little while, if you 
 were in sympathy with him, before he told you through the 
 mute and unerring eloquence of those wonderful eyes that 
 though he might on occasions here and there be this or that, 
 he was always and everywhere destined to see all things as 
 they are seen only by the poet. Such a poet too as might, 
 perhaps, be best described in the words used of the poet 
 
 whom he most loved 
 
 i 
 Friend of the wise, and teacher of the good. 
 
 Such I believe Principal Shairp to have been ; and as such 
 we must always regard him, if we would regard him rightly. 
 I will try to illustrate some of his characteristics by a few 
 examples. 
 
 It must at once be said that, socially, he was extraordin- 
 
280 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 arily sensitive to his surroundings. If he was not sure of 
 sympathy, he could not utter himself, otherwise than con- 
 ." ventionally. But, given sympathy, I have heard no such 
 conversation from any man. He had not a ready tongue, 
 and this made his conversation all the more extraordinary. 
 The thoughts slowly worked themselves out, coming from 
 his very soul, every word adding weight. It was rarely 
 monologue ; it was true conversation. Sometimes, indeed, 
 he quite forgot his surroundings, and, with real inspiration 
 upon him, would deliver himself of some great thought that 
 had been pent up within him, with a kind of solemn awe that 
 all who have been intimate with him must recall. 
 
 One such occasion I specially remember. We were walk- 
 ing on the Links at St. Andrews, and our conversation was upon 
 deep things. He became more and more possessed by his 
 subject, it worked within his soul, and the burden of it was 
 upon him, until at length with that swift and sudden pause 
 in his step, so characteristic of him at such moments, he 
 came to an abrupt climax, with one of those instantaneous 
 utterances of deep solemnity. His spirit was unburdened, 
 and his voice was still. And it was all natural, unconscious, 
 inevitable. It came from the fire that was always smoul- 
 dering within him. 
 
 He was fond of saying that his Scotch descent and his 
 'early training had given him a bent towards metaphysics. 
 And this was quite true. It was a part of his very 
 nature to dwell constantly and habitually upon the Ideal. 
 But united with this tendency there was within him an 
 equally deep-seated tendency to look at all things from the 
 practical and concrete side. All his friends must remember 
 how often, during a conversation upon the deepest questions, 
 he would say, ' Give me an instance/ And to the test of 
 ' an instance ' he would bring everything. Nor would he 
 hesitate to bring forward instances from his own life, even in 
 cases where many men would have shrunk from putting the 
 matter to a personal test. I well remember his bringing 
 forward such an instance, to prove the extreme difficulty of 
 practically shaping one's life according to the ideal standard. 
 
 ran 
 
xni PRINCIPALSHIP OF THE UNITED COLLEGE 281 
 
 It may be thought that my particular relation towards 
 him gave me special facilities for hearing his views upon 
 educational questions, and we certainly frequently discussed 
 them. I believe I am right in stating that his general views 
 both as to subjects and methods of study were essentially 
 conservative. 
 
 Two points stand out with special prominence in my 
 recollection, upon which he felt very strongly. First, in 
 the education of boys he was for ever insisting upon the 
 necessity for thoroughness, and used to detail to me the 
 minuteness of his own method whenever he taught his ' 
 son. Secondly, regarding English University education, he 
 set his face strenuously against the bringing of everything to 
 the test of the class, and used to say, with much fondness of 
 reminiscence, that in his days at Oxford character was what J 
 a man was judged by, and that they were not then in the ' 
 habit of enquiring what class he would take. 
 
 He was in all matters, great and small, penetrated with 
 the_sp-nsp. nf fluty, and with the determination to let nothing 
 interfere with the performance of it. Once let him be 
 thoroughly convinced that his duty lay here or there, and 
 no amount of opposition from others, or inconvenience to 
 himself, could prevent him from holding to his resolve with 
 the utmost tenacity. All his friends could give examples of 
 this. I will permit myself to record only one, as possessing 
 some particularly pleasant features. 
 
 When Carlyle came to Edinburgh in 1866, to deliver 
 his Eectorial Address, Principal Shairp was asked to meet 
 him at a small dinner hastily got up at the house of a friend. 
 But he had a previous engagement to what he said was, he 
 knew, likely to be a very prosaic dinner, and he was eager 
 to meet Carlyle. He knew, however, that there would be 
 disappointment among his friends whom he had promised to 
 dine with, if he asked to be excused ; and so, with much 
 disappointment, he held cheerfully to his engagement. 
 ' And,' he said, ' I heard that Carlyle was in a specially de- 
 lightful mood that evening, overflowing with pleasant and 
 mellow conversation.' 
 
282 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 For many of us the name of Principal Shairp stands in 
 constant association with that of Wordsworth ; and that 
 this is so, is due, I think, not only to the fact that he did 
 perhaps more than any one to introduce Wordsworth to 
 many readers and to interpret him to them, but, along with 
 this, to the fact that there was an undoubted similarity 
 of nature and character between them, which amounted to 
 , v a kind of innate and primal sympathy. In interpreting 
 Wordsworth, he was often interpreting himself. And per- 
 haps this may have given him that sensitiveness, which he 
 
 certainly possessed, to Wordsworth's defects. But all that 
 was greatest and truest in Wordsworth he embraced as a 
 kind of natural good, and ifc was a very part of him it was 
 himself. This could be abundantly illustrated by a refer- 
 ence to much that is most characteristic of Wordsworth's 
 utterances on the deep things of life. I will take a some- 
 what different example. 
 
 Wordsworth's views, so consistently enforced in practice, 
 on the subject of literary styley are well known. To Prin- 
 cipal Shairp a style that seemed artificial or 'redundant was 
 sitively painful. I remember well his talking to me about 
 small biography of Wordsworth that had lately appeared, 
 striking, indeed, and meritorious from many points of 
 view. But it seemed to Principal Shairp somewhat copious 
 in style. And this he could not get over. It seemed to 
 him a sort of indignity to Wordsworth that his life should 
 be written in any style that was not very simple and almost 
 severe. And he expressed himself about this with something 
 like a really personal feeling. He was personally almost 
 pained about it. 
 
 v> This similarity between Wordsworth and his interpreter 
 extended, as I have often thought, to another feature of a 
 very different kind. There was about Principal Shairp an 
 inherent love of plainness, extending even to his dress. 
 He did not move easily in the ordinary everyday get-up of 
 a professional man. He always preferred a tweed suit to a 
 black coat. I met him one morning at one of the great 
 public breakfasts, given by the Moderator of the Church 
 
xni PRINCIPALSHIP OF THE UNITED COLLEGE 283 
 
 Assembly in Edinburgh, who that year was his colleague 
 at St. Andrews, Principal Tulloch. After breakfast we 
 walked out together. The first thing he did was tojjo 
 straight to his tailor's and divest himself of his society 
 black coat, and put on his ordinary tweed suit. Then he 
 was comfortable. All this was thoroughly characteristic of 
 him. The clothes were part of the man. He was studiously 
 careful to conform to all reasonable social usages, whether of 
 dress or other things ; but for himself, in all things, of all 
 kinds, and under all conditions, Jie preferred homespun to 
 broadcloth. 
 
 I do not think I ever saw him more overflowingly happy 
 than on the occasion when Dean Stanley delivered his in- 
 augural address, as Eector of the St. Andrews University. 
 And perhaps both men were seen at their best, as we 
 walked round inspecting the old ruins and buildings of 
 that most deeply interesting place, so rich in those ancient 
 historical associations in which each of them loved to move. 
 
 I saw Principal Shairp for the last time, as he passed 
 through Edinburgh on his way to Oxford to deliver one of 
 his lectures as Professor of Poetry. He was to lecture upon 
 Virgil, and it was upon Virgil mainly that we talked. It is 
 fitting perhaps that it should have been so. For with so 
 much superficial and real difference between the two, there 
 was a yet greater and deeper likeness. Upon none has lain 
 more constantly a sense of ' the burthen of the mystery ' 
 of what is here, and what is beyond. And each, according 
 to his capacity, has looked into the depths, and has helped 
 us to look. Of Virgil's strain of sad and ironical pessimism, 
 I think Principal Shairp had little. But with that subtle wist- 
 fulness, that penetrates Virgil, to lift the veil ripce idterioris 
 amore with this those who know the writings of Principal 
 Shairp, and knew the man, know that he too, as Virgil, was 
 penetrated to his very soul. Earely, I believe, absent from 
 him was the thought, expressed over and over again in one 
 form or another in his own writings and words the thought 
 expressed in these words of his ' there remains more 
 behind.' " 
 
284 JOJtt^frtff'BEL-L JSOOTRP ^' CHAP. 
 
 ii 
 
 t 
 
 In the year in which he was appointed Principal, Shairp 
 gave a course of lectures to the students of St. Andrews 
 on the subject of " Culture and Religion." These were 
 afterwards published in 1870. The remarks of Cardinal 
 Newman and of Dr. John Brown upon them are much 
 more important than any critical estimate ; but, before 
 quoting them, one point may be noted. Though the Greek 
 ideal is happily described and dealt with in these lectures, 
 they are mainly devoted to the notions of culture that 
 govern the modern scientific mind on the one hand, and 
 are the outcome of the modern literary spirit on the other. 
 >An accurate understanding of the laws of Nature, and an 
 f implicit deference to them, may be said to be the scientific 
 \ theory of culture. The possession of a highly-educated 
 and perfectly-balanced nature, a nature developed all 
 round to the utmost possible extent, is the literary ideal. 
 Principal Shairp is much more satisfactory when he is 
 criticising the scientific^ than the literary view of culture. 
 The end of education, according to the former (of which he 
 takes Mr. Huxley as the representative), is to learn the 
 rules of the mighty game of life, and to conform to them 
 with unerring accuracy, remembering that we play the 
 game with an unseen antagonist, who never makes a mis- 
 take, and who never overlooks one. It is a fine simile ; 
 but it will be seen at a glance that, in such a universe, the 
 only passive virtue will be that of submission, and the only 
 active ones possible will be those of worldly wisdom and a 
 selfish struggle for existence. And what of those who do 
 occasionally make mistakes in the playing of this mighty 
 game ? Must they inevitably go to the wall ? and sink 
 inevitably out of view ? So far as these laws of Nature 
 are concerned, that is their fate. They cannot receive any 
 aid from a source higher than themselves. Principal Shairp 
 points out, with force and clearness, that the scientific study 
 of the universe cannot reveal to us a supernatural Deity ; 
 and therefore that, by this pathway at least, we can never 
 reach the realm of the spiritual. But he condemns the 
 literary theory of culture (of which he takes Mr. Matthew 
 
xin PRINCIPALSHIP OF THE UNITED COLLEGE 285 
 
 Arnold as the representative), no less than the scientific 
 one. He holds that if Eeligion is made a part of universal 
 Culture it is immediately degraded, if not surrendered, and 
 that if it be not allowed to be supreme over all culture it 
 will vanish away ; in other words, that the literary view of 
 culture makes that primary which should be secondary, and 
 relegates to a subordinate position that which ought to be 
 supreme. 
 
 His contention here is, however, open to some counter 
 criticism. Eeligion may be looked at either as the dis- 
 tinctive life of one part of our complex human nature, or as 
 the action of the whole of that nature turned in one special 
 direction ; either as one out of many tendencies equally valid 
 and necessary to the life of the whole, or as a supreme and 
 supernatural influence, emanating from the Fountainhead of 
 existence, and intended to pervade human nature, in all its 
 parts, root and stem and branch together. It is a question 
 of definition ; and there is a way in which the view taken 
 by Mr. Arnold may be reconciled with that of his friend 
 and critic. Every one must feel, however, that this is an 
 eminently genuine and helpful book, whether they agree 
 with its conclusions or not; that it is clear and direct, as 
 are all the writings of its author, and that it stimulates 
 the higher nature from first to last. 
 
 Of these lectures on " Culture and Eeligion," Dr. John 
 Brown wrote : 
 
 [Postmark, 1 2th December 1870.] 
 
 " The first I read when driving and screaming through 
 the once Drumshoreland Moor, past the dear old steading and 
 chivalrous woods and house of Houstoun, standing stark and 
 strong in the pallid moonlight, as I journeyed to my dying 
 uncle at Crofthead. I have now finished them, and though 
 it is like the voice of him who saw the Land of the Blessed, 
 across the great gulf fixed, I cannot help thanking you for 
 these words, for their heavenly majesty, as of a strong, 
 
286 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 simple, humble, faithful soul, one who has more of the 
 mountain air, and stride, and clear vision, than of cultured 
 fields, and fat pastures, and oil-distilling productiveness and 
 payingness. . . ." 
 
 Cardinal Newman l wrote of the Lectures as follows : 
 
 " THE ORATORY, BIRMINGHAM, 
 " 18th December 1870. 
 
 " MY DEAR MR. PRINCIPAL I have been much gratified 
 in receiving your volume from you. It is not the first kind- 
 ness which you have done me, nor the first thanks I have 
 to pay you. Your volume is on a most interesting subject, 
 and I shall have pleasure in reading it. It is almost the 
 subject of the day. In cutting open the leaves I am 
 pleased to see that you urge the view of conscience, which 
 has ever seemed to me so important. Were I a wider reader, 
 I daresay I should not have found so much cause to be 
 anxious about it, or so much reason to insist upon it. I 
 have done so again and again in print, because, to my per- 
 plexity, I have not fallen in with those who have sympa- 
 thised with me in it. I mean, I have not found those who 
 considered it as much an act of reason to believe in God 
 as revealed in Conscience as to believe in Him as revealed 
 in physical nature. For myself (without denying the argu- 
 ment from final causes), my reason would not lead me to 
 Him from the phenomena of the external world. 
 
 It pleased me also to find that you agreed with me on 
 another point, at p. 87 ; and to read your quotation from 
 Mr. Davies. A striking passage to the same effect was 
 shown me lately in the Preface of Cardinal Wiseman to 
 the works of St. John of the Cross. 
 
 I am quite persuaded that in this way alone religious 
 men will ultimately arrive at unity of thought and worship. 
 Not that it will be attained in our day, but the first step is 
 
 1 In giving me permission to publish this and other letters, Cardinal New- 
 man has kindly added one or two sentences to the original. 
 
xin PRINCIPALSHIP OF THE UNITED COLLEGE 287 
 
 to lay the foundation, or rather to prepare the soil. It 
 would be a great thing if certain theses could be drawn 
 up, such as the two to which I have referred, which all 
 would be willing to subscribe, not to -speak here of the all- 
 important question of dogma. It is the way with men of 
 science to grant us a great deal, sense of beauty, moral 
 sentiment, greatness and height of principle, a great history, 
 abounding in romance and heroism, and so on, but not mere 
 logical reason. Spirituality is thought something distinct 
 in kind from rationality. To show that there is a true 
 philosophy of religion is the first step in the development 
 and reception on a large scale of Christian and Catholic 
 truth. Most sincerely yours, 
 
 JOHN H. NEWMAN. 
 
 P.S. On reading over your letter again I find I have 
 not thanked you half enough for the great encouragement 
 and consolation it gives me." 
 
 With none of the younger clergy of the Church of Scot- 
 land was Principal Shairp more intimate than with Mr. 
 Eobertson, the parish minister of Whittinghame. He had 
 been a student at St. Andrews when Shairp came as Pro- 
 fessor, and had acted as tutor to some young men who 
 boarded at Gillespie Terrace while preparing for Oxford, 
 and afterwards became a familiar friend. Mr. Eobertson 
 has sent me a long and valuable paper, containing frag- 
 ments of letters, and relating conversations on religious 
 subjects. It exhibits a side of Principal Shairp's character 
 which perhaps none of his friends knew so well. Mr. 
 Eobertson writes : 
 
 " I had the privilege of an intimacy of acquaintance 
 with him which grew with years. It became a habit that 
 I should pay a yearly visit to St. Andrews during the 
 session. . . . The feature of these visits, for which above all 
 others I cherish their memory, was my conversations with Mr. 
 Shairp at his house, and especially in long daily walks with 
 
288 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 him across the Links, through the grounds of Strath tyrum, and 
 through the old Castle and Cathedral precincts. These 
 conversations were always religious. His talk might take a 
 wide range, and I often delighted to draw from him reminis- 
 cences of his College friends at Glasgow and in Oxford, so 
 many of whom have since become famous ; but all his con- 
 versations were penetrated deeply with religious feeling, and 
 continually returned to thought and inquiry about Christian 
 truth and hope. I know not how better to indicate what 
 those days were to me than as the yearly realisation of 
 what has been called a spiritual ' retreat,' with, however, a 
 breadth and varied light in them like the ample, airy, and 
 historic spaces in which they were spent. 
 
 I should not feel that I was giving any fit impression of 
 Principal Shairp if I merely set down, so far as I know them, 
 the articles of his creed. A man so catholic that he gave 
 unstinted reverence to men so differing in creed as Newman, 
 Arnold, M'Leod Campbell, and Thomas Erskine, whose 
 culture of spirit as well as of mind was the result of the 
 finest Scottish along with the finest English nurture and 
 opportunities such a man is not known by having a few 
 of his opinions set down. What I felt so rare and elevat- 
 ing in him was the tone and emotion of his spirit. It is 
 this which I would wish in these lines chiefly to recover. 
 And when I begin by asking myself what most constantly and 
 deeply characterised his spirit, I find I must name these two 
 things together, high Christian aspiration and profound 
 sense of sin. He had that deep sense of sin which belongs to 
 all characters of high devoutness. It showed itself in the 
 tender reverence that penetrated all his conversation on re- 
 ligious subjects. It showed itself in his tones of voice and 
 aspect even, and now and then it was uttered in words of 
 deeply humble self-estimate. It gave to his piety a certain 
 subduedness, even with its enthusiasm, that reminded one less 
 of the joyousness that is distinctively Protestant than of the 
 graver devotion which has been called Catholic. And when 
 he himself writes of ' that refinement of feeling and that 
 deep and sober piety which seems to have descended to us 
 
xni PRINCIPALSHIP OF THE UNITED COLLEGE 289 
 
 from the Catholic ages/ he is describing one of his own affini- 
 ties. His life had been from the beginning an unusually 
 pure one, and there had been no crisis in it. He was accord- 
 ingly not burdened by any special recollections from past years. 
 But he was so ideal in thought and aim, and so sensitive to 
 saintly memories, that his own spiritual shortcoming was 
 much in his thoughts. He longed with great desire to be 
 a profitable servant and do good in his generation, and no 
 good seemed to him comparable in value to spiritual good. 
 
 He would have marred relentlessly the art of anything 
 he ever wrote, prose or poetry, if otherwise there would 
 have been the least hazard of its Christian influence. The 
 question whether he had so handled his subject as to sub- 
 serve the highest ends was never long out of his mind. He 
 had a keen sensitiveness of conscience about what he under- 
 took to write. 
 
 Another main characteristic of Principal Shairp was his 
 belief in light and help from the unseen world. 1 This was 
 not merely a belief which he accepted and defended. What 
 was unusual was the degree to which it possessed him, and 
 controlled all his thoughts and conversations about religion. 
 Often I have noticed in going out for a walk, hardly had 
 he gone a few steps when he seemed, even in bodily attitude, 
 to place himself reverently under the unseen powers. To 
 an idealist such as he, familiar with the feeling that visible 
 things are but shadows, and spirit the only reality, the un- 
 seen was solemnly near, and his conversation went on as if 
 partly in commerce with it. ... He believed that the universe 
 cannot be construed by mere intellect, that this can carry 
 us but little way in divine things, that these are to be ap- 
 prehended by the whole man, more by the conscience and 
 affections than by the intellect. . . . He seemed always to 
 distrust argument, and to wait for truth to be felt in the 
 spiritual instincts quickened from the great source of truth, 
 and to be yielding up his own natural reason, conscious of 
 its weakness, with the prayer, ' send out Thy light and 
 Thy truth : let them lead me ! ' 
 
 1 Compare his address on Religion, delivered at Aberfeldy, pp. 308, 309. 
 
 U 
 
290 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 In regard to help from the eternal world, he looked for 
 it through many channels. His hope was not in putting 
 forth the strength in us, but in receiving impulse from above. 
 I remember speaking once of truth as the invariable instru- 
 ment of the Spirit of God. He interponed emphatically to 
 say there might be, there were, unconscious influences of the 
 Spirit. All Nature and the ordinances of life he thought 
 of as an organ through which God reaches our souls, as 
 indeed in a manner sacramental. . . . His thoughts may 
 be judged from his writing as follows : 
 
 ' You said something in your last letter about inability 
 to apprehend the sacramental view. My thoughts on it are 
 not formulated, but I rather think that something of this 
 kind is part of the teaching of St. John's Gospel, and that 
 by refusing to take it in we miss much that is deepest in 
 that Gospel. Is it not a cardinal image of that Gospel that 
 He took upon Him our flesh, that we in and through His 
 flesh (flesh spiritualised by the Divine Spirit that dwelt 
 within it), might pass to His Spirit, and to God the Father 
 who is Spirit ? It often occurs to me that Presbyterianism 
 by denuding the truth of all its material side, by making 
 the whole of it into doctrine and into spirit, has never fully 
 realised the whole meaning of that truth " The Word was 
 made flesh." I am not satisfied with any Presbyterian or 
 purely Protestant view of these things which I have ever 
 met with.' 
 
 I have spoken of the deep expectant belief he had in 
 help from the unseen world. Yet in one of the most im- 
 pressive letters I ever had from him, a passage occurs in 
 which he seems to seek for this and not find it. ... 
 
 ' " Toiling in rowing for the wind is contrary," is the ex- 
 perience of so many, it is so much my own. With my 
 understanding I see clearly that there is no happiness but 
 to believe with the whole heart and mind that God's will 
 and way are good are the best for us and to acquiesce. 
 This is very easy to see, to acknowledge, but how to attain 
 to it I find not. To love the will of God (however it 
 crosses one's own will) better than anything else in the 
 
xin PRINCIPALSHIP OF THE UNITED COLLEGE 291 
 
 whole world, this is the only true peace ; one sees this. 
 But really to do it is a very different matter. Often one 
 feels inclined to say, I have rowed long enough against the 
 stream ; I will row no more the current may bear me 
 where it will. A little ease, a little rest before the grave, 
 this one often craves. It is not so much the struggle 
 against the winds without though this is often sore as 
 against the strong tides within. . . .' 
 
 Another thought constantly present to Principal Shairp 
 was the mysteriousness of our life, the fragmentary character 
 of our knowledge, and the consequent impossibility of com- 
 plete intellectual system in our beliefs. ... A passage in 
 Canon Mozley's sermon on the Atonement as well as 
 much more by that theologian Principal Shairp found 
 quite to his mind, and he quoted it with the emphasis he 
 was accustomed to give to favourite passages. 
 
 ' Have we not in our moral nature a great deal to do 
 with fragments ? What is mercy itself but a fragment 
 which we do not intellectually understand, and which we 
 cannot harmonise and bring into consistency with justice ? 
 . . . Justice is a fragment, mercy is a fragment, mediation 
 is a fragment, all three; what indeed are they but great 
 vistas and openings into an invisible world in which is the 
 point of view that brings them all together ? ' 
 
 I recollect his pointing out two verses of Keble's hymn 
 for Monday before Easter (the fourth and fifth), and telling 
 me of a saying of Mr. Erskine that they were ' worth more 
 than all the Calvinistic theology.' . . . 
 
 I do not suppose that Principal Shairp took this saying 
 of Mr. Erskine after the letter, but the preference of one 
 thought that stimulated reverent devotion over doctrinal 
 system was quite to his mind. He regretted that theology 
 in Scotland had been reduced so much to mere logical pro- 
 positions. 
 
 Ecce Homo he read with great interest and appre- 
 ciation. I may mention this expressly, because in his 
 published writings what has chiefly appeared has been, I 
 think, criticism or objection. But I well recollect calling 
 
292 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 on him when it first came out, and finding him much stirred 
 by it. He began at once to give me an idea of its scope 
 and character. Oddly enough, while he was in the act of 
 doing this, a letter was handed him, which after glancing at 
 he read aloud. It was a letter from the publishers asking 
 if he had written the book. The MS. had come to the 
 Messrs. Macmillan through a third person ; they themselves 
 were as puzzled as others to know who could be the author, 
 and they had come at length to guess that Mr. Shairp 
 might be the man. ' No/ he said to me. ' I have not 
 written it ; it is not in me to write it.' 
 
 He had a ready interest in all practical Christian work, 
 at home and abroad, but shrank from ecclesiasticism, and 
 belonged himself to the Church Universal. In spite of his 
 sacramental leanings, he had no place in his mind for the 
 doctrine of apostolical succession, and once gave the follow- 
 ing emphatic utterance publicly on the subject : 
 
 'Scottish Presbytery has a witness to bear in Christen- 
 dom and a work to do at home, and the witness it has to bear 
 is against all sacerdotalism and priestly notions. If there 
 is one thing for which more than another I, in common 
 with many others, value Presbytery, it is for the protest 
 which its very nature contains against sacerdotalism. With 
 my whole heart I believe with Dr. Arnold that the separat- 
 ing of the clergy from the people as a separate caste, en- 
 dowed with some mysterious and mystical functions, was 
 the first and most fatal apostasy a thing which more than 
 anything else has paralysed the power of Christianity in 
 the world. Presbyterianism rightly understood is a protest 
 against this sacerdotal notion not merely a negative protest, 
 for negatives have no power ; but it is and ought to be a 
 positive protest, by asserting that the only priesthood on 
 earth is the priesthood of every true believer, a priesthood 
 in which the humblest layman shares equally with the 
 highest clergyman. The truth it has to witness to is that 
 every true believer who is united by faith to the one 
 heavenly High Priest is the only priest on earth, that 
 ministers are not priests of the congregation, but merely 
 
xiii PRINCIPALSHIP OF THE UNITED COLLEGE 293 
 
 office-bearers and instructors in it, and that they derive 
 their functions from God in no other sense than the humblest 
 layman derives his functions. . . .' 
 
 In Scotland, however, he seemed to miss the nobility of 
 form and embodiment which Christianity had attained to in 
 England. Presbyterian worship whenever it had not the beauty 
 of fresh spontaneousness (to which he always responded in 
 the humblest meeting), and the mundane tone of Presbyteries, 
 exaggerated as it is by the selections given in newspaper 
 reports, these repelled him, as indeed all denomination- 
 alism did. ' I look forward/ he wrote, ' to a time not far 
 off when all the present organisations will be broken up. 
 The whole apparatus of Presbyteries, Synods, and Assemblies 
 rather repels me. Excuse my saying it.' The helpful 
 sense he felt in the Church of England service of a larger 
 catholicity and of the communion of saints is expressed in 
 the following extract from a letter : 
 
 ' To - day being Good Friday, I ask myself whether we 
 have not cut ourselves off from an enormous fountain of 
 spiritual life, by having turned our back on this day as a 
 historical commemoration. How much of the spiritual 
 virtue that lies in the crucifixion may we not have lost by 
 giving up the historical remembrance of it ? Then, too, we 
 cut ourselves off from the sympathy of all the rest of 
 Christendom by neglecting it, and this sympathy I hold and 
 feel to be a very real support. The services of the English 
 Church, from last Sunday to next, I have always felt to be 
 of inestimable value, quite the most precious inheritance 
 the Church of England has retained. Yet I don't like any 
 mere imitations of the Church of England, especially as 
 fashion enters so largely into this. And fashion is not 
 religion. ... I do long to find in myself, and see in others' 
 in our land, a quickening and a broadening of spiritual 
 energy. Mere revivals are not enough. We need a deeper, 
 firmer, more habitual grasp of unseen realities, a theology 
 that shall pervade our whole being, intellect, heart, will, and 
 spirit.' 
 
 In writing of Principal Shairp one cannot omit the tinge 
 
294 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 of sadness that belonged to his prevailing sense of the 
 mystery of life. He never gave in to melancholy; but 
 there was a strain of it in him which had much to do with 
 the sympathetic depth of feeling which was so great a charm 
 of his character. He had naturally keen capacity for en- 
 joyment. His early life abounded with this, and his Oxford 
 time and years of Border excursion must have had in 
 them an extraordinary spirit and fulness of enthusiasm. 
 But this temperament has also deep sensitiveness to the 
 sadness of life. He wrote once : ' As time goes on one 
 does feel ever more deeply how sad a place earth is 
 how deeply inwrought into the very texture of life sorrow 
 is. This is the case apart from all religion, the actual 
 experience of life to all who have hearts to feel it whether 
 they are religious or not. And it seems a great verification 
 of the reality and divinity of the Christian faith that it re- 
 cognises this fact, takes account of it, and without seeking 
 to lessen it, meets it with truths which fit into it, and ele- 
 vate the sorrow into peace and the promise of ultimate joy 
 through sorrow.' . . . 
 
 One naturally keeps to a grave and pensive strain in 
 writing of Principal Shairp. Yet it would be an error if 
 this led to a conception of him as too sad for humour. He 
 was no mere dreamer. His eyes were perfectly open to 
 common life. He saw the ridiculous side of character, and 
 could exchange talk with men he met on sport or any mis- 
 cellaneous topic; but this was all in the outer court of his 
 mind, and his humour did not bubble and swell continually, 
 but gleamed or ' glinted ' across the pensive landscape of 
 his thought. 
 
 The conservatism of his political leanings, his tenderness 
 to the Stuarts, and his honour for the Great Montrose, are 
 known to his readers. In politics, however, he seemed to 
 me to speak less guardedly, and often somewhat beyond the 
 actual balance of his conviction. He did so, I felt, in im- 
 patience with the conceit of democracy, its ignorant depre- 
 ciation of greatness in the past of which it does not know, 
 its susceptibility to flatteries, and its frequent hostility to 
 
xiii PRINCIPALSHIP OF THE UNITED COLLEGE 295 
 
 the finer and more cultured side of life. . . . Principal Shairp's 
 interest in humble lives of true worth and dignity, his fellow- 
 ship with them and sense of what was to be learned from them, 
 were such as belonged to one who was at once a Scotsman 
 and a scholar of Wordsworth. But if his handling of 
 politics seemed sometimes an impatient reaction from ex- 
 tremes of the hour, to his conversation on religion, on the 
 other hand, his whole being was summoned, and he placed 
 himself in an attitude of reverent self-doubting and ready 
 subjection to any one who seemed to be at all taught of 
 God. I have heard him read in his own family circle, 
 where he was most entirely himself, the sermons of a 
 student of his own, who died early in life (Mr. Forrester of 
 Port Elizabeth), and the respect with which he sat at the 
 feet of his former scholar, and his earnest recognition of a 
 true authority in that scholar's words, seemed to me beauti- 
 ful then, and are still more pleasing now in retrospect. 
 
 Few men I have known had a more habitual sense of 
 the rapid passing of life. Years ago his links of friendship 
 to so many eminent contemporaries had entailed on him the 
 duty of contributing, in the case of one after another, remi- 
 niscences to their published Lives. He felt himself, he said to 
 me once, becoming a literary undertaker -he had assisted at 
 so many burials. This helped to call up again and again the 
 thought expressed in lines of his favourite Wordsworth 
 
 And I, whose lids from infant slumber 
 Were earlier raised, remain to hear 
 A timid voice that asks in whispers, 
 Who next shall drop and disappear ? 
 
 . . . Still it came to me with a great sense of unexpected loss, 
 my life deprived of a great stay and of a trusted land-' 
 mark, when I read in a newspaper of the death of Prin- 
 cipal Shairp. My reverence for him, and my sense of 
 indebtedness for influences of the very highest kind which 
 one can receive in life, increase with distance. . . . One 
 feeling especially is deepened by this effort of remembrance ; 
 one word expresses the most characteristic influence of con- 
 
296 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 tact with him aspiration. Whatever else he did, even in 
 short converse with those who knew him, he plucked them 
 aside from the vulgar commonplaces of life. The ' high 
 humility ' of his spirit stirred in them the feeling 
 
 Our only greatness is that we aspire." 
 
 Shortly after he became Principal, Shairp took up his 
 summer residence in Strathtay, near Aberfeldy, and during 
 the remainder of his life that district became very inti- 
 mately associated with him, and he with it. 
 
 What he did for his College, his University, and his 
 Country, is to be measured not only by the record of attend- 
 ances at meetings of the Senatus Academicus, and its 
 numerous committees, or at meetings of his own College, 
 by his work in connection with the business part of a 
 Principal's duties, his annual addresses to the students, 
 his occasional lectures, and his literary work. It is to be 
 estimated also by elements not so easily seen, or weighed 
 in the balances of educational utility, by the influence he 
 wielded in Society, as representing his College and Univer- 
 sity whether in the homes of the poor, or amongst the 
 schools and schoolmasters of his native land, or in private 
 meetings of literary men, or in the professional gatherings of 
 Scotsmen from other University seats, or in his frequent inter- 
 course (where he was always a welcome guest) with the 
 larger academic circles of the south. Whether at St. 
 Andrews, Dundee, or Aberfeldy, in Edinburgh, Oxford, or 
 London, at his ancestral home, or at Linlathen, or Meg- 
 ginch, or Methven, he wielded an influence, which helped 
 his University, and spoke for it, wherever he went. This 
 was due not so much to his scholarship, his intellectual 
 resources, or the charm of his conversation, but to that 
 undefmable atmosphere which he carried with him which 
 moved on as he moved amongst men whether of high 
 or low degree. In judging of the work which the Principal 
 of a Scottish University does, or is expected to do, people 
 sometimes forget to take this latter element into account. 
 
xiii PRINCIPALSHIP OF THE UNITED COLLEGE 297 
 
 No direct teaching duties are associated with the office, 
 but the indirect duties, the work of superintendence and 
 organisation, which habitually call for tact, prescience, and 
 consideration for others, these are quite as important 
 qualifications in the head of a University as the gifts of 
 scholarship and oratory. 
 
 In these respects Principal Shairp's indirect influence 
 was quite as great, and as fruitful of good, as his direct 
 administrative work. The help he rendered to many a 
 poor student, his social influence in St. Andrews, and in 
 Scotland generally, his loyal attachment to the Institution 
 of which he was the head, and his firm faith in its future 
 when others were doubtful or faint-hearted the prestige 
 which his literary work carried with it wherever he went, 
 above all the kindling touch of his personality, these things 
 must be taken together, in any just estimate of him, as 
 Principal of the United College. 
 
 His sympathies were not shut up, however, within the 
 academic groove. There was no movement for the edu- 
 cational benefit of his native land whether it concerned 
 her Primary, or Secondary Schools, or her Universities in 
 which his interest was not keen, and his advice suggestive. 
 He became President of the Educational Institute of Scot- 
 land, and in that capacity delivered a most stimulating 
 address, from which an extract will be given later on. He 
 took a special interest in the movement for the establish- 
 ment of a great secondary school in Scotland, on the plan of 
 the English public schools Fettes College not as initiat- 
 ing a rival movement to the old High Schools, or Burgh and 
 Grammar Schools of Scotland, but as providing a much- 
 needed supplement to them. He often spoke of the edu- 
 cational work that was done in that school all round, the' 
 training of mind and character together, as being of rarely 
 admirable quality ; and, during the time of his residence in 
 the Eiviera in the last winter of his life, when a memorial 
 was prepared for Parliament bearing on the work of Fettes 
 College, no one wrote more kindly or enthusiastically in 
 reference to it. 
 
298 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 All the Parliamentary Bills for the improvement of the 
 Scottish Universities had his most careful attention and 
 helpful criticism; and the expression of his views had an 
 appreciable weight in the discussions that took place. 
 Those who went with him in deputations to the Home 
 Office, or to the Treasury, know how much importance was 
 attached to his opinion on academic questions. 
 
 Another point of importance in connection with his 
 official life in St. Andrews has reference to his member- 
 ship in the University Court, to which he was elected as 
 delegate from the Senatus Academicus in 1876. I have 
 often heard Principal Tulloch, who, as Vice- Chancellor, 
 was, in the absence of the Eector, Chairman of the Court, 
 say, that though he might differ from Principal Shairp 
 in his views of public policy at times, he was invariably 
 the most conscientious in the discharge of his duties as a 
 member of the Court ; and I remember when such matters 
 as the election of a Professor, or of a University Examiner 
 had to be considered so far as he conferred with his 
 colleagues in the Senatus how minutely careful he was in 
 his collection of evidence, and invariably candid in his 
 judicial estimates. 
 
 Shairp's correspondence with his early college friend, 
 William Clerk of Kilmalie, was continuous, and very varied. 
 We find him at one time sending a kindly remembrance, in 
 the form of a post - office order, to some old Highland 
 shepherd, whom he had known in Glen Desseray, or with 
 whom he had wandered by the head of Loch Hourn; at 
 another time, introducing a Eoman Catholic priest to be 
 befriended in the hospitable Highland manse, and guided 
 on his travels ; now asking for Gaelic songs, and old tra- 
 ditions of the district ; again inquiring as to the precise 
 meaning of local Celtic terms. He revised his friend's 
 Preface to his Translation of Ossian, while that friend 
 revised his notes to the Lectures on Gaelic Poetry he had 
 delivered at Oxford. It may surprise some to find that 
 Principal Shairp was able to express a critical as well as a 
 literary judgment, upon these translations of Ossian, to so 
 
xui PRINCIPALSHIP OF THE UNITED COLLEGE 299 
 
 competent a Gaelic scholar as Dr. Clerk ; but what his 
 Celtic scholarship may have lacked in linguistic range, it 
 gained in intuitive accuracy. There is a great deal in his 
 letters to Kilmalie Manse, about the Ossian controversy and 
 M'Pherson. He says in one of them that he felt "the 
 Gaelic fever " coming on him whenever he saw the heather 
 in bloom, or climbed to such a height as Tarragon, and saw 
 the great circle of the hills to north and west. He asks 
 his friend all about the clearances in the glens, and the 
 emigrations ; where the people went to ? and whether it 
 was a voluntary exile ? There is also much in these letters 
 to justify what Mr. Erskine and John Brown called him, 
 " a vernacular man." 
 
 The modest way in which he looked on his Gaelic 
 studies, is seen in the following undated letter to Clerk. 
 
 After asking for some Gaelic songs, with words and 
 music, and mentioning his efforts at translating Gaelic, he 
 says, " How I wish I had begun Gaelic when we were at 
 Glasgow. I might have made something of it. But life 
 is too short now to do more than play at it. However, I'll 
 stick to it as a recreation, after the necessary works are done, 
 and do you so too. Use some of your leisure in writing 
 into large common-place books all the oldest most charac- 
 teristic legends, antiquities, songs, poems, you can get your 
 hands on. Use plentifully the quarry that lies in old Kate 
 Keith's memory, and then you may be sure that either in 
 your own hands, or those of your children, these things will 
 come into good service. All Gaelic lore is now on the rise, and 
 will rise, perhaps just because the old life is receding so fast." 
 
 The two following letters are also imperfectly dated, 
 but they belong to this period : 
 
 " UNITED COLLEGE, 20th January. 
 
 " MY DEAR CLERK . . . The more I study your Preface, 
 the more I perceive how honest and moderate it is. It 
 disproves Johnson's two strong assertions : (1) that there 
 was no Ossianic poetry in MSS. ; (2) that oral tradition 
 could not preserve such poetry, and that none could repeat 
 
300 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 any amount of what M'Pherson had pretended to translate. 
 Another point also I am arrived at that M'Pherson took his 
 MSS. and what he had written down for oral recitation, 
 and out of these two sources, pieced and patched together 
 the Gaelic as it now stands. This he did that winter in 
 Badenoch, after his return from his collecting tour, and did 
 it with the help of Strathmachie, Gallie (and Morrison 
 perhaps). Whether they added any of their own to piece 
 the fragments together, and if so, how much, this there 
 seems to be no materials to show. . . . Yours most sin- 
 cerely, J. C. SHAIRP." 
 
 " UNITED COLLEGE, ST. ANDREWS, 
 " llth February, 
 
 " MY DEAR CLERK . . . The conclusion I have come to 
 as the most probable one is, that whatever distrust belongs 
 to M'Pherson belongs to Strathmachie and Co. equally, 
 that if he had a secret they shared it with him, and that 
 therefore if blame attaches to M'Pherson they share this too. 
 
 And the opinion I regard as most probably the true one 
 is that M'Pherson, along with Strathmachie, Gallie, Morri- 
 son, etc., made up the Gaelic text, as we now have it, that 
 winter in Badenoch that the materials out of which they 
 patched it were the old MSS., the fragments taken down 
 from recitation which they had brought back with them 
 from their tour. Whether in piecing these together M'Pherson 
 put in any connecting lines of his own, and if any, how 
 many, this, I believe, can only be ascertained, if as- 
 certainable, by a very careful and critical examination of 
 the Gaelic text by the most accomplished Gaelic critics. 
 1 am inclined myself not to think that M'Pherson added much 
 of his own if he added any. 
 
 The discussion of the evidence in bringing out this view 
 will occupy almost all my paper. . . . Ever yours, 
 
 J. C. SHAIRP." 
 
 In June 1871 he contributed an article on Ossian to 
 
xin PRINCIPALSHIP OF THE UNITED COLLEGE 301 
 
 Macmillans Magazine, which was a review of Dr. Clerk's 
 two volumes on the poems. 
 
 To the same friend he writes (20th January 1871): 
 "You ask whether I am still teaching the Latin classes. 
 I am, and what between this and my College duties, it is 
 only half-hours every second day I can find for ' Ossian.' 
 You must not expect anything good from this broken kind 
 of work. If I ever do anything worth while, it is when I 
 have had time to brood and muse till the fire kindles. 
 During session time this is impossible." 
 
 Again, in February of same year : " A Professor's work 
 and a Principal's correspondence and business are, I assure 
 you, a heavy load." 
 
 A year later (2d January 1872) he says: "I am now 
 rid of my Professorship ; and though it curtails me of 
 some incomings, it also cuts off great and vexing annoy- 
 ances. 
 
 This year I am to try to lecture on the early Scottish 
 history Celtic Scotland, in fact, before Malcolm Canmore's 
 time. These old Pictish times are intensely interesting, 
 though very hard to make clear. Yet Skene, Eobertson, 
 and Stuart's Book of Deer have thrown a good deal of frag- 
 mentary light on them." 
 
 During the winter of 1872 he was gladdened by a visit 
 in St. Andrews from Norman Macleod, who came to address 
 the students of the University on the subject of Missions 
 in the month of February. It was one of Macleod's last 
 addresses, and Shairp wrote of " his worn and flaccid look ; 
 he seemed so oppressed and nervous when he was going to 
 address only a few hundred people in our small University 
 chapel." Macleod wrote to his friend in March 1872 
 
 "MY DEAREST JOHN More dear than ever as friend 
 after friend departs, and as we feel ourselves every year like 
 the remains of an old Guard whose comrades have almost 
 all left us all who could speak, not of the old wars, but of 
 the old times of joy and hope, of struggle and of victory." 
 
302 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 Again he wrote : " I feel as if the winding-up were 
 coming soon." 
 
 When his friend died, Principal Shairp was asked to 
 write his Life, but very wisely declined the task. His 
 contribution to the work, however, his ' study ' of his 
 friend's character, is, like all his studies, admirably real and 
 vivid. 
 
 Some time after Macleod's death he sent the following 
 unpublished lines to his widow, which may be compared 
 with his elegy on Clough : 
 
 1. 
 
 For one more day, 
 
 Thy name survives upon the lips of men, 
 The sport once more of every tongue and pen 
 
 Then let them say their say. 
 
 2. 
 
 And every one is free 
 
 To make their best or worst of thy dear name 
 Many will doubtless praise, and some will blame. 
 
 But what is that to thee ? 
 
 3. 
 
 Within the old kirkyard, 
 Beneath the sod where thou art lowly laid, 
 Wrapt in the kind folds of thy Highland plaid, 
 
 It wins not thy regard. 
 
 4. 
 
 A small thing 'tis in sooth 
 How men may judge thee, now thou hast to do 
 Only with judgment that is wholly true 
 
 With Him who is the Truth. 
 
 5. 
 
 Thou gavest to thy kind 
 The full outpouring of a noble heart, 
 And of their love did'st long some little part, 
 
 Some small return to find. 
 
 Some gave it, some withheld : 
 There is no more withholding there where thou 
 
xiii PRINCIPALSHIP OF THE UNITED COLLEGE 303 
 
 At the full-flowing river drinkest now 
 Of God's love freely welled. 
 
 7. 
 
 There now that thou hast met 
 Just men made perfect, and with them dost share 
 The larger vision, breathe the ' ampler air,' 
 
 Dost thou at all forget ? 
 
 8. 
 
 Surely thou dost not those 
 On earth so dear, but with love more intense 
 And wiser lov'st them, albeit dark and dense 
 
 The veil doth interpose. 
 
 In a letter written by Shairp in March 1 8 7 6, to Dr. Donald 
 Macleod, the biographer of his brother Norman, the follow- 
 ing occurs : " The last years saddened me a good deal, not 
 only from the impression that he was greatly overburdened 
 and depressed, but the impression that he felt all things to 
 be breaking up is so omnipresent as to be painful. You 
 hardly feel that he was seeing the relation in which the 
 Kock beneath his feet stood to the general break-up going 
 on around him." 
 
 It is a misfortune that all Shairp's letters to Dr. John 
 Brown have perished ; but the following are fragments of 
 Brown's letters to him, belonging to this year : 
 
 " 9th July 18*72. . . . Last night at 10.30 the heavens 
 were lucid and luminous, and a great wing as of an arch- 
 angel its feathers and great ' pens ' white and glistening 
 lay across the whole north-west, a mighty angel's wing. 
 Yours, J. B." 
 
 " 14th July 1873. It feels a long time since our minds 
 met. I have been in Skye since, and have seen things it is 
 impossible for a man to utter." 
 
 Of Sara Coleridge's Memoirs and Letters Brown wrote : 
 " I have just finished a most delightful book. It is wonderful 
 for understanding, for critical and imaginative faculty, and 
 
304 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 womanly tenderness, and now and then true fun. Her notes 
 on Wordsworth, and Tennyson, and Keats, and Talfourd are 
 quite worthy of her father. She was a great theologian. 
 Her thoughts are the spontaneity of true poetry, a true 
 warbling of native woodnotes wild, setting (artist-like) the 
 imagination agoing like a mill." 
 
 When Macleod and Erskiiie had both passed away, 
 Principal Shairp found increasing solace in the friendship 
 of John M'Leod Campbell of Eoseneath. In sending 
 him a copy of his Lectures on Culture and Religion lie 
 said : " There is no one to whom the book is more 
 due than yourself, for the suggestions I have derived 
 from your works. I tried to acknowledge them in the 
 book, but sometimes it comes over me that I ought to have 
 acknowledged my obligations to you more fully still. . . . 
 I often wish that occasions took me more into the West, 
 that I might have an opportunity of seeing and conversing 
 with you. I feel this all the more now since dear Mr. 
 Erskine has been withdrawn. You know how much I prize 
 your work on the Atonement, as the only one I have ever 
 met with, which enabled me really to think and see some 
 moral light through that mysterious fact and truth. Espe- 
 cially I feel the value of what you call the ' Eetrospective 
 aspect.' . . . Yet satisfactory as is your teaching on the 
 retrospective aspect, so far as it goes, I still feel that neither 
 it, nor any thought as yet uttered by man, has gone down 
 to the roots of the matter. . . . Till we fully understand 
 the whole mystery of evil, can we expect fully to under- 
 stand its antidote ?" 
 
 On receiving a copy of the Reminiscences and Reflections 
 of M'Leod Campbell, in 1873, Shairp wrote thus to his 
 friend's son, the Kev. Donald Campbell : " I shall read it 
 slowly, page by page, pausing over it ; for it is not and 
 nothing your father ever wrote is to be read otherwise 
 than with much meditation. It is impossible to say all 
 that the few pages I have read awaken within me : thoughts 
 of the hours of intercourse with him precious hours, but 
 
xin PRINCIPALSHIP OF THE UNITED COLLEGE 305 
 
 brief, and at wide intervals. Then thoughts of his dear 
 friend, and mine too. Mr. Erskine. Lastly, thoughts of 
 another very different from both, yet worthy of them both 
 dear Norman Macleod. What great gifts they were to their 
 generation, and to think that, having known them, we 
 are such poor beings as we are. If Norman's soul owed 
 allegiance to any other human soul, it was to your father. 
 . . . The last night I ever spent with him, in a railway 
 carriage travelling to London, in March last, Norman was 
 full of all your father had been to him." 
 
 Of his own contribution to the Memorials of his friend, 
 Shairp wrote to Mr. Donald Campbell : " It has now been 
 so often laid on me to record my memories of the departed 
 that I feel every new call to do so a heavier burden. It 
 would more please me to think of them in silence. But I 
 would like to put down the notes I have of one interview." 
 
 The following is an extract from his contribution to the 
 book : 
 
 "... From early days in our family the name of Mr. Campbell of 
 the Eow was familiar. At that time, the fourth decade of this century, 
 'The Row Heresy,' as it was then called, was everywhere spoken 
 against. But through some members of the Stirling of Kippendavie 
 family who used to visit in our immediate neighbourhood, and who 
 were devoted to your father and his teaching, sermons and addresses 
 by him and his friends found their way into our household. They 
 were read by some and produced their own impression ; and that was, 
 that however they might be discountenanced by the authorised teachers 
 of the day, they contained something more spiritual, and more appeal- 
 ing to the spirit, than was at all common at that time. One small 
 book that was especially valued was Fragments of Exposition, which 
 contained notes taken of discourses delivered by your father after he left 
 the Church of Scotland. I well remember about the years 1845 and 
 1846 at Oxford, after having heard and read a good many of Mr. 
 Newman's sermons, and being much impressed by them, turning to 
 this small book of your father's discourses. Though they came from 
 a different quarter of the doctrinal heavens, and had no magic in their 
 language, as Newman's have, yet they seemed as full of spirituality, 
 and that perhaps more simple and direct. They seemed equally re- 
 moved from the old orthodoxy of Scotland, and from the spiritual 
 teaching of the best Oxford men, confined as that was within a sacer- 
 dotal fence. Perhaps I do not rightly express it, but I remember very 
 well how soothingly many of his thoughts fell on me during those years. 
 
 X 
 
306 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 Again, when I used to visit Norman Macleod at Dalkeith during 
 the years from 1843 till 1850 he always talked much of your father, 
 and of the refreshment of spirit he found in converse with him. For 
 during those years Norman was very isolated and lonely in his church 
 relations. 
 
 After I came to St. Andrews, and began to visit the late Mr. 
 Erskine at Linlathen and in Edinburgh, he too spoke even more of 
 Mr. Campbell than Norman Macleod had done. Often he would re- 
 vert to the time of their first acquaintance, and tell me about their 
 experiences then. 
 
 But of two days' visit he paid me at St. Andrews in July 1868 
 I have a very distinct remembrance, though I took no notes of what 
 he then said. As we walked about during these two days he talked 
 of many things besides theology indeed he did not enlarge on this 
 subject unless when questioned, and this I did not then do. I re- 
 member his speaking of St. Columba with great interest, and quoting 
 a Gaelic verse said to be by him. I put it down at the time and 
 have it somewhere. What especially struck me of his conversation 
 at that time was the extent to which during recent years he seemed 
 to have opened his mind to subjects of general literature and philo- 
 sophy. In all his remarks on these there was a weight and originality 
 one seldom meets with, as of one who knew nothing of the common 
 and wearisome hearsays that pass current among the so-called educated, 
 but as if everything he uttered had passed through the strainers of 
 his own thought, and came thence pure and direct. Whatever he said 
 bore the mint-mark of his own veracity, and commended itself as 
 true true that is, not only as regarded him, but true in itself. All 
 his judgments of things and of men, while they betokened that subtle 
 and reflective analysis which belonged to him, had a scrupulous just- 
 ness and exactness. Penetrating inwardness there was, and watchful 
 conscientiousness of thought, but at the same time eminent sanity of 
 judgment. Above all, you felt that all his thoughts and feelings 
 breathed in an atmosphere of perfect charity." l 
 
 Shairp's Highland home in Strathtay was built in 1872, 
 and entered in the month of July. It was built on a feu 
 from Killiechassie, the property of his brother-in-law and his 
 wife, Mr. and Mrs. Edward Douglas. In April of that year 
 he wrote to Dr. Clerk, from Tighnault, Aberfeldy 
 
 "... I have just run up here for a day to see about 
 our new cottage. It occurs to me to settle now about its 
 
 1 Memorials of John M'Lcod Campbell, D.D., vol. ii. pp. 338-344. 
 
xiii PRINCIPALSHIP OF THE UNITED COLLEGE 307 
 
 name. It is a ' nook,' and it has a lovely view. Therefore 
 Cuil-aluinn has been thought of. Cuil is appropriate both 
 to the spot, and also the farm in which it lies is called Cuil. 
 If it is to be Cuil-aluinn, I wish you to write me out the 
 exact Gaelic spelling which must be retained. Cuil-asgadh 
 has been suggested. It is well sheltered. Again Beul-na- 
 bruaich is the original name of the field on which it is built." 
 Cuil-aluinn was the name finally chosen, "the bonny 
 nook," and from it the view westwards to the crags of 
 Weem, above Castle Menzies, is one of the finest in the 
 Strath. Here it was that for thirteen summers a resting- 
 place was found by Shairp, in a beautiful spot, within hear- 
 ing of the murmur of the Tay, and within sight of Ben 
 Lawers a Highland home where much fruitful work was 
 done, and honoured rest enjoyed. 
 
 In a letter to Mr. John Boyle, asking him to visit Aber- 
 feldy, he speaks of the changes which time had wrought in 
 the neighbourhood, and of the losses of near relations which 
 some households had experienced. " Still the old hills remain. 
 Schihallion and Ben Lawers are as fresh as ever, though we 
 and ours change and decay. If you come this way we must 
 try to get some breath of their eternal freshness." 
 
 He interested himself in all the life of the district, and 
 took his share in various bits of work for the benefit of the 
 people in the Strath. His sympathies were most catholic, 
 and he wrote thus to his friend Clerk of the Free Church 
 minister at Aberfeldy 
 
 " Yesterday I was at the Free Kirk. A man of your 
 name is minister there. He is a remarkable man, very 
 fervent and strong, and clear-seeing, very realistic, hitting ' 
 the nail of fact on the head in every sentence. He may be 
 in a state of tension, but there was no visible excitement 
 in his sermon, but calm, strong earnestness. . . ." 
 
 The following is part of an address which Principal 
 Shairp delivered both to a young men's society at Aberfeldy 
 and to the students of St. Andrews who came out to a 
 religious service on the Sunday evenings. It is greatly 
 
308 JOHN CAMPBELL SHA1RP CHAP. 
 
 contracted, but even a few extracts will illustrate one side 
 of his character, and will recall the addresses he used to 
 give on Sunday evenings in Rugby School. 
 
 " The religious life has two sides, which we may contem- 
 plate separately, but which in practice can never be divided. 
 One side is individual, personal, I may almost say secret, in- 
 volving the personal relation of each with God. The other is 
 active, social, outgoing, and involves all our relations with our 
 fellow-men, our influence on others, and the influence we 
 receive from them. 
 
 On each of them I would say a word, and on the im- 
 portance of trying to preserve something like an even balance 
 between them ; for, on preserving it, our spiritual health and 
 wellbeing depend. 
 
 1. As to a man's inward or individual life. . . . Pardon 
 and renewal are the two most essential needs of man. But 
 in order that these two things may be to us not words, but 
 realities, we need to know ourselves. It is not by merely 
 reading religious books that we come to know our need of 
 these things. We may admit as a matter of course that we 
 need to be made better. But it may be to us no more than 
 a truism, admitted readily, but without influence on our life. 
 If we are to know it for ourselves, and not at second hand, 
 we must go below the surface. . . . Can any one of us 
 honestly say that the first and deepest desire of his heart is 
 that ' God's kingdom may come, that his will may be done 
 in earth as it is in heaven,' that he would prefer this to any 
 personal or selfish object ? In looking back can we truly say 
 that there is any one thing we have ever done without an ad- 
 mixture of a self-interested motive ? If we try thus honestly 
 to examine our characters, and to scrutinise our motives, 
 we shall learn how true is our need of pardon and renewal. 
 . . . Just in proportion as we strive thus honestly to know 
 ourselves, we shall learn that there is in each of us a double 
 nature, ' a twofold moral personality,' what St. Paul calls ' a 
 law in the members warring against the law of the mind.' 
 . . . Further, let us try to learn that other truth, that there 
 
xiii PRINCIPALSHIP OF THE UNITED COLLEGE 309 
 
 is a strength not our own, out from us, above us, on which 
 we can cast ourselves, which can deliver us. 
 
 These two things pervade all Scripture as a deep under- 
 tone which runs through all its varied music ; and they 
 are not two separate distinct things, but parts of one great 
 process. These are two continually recurring needs, forgive- 
 ness and the influence of a power not our own to purify 
 the inner springs of character, so that we may act, not with 
 the spirit of a slave, but with that of a child. Just as we sur- 
 render ourselves, with a single mind to be guided, is our growth 
 in character, and we are brought into a purer atmosphere, 
 a diviner life. Doublemindedness is our great hindrance, 
 from which we need deliverance. It is a hard struggle ; a 
 fight it is, and must be. The struggle is to overcome the 
 selfish life ; and yet we attain to peace not by struggle, but 
 by receiving the gift, by entering into the divine life. Thus 
 all heavenly powers are on our side. 
 
 In all this there is nothing new. They are the most 
 obvious points in the personal, individual life. But by going 
 over them anew, we may stir up our hearts by way of re- 
 membrance. 
 
 2. But as soon as this inward life begins, the outward 
 manifestation of it should follow. It has often been brought 
 as a reproach against the religious life of Scotland that it is 
 too isolated, too individual; that each man's religion is shut up 
 within himself, double padlocked a padlock on the lips and 
 one on the heart besides. If this is so, it may arise partly 
 from the natural reserve of most Scotchmen about everything 
 that most deeply concerns them. But Christianity is above 
 all things an expansive and diffusive power. If we try to 
 bottle up our religion, and keep it to ourselves, it will surely ' 
 die. For the law of spiritual wealth and the law of material 
 wealth are directly opposite. The more openhanded a man 
 is with the wealth of this world, the less he has to himself ; 
 but with spiritual life, the more it communicates itself to 
 others, the more it is strengthened and enlarged." 
 
 In 1873 the household at Cuil-aluinn was saddened by 
 
310 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 a fatal accident to a near relative, Henry Douglas, at the 
 Moness Falls. Shairp wrote thus of it to Clerk at Kil- 
 malie : " We have had in our family circle here an awful 
 visitation. Our nephew and niece, Henry and Mary Douglas, 
 were by a falling rock swept down a great waterfall in this 
 neighbourhood. He perished. She escaped as by a miracle. 
 It has taken all the light out of our autumn, and has indeed 
 saddened all this Strath. The father, Henry Douglas, is in 
 Bombay. You know he is Bishop there." 
 
 In this same year 1873 in conjunction with Professor 
 Tait of the University of Edinburgh, and Mr. Adams Eeilly, 
 the geographer of Mont Blanc, Shairp wrote the Life and 
 edited the Letters of his predecessor in office, Principal 
 Forbes of St. Andrews. By far the larger and more im- 
 portant section fell to Principal Shairp. It was fitting that 
 it should be so ; and his part of the work his account of 
 Forbes's early life, of his professoriate, and especially of his 
 work in St. Andrews in directing the affairs of the United 
 College is admirably done. It is bright, genial, and ap- 
 preciative. He was quick to recognise the value of work done 
 in spheres where he had no special knowledge of detail. 
 
 A philosophic man of letters is usually more successful 
 in writing the life of a scientific specialist, than a student 
 of pure science is in dealing with the career of a poet or a 
 philosopher. This is simply because it is part of the voca- 
 tion of the former to appraise excellence in every sphere of 
 genuine human activity. In 1866 it fell to Principal Forbes 
 to write some sentences about Principal Shairp, then a 
 candidate for a chair in a sister University of Scotland. It 
 is interesting to compare the respective estimates by the two 
 men of each other's work and genius. In his Biography 
 of Forbes, Shairp describes his aim from the outset as an at- 
 tempt to indicate " what manner of man James Forbes was." 
 He says that " almost all men fall into one of two kinds. 
 In the one, the intellectual or professional interest is so para- 
 mount that it pervades the man's being to the very core. 
 Withdraw this, and little else is left. The domestic feel- 
 
xin PRINCIPALSHIP OF THE UNITED COLLEGE 311 
 
 ings occupy but a small niche apart, and do not really 
 colour and rule the life. In the other kind of man, affec- 
 tion is central and paramount ; the mental and scientific 
 habits, whatever they be, seem external powers or capacities, 
 clothed as it were upon the deeper affections, which are the 
 tower itself. To this latter kind Forbes belonged." 
 
 In the fifth chapter of the book he writes thus : " The 
 life of recent Scottish professors was then, as now, divided 
 into six months of unbroken work in College, and six months 
 of vacation. To strangers unacquainted with the ways of 
 Scotland and the habits of its students, so long a vacation 
 appears a strange anomaly. But there are reasons enough, 
 grounded on our social facts and habits, which have justified 
 it for generations, and which satisfied the late University 
 Commissioners when they carefully inquired into all the 
 bearings of this question. It must not be supposed that 
 these six months are either to student or professor times of 
 idleness. The former is often employed in some useful work 
 for self-support, as well as in carrying on his College studies. 
 The latter, when he has recruited himself after the toils of 
 the session, finds full employment in preparing new lectures or 
 recasting old ones for the approaching session. Besides this, 
 whatever Scottish professors have done for Science, Phi- 
 losophy, or Literature, has been the fruit of their summer 
 leisure. No man ever employed his summers more methodi- 
 cally and energetically than Professor Forbes. Indeed, it is 
 probable that the world has received fully as much ad- 
 vantage from what he achieved during his summers as 
 from his regular winter labours " (p. 1 7). 
 
 If this was true of Forbes, it was equally true of Shairp. 
 Again he says : " Nothing can be more uniform than a pro- 
 fessor's winter course so uniform, that to lookers-on from 
 without it may appear monotonous. But from this it is 
 saved, at least in the case of a vigorous and advancing 
 teacher, by the deeper insight and wider range, which he is 
 year by year obtaining in his own field of inquiry" (p. 112). 
 
 In his further estimate of the professorial life of Forbes, 
 he says : " Forbes never shrank from collisions, however 
 
312 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 painful, if he met them in the way of what he conceived to 
 be duty. But he was by nature no polemic. He did not love 
 the battle for its own sake ; indeed, it cost him more than 
 most men to enter into personal conflicts. Though he never 
 flinched from opposing men when he thought he ought to do 
 so, he felt very keenly the hard words and severe blows 
 which such encounters call forth. ... It was in the inter- 
 course of the classroom, and of private life with like-minded 
 students, that he found the field most congenial to him " 
 (p. 135). 
 
 Shairp's Memoir of Forbes gives the picture of a brave, 
 devout, adventurous man, neither afraid of obloquy on the 
 ground of narrowness, nor of the effect of any discovery in 
 the realm of fact. It is admirably written. 
 
 A literary question which interested him much during 
 the same year (1873), was the authorship of the Scottish 
 poem on " The Cuckoo " whether it was written by Michael 
 Bruce, or by Logan, on which subject he wrote a paper. 
 The following letters to Shairp from Sir William Stirling 
 Maxwell of Keir, and Mr. John Bright, refer to that con- 
 troversy : 
 
 "KEIR, DUNBLANE, N.B., 31st August 1873. 
 
 " MY DEAR SHAIRP ... I thank you for kindly under- 
 taking the Latin of my English, which I enclose. It is to 
 commemorate an incident in my family history which I 
 think worth recording in situ. I shall now read your paper 
 on the Bruce-Logan Cuckoo with much interest, if you will 
 tell me when or where it appears. The question of the 
 authorship can be solved only by a much more close 
 attention to small scraps of evidence than I have given. I 
 have not Grosart's book commented on by D. Laing, and 
 know the Bruce side of the story mainly from Mackelvie's 
 edition of Bruce (Edin. 1837). The chief pieces of evidence 
 in favour of Bruce seem to be the statement of Birrel, 
 Bruce's letter (which D. Davidson, fils, says his father Dr. 
 Davidson said he had seen) in which Bruce says ' he was 
 
xin PRINCIPALSHIP OF THE UNITED COLLEGE 313 
 
 writing a poem about a gowk/ and Principal Baird's change 
 of opinion on the matter going over from Logan's side to 
 Bruce's, on the evidence, inter alia, of a MS. of the poem 
 in Bruce's handwriting (Mackelvie, p. 11 7). All these, 
 however, seem themselves open to some suspicion. It is 
 odd too that the folly of Logan, in his treatment of the 
 matter (supposing ' The Cuckoo ' to be his) should have been 
 repeated by Baird, in printing as Bruce's a poem which he 
 himself had formerly believed to be Logan's, and which he 
 must have known was a subject of dispute, and adding no 
 note of the evidence which had induced him to transfer it 
 from one author to another. I had the good fortune to 
 pick up the original editions of the poems, both of Bruce 
 and of Logan, a few months ago Believe me, yours very 
 truly, WILLIAM STIRLING MAXWELL." 
 
 " 3d December 1873. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR I thank you for sending me your 
 paper on Michael Bruce, which I read with much interest. 
 
 From an error in your paper, I suppose you have not 
 visited Kinnesswood, and the shores of Loch Leven recently, 
 or in connection with your researches or reading about the 
 poet. He was not buried at Portmoak, where his friend was 
 buried, but in the graveyard of the church, which is on the 
 road leading from Kinnesswood round the loch, and where 
 there is a simple tombstone and monument to his memory. 
 I think it is very difficult not to admit the claims of Bruce 
 to the authorship of ' The Cuckoo/ after reading Mr. 
 Grosart's book. Dr. John Brown of Edinburgh sent me a 
 copy of it, and I think he considered it conclusive. In my 
 opinion Bruce's ' Cuckoo ' is superior to Wordsworth's, or 
 any other lines or verses on the same subject. But I do 
 not pretend to be an authority, and must leave it to others 
 better qualified to judge. 
 
 ... I have much pleasure in the fine passages of some of 
 our poets, and only regret I did not study them more when 
 young, and when the memory is more retentive. Believe 
 me always, very truly yours, JOHN BRIGHT." 
 
314 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 In 1874 Shairp edited Dorothy Wordsworth's Journal 
 of the Tour in Scotland, which she took with her brother 
 in 1803. This Journal had lain for seventy years un- 
 edited, and very little known. Its publication revealed to 
 the students of Wordsworth what few were aware of before, 
 that the sister's eye was fully as delicate as the brother's 
 in its appreciation of natural beauty, and the varied phases 
 of human feeling. The fragments, which had been quoted 
 by the Bishop of Lincoln, in the Memoirs of his uncle, had 
 raised expectation, and excited curiosity; but scarcely any 
 readers were prepared for what the whole Journal contains, 
 viz. a minute and continuous unfolding of the distinctive 
 features of Scottish landscape and Scottish character. The 
 same thing is true of the as yet unpublished Journal of the 
 Tour on the Continent, which Wordsworth took with his 
 wife and his sister in 1820 ; and still more emphatically of 
 the sister's Diary of their life, both at Alfoxden, in Somer- 
 setshire, and at Dove Cottage, Grasmere. As a record of 
 the plain living and high poetic thinking of that Words- 
 worth household, in their Highland rambles, as well as in 
 their Westmorland cottage, these Recollections have a value 
 for all time. The book is full of delicate insight, of 
 much humour, descriptive grace, and happy characterisa- , 
 tion. The editorial part of the work is a model of what 
 such editing should be. A brief sketch of the life of the 
 poet, and his relation to his sister, introduces the volume ; 
 and only a few notes are given, here and there, when any- 
 thing calls for explanation. 
 
 Dr. John Brown wrote several letters to Shairp about 
 Miss Wordsworth's Journal of the Tour in Scotland. 
 
 "9th April [1874]. Isn't this of Dora delightful, 
 delicious, like the fragrance of thymy braes, or the cool 
 sweetness of fruits ? It will be a poor soul that will not 
 relish it. Could you not write a poem as well as a preface, 
 setting forth, in your own way, William, Dora, Coleridge, 
 and the idea of their Tour ? Try. It would be a great suc- 
 cess, if that Great Beast the Public had heart, and taste, 
 and greatness of mind. Where in England, at that time, 
 
xiii PRINCIPALSHIP OF THE UNITED COLLEGE 315 
 
 would bare-legged boys be found careering to school to read 
 Virgil and Homer ? Will that, under our new Administra- 
 tion Act, be the case seventy years hence ? The boys may 
 be stockinged ; will the mind be clothed and fed ? Will 
 the soul be awakened ? When do you go north ? Yours, 
 
 J. B." 
 
 Again, "15th April. I am sure all the quotations from 
 Wordsworth should be incorporated in the text within 
 brackets. ... It is exquisite, just like Nature's self, and 
 soul, and smell. ... I think at the close of the Tour you 
 should break forth into song thus." [He then gives some 
 lines and adds] "This verse is the mother liquor uncry- 
 stallised." 
 
 On another page, some days later, he wrote " Crystals 
 forming feebly on finishing Dora's Tour." 
 
 I close the book, I shut mine eyes, 
 
 I see the three before me rise. 
 
 Loving sister, brooding brother, 
 
 Each one mirrored in the other. 
 
 Mighty ' William,' artless Dora ' 
 
 Who was to the very core, a 
 
 Lover of dear Nature's face, 
 
 In its perfect loveliness. 
 
 Lover of her flowers and mountains, 
 
 Of her glens, and of her fountains, 
 
 Of her tears, and of her smiles, 
 
 Of her quaint and winning wiles, 
 
 Nor less the human face divine 
 
 Brightening yours, and brightening mine. 
 
 Again on 9th June 1874. "I have read it all. I 
 knew what it would be, and yet it has surprised me with 
 its fulness, its penetration. There is not one thing amiss ; 
 it is sustained throughout, and continues with increasing 
 power what you long ago began so nobly, the commending 
 and unfolding Wordsworth to the world. You must do 
 more in this line yet before you die ; and you have added to 
 his power and sweetness a fulness of Christian insight and 
 
316 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 articulate Christian confession. ... It is delightful to 
 have you associated with this quite unique Journal. Yours, 
 
 J. B." 
 
 And on 10th June 1874. . . . "The Preface or 
 Prelude please me more and more. ... I don't think you 
 have done better work, and it was work not easily done, 
 and only by a man saturated with Wordsworth. ... I wish 
 you would, having so well introduced the Journal, part 
 from it with a blessing in verse. Try this. Go up towards 
 Tarragon, and let the winds blow and shout, and the fang 
 will come. Yours, J. B." 
 
 Again, " llth June 18*74. This Preface has taken a 
 great grip of me. I have just finished my third reading, 
 and I am so impressed with the majesty, the purity of that 
 third, I feel as if surely such a well of healing will 
 never be shut up. But you must dedicate yourself to a 
 larger work, and interpret Wordsworth to the world. What 
 a specific for the present feverish, godless, vain lines of 
 thought and feeling. Think of this. . . . Yours, J. B." 
 
 In the winter of 1874, at the Jubilee dinner of his old 
 school, the Edinburgh Academy, Principal Shairp made a 
 remarkable speech. Dr. Tait, then Archbishop of Canterbury, 
 presided, and amongst the 170 who were present, almost 
 all were former pupils of the Academy. In proposing his 
 toast, the Principal remarked 
 
 " It is sometimes said by our southern critics that the fondness and 
 persistence with which we Scots revert to the literary eminence of this 
 northern capital during the past generation is a proof of our barrenness 
 in the present that it is the wail of the land for a glory which has 
 departed. Now, whether this taunt be true or false, all must feel that 
 if ever there was an occasion on which we might naturally look back 
 with affectionate remembrance to that galaxy of great men, that occa- 
 sion is to-night. It is not natural pride, but 'natural piety' that 
 makes us do so, for these men were the fathers and the founders of 
 that school whose birth we are to-night met to celebrate. 
 
 There is not probably a man in all this company to whom those 
 
xiii PRINCIPALSHIP OF THE UNITED COLLEGE 317 
 
 honoured names have not long been household words. Among those 
 whom I address, some there are who knew these men as they walked 
 in the flesh who can feelingly recall the expression of their counte- 
 nances, and the tones of their voices ; some, perhaps, who were bound 
 to them by the still more endearing ties of kindred or of early friend- 
 ship. We have all heard some may even be weary of hearing of 
 that day when, on the top of one of the Pentlands, the idea of a new 
 classical school first flashed on the brain of Henry, Lord Cockburn. 
 It was a fitting birthplace for a large and beneficent idea. Not in the 
 retirement of the lawyer's study not under his wig in the Parliament 
 House but under his rustic hat, with the free Pentland winds blow- 
 ing about his comely and expressive face, that idea was born. And 
 what Cockburn's brain first conceived, his hand was not slack to 
 execute. From that day to the latest of his life he gave to the young 
 school all the aid of his ever-youthful enthusiasm, and regarded it as 
 'his only child.' With himself he generously associates Leonard 
 Homer as the joint -originator of the conception, but probably the 
 greater share, if not the whole of it, was due to Cockburn himself. 
 
 This idea, of which Cockburn was the father, Sir Walter Scott 
 eagerly took up. He not only found for the new school its first rector, 
 the Vicar of Lampeter, college friend of his son-in-law Lockhart, and 
 the tutor who prepared for Oxford his only son Charles, but he also 
 presided at the opening of the new institution, and in a long and 
 thoughtful speech, which still survives, explained in unadorned 
 and kindly language what was the aim and the nature of the new 
 school. You have told me, my Lord Archbishop, of that opening day, 
 and you and others here to-night can probably still remember the 
 feeling tones in which he expressed his hope that * his words, poor as 
 they were, would sink into the hearts of his young hearers and remain 
 in their memories, long after they had forgotten the speaker,' as 
 though they could ever forget him. Him followed on that memorable 
 day the venerable Henry Mackenzie, the Man of Feeling, then in his 
 eightieth year, the sole remnant and representative of the sentimental 
 literature which flourished in the generation that preceded Scott. 
 
 Nor less zealous in his advocacy of the nascent school was Lord 
 Jeffrey, whose eloquent, if somewhat artificial, accents were often 
 heard within its walls. That venerable clergyman who, on the 
 opening day, invoked God's blessing on the future of the school, was 
 Sir Henry Moncreiff ; and his son, the late Lord Moncreitf, not only 
 lent the advocacy of his voice, but contributed to its earlier years the 
 ability of his several sons, and of him especially whom we rejoice to 
 see here amongst us, and who so ably maintains the tradition of his 
 honourable house. Nor must I omit to mention the less brilliant but 
 not less useful service of the first Honorary Secretary, Mr. John 
 Russell, who gave his legal knowledge to organise its beginning, and 
 continued for many a year to watch over its interests with most dis- 
 interested zeal. 
 
318 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 Time would fail me to enumerate all the others who co-operated 
 with those I have named to launch the school on that course on 
 which it has now held for fifty laborious and prosperous years. 
 Enough, however, have been recounted to show that we can look 
 back to a not undistinguished ancestry. It is one of the most benign 
 influences of Learning and Literature that they can unite those whom 
 nothing else can. And so it is pleasing to find that in the foundation 
 of this our school, the great Sir Walter joined heart and hand with 
 Cockburn and Jeffrey and others, to whom in most other public 
 questions he had stood in lifelong antagonism. It was a pure and 
 generous impulse which made those great men, in the prime of their 
 powers, pause to think of the coming generation, and to provide for 
 them what they hoped might prove some better learning than they 
 themselves had enjoyed. Themselves but rough Latinists and guilt- 
 less, most of them, of Greek for Scott, though himself the true 
 modern Homer the poet who, of all others, for the last two thousand 
 years, breathed most of the spirit of the old Ionian rhapsodist never, 
 I suppose, after his schooldays read a single line of the Homeric 
 poems in the original language ; yet they generously desired that we 
 who came after them might drink more deeply of Hellenic fountains 
 than they had done. That the Academy did much for raising the 
 standard of general scholarship, and especially of Greek, in Scotland, 
 one cannot doubt. That it did not succeed in leavening the whole 
 educated community with Greek lore, that it did not stem the strong 
 currents setting in other directions, that it could not turn back the 
 native bias towards mere utilitarian objects, is no discredit to it. Sir 
 Walter in that opening address adverted to that saying of Dr. 
 Johnson's, that ' in learning Scotland was like a besieged city, where 
 every man had a mouthful not a bellyful, 5 and, sturdy Scotchman as 
 he was, he could not gainsay its truth. He expressed his hope that 
 the Academy might do something to wipe away this reproach ; but we 
 must in candour admit that as far as deep scholarship goes we are like 
 a besieged city still. 
 
 We all know that the Academy has trained, during the last fifty 
 years, not a few very eminent Greek scholars ; but they, with the 
 sure instinct of our race for the main chance, have for the most part 
 carried their wares to southern and more lucrative markets. Scotland 
 has been when it was a poor country it continues now when it has 
 become a rich one a land in which scholars are few. But to pro- 
 duce great scholars is not the only, or even the chief, work of a large 
 school : rather to train boys so that they shall become upright, 
 honourable, intelligent, industrious men in all the walks of life. 
 
 Tried by this test, I believe that the Academy has abundantly 
 fulfilled its mission. Of those, her pupils, whom it has been my lot 
 to know in after life, I can recall many a one of whom she may 
 reasonably be proud ; hardly one of whom she need be ashamed. In 
 organising their plan of the new school, our founders kept their eye 
 
xin PRINCIPALSHIP OF THE UNITED COLLEGE 319 
 
 on utility little or nothing on amenity. The situation they chose, 
 the building they erected, the six hours' continuous work by day, with 
 nearly as many more by night, required from the boys who stood near 
 the top, made the existence of most boys of my time somewhat too 
 unrejoicing. In vain you would look there for the green playing 
 fields of Eton by the shining Thames, or even for the green close of 
 Rugby with its venerable elm-trees, and all the pleasant associations 
 that gather round these. These things the Academy did not affect. 
 But it aimed at and affected careful grounding, sound learning, and 
 a most laborious work. And the result has been that no Academy 
 boy ever learned any part of scholarship there which he had after- 
 wards to unlearn, go where he might. Ten continuous months of as 
 faithful teaching and as hard a grind as any school in Britain ever 
 knew, this is my impression in looking back to four years spent within 
 the Academy walls. And if, when the year closed with the annual 
 field-day, the spirit in which the orators year after year addressed the 
 head boys was somewhat too mundane ; if mere worldly ambition and 
 preferment were too exclusively set before them as motives of action ; 
 if the higher spiritual elements which have since that day entered 
 into the aims of the best English teachers were wanting ; yet those 
 founders and patrons who addressed us spoke according to their then 
 lights. They gave us of the best they had to give ; and the fault is ours, 
 not theirs, if we have not something of the more self-forgetting spirit 
 and Christian chivalry which has animated the best men of more recent 
 times. It would be well if we, with our later lights, could hand on 
 to our descendants any institution which could confer on them as sub- 
 stantial and lasting benefits as the Academy has conferred on her 
 numerous sons." 
 
 Every movement for the promotion of the higher edu- 
 cation in Dundee had the Principal's warmest support. In 
 1873, a University Club was formed in that town, consisting 
 of the graduates in Arts, Law, and Medicine, who resided in 
 Dundee or its neighbourhood, including the old students of 
 any University, British or foreign. Principal Shairp became 
 one of its members, was elected its President, and took much , 
 interest in its prosperity. When Dean Stanley delivered 
 an address to that Club, and to the general public of Dundee 
 under the Club's auspices, Principal Shairp presided, and 
 introduced him. In February 1875 he himself delivered 
 an address to the Club in the Albert Institute Buildings, 
 from which extracts are given in the appendix to this 
 volume. 1 
 
 1 See p. 443. 
 
320 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 During his later years in St. Andrews, the chief interest 
 to Principal Shairp was the maintenance of the efficiency 
 and dignity of the College over which he presided, the 
 development of the University, and the extension of its use- 
 fulness. 
 
 Year by year, for many years, he opened the winter 
 sessions of the United College by the delivery of a lecture 
 to the students and the public. Many of these academical 
 addresses were weighted with wisdom, their subject-matter 
 was always important, and the treatment never common- 
 place. As reported in the newspapers of the day, they 
 served to keep before the public mind the work which the 
 University was doing, and the function which it fulfilled in 
 the academic life of Scotland. They were dignified ad- 
 dresses, dealing with varied themes, both national and local ; 
 and, whatever other features characterised them, their main 
 note of distinction was their elevated tone, and their ideal 
 touch. 
 
 In his efforts after University extension, however, Principal 
 Shairp's work was not carried on alone. He had the assist- 
 ance of his colleagues in St. Andrews in many schemes which 
 had for their sole object the development of the University, 
 and the diffusion of its influence in the district of Scotland 
 to which it had been so long an educational centre. In the 
 month of March 1864, when a committee of Senate was 
 appointed to organise a system of University Local Exami- 
 nations, he was a working member of it. He took special 
 interest in the educational work of the Dundee High School, 
 when its classical department was under the care of the late 
 Dr. Low, a man for whom he had a warm regard, and on 
 whom, at his instance, the Senate conferred the honorary 
 degree of LL.D. He used frequently to visit the High 
 School, and carefully to note the teaching of the Latin and 
 Greek classes in it. 
 
 Principal Shairp's chief relations with that commercial 
 centre which has now its College, partially affiliated to 
 St. Andrews, and destined, let us hope, to be perman- 
 ently united as a branch of the University arose out of a 
 
xiii PRINCIPALSHIP OF THE UNITED COLLEGE 321 
 
 movement which originated in Dundee, but which was 
 carried out by the St. Andrews Professors, for the delivery 
 of University lectures in the former town. The story of the 
 academic relations between the two places is a long one, and 
 this is scarcely the place to tell it, as it may yet be done in 
 a more detailed and formal manner. It may be mentioned 
 now, however, that there were many in Dundee who sym- 
 pathised with the local aspiration to have a College situated 
 in the town itself, but who thought that whatever branches 
 of learning were taught in it, the Arts and Science faculties 
 in St. Andrews should be strengthened, and that the best way 
 to help Dundee to develop a distinctive College of its own 
 having an academic right to live and grow strong amongst 
 the other institutions of Scotland was meanwhile to bring 
 the two places into closer and more living accord. A 
 Dundee Committee was formed to promote this end, and a 
 request was addressed to Principals Tulloch and Shairp, and 
 to Professors Heddle, Nicholson, and Pettigrew, to deliver 
 courses of lectures in Dundee. A Guarantee Fund was raised, 
 and thirty lectures in each subject were delivered in the 
 evenings in the largest classroom of the High School. During 
 the first year of the experiment the subjects of lecture were 
 Chemistry, Natural History, and Physiology respectively; 
 while two shorter courses were delivered on the Saturday 
 afternoons, one by Principal Tulloch on "St. Dominic, St. 
 Francis, Pascal, and the Port-Koyalists," and the other by 
 Principal Shairp on " The Poetic Interpretation of Nature." 
 What Principal Tulloch did to promote an object, in which 
 he was so profoundly interested as the union of St. Andrews 
 and Dundee for educational purposes, will doubtless be told 
 in the story of his Life. The share which Principal Shairp 
 had in it, if less explicit in the way of organisation and 
 business detail, was no less valuable. 
 
 He came down one day from Cuil-aluinn, and spent it 
 with a Dundee citizen who was deeply interested in the 
 work of the University ; and of this visit he wrote home to 
 the following effect : " The Lecture Scheme seems to go on 
 well. Went with to - (who is a representative 
 
 Y 
 
322 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 man in Dundee, a sort of business king). He reports that 
 ' the whole intelligence of Dundee is unanimous in favour 
 of the lectures/ that a Guarantee Fund of 400 has been 
 already raised, and when one or two more are asked it will 
 be 500. He was very strong on the impetus that would 
 be given to the movement if the two Principals would give 
 four or five lectures on Saturday afternoons in connection 
 with the more regular teaching lectures." 
 
 Accordingly, Shairp delivered a course of Saturday 
 lectures. If his one gift to Dundee had been these discourses 
 on " The Poetic Interpretation of Nature," it would be no 
 small one. As was so often the case with those who 
 listened to his spoken words, a desire was then expressed 
 by several that an opportunity might be given them of 
 reading the lectures leisurely. They were published in 
 1877, and so greatly were they appreciated in America that 
 an edition was soon afterwards reprinted there. 
 
 In estimating these lectures their original aim must be 
 remembered. They were meant to be popular, and to 
 illustrate a side of Nature, different from that on which 
 his scientific colleagues had been dwelling, but not less real 
 and necessary to be known ; especially so in an age of 
 material success and utilitarian aims. Had they entered 
 into minute scholarly detail, they would have been un- 
 suited to the audience originally addressed, as well as to 
 those whom their after publication was meant to interest and 
 stimulate. There is in them all the freshness of Nature, 
 the old breath of the mountain and the heather. Eeaders 
 may see statements from which they differ, but they will 
 be instructed by these differences. The relations between 
 'oetry and Science are suggestively drawn out; and the 
 eight different ways in which the poets are said to have 
 dealt with Nature (chapter VIII. pp. 90-124), if not all 
 fundamentally distinct from one another, are each real and 
 important. 
 
 Cardinal Newman wrote thus on receiving a copy of the 
 book 
 
xiii PRINC1PALSHIP OF THE UNITED COLLEGE 323 
 
 "THE ORATORY, 6th July 1877. 
 
 " MY DEAR PROFESSOR SHAIRP I saw the advertisement 
 of your volume, and thought how interesting the subjects 
 were which were contained in it, little thinking I should 
 have the pleasure of" receiving a copy from the author. 
 
 I thank you very much for it, and for the very natter- 
 ing notice which you have introduced of me at the page you 
 name. However, I had seen it before your letter came 
 and without setting to read the book formally, had enjoyed 
 many detached portions of it. I was particularly pleased at 
 your remarks on Cowper. He has always been dear to me ; 
 and I never could acquiesce in Keble's judgment of him, 
 which I do think was partly owing to Cowper's being a friend 
 of John Newton's. 
 
 Thank you also for what you say of portions of my 
 essay on Assent. Very truly yours, 
 
 JOHN H. NEWMAN." 
 
 It should be added that the historical section of this 
 little book (chapters IX. to XIV.), outlining the way in which 
 the poets have contemplated Nature, from Homer and the 
 Hebrew bards to Tennyson, is specially good, in particular 
 the part dealing with the English poets. 
 
 A ^' c 
 
 Shairp's knowledge of, and delight in, the scenery of the 
 Borders has been already referred to, but we have no record 
 of it not even in his poems on Yarrow, and Manor, Tra- 
 quair, and Broadlaw finer than the speech he delivered 
 at the annual dinner of the Border Counties Association at 
 Edinburgh in January 1877. In proposing the toast of 
 " The Literature of the Borders," he said 
 
 " It is now with a feeling of strangeness and wonder that 
 I look around and find myself in this gathering of Borderers 
 I who am no Borderer, but born in Lothian. And yet I 
 cannot call myself altogether a stranger here, for I have a 
 dash of Border blood in me. My great-grandmother was 
 Anne Scott of Harden, the last fema^ of the oldest branch 
 
324 
 
 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 
 virtue of this I never look on 
 
 of that of Harden's line, (in 
 Dryhope Tower, where Harden woo'd and won the Ijtower 
 of Yarrow, without something of a family feeling. Besides 
 this, I have other more recent vand nearer ties to the Border 
 which I need not name now. \ 
 
 Moreover, if not by birth/ 1 am in heart a Borderer. 
 is not here present one, I believe, who has wandered 
 longer, or more lovingly over that delightsome land. In 
 long gone summers I have wandered on foot over almost 
 every dale of the Borders^-from Stitchell and Smailholm 
 Tower to Leader Haughs and Cowdenknowes ; from Leader 
 Haughs to Ashiestiel and Williamshope. Over all Yarrow, 
 high and low, I know every hope, and holm, and howe ; I 
 have sought out the site of every one of its long- vanished peels. 
 Up Ettrick I have travelled by Eankleburn and Timah 
 Water ; seen the cleuch where the buck was ta'en ; looked 
 from the top of Ettrick Pen far down Annahdale to Niths- 
 dale, over the whole of that song-enctan^ed land ; wan- 
 dered down Craigmichen Scaurs, by Moffat Water ; up 
 Carriffren Scaurs, by Gameshope and Whitecoomb Edge ; 
 down by Meggat Water and Talla Linn, past Tweedsmuir 
 Kirk ; by Kingledoors to the Tower of Lamington. 
 
 as I wandered how often have I paused and asked 
 myself, What is it that makes the charm of this wonderful 
 land ? No doubt, the land is beautiful, with a quiet unob- 
 trusive beauty of its own with its soft, green, mammy hills, 
 with their soft-flowing outlines, and its secluded hopes, with 
 their clear burns 
 
 The grace of forest charms decayed, 
 And pastoral melancholy. 
 
 But other lands are as beautiful, even more striking in 
 their beauty. What, then, is its charm ? It is the atmo- 
 sphere of tradition and of melody by which it is overspread 
 and glorified. This seems to be the special inheritance of 
 
 V - 1 - 
 
 the_Borders. their peculiar gift.) No doubt, to create that 
 "tradition and that melody centuries of wild and adventurous 
 deeds had first to be lived by the Border people. The 
 
xiii PRINCIPALSHIP OF THE UNITED COLLEGE 325 
 
 whole line of hills that sweep from St. Abb's Head to the 
 mountains of Galloway and Loch Ryan stood like a rampart 
 between the two rival kingdoms, and to the Border men it 
 fell to man that mountain wall, and roll back the tide of 
 southern invasion. A grandly exciting time it must have 
 been when, as soon as his board was bare, and the cattle 
 stalls were empty, the Border chief sprang to horse and rode 
 into England to drive a prey more gleefully than their 
 descendants to-day ride forth to the hunting-field. And 
 then they had the sense that, while they were taking their 
 pleasure in harrying our ' auld enemies of England/ they 
 were doing good service to their own king and country. But 
 this sport of cattle-lifting was too much to the Borderer's 
 mind to be confined to his foes besouth the Tweed. When 
 there was no raid over the English Border, he could turn 
 with as little compunction, and harry his next neighbour's 
 land, and drive off his herds. 
 
 This side of Border life and habits Sir Walter knew 
 well, and many a turn he has given it in his poetry and 
 romances. For three centuries, from the time of King Robert 
 Bruce till the union of the Crowns, that fierce warrior-life 
 of the Borders went on. But all that life of Border raid 
 and battle, of wild adventure and romantic love, would have 
 perished from memory, had not the nameless minstrels of 
 the Border condensed it into those many ballads, and left 
 them as the record of that ' war- wounded past.' And the 
 ballads themselves, scattered here and there through the 
 dales, would have been swept into oblivion had not Sir 
 Walter Scott, just before the coming of the modern era, been 
 born into the world. I may speak of the mist of tradition 
 and melody spread over the face of the land. Like many' 
 another morning mist, it would have disappeared had not 
 Scott been the sun that looked over the eastern hills and 
 turned the mist to gold, and fixed it there for ever. Some- 
 times as I croon over these ballads a suspicion crosses me 
 that here and there I can discover the hand of Scott re- 
 touching them. In the song of the outlaw Murray, for 
 instance, there is one verse where I cannot but feel as if 
 
326 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 Scott had added a touch of his own. As it is about the 
 family of Buccleuch, will our noble chairman forgive me if 
 I quote it ? The King, James V., had resolved to put down 
 the great freebooters of the Border. Foremost among these 
 was the outlaw Murray, who dwelt in his castle of Hanging- 
 shaw, on the Yarrow 
 
 The king was cuming thro' Caddon Ford, 
 And full five thousand men was he; 
 
 They saw the derke foreste them before, 
 They thought it awsome for to see. 
 
 Lord Hamilton proposes that the king should meet the 
 outlaw and settle matters in conference 
 
 Then spak' the keen laird of Buchscleuth, 
 A stalworthye man and stern was he, 
 
 and told the king it was unbecoming his state and dignity 
 to meet an outlaw in conference 
 
 The man that moves yon foreste intill, 
 He lives by reif and felonie ! 
 
 Wherefore, brayd on, my sovereign liege ! 
 
 Wi' fire and sword we'll follow thee ; 
 Or, gif your countrie lords fa' back, 
 
 Our Borderers sail the onset gie. 
 
 Then out and spak' the nobill king, 
 
 And round him cast a wilie e'e 
 Now haud your tongue, Sir Walter Scott, 
 
 Nor speik of reif and felonie, 
 For had every honeste man his awin kye, 
 
 A right puir clan thy name wad be. 
 
 I have never read this last stanza but a strong suspicion 
 has come over me that we have Walter's own hand here 
 that it was he that added to the original ballad this wily 
 side-hit at his own clan and chief. A like suspicion has 
 often crossed me as to that grand Homeric touch in the 
 ballad of ' Jamie Telfer of the fair Dodhead ': 
 
 But Willie was stricken oure the head, 
 
 And thro' the knapscap the sword has gane ; 
 
xiii PRINCIPALSHIP OF THE UNITED COLLEGE 327 
 
 And Harden grat for very rage 
 
 When Willie on the ground lay slane. 
 
 But he's ta'en off his gude steel cap, 
 And thrice he's waved it in the air 
 
 The Dinlay snaw was ne'er mair white 
 Nor the lyart locks of Harden's hair. 
 
 ' Revenge ! revenge !' auld Wat gan cry; 
 
 * Fye, lads, lay on them cruellie ; 
 We'll ne'er see Tiviotside again, 
 
 Or Willie's death revenged sail be.' 
 
 That Homeric touch about Wat of Harden, who could 
 have given but our own Scottish Homer ? What a subject 
 for a painter, could one be found to render it worthily ! But 
 all these long ages of wild battle and raid, and romantic ad- 
 venture, love and sorrow, might all have passed into oblivion 
 and been utterly forgotten ere now, but for the local ballads 
 that preserved their memory. And these ballads themselves 
 had all vanished from the dales ere now, unless just before 
 the modern age with all its changes set in Walter Scott 
 had been born to gather them up and give them an immor- 
 tality in that wonderful Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. 
 
 These raids after the ballads were what trained and 
 made him. What college classes and erudition do for 
 other men, Liddesdale and The Forest, with their old tales 
 and ballads, did for him. Great and precious as are his 
 poems and other works his Lay, his Marmion, his Guy 
 Mannering, and his Antiquary, his Abbot I know not if 
 there is one of them which we would not willingly spare, 
 rather than lose that earliest of them all, The Border 
 Minstrelsy, which, in his unknown days, he gathered and* 
 preserved. Lockhart has said that the minstrelsy was the 
 great quarry out of which the materials for all his after 
 works were dug that there is hardly an incident or adven- 
 ture or character in any of them the first hint of which may 
 not be found in the three volumes of the Minstrelsy, either 
 in the ballads, or in the prefaces and notes by which he so 
 grandly illustrated them. This is the great storehouse out 
 of which came the materials of all his subsequent creations. 
 
328 JOHN "CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 The Borders received his first and best songs ' The Eve of 
 St. John' and 'The Lay.' They secured, too, his latest 
 love, when, as all remember, he roused him from that last 
 lethargy as he heard once more the name of Tweed. But 
 if the Borders were the centre of his inspiration, his gift has 
 overflowed and glorified the whole of Scotland 
 
 For thou upon a hundred streams, 
 
 By tales of love or sorrow ; 
 Of faithful love, undaunted truth 
 
 Hast shed the power of Yarrow. 
 
 But while we hail Scott as king of Border melody, we 
 must not forget the many other gifted spirits who sang their 
 songs, and each added some lyric contribution to their native 
 region. Leyden, Allan Cunningham, the Ettrick Shepherd, 
 Laidlaw, poor Smibert, and many more ; Lady Grizell Baillie, 
 Miss Jane Elliot, Mrs. Eutherford these flowers of the 
 forest who have each enriched their native minstrelsy with 
 at least one deathless song. And one poetess still lives, 
 worthy to be named with the best of these Lady John 
 Scott, with her wealth of most characteristic minstrelsy. 
 While we do all honour to Scott, let us not forget those 
 genuine though lesser singers, whom he himself with his 
 large generosity would have been foremost to acknowledge. 
 If the volume of his song was as Tweed river, those other 
 singers were the affluent streams and burns and hopes that 
 fed its volume, without which he never could have been 
 what he was. And just as every tributary burn and hope 
 has an individual beauty of its own, and is worth tracing 
 up to its remote well-head, so each of those minor Border 
 poets has his own felicities to repay the loving student of 
 them. 
 
 I say nothing of other forms of literature produced by 
 the Borders history, science, philosophy, etc. These may 
 be produced anywhere as well as in the Borders. It is your 
 minstrelsy, your rich inheritance of heroic tradition, em- 
 balmed and glorified in song this is your peculiar, your 
 matchless possession, ye sons of the Border. Preserve it, 
 
xiii PRINCIPALSHIP OF THE UNITED COLLEGE 329 
 
 cherish it, love it ; hand it on to posterity ; be yourselves 
 worthy of it. Once let go or be forgotten, it can never be 
 restored. We who, in the heyday of youth, have wandered 
 over these dales so delightedly, feel now that 
 
 Yarrow through the woods, 
 
 And down the meadow ranging, 
 Doth meet us witli unaltered face, 
 
 While we are changed, or changing. 
 
 We pass ; that romantic land remains. Preserve it, and 
 hand it on to the coming generations, that they may 
 drink from as deep delight as we have done. Keep its green 
 dales, as far as may be, by needless railways undesecrated, 
 its pure streams by factories unpolluted, and its solitary 
 places by staring statues unvulgarised. If you preserve it 
 as it is, the consecration of its beauty will deepen with every 
 new generation of human eyes that look on it ; and he, its 
 great poet, much as you have thought of him, future men will 
 think of him still more his reputation and his fame will 
 grow with time as century follows century, and no second 
 Scott is born into the world." 
 
 Two months later we find Shairp as full of the spirit of the 
 North as in this speech he is in sympathy with the South. 
 Writing to his friend Clerk at Kilrnalie in March, he says 
 
 "... Will you point out to me two or three of the pas- 
 sages in your translation of Ossian, which you consider most 
 characteristic of Highland scenery ? 
 
 (1) Of the dreary monotone of mists, and moors, and 
 ghosts, and voices of the wind. 
 
 (2) Of the more happy aspects, the breaking out of 
 sunshine after the storm. ... I wish some samples of 
 Ossian's peculiar treatment for a book I am getting ready." 
 He added, referring to Glen Desseray, " You have got the last 
 but one of the instalments of the poem ; " and mentioned his 
 being a candidate for the Professorship of Poetry at Oxford. 
 
CHAPTEE XIV 
 
 THE OXFORD CHAIR OF POETRY 
 
 IN June 1877 Shairp was elected Professor of Poetry in the 
 University of Oxford. 
 
 During his candidature many interesting letters were 
 received by him from friends in the south. 
 
 Mr. Matthew Arnold, the former occupant of the Chair, 
 wrote him : " Unless either the Bishop of Deny claims me, 
 or the angel Gabriel, or some equally unforeseen personage 
 stands, I will vote for you. I have a conscience in these 
 
 matters, so if I thought the best candidate I should 
 
 vote for him, though I like you best. But I do not think 
 him the best candidate, though he has more accomplish- 
 ments (I suppose) than you. I think he would be sure 
 some day to run amuck at somebody or something; and 
 this is just what a Professor ought not to do. . . ." 
 
 After the election he wrote : " If you had stood an 
 election and won, I should certainly have written to con- 
 gratulate you. And still more do you deserve congratula- 
 tion on the peaceable entry upon office by the flight of your 
 competitors. I am most thoroughly glad that you are to be 
 Poetry Professor, and I congratulate you most heartily on 
 the warm and appreciative feelings towards you, which have 
 appeared right and left since you were first announced as a 
 candidate. Cicero says most truly that the benevolentia 
 civium is one of the best instruments of usefulness that a man 
 can have. . . ." 
 
 Mr. Palgrave, his successor in the same chair (who with- 
 drew in Shairp's favour in 1877), wrote expressing his great 
 
CHAP, xiv THE OXFORD CHAIR OF POETRY 331 
 
 pleasure at the kind words Shairp had used in regard to his 
 withdrawal, and stating that he had written to many friends 
 to ask them to support him, and that he hoped he would 
 " walk over." He said he did not know if " human nature " 
 allowed one to rejoice quite so much at another's success as 
 in one's own ; but that if it ever did, it really did so now in 
 his case. 
 
 The Bishop of Derry wrote wishing him success, and 
 speaking of his criticisms " at once reverent and refined." 
 He added, " You feel Keble, as no one else does." 
 
 His old Rugby colleague, the present Dean of Norwich, 
 wrote : "I will vote for you against any man in the world. 
 . . ." And the late Dean of Rochester, Mr. Robert Scott, said 
 the same. 
 
 His election led to a pleasant renewal, in the closing 
 years of life, of his old connection with Oxford, while re- 
 taining his position as Principal at St. Andrews. The duties 
 of the Oxford Chair of Poetry are not laborious, although 
 when the post has been held by a distinguished man of 
 letters the lectures delivered have often been brilliant, and 
 usually an addition to literature. The result of such lectures 
 is never to be judged by their immediate effect. Their sub- 
 sequent publication, by which a far wider circle is reached 
 as in the parallel case of lectures by the Slade Professor of 
 Fine Art may be regarded as more important than their 
 oral delivery. 
 
 Shairp's first lecture on " The Province of Poetry " was 
 given in Michaelmas term 1877, when he was the guest of 
 an old Rugby friend, then Master of University College, and 
 now Dean of Westminster. The fact that His son had 
 matriculated, and was resident at Oriel, added greatly to the 
 pleasure of these Oxford visits, when he went up once a term 
 to deliver a new lecture. It was also a peculiar pleasure to meet 
 the few survivors of his old circle of Oxford friends, and 
 occasionally to make the acquaintance of new ones. The 
 interest he took in all Scotsmen resident in Oxford, and 
 especially in those who had gone up from St. Andrews as 
 Guthrie scholars, was unabated. Before giving the reminis- 
 
332 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 cences of the Dean of Westminster, and others, of these 
 Oxford visits, portions from two of his own letters may be 
 quoted. One was written three months before his election 
 to the Chair of Poetry, and the other during a subsequent 
 visit to the city. They both refer to his journey south. 
 Of his journey south to Oxford he wrote 
 
 "THE LODGE, BALLIOL COLLEGE, 
 "23d March 1877. 
 
 " . . . As we passed through the Border Hills between 
 Clyde and Annandale, they were robed in snow till near the 
 foot, and looked grander than I ever saw them, with the 
 sunlight on them. As I came down Annandale, and looked 
 out on all the old places that we have not seen for a number 
 of years, it seemed so strange, like the meeting of friends 
 long unseen. Moffat and its hills, the Dryfe, and the old 
 House of Lockerbie 1 smoking away in the sunshine, as 
 cheerful as if all its own people were there. 
 
 Then, as we passed over Shap Fells, I sighted far off 
 the old Langdale Pikes, white with snow, and thought of 
 past years. . . . To-day I travelled through a beautiful 
 English country, Worcestershire, with its orchards all dressed, 
 and newly -engrafted trees, waiting the touch of spring 
 to bring them into bloom. It undulates beautifully, and 
 the Malvern Hills and Breedon Hills, and far off the Cots- 
 wolds, take away all sense of tameness and monotony. As 
 we neared Oxford we passed along the margin of Watch wood 
 Forest, which I knew in old days, and saw the first prim- 
 roses coming out beneath the oaks. . . ." 
 
 During another visit to Oxford he wrote from Balliol 
 College : " I never saw a finer evening than last as I came 
 from Crewe to Oxford ; glorious glow of golden sunset over 
 all the western sky, and the very thin young crescent moon 
 in it set off the English landscape and fresh green swards so 
 well. . . . Chestnuts fully out, all the different kinds of 
 May blossom, and laburnums full out, and refreshing the 
 air as I passed to my lecture." 
 
 1 Mrs. Shairp's brother's house. 
 
 
xiv THE OXFORD CHAIR OF POETRY 333 
 
 The Dean of Westminster writes 
 
 " I was deeply interested in Shairp's election as Professor 
 of Poetry at Oxford, which took place during my own 
 residence as Master of University. But I shall not 
 attempt to enter into any estimate either of his writings 
 or his lectures. The man himself seemed to me, in his 
 brief visits to Oxford and later on to London, at once un- 
 changed and greatly changed. The thirty odd years, that 
 had passed since he left Oxford, had done their work on the 
 general tone of the University, and on himself; and the 
 course of intellectual and spiritual training through which 
 Shairp had passed, since he took his B.A. in 1840, had 
 carried him in many respects in a very different direction 
 to that in which the University was travelling when he 
 from time to time revisited it. There was still the same 
 earnestness, the same fund of enthusiasm, the same rich 
 store of illustration from all the poetic side of Scottish 
 history, tradition, or legend; the same keen interest in 
 poetry, much of the same humour. But there was much 
 also in the feelings, opinions, and tendencies of young 
 Oxford which was distasteful to him. The attitude of his 
 own mind had become, as life went on, essentially conserva- 
 tive. . . . And remembering, as some of us did so well, the 
 John Shairp of our own youth, there was something half-sad- 
 dening and half -amusing in seeing that by the young genera- 
 tion he was looked on as -a critic who belonged to an age that 
 had passed away, and as only partially in sympathy and har- 
 mony with that which had succeeded. For myself, who like 
 my friend had long ceased to be young, I found his conver- ' 
 sation, if not as stimulating and suggestive, yet scarcely less 
 interesting and attractive than I had found it in years gone l~lo 
 by. His interest in religious subjects was uppermost; he 
 retained of his former self a large and hearty and catholic ' 
 sympathy ; he still felt as much at home in the worship of 
 our own Communion as of the Scottish Church ; he still felt 
 equally drawn to Keble, to Newman, to Arnold, and to Norman 
 Macleod. The name of Arthur Stanley was still as dear to 
 
V 
 
 334 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 him, as to myself ; but he was no longer in as much sympathy 
 as he had once been with what would be called the more 
 advanced section of the Broad Church, in either the Scottish 
 or the English Churches, and looked with quite as much 
 uneasiness to a further development of views in that direction, 
 as in that of a revival of mediaeval tenets and practices. Many 
 questions also which he would once have keenly brought 
 forward and discussed, had lost their interest to him. In 
 politics, too, he had become, as it seemed to myself at least, 
 somewhat stiffly conservative, and lacking in readiness to 
 enter into the point of view of the other party. On the 
 other hand, in many respects he was in more advanced life 
 just what he had been in youth. On the subject of Scottish 
 history, life, or scenery he was always fresh, always delightful. 
 After a visit to Eoss-shire in 1 8 8 4, 1 remarked to him that I 
 had found little use there for the History of Scotland, which 
 I had found so delightful a companion farther south. ' True/ 
 he said, ' history there is a mute history, never put into print. 
 Plenty of it in tales and memories, and in songs if they could 
 only find a singer.' We tried hard to meet if possible, as we 
 had once done to our great delight, at his sweet little home, 
 Cuil-aluinn which he taught me carefully to spell near 
 Aberfeldy, on my return through the Highlands ; but to our 
 mutual sorrow we were prevented. I saw him once more in 
 town, far from well, but suffering, as I hoped, from a passing 
 ailment ; and later on was greatly gratified at being able to 
 co-operate in paying him the welcome compliment of admitting 
 him, by an Act of the Committee, as a member of the Athen- 
 aeum. He was then leaving England in the early months of 
 1885 for a visit to the Eiviera. In the following September 
 on our return from Germany, as we stood waiting for a boat 
 at the bottom of the Drachenfells, a newspaper was placed 
 in my hands with the news of his death, unexpected and 
 saddening beyond all that words can say. I can add no more. 
 Few men have been more deeply lamented; few passed through 
 life who have left behind them richer and more delightful 
 memories. As I look back and recall all that I have learned 
 from him, my life seems indeed the poorer ; and no better 
 
xiv THE OXFORD CHAIR OF POETRY 335 
 
 wish can I frame for our children's children than that they 
 may form in opening manhood such friends as I and others 
 found in the Shairp who has gone before us." 
 
 Mr. Butler of Oriel College writes 
 
 " I pass on to the Oxford life, when Professor Shairp 
 returned to occupy the Chair of Poetry. It is need- 
 less to say what delight it gave him to come back. 
 Oxford was still hallowed to him by the memory of 
 old friendships, as well as of the great religious move- 
 ment which he has so sympathetically described. Or, as 
 he wrote, combining both these memories into one, ' Those 
 who remember the fine spirits whom it touched, the noble 
 characters which it moulded, how deep they were, how pure, 
 how tender-hearted, how unworldly, can never look back on 
 the Oxford (religious) movement with anything but affec- 
 tionate and pensive recollections.' Oxford, it is true, had 
 greatly changed, and he knew it. It was no longer domi- 
 nated by a single movement, a great religious influence, 
 exercised by a master-mind ; it was become cosmopolitan, 
 reflecting all the beliefs and unbeliefs, the interests and aims 
 which agitate England ; but still it had for him that attrac- 
 tion which is common to all feeling minds, and to none in 
 a greater degree than to the author of Culture and Religion. 
 The duties of the Professor are not onerous, consisting mainly 
 of a lecture three times a year on some subject of art or poetry, 
 the task of looking over the University prize-exercises, which 
 are recited at the Encaenia, and the delivery of a Latin 
 oration on the same occasion every second year. The posi- 
 tion is one which is much coveted, and has been considered 
 as a kind of Blue Eibbon for the man who combines, in the 
 highest degree, critical and poetic^ power. 
 
 Now it will be seen at once that the Professor may, if 
 he please, live in a serene and ideal world apart from con- 
 troversy, or he may come into conflict with some of the 
 deepest likings and prejudices of his hearers. The odium 
 theologicum is proverbially bitter; but it may be doubted 
 
336 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 whether there is not quite as strong an odium between the 
 Naturalistic and Purist schools of criticism the one admiring 
 ' Art for art's sake ; Beauty for beauty's sake ' ; the other 
 exacting from the poet the same self-control in expressing 
 emotion that it does from other men. There is doubtless a 
 happy medium here as in other things ; but it is one diffi- 
 cult to attain, without suspicion of either too great laxity or 
 severity, and a lecturer's views on some vexed question, such 
 as the merits of Burns or Shelley, are awaited with somewhat 
 of the 1 same interest and curiosity as the delivery of the 
 first Bampton lecture on some vexed question of theology. 
 Young men naturally incline to the more indulgent school. 
 Professor Shairp was already, when he came to us, a well- 
 known advocate of the moralists. Moreover, '^Estheticism' 1 
 was just then rife in Oxford among those who most cared 
 for poetry, so that the elements of antagonism were not 
 wanting. 
 
 Unfortunately the Professor's voice was not equal to 
 the strain of lecturing to a large audience. He began 
 with spirit and animation, but soon, owing to the weakness 
 of his throat, the voice grew faint and indistinct, till he was 
 audible only to those close about him. Had he retained his 
 old Eugby fire and power of elocution, he would, I believe, 
 have had a great following. For young men admire a strong 
 and eloquent personality even where they differ; and the 
 lectures were in themselves of a high order. When pub- 
 lished under the title Aspects of Poetry, they were met by a 
 chorus of approval. ' Full of interest, showing wide and 
 varied sympathies, fresh as his native air and heather,' they 
 at once silenced most of those objectors who had regarded 
 him as the narrow moralist and preacher, Some, it is true, 
 were irreconcilable. His lecture on Burns might be con- 
 doned, owing to the ardent praise and admiration with which 
 he qualified his censures ; but that on Shelley could not 
 be forgiven. Here it was felt even by many of his friends 
 
 1 " JEstheticism " was a very ephemeral movement here, as elsewhere. Just 
 now, Oxford, like England generally, is in a far sterner mood, girding itself 
 to try and find an answer to the problems of Democracy and Socialism. 
 
xiv THE OXFORD CHAIR OF POETRY 337 
 
 that he was severe and unsympathetic. He took small 
 account of the poet's circumstances and education, of the 
 times in which he lived, and against which he revolted, or 
 of the early age at which he died, just when his splendid 
 powers were showing signs of growing restraint and self- 
 control. He regarded him as the representative of poets of 
 mere emotion, and, prevented by the tradition of his office 
 from speaking of living writers, he made this protest against 
 one great source and origin of the mischief. And yeLJie 
 jnvp.ri Kp.11py and would at times quote his great lyrics with 
 a power and pathos which showed how deeply they had 
 stirred him. And his criticism on Shelley's well-known 
 ' Lines Written in Dejection,' on the Bay of Naples, shows 
 that he had felt the truth that the vivid expression of sorrow 
 may help to lighten others' sorrow. ' So sweet they are/ he 
 says, ' that they seem by their very sweetness to lighten the 
 load of heart-loneliness.' In other words, melancholy and 
 gloomy thoughts have their hour in all sensitive natures, 
 and ' the sadness of the poet's strain,' like that of music, 
 may be one means of giving these feelings vent, and cleans- 
 ing the bosom of that 'perilous stuff,' which else would 
 stifle it. But Professor Shairp felt strongly that the aesthetic 
 school, then numbering so many adherents in Oxford, was 
 full of danger ; it was morbid, plaintive, pessimistic ; and at 
 a time when it was being seriously discussed whether ' life 
 was worth living,' it was well to warn men that in loving 
 Shelley, and other poets of emotion too well, there was ' poison 
 in the air ' ; and that poetry was meant to brace, not enervate, 
 to cheer to noble action, not to sadden and dishearten. 
 Consequently he strove to turn them to the spiritual teaching 
 and lofty optimism of Wordsworth, and the healthy manliness 
 of Scott ; but, as sometimes happens with our Professors at 
 Oxford, he was out of tune with the rising generation, and his 
 words, I fear, too often fell upon rebellious ears. 
 
 The same conflict between the Professor and the 
 poetic tendencies of the time showed itself also in a 
 more amusing manner in the adjudication of the prize 
 for the Newdigate prize-poem. Here there is a restric- 
 
 z 
 
338 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 tion that the poem shall be in heroic metre ; but in 
 their treatment of the subject the successful poets had 
 come to be anything but heroic, and the verse, running into 
 the opposite extreme from its old rigidity, had grown slip- 
 shod and undignified. This triumph of the aesthetic party 
 I use the term for want of a better was a constant grief to 
 the Professor. At last, however, he thought he had secured 
 a more manly treatment by setting for the subject the most 
 heroic battle of ancient times. Here it would seem that 
 man in his bravest, most sacrificing, mood was everything, 
 and Nature, sighing, sympathising Nature, nothing. Both 
 parties seem to have understood the challenge, and girded 
 themselves for the contest ; and there was considerable 
 interest in the result even outside the circle of the candi- 
 dates' friends. But here again the weaker side had the 
 stronger man, and the defeated champion of the heroic 
 school had to be content with two of his lines being much 
 quoted in the University 
 
 Is life worth living ? Yes, if truth be true, 
 Life is worth living, death worth dying too. 
 
 This was at once a protest against the pessimistic side 
 of aestheticism, and a not unworthy tribute to the heroes of 
 Thermopylae. 
 
 One more story may be told of the Professor's last 
 
 appearance in the theatre, when delivering the Latin oration 
 
 on the events of the past year. The theatre is a large 
 
 place, and he was ill-heard and constantly interrupted by 
 
 the time-honoured jokes customary on that occasion. One 
 
 small knot of tormentors, unusually annoying, was just above 
 
 his head, and at last, losing patience, he turned round upon 
 
 them, and, drawing himself up, shook his fist at them with a 
 
 good-natured smile. They at once cheered him, and allowed 
 
 him to finish his speech without further interference, which 
 
 - moreover was delivered with unwonted ring and fire. This 
 
 - little scene was characteristic of his relations to under- 
 
 ^ graduates, when brought face to face with them. He won 
 
 them at once, partly from his own delight in young men, 
 
xiv THE OXFORD CHAIR OF POETRY 339 
 
 and the deference and courtesy with which he treated them ; 
 partly also by his own native manliness and simplicity. 
 Sympathy is ever fresh and young, and he was full of sym- 
 pathy ; and men of all kinds were charmed with his conver- 
 sation, so various, so original and full of humour. Who 
 indeed could resist that conversation's charm ? It needed a 
 small circle to bring him out, but given the right time and 
 place, his talk would flow on in a delightful stream, rich in 
 anecdote, on occasion elevated, abounding in humour. As 
 with all good talkers, you never felt you had come to an end, 
 even of any single subject. The stream flowed on ; the 
 source was inexhaustible. For his range and width of in- 
 terest and sympathy were as remarkable as his fulness and 
 depth. He had known, or knew, most of the great leaders 
 of religious thought, and chiefs of literature, and liked to talk 
 of them ; not in a light gossiping way, but of their influence 
 on one another, and on their time. Sometimes it was a grief 
 to him that men to whom he owed much had known but 
 little of one another's writings, as, for instance, Newman and 
 Wordsworth. The great masters of thought live alone. He, 
 on the contrary, which is perhaps rare in men of strong 
 character and principle, was universal (if I may use the 
 word) in friendships and admirations. No matter who the 
 man was, an Erskine or a Keble, a Stanley or a Newman, a 
 Tory or a Liberal, if he recognised goodness and greatness in 
 him, he reverenced, he loved him. Perhaps the explanation! 
 is, that he was a Tory-Presbyterian, educated at Balliol, in 
 the time of Newman. So, as I have heard from those whos^ 
 guide he was, he trod with reverence the place where 
 Dundee fell at Killiecrankie, and would stand bareheaded 
 before the tombs of the Covenanters. 1 And again, though a 
 
 1 The following story is communicated by a friend : 
 
 ' ' There is a little island off the western coast of Scotland, called Eilan 
 Mhor. It is a lone spot ; a few sheep from the mainland find summer feeding 
 there, but now it is uninhabited by man. It was here, in early days, however, 
 that one of the missionaries from the Isle of Saints fixed his abode. Here 
 still exist the ruined chapel where he lies buried, the cross on the rising 
 ground where first he preached, and the cell which was his dwelling-place. 
 Even for the ordinary mind Eilan Mhor possesses a strange fascination. But 
 
340 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 staunch upholder of lords and lairds, he was eloquent in 
 bewailing the wrongs of a peasantry expropriated to make 
 sheep-farms and deer-forests. And in his heart, I think, he 
 loved the people of Scotland far the best of all. In the 
 highest and best sense, quite apart from political intrigue, he 
 combined the spirit of Toryism and Democracy. And thus, 
 having this breadth of sympathy, he had friends everywhere. 
 And what a_Mend he was ! how kindly when present, 
 how tender in recollection ! Once I remember his stopping 
 suddenly in Holywell, in Oxford, opposite a small house, and 
 saying solemnly, ' Clough lodged here.' And he was silent 
 for some time after, before resuming the broken conversation. 
 And yet he did not idealise any one. He was too shrewd, 
 too just an observer, to miss the flaw, or fault in a man or 
 system. But he was, with all that it implies, a perfectly 
 true friend. And speaking of many of his own friendships 
 cut short by death, he loved to quote the beautiful lines of 
 Wordsworth 
 
 Like clouds that rake the mountain summits, 
 
 Or waves that own no curbing hand, 
 How fast has brother followed brother, 
 
 From sunshine to the sunless land ! 
 
 Or again, those lines of Uhland, as translated 
 
 Take, boatman, thrice thy fee ! 
 Take, I give it willingly : 
 For, unwittingly to thee, 
 Spirits twain have passed with me. 
 
 Or again, to quote his own words upon his old friend- 
 ships 
 
 Since then, through all the jars of life's routine, 
 All that downdrags the spirit's loftier mood, 
 I have been soothed with fellowship serene 
 Of single souls with Heaven's own light endued. 
 
 Principal Shairp was quite carried away by the associations of the spot, and 
 was heard by his friends murmuring to himself, ' Holy they were ; holy they 
 are ; holy it is ! ' And often afterwards he would refer to it as a hallowed 
 place." 
 
xiv THE OXFORD CHAIR OF POETRY 341 
 
 But look where'er I may, before, behind, 
 I ne'er have found, nor now expect to find, 
 Another such high-hearted brotherhood. 
 
 Full as he was of present living interests, he lived more 
 than most men in communion with the ghosts of the past. 
 And could he have brought himself to undertake it, he would 
 probably have been a great biographer, for he was greater, .1 
 think, in construction than in criticism ; but, on the other x 
 hand, he would have felt it his duty to criticise, which would 
 have been trying to him, at least in writing of a friend. 
 
 It would be easy to multiply stories and recollections 
 of a man whose character showed itself so transparently, 
 and in such interesting ways, in all his words and actions. 
 But I have already wandered from my subject, which is his 
 work in Oxford. It must not be thought from anything 
 here said that the antagonism between him and those of a 
 different way of thinking was a thing open and expressed. 
 Academical differences in these days are not very intense 
 or outspoken. But when occasion called for it he could 
 speak out plainly and unmistakably. As Professor Farrar of 
 Durham said of him in the University pulpit after his death : 
 ' His mind was of the prophetic order.' Not a prophet, he 
 was of prophets' kin. And so, though it cost him much to 
 do it, just as he had done before in Scotland in attacking 
 the idolatry for Burns, so here also he felt it his duty ' to 
 make a strong protest against the fatal doctrine that men of, 
 genius hold a charter of exemption from the obligations of 
 divine law.' But if, on the two occasions before alluded 
 to, he seemed to assume the functions of the preacher rather' 
 than the art critic, they were the marked exceptions, not the 
 rule. Had he lived, he was meditating some lectures on the 
 ' Poetic aspects of Scottish History,' especially of the struggle 
 between the Stuarts and the House of Douglas, resulting in 
 the downfall of the latter. 'Even Shakespeare,' he said, 
 ' never found a nobler subject for a tragedy.' Of his power 
 so to treat history he had given an earnest in a very in- 
 teresting lecture on James I., the poet-king of Scotland. He 
 also meditated lectures on the Eoyalist and Jacobite poetry 
 
342 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 in England and Scotland. But all these schemes were cut 
 short by his untimely death. When the sad news reached 
 Oxford it was received with universal regret. Even those 
 who knew him little felt the charm of his simplicity, his 
 kindliness, his most interesting and varied conversation, and 
 his chivalrous and lofty tone of mind. He was, moreover, a 
 connecting link with a past, which most Oxford men regard 
 with reverence. What the loss was to his friends I will 
 not attempt to describe. So charming a companion, so true 
 a friend, will not come again. 
 
 Of his lectures, I think that some at all events should 
 be saved from the oblivion which generally is the fate of 
 work of this kind. Like his other writings, they are thought- 
 ful, earnest, elevated, showing a pure and lofty mind, and 
 with a thorough mastery of his subject ; and though not 
 striking in the way of paradox or epigram, or brilliancy of 
 expression,- there is in them a freshness and naturalness, as 
 well as beauty of language, which make them delightful 
 reading. Above all, he has a happy gift of selection from 
 his author, and so letting him illustrate and explain himself." 
 
 The following is the concluding part of Professor Sellar's 
 letter on his friend : 
 
 "From the time I left St. Andrews in 1863, though we 
 saw much less of one another, there was no abatement of 
 our friendship. . . . His talk was always delightful, and 
 was always about the things and subjects which really in- 
 terested him. We met him once or twice in Oxford on 
 our visits to the Master of Balliol, during the summer terms, 
 when he used to give his lectures as Professor of Poetry. 
 He had great pleasure in his life there, in the beauty of 
 the place, in the revival of old and the making of new 
 friendships among the younger men. Once, on their way 
 back to their summer home in Perthshire, he and Mrs. 
 Shairp passed a few days with us here in the Glenkens of 
 Galloway. This was one of the few among the picturesque 
 parts of Scotland which had hitherto remained unknown to 
 
xiv THE OXFORD CHAIR OF POETRY 343 
 
 him. I have never seen any one enjoy this country more. 
 His historic feeling was touched by a visit to Kenmure 
 Castle, by the sight of the pictures of the men and women 
 of ' Kenmure's line,' who played a bold part in the first 
 Jacobite rising, and also by seeing the desolate hills and 
 moors around Carsphairn, among which there still linger 
 memories of the Covenanters. With these two antagonistic 
 causes he had an impartial sympathy. Like Scott, he was 
 attracted by what was chivalrously daring or grimly earnest 
 in our national history, to the disregard of what was politic an< 
 economic. He was present at our Tercentenary Celebration 
 in the spring of 1884, when, on the proposal of his friend, 
 Sir Alexander Grant, he, among many distinguished mien 
 from all countries, received the degree of LL.D. 
 
 The last time I saw him was in December of that year, when 
 he and I walked together in the sad and solemn procession at 
 the funeral of our old Balliol and Oriel friend. The thought 
 occurred to both of us, as we talked over the past, how strange 
 it would have seemed to us if, some forty years before, when 
 we were all three young men together, with an uncertain 
 future before us, we had had, while all the intervening years 
 remained unknown to us, a prophetic vision of that spectacle 
 of which we formed a part, and some intimation of its 
 meaning. He came back with me to my house, and I re- 
 member, as I was somewhat ill at the time, how kindly and 
 earnestly he urged me to get leave of absence till after 
 Christmas, offering to come and do my work for me himself. 
 1 mention this because it was one among several occasions in 
 my life in which I had proof not only of his kindest sympathy,, 
 but of his most active friendliness. On one important occa- 
 sion I now know that he acted towards me with a magnani- 
 mous disregard of his own interest, of which very few men 
 indeed are capable. Though I could not specify these services 
 without entering on details which concern myself alone, 
 there are none ever rendered to me by any one for which I 
 feel a more lasting gratitude. . . . My last association with 
 him was of walking, along with old college friends of his 
 and mine, and friends and former colleagues from St. An- 
 
344 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 drews, in the garden and the fields about his home in Lin- 
 lithgowshire, on the morning of the bright autumn day on 
 which he was borne to the family burial-place. It seemed 
 then that there could have been no more pious and beautiful 
 close to a pious aud beautiful life none more fit to leave on 
 the mind, in the words of a poem which was a great favourite 
 of his, 'happy thoughts about the dead.' . . . He realised his 
 poetry in his life. 
 
 The biographies of men of genius show that some- 
 times, along with high aspiration and heroic effort, there co- 
 exists a ' seamy side' in their lives, and that the fame they 
 enjoy is counterbalanced by something unhappy in their 
 lot. Those most intimate with him never saw any ' seamy 
 side' in Shairp's life; and his lot was eminently a happy 
 one. He had not, and he never desired, great worldly suc- 
 cess. He may have had at times, more than many of his 
 friends and social equals, to feel the strain of the res an- 
 gusta domi. But it came naturally to him to realise the 
 precept of his first teacher, and to combine ' plain living with 
 high thinking.' I remember when the St. Andrews revenues 
 were, owing to the agricultural depression, at their lowest, 
 his saying with a kind of gallant pride, ' It is nonsense mak- 
 ing a poor mouth about these things.' He received from 
 Nature a combination of the courage and independent spirit 
 of a man, with the refinement and ready sympathy of a 
 woman. And this natural endowment was tempered into 
 a consistent character by constant watchfulness against any 
 assertion of self, in the way either of indulgence, or interest, 
 or vanity. He was eminently happy in his early home-life, 
 and in the home of his later life ; and the happiness 
 of his later home did not weaken his tie to the older 
 one. He was also most happy in the number and quality 
 of his friends, and while he went on till the end of his life 
 adding to their number, he never, I am sure, lost one through 
 any fault or neglect of his own. He was by no means too 
 facile in forming friendships, but when once he trusted a 
 man, it would have been no light cause that afterwards 
 alienated 
 
xiv THE OXFORD CHAIR OF POETRY 345 
 
 He was, I think, a true_discerner of character, and 
 what he looked for in any one he cared for was that 
 he should be^ genume^^imr real _ self. He regarded with 
 good-humoured amusement all affectation and pretence, and 
 all ambition in a man to appear or to be greater or more dis- 
 tinguished than nature and circumstances fitted him to be. 
 For anything false and base in the relations of men to one 
 another he felt an indignant scorn ; and he would have been 
 more charitable in judging of it if the wrong were done to 
 himself than if it were done to a friend or even a stranger. 
 As he had a quick sense of personal dignity, and a generous 
 impetuosity of spirit, it was possible that he might some- 
 times take, and sometimes, though rarely, give offence ; but if 
 this happened, he was always prompt to receive or to make 
 acknowledgment; and the matter was never afterwards remem- 
 bered. At no time of his life would any one have said in his 
 presence anything essentially coarse or irreverent ; or if he had 
 done so once, he would not have repeated the experiment. 
 But not to speak of the specially Christian graces which adorned 
 him, there were in his human relations two qualities prized 
 equally by Christian and Pagan, especially conspicuous, can- 
 dour and generosity. Dr. Newman, in the Grammar of 
 Assent speaks of the way in which, in our youth, we read 
 some of the classical writers, and think we understand them, 
 and he shows how different that understanding is from the 
 truer insight we gain into their meaning when we have had 
 experience of life. It seems to me, in thinking of Shairp, 
 that I only now understand the full human feeling and 
 human experience compressed into the ' sad earnestness and , 
 vivid exactness' of lines often read and often quoted with 
 perhaps an incomplete realisation of their meaning, 
 
 Incorrupta fides nudaque veritas 
 Quando ullum inveniet parem ? " 
 
 To Mr. Sellar's paper may be added the remainder of the 
 Dean of Salisbury's 
 
 "In 1877, when Sir Francis Doyle had concluded his 
 
346 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 second term of office as Professor of Poetry at Oxford, it 
 occurred to me and to many friends of Shairp's that he was 
 eminently fitted to fill the post. His published criticisms 
 had given him distinction and position as a real judge of 
 poetry. Mr. M. Arnold, who had again been requested to 
 come forward, stood aside in favour of his old Balliol friend, 
 and the retirement of the present Bishop of Derry, a poet 
 and refined critic, left the field open, and Shairp was elected. 
 He prized the distinction greatly, and he showed in unmis- 
 takable ways his value for our friendship by invariably 
 consulting me upon the subjects of his lectures. Many 
 pleasant letters did I receive from him from time to time, 
 when he was deliberating as to the subjects which he 
 thought likely to interest his Oxford hearers. I regretted 
 that he did not determine on some course of lectures, deal- 
 ing with a particular period either of ancient or modern 
 poetry. But he used to plead his inability to deal with 
 classical poetry in a way satisfactory to himself, and he be- 
 lieved that an effort to create interest in the poets who 
 were so dear to himself would be more fruitful. From the 
 time of his election to the year of his death, when we met 
 occasionally, it was clear to me that poetry and philosophy 
 had not the same interest for him as theology. 
 
 In the autumn of 1 882 I paid him a visit at his delightful 
 summer residence, near Aberfeldy. We walked together to the 
 grave of his brother-in-law, Bishop Douglas of Bombay, and 
 under the trees of Castle Menzies I had one of the most solemn 
 conversations I ever held with Shairp. The year 1882 was 
 a very memorable one to both of us. In the spring, Hugh 
 Pearson had followed his friend Arthur Stanley into the 
 silent land. Shairp and these two friends and I had many 
 delightful associations with pleasant days in Scotland, and 
 as we stood under the trees, Shairp repeated the fine passage, 
 at the conclusion of the Agricola of Tacitus, and then spoke 
 of the effect produced upon him by the lives of Erskine, 
 Stanley, and Pearson : ' I often differed from them, but 
 they had one thing I longed to have more an intense hatred 
 of sin, and a greater love.' He then spoke of the effect pro- 
 
xiv THE OXFORD CHAIR OF POETRY 347 
 
 duced upon him by some of the more earnest religious men 
 he had been meeting lately at Oxford, dwelt much upon a 
 sermon of Liddon's, and regretted the growing spirit of doubt, 
 too much fostered he thought by the diffusiveness of modern 
 Oxford culture. I told him that some young men in whom 
 I was greatly interested had been much moved by his lec- 
 tures on ' Eeligion and Culture/ and urged him strongly to 
 try and write a book which might aim at doing what Col- 
 ridge's Friend and the Aids to Reflection had done for 
 another generation. He quite admitted his own great in- 
 terest in the subject, but spoke much of advancing years 
 and the difficulty he felt in expressing thought, with lucidity 
 and power. ' I envy,' he said, ' the ease with which Jowett 
 seems to write those Introductions to Plato, and read them 
 with a kind of despair.' I remember being much struck 
 during this visit with the hold that Keble had upon his 
 mind. As we drove to the station I reminded him that it 
 was the eve of St. Bartholomew, and told him of some plea- 
 sant historical gossip I had heard from Stanley ; but he said, 
 with a smile, 'I was thinking of Keble's poem;' and he 
 stopped the rather jingling waggonette in which we were, to 
 repeat to me some well-known stanzas, illustrative of the 
 power of Scripture over the human heart. No one that I 
 have ever known, penetrated so completely to the inner 
 spring of Keble's poetry as Shairp. He delighted to dwell 
 upon Arnold's love for The Christian Year, and used to speak 
 with great pathos of the way in which the father of his 
 friend, Lord Coleridge, deplored the estrangement between 
 Keble and Arnold. Something of the same kind had hap- 
 pened in the case of friends well known to both of us, and 
 he mentioned some noble traits in the character of Arch- 
 bishop Tait, ' the most forgiving man/ he said, ' that I have 
 ever known.' No one can feel more than I do, how crude 
 and imperfect these recollections must appear. In the fol- 
 lowing year, 1883, Shairp and I met again at Megginch 
 Castle, and Mrs. Vaughan, the sister of Dean Stanley, was 
 also of the party. At Megginch, Dean Stanley passed many 
 a pleasant day. When he was there his kind host and 
 
348 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 hostess often planned for him excursions to interesting places, 
 and arranged that he should meet friends like Shairp and 
 others who interested him. Shairp dwelt upon these days, 
 in conversation with Mrs. Vaughan as he paced the green 
 walks of the old garden, and I never heard him express him- 
 self more happily as when he described the effect of Stan- 
 ley's animating presence amongst old friends, masters at 
 Eugby in the days when he himself was a fellow-labourer 
 there. As we went to bed at night, Shairp repeated the 
 lines 
 
 Oh ! for the touch of a vanished hand, 
 And the sound of a voice that is still, 
 
 and brought to my recollection what Dean Wellesley had 
 said to me in almost the same words, used by Walter Scott 
 at James Ballantyne's funeral, ' There will be less sunshine 
 for you and me now that Stanley is gone.' 
 
 In the following year, 1884, we spent two days together 
 in Perthshire. Many were the topics upon which he dis- 
 coursed ; and in looking back upon that time, I distinctly 
 remember how frequent were his allusions to the incom- 
 pleteness and fragmentary nature of human interests, and 
 how there seemed almost at that time to have come upon 
 him the impression that his working days were drawing to 
 a close, and that in his own words, adapted from Hallam, ' he 
 must make haste to gather up his sheaves.' I urged him 
 to do something in the way of editing a new edition of his 
 Religion and Culture, but he said that he shrunk from 
 touching what he felt to be full of imperfection. Newman 
 and his influence upon English thought he dwelt much upon; 
 and I remember well how, in speaking of old Oxford days, 
 he described the strengthening effect which Newman's treat- 
 ment of Scripture had had upon his own mind. ' To tell 
 you the truth,' he said, ' I have always felt indifferent as to 
 the talk about results of criticism. I got through Newman 
 an idea of the grandeur of the Bible as a whole, and Nor- 
 man Macleod and John M'Leod Campbell drove the same 
 thought into my mind, so that it has been a rest and sup- 
 port to me all my life to be independent of all this talk.' 
 
xiv THE OXFORD CHAIR OF POETRY 349 
 
 We walked together to the peaceful resting-place of 
 Bessie Bell and Mary Gray, and it was very shortly after 
 this that I received from him the letter which I now have 
 a painful pleasure in adding to this account very imperfect 
 of a most happy two days' visit. 
 
 ' CUIL-ALUINN, ABERFELDY, 22d September 1884. 
 
 ' MY DEAR BOYLE . . . It is one of the greatest plea- 
 sures each summer brings to meet you. And this becomes 
 more so as the old ties become fewer, which they are 
 doing more rapidly each year. I find now almost an in- 
 ability to take up new acquaintanceships, not to speak of 
 friendships. The only exception is, when one meets young 
 people who are connected with the old, and who recall them 
 by something more than name. In these cases it is very 
 pleasant. How increasingly true to the heart one feels 
 that 
 
 I could wish my days to be 
 
 Bound each to each by natural piety. 
 
 I don't think I thanked you enough for the gift of 
 Fanny Kemble's little book. Besides Absence, there are 
 several more which greatly touched me Heart - chords, 
 indeed, coming straight from and going direct to the heart. 
 ... I have thought over your proposal of what I should 
 try to do for the Greek tragedians. It is a fine mine, and 
 the man who should work it as you and I should like to see 
 it worked would do much good. But I doubt if I am the , 
 man. I am essentially a Teuton and a Celt, with rather 
 more of the latter than of the former, and find it more than 
 ever hard to force myself to be a Hellen. I can only write 
 about what I can get myself to care about warmly, and all 
 that, with me, lies this side the Christian era. . . . Most 
 sincerely yours, J. C. SHAIRP. 
 
 P.S. I look forward 'to -Soaker, whom of all the Puritans 
 I like best. I suppose he really was the largest, most reason- 
 
350 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 able, aiid most humane. Is there any record of his ever 
 meeting Milton, and of his opinion of that " cankered carle," 
 as the Scotch songs have it ? ' 
 
 In the next year, after his brief sojourn in Italy, 
 Principal Shairp and his wife paid a long -promised visit 
 to Salisbury. He was far from well, but his interest in all 
 that had occupied him was as fresh and buoyant as ever, 
 and he enjoyed the society of my elder brother, whose 
 friendship for him stretched over a very long period of his 
 life. As in the previous autumn, his thoughts and conver- 
 sation constantly took one direction. He was in great 
 hopes that in the Scottish Universities there might be a 
 greater movement, owing to the increased interest that had 
 been called forth on the subject in Scotland, and he spoke 
 with delight of the good work Professors Butcher and Jebb 
 were doing in their Universities. . . . 
 
 We never met again, and the letter which now follows 
 was almost the last I had from him. But I should not 
 like to conclude this fragment of biography without saying 
 how greatly I was impressed during my last intercourse 
 with him by an extraordinary evidence of his anxious 
 desire to do justice to friends, whose present position in 
 politics and religious thought he had little sympathy with. 
 It may have been the result of an internal feeling that the 
 work day was ending, and the time of rest near. 
 
 * CUIL-ALUINN, ABERFELDY, 21si July 1885. 
 
 ' MY DEAR BOYLE Thank you so much for your sermon 
 on the late Bishop. It seems to me done with very good 
 taste, neither overdone nor underdone. I am sure his 
 family must be pleased with it. We are so glad to have 
 been at Salisbury and to have seen you and Mrs. Boyle 
 in your interesting home, and to have seen, besides, the 
 very garden that Honoria walked in. If I keep well I 
 shall hope some day to return. I am much better and 
 stronger now than when I was with you. We came up 
 
xiv THE OXFORD CHAIR OF POETRY 351 
 
 here at the beginning of this month, and have enjoyed the 
 calm peace without dulness of this Strath. The quiet and 
 the good air, and the greenness, and the outlook to the 
 hills, all suit me and have done me good. 
 
 We go, I am sorry to say, at the end of this month to 
 St. Andrews, for we have let our cottage for three months. 
 If I could always live in as temperate a climate as this 
 July, and as aloof from cares and " worries," I think I 
 should never be ill. I have been working quietly at the 
 Italian subject and have yet plenty of material, if I can 
 only handle it aright. . . 
 
 "Wherever he was known," writes Mrs. Bonamy Price, 
 " he must have stood out as a single figure, and was not 
 merged into those amongst whom he was living. Looking 
 back upon him, nothing strikes me more than that he was 
 # a group ; the individuality of the man was so 
 He might agree with others, and act with others, 
 but you felt he did not do so as belonging to a party. He 
 had his own views and feelings, and he acted upon these 
 alone. Devotedly attached as he was to Oxford, with quite 
 a filial love, and much as he enjoyed coming down twice a 
 year to deliver his lectures, he came as an independent 
 man a son out in life, and no longer bound by the tradi- 
 tions of the family at home. I can only describe his visits 
 as a fresh breeze from his own mountains, sweeping across 
 the closer and heavier atmosphere of a plain. And yet this 
 was absolutely without self-assertion, or self-consciousness.' 
 He did not mean to be different from others ; but it never 
 occurred to him, because he loved and admired a man, that 
 he should agree with him upon all points ; and yet no man 
 could love and admire with a more ungrudging spirit. 
 
 He was the most delightful companion in a chat by 
 the fireside, or a stroll on a summer evening I had almost 
 said in a gossip ; for while no subject was too deep, none 
 was too light to be touched, old rides at Eugby, scenery, 
 sunsets and storms, which we had enjoyed and braved 
 together, with recollections of many who have passed out 
 
352 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 of our lives, and comparing our present and past estimate 
 of them, all in a kindly spirit. I never knew him stern, 
 except when he felt there was irreverence in dealing with 
 sacred subjects. He once said to me, speaking of an 
 occasion of this sort, ' I would have bitten my tongue out 
 before any one should have seen the shadow of a smile ; ' 
 and I know well the stern look which would come over his 
 face. 
 
 With all his wide sympathies with England, and in 
 many respects with modern thought generally, and his deep 
 love for Oxford, which made it always a delight to him to 
 be there, he was a Scotchman to the bottom of his heart 
 I will even venture to say a prejudiced one ; for he would 
 occasionally fancy a lack of due recognition of his country's 
 position in matters which seemed to me too indifferent to 
 be noticed. 
 
 When I say it was a delight to him to be at Oxford, I 
 do not mean that he was in touch with the general line of 
 thought there. It was the Oxford of his youth which he 
 tried to revive in talks with old friends (a breakfast with 
 one, a walk with another, an evening with a third) ; and if 
 he could meet two or three younger friends, and quietly 
 compare with them present and past times, they were 
 evenings much to be enjoyed and remembered by all who 
 were present." 
 
 Miss Wordsworth, the Principal of Lady Margaret Hall, 
 Oxford, writes 
 
 " To give my recollections of the good Principal is like 
 sketching an atmosphere rather than an outline; and 
 though it was an atmosphere which it was both profitable 
 and delightful to breathe, yet it seems almost impossible to 
 convey the effect of it to another person. I think one of 
 my strongest feelings about him was, that he was ' so very 
 Scotch.' By that I mean that he had in a marked degree 
 those qualities which characterise the best Scotchmen and 
 Scotchwomen, and which it is the glory of their literature 
 
xiv THE OXFORD CHAIR OF POETRY 353 
 
 to reflect. His tall figure, and kindly observant expression 
 of face, his somewhat deliberate speech and self-possessed 
 manner, his delightful smile, and the little soupqon of a 
 northern accent which gave a quaintness and an air of 
 sincerity to everything he said, left their impression at once 
 on all who saw him. There was in him a mixture of simplicity 
 and shrewdness, a certain self-respect and respect for others, 
 a depth of feeling combined with manliness, a susceptibility 
 to the imaginative side of things coupled with wholesome, 
 everyday common sense, a natural love for what was great, 
 good, and noble, charmingly blended with a sympathy for 
 the lighter and more playful aspects of life. This, perhaps, 
 came specially under my notice from the interest he took 
 in girls and young women. He individualised them (which 
 a great many clever men do not!) and seemed to have a 
 kind of paternal affection for them and a pleasure in the 
 little prettinesses and amusements of young-lady life, which 
 we see a father sometimes showing in the case of his 
 daughters. 
 
 I fear I cannot recall a single remark or conversa- 
 tion which would bear publication. The people who leave 
 brilliant epigrams behind them are not always those who 
 were most beloved by their friends, any more than fires, which 
 are always flinging out sparks, are the pleasantest to warm 
 oneself by ; and his benevolence had a steady glow always 
 the same always to be counted upon, unobtrusive, but 
 never-failing. 
 
 Others will have written of his literary attainments, and 
 have spoken of him as a lecturer. In this last capacity 
 he never did himself justice. His manner was not by 
 any means equal to his matter, his glasses seemed to 
 worry him, and his reading wanted light and shade. I 
 doubt, too, whether critical analysis was his real forte. 
 He belonged to the affirmative half of the world, a half 
 which is not generally very well represented in Oxford. 
 The lectures of his which struck me most were those in 
 which he left criticism behind and gave us something 
 positive and definite to admire, e.g. a lecture on Ossian, 
 
 2 A 
 
354 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 and perhaps still more a very affecting one on James I. of 
 Scotland. In a lecture of this kind his own real warm 
 heart and poetical feeling came out, as well as that strong 
 nationality which it is the privilege of Scotchmen to possess, 
 and which in itself goes a long way to the making of a 
 poet. 
 
 For my own part I could have wished that he had 
 
 done more of this constructive kind. He had the power of 
 
 sympathy in an unusual degree. It was this power which 
 
 made his portraits, such as that of Dr. Newman, of much 
 
 ^vTmore than contemporary interest, and which would have 
 
 /Jf come out in any narrative or biography which he might 
 _T^ have undertaken. It was this which endeared him to so 
 ^/r\ many friends, many of whom differed considerably from one 
 another in views and opinions, but who all agreed in 
 valuing him. Many have already passed away to the 'land 
 of the leal/ whither he, as we trust, is gone. As far as 
 human judgment goes, few could have had less of little- 
 ness, worldliness, and self-love to leave behind them, few 
 could have more carefully fostered those nobler qualities, 
 both of the intellect and of the soul, which seem fittest 
 for a better life, than he of whom these words are written. 
 His sense of beauty was remarkably strong, and his en- 
 thusiasm for the work of others a very characteristic trait. 
 If I may be allowed to say so, he seemed particularly fitted 
 for appreciating Wordsworth. The Lake District has much 
 in common with Scotland; we find in both a certain 
 masculine tone, a love of ideas rather than imagery, of 
 height, depth, and breadth rather than subtlety perhaps 
 I ought in fairness to add a certain toughness of fibre 
 which does not lend itself very easily to dramatic im- 
 personation, and which is scarcely susceptible and sensitive 
 enough to deal very much in humour of the more delicate 
 kind above all, a large, healthy, objective way of looking 
 at things (one's own mind included, though this may seem 
 paradoxical) which differs very widely from some of the 
 poetry of the last twenty years. Perhaps he had hardly 
 enough constitutional sympathy with the tastes of the 
 
xiv . THE OXFORD CHAIR OF POETRY 355 
 
 Oxford world of to-day to win a widely-extended hearing 
 from younger men. One could wish this had been other- 
 wise, for there was much he had to give which was just 
 what they wanted to counterbalance not to exclude the 
 influence of a later school. I am inclined, however, to 
 think that it is chiefly as a writer that he has made his 
 mark, and that as such he will long continue to influence 
 the thinking part of the world ; not by paradox, not by 
 showiness, not by sensationalism, not by morbid patho- 
 logical introspectiveness, but by his earnestness, his thought- 
 fulness, his high culture and thorough mastery of his subject, 
 and his deep love for all that is noble, pure, and good." 
 
 A resident in Oxford writes 
 
 " I recall a walk we had together one early June even- 
 ing for the purpose of hearing the nightingales then in full 
 song. With what absorbed delight he listened to them ! I 
 remember his repeating to me, as we returned, Keats's lines 
 to the nightingale, and his commenting on, though not 
 sympathising with the sadness of their strain. The tendency 
 of the true poetic instinct, he maintained, should be to raise 
 not depress the soul." 
 
CHAPTEE XV 
 
 LATER YEARS AT ST. ANDREWS 
 
 As this chapter includes the last decade of Shairp's life, it 
 may be most appropriately begun by the latter part of 
 Professor Yeitch's paper on his friend. 
 
 "On a beautiful day early in September 1878, Mr. 
 Lushington, Mr. Shairp, and I left the Loaning on the 
 Tweed, and drove by Traquair and Newhall up the Paddy 
 Slack to Glenlude, and then down by Mount Benger and 
 the Gordon Arms to Yarrow. We paused at the point a 
 little to the south of the watershed of Mount Benger Burn, 
 memorable as the spot whence Wordsworth, in company 
 with Hogg and William Laidlaw, first saw the Vale of 
 Yarrow. The river opened up in its valley, in gleaming 
 links, now seen, now lost, and overhead white fleecy clouds 
 lay calm on the autumn blue. Proceeding up Yarrow, we 
 left the carriage at the Kirkstead Burn, took to the moor 
 on the right, making for St. Mary's Kirk and the wizard- 
 priest Binram's grave. Thence we walked to Meggatdale, 
 and paused for some time at the tomb of ' Perys of 
 Cokburne and hys wife Marjory/ After visiting Tibbie's 
 cottage we drove back, while the shadows were falling, in 
 the peace of the evening. 
 
 This was a sacred Yarrow day, full of dreamy repose 
 and soothing suggestions the past and present happily 
 blended. For Shairp it was a retrospect full of memories 
 of earlier visits ; for Mr. Lushington it was a revelation 
 this being his first visit to the Vale. It was obvious 
 
CHAP, xv LATER YEARS AT ST. ANDREWS 357 
 
 how mucli and how finely the latter was impressed by 
 the scenery and the story. Some time afterwards Shairp 
 read to ine a poem, which was suggested by this visit, 
 entitled ' Three Friends in Yarrow, addressed to E. L. 
 Lushington, September 1878.' 1 
 
 These days of Shairp's Border wanderings were not 
 without touches of humorous incident. One evening, as 
 I have heard him tell the story, he arrived late, wearied 
 and seeking rest and shelter after a long day across the 
 moors above Bellenden and Buccleuch, at a farm-house in 
 the Eankle Burn, tenanted by a farmer of an old Border 
 stock of the name of Grieve. He was admitted to the 
 kitchen, and sat down. Presently the goodwife of the 
 house came and spoke to him a kindly woman, with some 
 insight into the quality of even a wayfaring stranger but 
 evidently with constraint and hesitation as to whether 
 he was to be housed for the night. After a little con- 
 versation she returned to the parlour, where evidently she 
 held a colloquy with her husband on the subject of their 
 visitor. At length, after a good deal apparently of nego- 
 tiation on the part of the old lady, Shairp was allowed to 
 remain for the night. Before he retired to rest, his con- 
 siderate friend, the gudewife, came to him with a tumbler of 
 whisky-toddy in her hand, which she proffered to him with 
 the words, ' Ye'll be nane the waur of a cheerer after your 
 lang day on the muirs.' The ' cheerer ' was very gratefully 
 accepted so he acknowledged. Next morning the secret 
 of the old gentleman's antipathy and apparent lack of hospi- 
 tality was revealed. It appeared that some months before, 
 a stranger had called at the house under similar circum- 
 stances, had given himself out as a friend of ' the Duke's ' 
 the farmer's landlord, the Duke of Buccleuch ; had pro- 
 mised his help in getting certain things done on the farm 
 had, in fact, pledged himself to get them done ; had lived 
 well and departed, never more to be heard of he or his 
 pledges. Hence the virtuous indignation of the honest old 
 
 1 See Glendessary, and other Poems, p. 201. 
 
358 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 gentleman, and his stern resolve to have nothing in the 
 future to do with respectable-looking ' tramps.' 
 
 There was another somewhat grotesque incident, which 
 I remember his telling me. One evening, after a long and 
 rugged walk across the wilds of Talk, he reached the herd's 
 house at the foot of Talla Linns, where, as he told me, he had 
 been often hospitably entertained by honest Walter Dal- 
 gliesh and his spouse. Thinking, as usual, to find quarters 
 for the night there, he went to the cottage, was admitted, 
 and cordially welcomed by the gudewife. He had had 
 a supper of porridge and milk, had thrown his wet 
 boots off, and was seated comfortably at the kitchen fire, 
 thinking he was finally and restingly housed. About nine 
 o'clock in came the gudeman, who welcomed him, but with 
 a certain restraint. The wife was forthwith called out of 
 the kitchen, and there was some low murmuring talk 
 ominous for him, Shairp somehow thought. Presently the 
 gudeman returned to the kitchen alone the wife could not 
 face the matter and with much bowing and many respectful 
 compliments, managed to tell the guest that the room was 
 preoccupied for that night, as two dykers had come and, 
 according to prearrangement, were to sleep in the bed ! 
 The worthy shepherd added, ' I dinna think ye wad like to 
 mak' a third.' Shairp woke up at this from his comfortable 
 resting before the fire, made up his mind to emigrate, pulled 
 on very reluctantly the wet boots, and started for the 
 nearest resting-place, the Crook Inn, six miles away, which 
 he reached somewhere about midnight. 
 
 Looking back over an unclouded intimacy of nearly 
 thirty years, many days spent on the hills with my friend 
 recur to me, touched with pleasing yet regretful memories 
 dear and delightful days, gone never to come again. In his 
 prime Shairp was one of the best men for a hill walk I 
 have known. Undaunted by distance, mist or rain, the 
 purpose of the day, however hard, was almost invariably 
 carried out. And certainly I have not walked with any 
 one whose heart-sympathy with mountain and moor, the 
 varied moods of the heavens gleam, shadow, even storm 
 
xv LATER YEARS AT ST. ANDREWS 359 
 
 the simple, free, and wild growths of the great upland soli- 
 tudes, was so fine, constant, deep as his. And I doubt if 
 any one since Wordsworth has felt and read their kinship 
 with human life and feeling so well as he." 
 
 In 1879 Principal Shairp contributed a volume on 
 Burns to Mr. Morley's series of English Men of Letters. 
 This little book has been a good deal misunderstood. It is 
 not only delightfully written, but its appreciation of Burns 
 is deeg,_and as a critical study it is admirable. That Shairp 
 was not in sympathy with Burns, and was oblivious to some 
 phases of his genius, has been repeated ad nauseam; but he 
 was only out of sympathy with what in Burns was ignoble 
 and downward. His appreciation of the genius of the 
 peasant bard, of his inimitable humour, his rare insight into 
 character, his force, his tenderness, and matchless lyric grace, 
 his patriotic ardour, the width of his sympathy, his endless 
 vitality, and vast complex power, was as keen as was his 
 recoil from the excesses of passion and the earthward gravita- 
 tion of Burns. That he remembers that Burns had failings, 
 and proceeds to point them out, is to his honour as a 
 moralist. If Burns himself bemoaned the fact that 
 
 Thoughtless folly laid him low, 
 
 and exhorted all his readers to remember that " self-con- 
 trol is wisdom's root," why should not a critic of the 
 bard drive the same truth home, with power and in- 
 cisive force, by plainly speaking of his faults ? If Burns 
 had something in common with The Jolly Beggars whom 
 he so exquisitely describes, and had more sympathy than 1 
 his critic with their wild and dissolute ways, it is a poor 
 rejoinder to say that he was more human ; say rather, less 
 human for blindness to faults is not a phase of the " charity 
 that covers a multitude of sins." It is rather a sign of the 
 relaxation of moral fibre that would construe all the varying 
 types of action as mere phenomenal varieties of character, 
 produced by causes over which the agent has no control, 
 like the waves that rise and fall on the sea of human con- 
 
360 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 duct. Of course there is much to be thankful for in every 
 vindication of human instinct, against unnatural repression, 
 or Puritanical crucifixion (which always determines a re- 
 action the other way) ; and we must judge Burns leniently, 
 remembering the man with his " passions wild and strong," 
 and remembering the age and his surroundings, as well as 
 the sad fact that he was himself the chief sufferer. Never- 
 theless it is the moralist's duty to indicate the inevitable- 
 ness of the law that man must reap as he sows, and that 
 those laws which govern the hidden world of moral agency 
 are as stable as that of gravitation. 
 
 It is by his Songs that our " Scottish son of thunder " 
 has outdistanced every other writer these fifty or sixty 
 songs, that are almost as faultless in lyric form as they are 
 perfect in natural feeling ; and no-ona has^ written better of 
 these songs than Shairp has done. 
 
 In a former chapter we have seen that on the occasion 
 of the Burns centenary Shairp wrote to his friend, Mr. 
 Scott, saying that there was only one man in the world 
 to be put alongside of Burns, and that for his part, being a 
 Scot, he preferred the Scotsman ; and all throughout his 
 later estimate it will be seen that the appreciation and the 
 sympathy are stronger than the criticism. 
 
 The following is a sample of it : 
 
 " Here was a man, a son of toil, looking out on the 
 world from his cottage, on society low and high and on 
 nature homely or beautiful, with the clearest eye, the most 
 piercing insight, and the warmest heart ; touching life at a 
 hundred points, seeing to the core all the sterling worth, 
 nor less the pretence and hollowness of the men he met, 
 the humour, the drollery, the pathos, and the sorrow of 
 human existence; and expressing what he saw, not in the 
 stock phrases of books, but in his own vernacular, the lan- 
 guage of his fireside, with a directness, a force, a vitality 
 that tingled to the finger-tips, and forced the phrases of his 
 peasant dialect into literature, and made them for ever 
 classical. Large sympathy, generous enthusiasm, reckless 
 
xv LATER YEARS AT ST. ANDREWS 361 
 
 abandonment, fierce indignation, melting compassion, rare 
 flashes of moral insight, all are there. Everywhere you see 
 the strong intellect made alive, and driven home to the 
 mark, by the fervid heart behind it. And if the sight of 
 the world's inequalities, and some natural repining at his 
 own obscure lot, mingled from the beginning, as has been 
 said, 'some bitternesses of earthly spleen and passion with 
 the workings of his inspiration, and if these in the end ate 
 deep into the great heart they had long tormented,' who 
 that has not known his experience may venture too strongly 
 to condemn him ? " l 
 
 What finer estimate of Burns have we than is contained 
 in the preceding paragraph ? 
 
 To an old friend, Mr. John Boyle, he wrote after the 
 book appeared : " It was in many ways the most difficult 
 piece of work I have had to do. The closer I came to his 
 life, the more unsatisfactory it became. What to say or 
 think of the whole man is very hard to say. One thing I 
 was sure of, that in Scotland he has been made far too 
 much an idol of, and that to the middle and lower orders 
 that over-admiration has done harm, coarsened their natures, 
 and lowered their tone. Therefore I tried to speak the 
 truth, and to be just yet charitable. I do not want to be 
 sympathetic with the coarseness and immorality that stained 
 his whole life, and in some degree his works. At the same 
 time I come behind no one in admiration of his marvellous 
 power and gifts, though I think he often misused them." 
 
 After the publication of the Burns, Professor Lushington 
 wrote to his old pupil and friend from Maidstone, referring 
 to a criticism of the book which had appeared in The 
 Academy 
 
 " It may be an open question whether a devoted ad- 
 mirer of Wordsworth may or may not be to some extent 
 less likely to appreciate all of Burns as his enthusiastic 
 admirers do. But could any sincere admirer of poetry 
 
 1 Burns, pp. 192, 193. 
 
362 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 (whether Burns or Wordsworth) speak of W 's doing 
 nothing better than writing some didactic lines against intem- 
 perance, etc., when there are the two poems ' I strive/ and 
 ' We fail/ which are amongst the grandest testimonies to 
 Burns's greatness breathing such tender sympathy, and 
 humble, loving grief for him ? I cannot help thinking that 
 if Burns could tell us now, he would rather have had these 
 two poems to his memory than anything that ever Carlyle has 
 written in praise of him. . . . And to speak of W - W 
 being incompetent to judge of a poem occasioned by the 
 French Eevolution, as if he had never felt or chanted 
 triumphal strains upon it !" 
 
 Of the Burns Dr. John Brown wrote 
 
 " It has given me as much pleasure as probably I am 
 now capable of most excellent, righteous in its judgment, 
 cordial and wise. The end is most noble and affecting. 
 You have said the right thing and the true, as ' the poor 
 inhabitant below ' would himself say ; though his reckless, 
 and to him (in a deep sense) unfair idolaters may say ' No.' 
 It is most skilfully done, and the story is told to the quick. 
 I am sure it will do good, though I feel as if it must have 
 given you often great pain to do it. There is so much in 
 the wonderful and deplorable being to make one unwilling 
 to detain the mind over his sin and misery, his greatness 
 and his vileness. I have nowhere seen truer or better 
 writing on him than in the last part : but all is good. . . . 
 I wish you had to do Wordsworth. There there would be 
 little let or hindrance, and no disgust. What a shame 
 printing all that trash, arid worse, which Burns on his death- 
 bed deplored he had ever written, or said, or done." 
 
 Lord Coleridge wrote : "I am delighted with Burns. 
 I think I trace a little of the unwilling Minerva in parts of 
 it, and certainly he is not savoury upon the whole. But 
 you have conveyed the impression of his terrible failings 
 and coarsenesses ; while you have done full justice to his 
 glorious genius, and to his great power of intellect. This 
 
xv LATER YEARS AT ST. ANDREWS 363 
 
 last I had not properly estimated till I read your book. 
 What a vigorous, clever fellow he was, quite apart from his 
 undying lyrics ! I think he might well have been promoted, 
 and he was badly treated. . . . You have done a good book, 
 old fellow, and one which will live." 
 
 Shairp's correspondence with his friends at this time was 
 various and interesting. To Lord Coleridge, who had just 
 enlarged his Devonshire home Heath's Court, at Ottery 
 St. Mary he sent some Scotch firs to be planted on a 
 small eminence in the grounds. Lord Coleridge wrote : 
 " They shall crown my little hill here, and they shall be 
 called 'The Principal's Grove'; and, as far as I can, my 
 descendants shall know of a friendship which I am proud 
 of, and (more than that) which I humbly thank God for." 
 
 And there they now stand, on the wooded knoll over- 
 looking the railway to Ottery, an interesting memorial in a 
 most interesting place, of one who never saw them there 
 himself. 
 
 To Lord Coleridge Shairp wrote the three following letters 
 in 1879 and 1880: 
 
 " CUIL-ALUINN, ABERFELDY, 29th July 1879. 
 
 " How much I should like to make out the visit you have 
 so often proposed to your Devonshire home ! ' But we are 
 bound by heavy laws,' so many things there are that keep 
 me fast to my small spot of earth. Still I do not give up 
 hope of making it out. Yet the time passes. To-morrow 
 I complete the threescore years. Clearly the autumn of 
 life has come, and all things wear now for me an autumnal 
 look. If any more years of strength are given, I would 
 that they were used to better purpose than the past have 
 been. . . . 
 
 I am glad you, on the whole, like the Burns. It was 
 done in many parts, invita Minerva. The contrast be- 
 tween what is best and really lovable in his poetry, in the 
 spirit of many of his letters, and the tenor of his manhood, 
 
364 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 was so painful to me. I have suppressed, as far as I could, 
 all the grosser details. . . . The Scotch prints much abuse 
 me for it. Prig, Prude, Pharisee, are the words they apply. 
 This, however, only makes me feel the more that it was 
 necessary that the truth should be told and not blinked. 
 A difficult question remains, How far, for the purpose of 
 Art, it is allowable or even desirable to dramatise what is 
 coarse and impure. Burns's Jolly Beggars is no doubt a 
 wonderful stroke of genius, showing what dramatic power 
 lay in him, but I dislike it for its impurity, and don't wish 
 to train myself to like it. Consider this question, about what 
 is morally allowable to the dramatic faculty How far and 
 in what way it may legitimately represent the baser sides 
 of human nature ? I don't see my way about it. When 
 you have time or inclination, please give me your thought 
 on this. . . ." 
 
 "9th September 1879. 
 
 "... Lately I met two old friends of ours on the banks of 
 
 the Tay, in the Carse of Gowrie, A. P. S and H. P - , 
 
 both very charming companions to spend a day or two with in 
 a pleasant country-house. Wonderful, is it not, to see Pearson 
 as he is ! Stanley told me of your intention of putting up 
 
 a bust of S. T. C in the Abbey. He seemed much pleased 
 
 with the thought. Having got W. W- there, I hope his 
 friend will be placed as near him as possible. I have not 
 seen Matt's Book of Selections yet, but greatly enjoyed his 
 
 essay on W in Macmillan. All he said was so true, so 
 
 penetrating, laying his finger ' there and there ' with that 
 peculiar diagnostic power of his, yet patronising W. W- 
 all the while, with that sublime condescension ! I greatly 
 enjoyed it ; from one thing alone I am disposed to dissent 
 the confining all his excellent things between 1798-1808. 
 I know as well as any one the peculiar charm of his best 
 things of that period the ethereal touch that belonged to 
 that springtime of his genius and which never returned. 
 But I hold, and I think you do, that his later period, even 
 up to thirty or thirty-six, produced things that one would 
 
xv LATER YEARS AT ST. ANDREWS 365 
 
 not part with for anything, and that, though the early charm 
 was over, there came a mature, mellow wisdom, as of a ripe 
 autumn, which has a charm of its own. ..." 
 
 "August 1880. 
 
 " . . . About this time of year I begin to bethink me of 
 my Oxford lectures. I am just trying to put down some- 
 thing on what I call the prophetic character of poets, as 
 distinguished from their merely artistic. By this I mean 
 their gift of seeing some new aspects of nature, or character, 
 or life, not hitherto perceived, and bringing it home to 
 people's hearts. The sense in which they are discoverers, 
 and enlarge the range of thought and sentiment open to their 
 fellow-men. In this sense, Scott and Wordsworth were 
 both prophets of our time. They had truths, the one about 
 the past, and human history, the other about the outer world 
 and the deep things of man and his destiny, to communicate, 
 by which they benefited their kind as really, though in a 
 much higher way than James Watt or Arkwright or Stephen- 
 son. Then, perhaps, I may go on to show in another region 
 how imagination is fitted to be our best teacher. 
 
 I mean in religious matters or things beyond both sense 
 and intellect. It is quite clear that the dry intellect can do 
 nothing for us in that region. Hence the ruthlessness of 
 Dogmatics. All that can be done for us is by adumbrations 
 of those things which conscience and the spirit feel after. 
 Hence, perhaps, it was that our Lord taught by parables as 
 the only possible means of conveying truly to us what may 
 be known of the super-sensible order. But I need not 1 
 enlarge on this. Si quid novisti . . . candidus imperti" 
 
 To Dr. Clerk at Kilmalie he wrote the following five 
 letters on Highland poetry : 
 
 " CUIL-ALUINN, ABERFELDY, 18th August. 
 
 " MY DEAR CLERK I am minded, if so be, to give one 
 lecture, may be more, at Oxford, on Highland poetry. Not 
 
366 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 only is it that at this season, with the heather in bloom, I 
 cannot fix my mind on the more bookish subjects Virgil, 
 Sophocles, and Co. but besides, I find that one always does 
 best, and most interests other people, when one writes of a 
 subject full of interest to oneself. 
 
 Now though I am growing old, and these interests are 
 fading from me, yet I have spent so much time on them in 
 the past, that I feel it due to the Highlands, and my own 
 past, not to let my tenure of the Oxford Chair pass without 
 saying some word on the Highland bards. 
 
 Ossian I don't intend to touch, but rather the more 
 modern men, Ian Lorn, Alastir Macdonald, and above all, 
 him whom I know and love best, my own Donach Ban, the 
 Burns of the Highlands Burns, but without his earthliness. 
 . . . Kemember it is not a laborious history, or antiquarian 
 investigation of these men I intend, but a bright, interesting 
 sketch, touching only their more picturesque points, and 
 giving a few extracts from their very best things. . . . 
 I feel it due to all those summer wanderings by Lochiel, 
 Moidart, and Arisaig to make something of it. ... 
 
 I must begin this side the Reformation, with a mere 
 allusion to the great Ossianic background, out of which all 
 modern song has come. Of Donach Ban's poems, besides 
 ' Ben Doran ' and the ' Farewell to the Bens,' and to ' Mary 
 Oig,' is there any other specially characteristic of him, or 
 specially fine ? . . . Yours most sincerely, 
 
 J. C. SHAIRP." 
 
 Again 
 
 " CUIL-ALUINN, 1st September 1879. 
 
 " MY DEAR CLERK ... As to my lectures, I am 
 getting on with the first, of which I may send you the rough 
 draft, if you can make allowance for it when very rough, as I 
 always block out my first outline. Then I rewrite, com- 
 press, arrange, and try to polish in the second draft. I 
 agree with you that the great Ossianic background that lies 
 behind all Highland poetry must be noted. On the other 
 
xv LATER YEARS AT ST. ANDREWS 367 
 
 hand, I cannot enter into the interminable jungle of the 
 Ossianic controversy and M'Pherson's doings. I shall just 
 refer those who care for those things to my paper in Mac- 
 millan, June 1871. But I should like to show that, even 
 leaving M'Pherson out of account, there remains a great 
 quarry of Ossianic stuff, and to give a few fragments as 
 specimens. . . . 
 
 Remember it is not antiquarian discussion I wish for 
 my Oxford audience they won't listen to that but the most 
 veritable and yet telling results of such investigation. . . . 
 Ever yours, J. C. SHAIRP." 
 
 " CUIL-ALUINN, Wednesday, 3d September. 
 
 11 MY DEAR CLERK My first lecture on the general capa- 
 bilities of the Highlands for poetry, on the way Celtic 
 feeling has in modern times filtered into English poetry, 
 and on the Ossianic poetry with some of its characteristic 
 features all this is so far roughly blocked out. . . . 
 But I should like a few of the most characteristic passages 
 to quote, three or four, part from your translation, part 
 from the Highland Society's Eeport, on some non- 
 M'Phersonised Ossianic poetry. A piece about a battle 
 that is good; also one or two pieces giving the peculiar 
 Ossianic wail or sadness. These are what I want for the 
 first lecture. For the second, on Post-Ossianic poetry, am 
 I to quote any of the old Bards, or ' The Owl,' or any of 
 these early poems ? or shall I give ' The Lament of M'Gregor 
 of Ross,' as translated by myself ? This must have been as 
 old as the Reformation. 
 
 Then of the regular bards in Mackenzie's Beauties, 
 I want a short characteristic piece from Mary Macleod, 
 translated into good prose by you. 
 
 Then ditto from Ian Lorn. 
 
 Ditto from Macdonald. These two last must both be 
 Jacobite pieces. 
 
 The second half of the second lecture will be all de- 
 voted to Donach Ban. 
 
368 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 But I feel that I have material for four instead of two 
 lectures ; however, I must try to cram it all into two. . . . 
 
 Mackenzie's Introduction is vague and unsatisfactory. 
 Many thanks for Paterson. His prose is always valuable, 
 and more or less to the point ; but his verse translations 
 are very vague, limp, and wanting in the pith and finish of 
 which the English is capable. . . . Yours very sincerely, 
 
 J. C. SHAIRP." 
 
 " CUIL-ALUINN, 6th September. 
 
 " MY DEAR CLERK ... You will observe that I have 
 given nearly half the lecture to the scenery, history, etc., of 
 the Highlands, and their influence on English literature. 
 Perhaps this may be disproportionately long. But one 
 must pave a way between the Sassenach mind and Donach 
 Ban, the Burns of the Gael. . . . Ever yours very 
 sincerely, J. C. SHAIRP." 
 
 " CUIL-ALUINN, 27th September. 
 
 " MY DEAR CLERK Thank you for your remarks on the 
 lecture. You are quite right. The historical part shall be 
 greatly shortened, and the Ossian part enlarged. . . . 
 
 My aim will be to put before an audience, who know 
 nothing of Gaelic poetry or its spirit, some of the more 
 salient and attractive features -of it. I feel it due to the 
 Highlands and to my long converse with them to do this in 
 the south. . . ." 
 
 The two following letters from Dr. John Brown to 
 Principal Shairp, are both interesting in themselves, and in 
 their bearing on the work which Shairp was doing in the 
 Oxford Chair : 
 
 [Postmark, 21st September 1880.] 
 
 " GLEN HILL, NEAR ABERDEEN. 
 
 " MY DEAR FRIEND . . . Why set poets for ever against 
 each other ? There is one glory of the sun, and another 
 
xv LATER YEARS AT ST. ANDREWS 369 
 
 glory of the moon, and one star differeth from another star, 
 not only in the quantity but also in the quality of its 
 glory. What you wrote in 1864 was felt by me to be true, 
 and what Coleridge in his Biographia Litemria true also. 
 To me Wordsworth's great defect is his want of the sense of 
 the ludicrous, of the incongruous of humour. I feel this 
 more than his prosiness : but that he was a great poet, the 
 greatest of our century, I never doubt. His is the poetry of 
 intellect and of feeling of humanity in the abstract 
 chiefly; and yet what more human than The Old Cumberland 
 Beggar ? 
 
 Byron when he is a poet which very often he is not, 
 though always eloquent is the poet of passion, of the 
 ' heart tumult '; but he would have been a greater poet had 
 he had the deep feeling, the quiet, steady, human-hearted- 
 ness of Wordsworth. . . . 
 
 Do you hear anything of Sellar ? Eead Don Quixote 
 slowly tastingly it is a wonderful performance for humour, 
 and pathos too ; and in the Spanish, and to a Spaniard, 
 must be as delicious as a ripe peach. 
 
 Do you remember what Sir H. Taylor says of Byron, 
 in his Preface to Philip van Artewelde ? ' Byron's men and 
 women are passions personified ; Shakespeare's are men and 
 women impassioned.' If you have not lately read that 
 Preface, read it ; his notions on poetry are good as far as 
 they go very. . . . Ever affectionately, J. B." 
 
 [Postmark, 1881.] 
 
 "... As for Chaucer, in his own line he is primary. 
 In description he is an inspired child, finding himself in the 
 juventus mundi, and getting the first crush of the grapes. It 
 is a pity there is so much animalism here and there ; though, 
 in a sense, of a not so unwholesome kind in him ; but it is 
 not suited to our time. The Wife of Bath is worse than 
 The Jolly Beggars though full of nature and freshness. . . . 
 The Knight's Tale is exquisite, ' Up rose the Sun and 
 up rose Emily ' and G-riselda is fine. ' She never was idle 
 
 2 B 
 
370 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 but when she slept.' I think I am quoting it wrong, but 
 that is the sense. . . . Do you know Lowell's (the American) 
 poems ? If not, get them. He is out of sight the greatest 
 poet our cousins have yet sent forth, both in reach of 
 thought and feeling, and humour, and in general felicity of 
 language, and spontaneity. Whittier comes nearest him, 
 Longfellow is a sort of male Mrs. Hemans. But get 
 Lowell, and study him. His Biglow Papers will disquiet 
 your fine old Tory soul, but they are full of wit and wisdom 
 and freshness of nature. 
 
 How glorious Ben Lawers will be looking from your 
 home, especially if he has those delicate mists clinging to his 
 shoulders, and entangling the sunlight." 
 
 Again, December 29, 1881 : He (Lowell) is a true and 
 nearly a great poet far their greatest in depth and breadth." 
 
 Shairp's Oxford Lectures were published in 1881, under 
 the title Aspects of Poetry. On receiving this volume, Car- 
 dinal Newman wrote to the author 
 
 "BIRMINGHAM, 25th November 1881. 
 
 " DEAR PRINCIPAL SHAIRP Your welcome letter and 
 present have just come, and I thank you sincerely for both, 
 and for the far more than kind chapter about me with which 
 your volume concludes. But it makes me feel very much 
 ashamed, and I do not know how to bear it, from the feeling 
 that it is so far above what I deserve. Yet I cannot but thank 
 God for having put it into your heart to speak so affection- 
 ately of me, however partially I can accept your critical 
 judgments. 
 
 I wished to have talked with you in Trinity Hall 
 more than I did, from the gratitude towards you (which I 
 have also felt towards Lord Coleridge), for former similar 
 kindnesses, but one cannot always speakj)ecause one wishes. 
 And I did not do justice to myself in what I sent to you 
 about Wordsworth. Hurrell Froude somewhat prejudiced 
 me against him, as if he was egotistical, which he thought 
 destructive of all true poetic genius ; but no one can delight 
 
xv LATER YEARS AT ST. ANDREWS 371 
 
 in his odes and occasional pieces more than I do, and I 
 shall read what you say of him in your present volume, as 
 in a former, with the certainty of rising from it with a fuller 
 sense of his greatness as a poet. Most truly yours, 
 
 JOHN H. CARD. NEWMAN." 
 
 No one in reading these lectures now will fail to see the 
 range of Shairp's knowledge of poetry, and the width of 
 his appreciation of it. His delight in the poetic work of 
 writers from whom, on other grounds, he recoiled, was not 
 only genuine, but it was often thrilling. I have heard him 
 repeat passages from the lyrics of Shelley, and the songs of 
 Burns, his voice tremulous with emotion, and his whole 
 frame moved by the utterance of them, in that self-forgetful 
 enthusiasm and pure appreciation which only poets feel. 
 And he seemed at times to dwell with special delight, to 
 linger over and repeat to himself, the most inspired passages 
 of these authors, with whom in their less exalted moods he 
 had little sympathy, or none at all. 
 
 On the publication of the Aspects of Poetry, Lord Cole- 
 ridge wrote to him in November 1881 
 
 " I am simply delighted and fascinated with it. Unless 
 I am quite mistaken, it will raise and help you where you 
 are, which at our time of life, and in the position which you 
 have reached, is perhaps the highest thing one can say. 
 Not to advance is said (and I think in youth is truly said) 
 to be to go back ; but in age, not to go back is really to 
 advance. I am specially struck with the Scott, the Shelley, 
 the Yarrows, and the White Doe. I think the latter has 
 never had its meed of praise. You have chosen the very 
 same passage which I chose years ago to read at Exeter, as 
 a specimen of Wordsworth's exquisite diction, when he chose 
 to lay himself out for it ; and I remember saying the open- 
 ing of The White Doe was as fine in metre as Jonson, or 
 
 Gray, or Shelley, or S. T. C , our four greatest metrists, 
 
 unless Herrick may claim a place amongst them." 
 
372 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 Again, a year afterwards 
 
 " Now then, like lago, to be critical, Why do you speak 
 so contemptuously of Callimachus ? In his hexameters there 
 are some very fine passages, though he is not even at his 
 best in them. But his elegiacs are very fine. I do not 
 know a finer, grander piece of poetry than that which tells 
 the kindness of Tiresias, in the Lavserum Palladis, and the 
 epigrams are lovely. The one on the death of a man called 
 Heraclitus is quite perfect. Why do you give in to the 
 German depreciation of Euripides ? the favourite of anti- 
 quity, the favourite of almost every great man and poet from 
 his own time till Schegel made the very wonderful discovery 
 that he was not Sophocles, and therefore was not to be ad- 
 mired. Surely Ion, Medea, Alcestis, Hippolytus, have as 
 much purity and loftiness and self-denial as any pre-Christian 
 creations in the world. The Prometheus stands alone and 
 inaccessible, but after that I do not think that either Soph- 
 ocles or ^Eschylus rose to the heights of Euripides ; and 
 think of the life of Sophocles compared with the austerity 
 and nobleness of Euripides ! " 
 
 In 1881 Shairp contributed an article to the Princeton 
 Review on " The Eeasonableness of Faith," a paper full of 
 interest and beauty, but scarcely convincing to those who 
 do not already agree with it. That "probability is the 
 guide of life," and that in all ordinary affairs we dispense 
 with logical facts, may be admitted, but we do not act, if 
 we are wise, without evidence, and it is the evidential element 
 that is, or ought to be, to rational men, the ground of action. 
 
 Several short papers, articles, and addresses were written 
 by Shairp of less permanent interest than his longer Essays 
 and Lectures but in all of which there are some things of 
 more than passing value, e.g. his estimate of Professor Terrier 
 in the " Introductory Notice " which Mr. Lushington prefixed 
 to Ferrier's Lectures on Greek Philosophy, his notice of an- 
 other colleague Professor Bell in one of the lectures with 
 which he opened the winter session of the United College, 
 and of the Eev. Edwin Wallace, of Worcester College, Oxford 
 
xv LATER YEARS AT ST. ANDREWS 373 
 
 a former pupil at St. Andrews, and the author of an im- 
 portant work on the philosophy of Aristotle, in a similar 
 address in a subsequent year, his estimate of Dr. Park, St. 
 Andrews, prefixed to a volume of his Songs, and his lecture 
 on Canon Mozley, afterwards printed in Frazers Magazine. 
 
 In 1867, he delivered an address at the opening of the 
 session of the United College, in Principal Eorbes's absence, 
 on the characteristic features of the Scottish University 
 System, as distinguished from that of England an address 
 well worthy of reproduction. In 1869 his address as 
 Principal referred mainly to his predecessor in office. In 
 1871 he dealt chiefly with the study of History, and the 
 importance of the subject in a University curriculum of study. 
 In the same year he opened the winter course of lectures at 
 the Literary Institute of Dunfermline by an address on "What 
 books to read, and how to read them." In beginning the 
 session of 1874 at St. Andrews, he dealt with the contrast 
 between the physical and the moral interpretation of the 
 Universe and Life. In 1875 he gave the history of the 
 movement in reference to Chairs of Education in the Scottish 
 Universities, and dealt with the work which a professor of 
 Education might take up, and with the state of secondary 
 education in Scotland at the time. 
 
 These addresses and that which he gave to the School- 
 masters' Educational Association at Edinburgh in 1878 
 might well be reproduced in a volume of posthumous essays. 
 
 In the year 1881, he was startled as many others in 
 Britain, America, and the Continent were by the sudden 
 death of his old and dear friend, Arthur Stanley, the Dean 
 of Westminster. He expressed his feelings thus in a letter 
 to Mrs. Drummond at Megginch, where Stanley used so often 
 to be seen and to be heard at his very best 
 
 " ORMSARY, ARDRISHAIG, ARGYLESHIRE, 2 1 st July. 
 
 " DEAR MRS. DRUMMOND I need hardly say to you how 
 this dreadful blow has stunned me ; and yet you will allow 
 me the relief of saying it. It was not till Monday last that 
 we knew anything of his illness ; then that startling extract 
 
374 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 from the Bishop of Manchester's sermon ; then a telegraph 
 from T. Walrond, with rather more hope ; then on Tuesday 
 morning the fatal tidings ! It is all so dreadfully sudden ; 
 no loss could have come in all England that would have 
 been so profound a sorrow to so many hearts. I do not 
 speak of the public calamity, nor do I venture to say what 
 he has been to you all his relations on either side. It is as 
 a friend, the friend of forty years, that I mourn him the 
 most faithful and unchanging, the most generous and noble- 
 hearted of men ; ever vivid, ever gentle, ever delightful ! 
 And what I feel, how many more are now feeling ? And 
 to every one of these his friends he had a place of his own 
 in their hearts, which must now remain empty while they 
 live. 
 
 To me it seems as if a darkness had fallen over all 
 England, and that I never can return to it again with the 
 same feelings now that he is no longer there. Even in 
 Scotland I had visited so many of its scenes with him 
 scenes which he for the first time brightened into life and 
 now I shall not care to look on them, nor think of them 
 again. All their interest seems gone with him. Do you 
 remember that dim morning (Saturday, 5th March) when I 
 last left the Deanery, and the passage from Carlyle l he read 
 aloud, while I was hastening through breakfast ? That 
 passage now sounds as a presage of his own quick coming 
 fate. 
 
 I have no doubt you were with him during these last 
 days, and some day perhaps I may hear something of them 
 from you. Had I been at all within reach I should have 
 gone to the funeral. From this great distance, where we 
 are on a long-planned visit, I could scarcely make it out. 
 There will be enough without me, and my heart will be in 
 the Abbey that day as much as if I were bodily present 
 there. . . . 
 
 I think the memory of him will be a bond while they 
 live to all who knew and loved him. Believe me, yours 
 very sincerely, J. C. SHAIRP." 
 
 1 See the Aspects of Poetry, Paper VII. 
 
xv LATER YEARS AT ST. ANDREWS 375 
 
 Two other letters to Mrs. Drummond may follow this 
 one, though they belong to later years. The Dean of West- 
 minster had left to the United College at St. Andrews his 
 memorials of the East, brought with him from Egypt, Pales- 
 tine, and Syria in the winter of 1852-53, when he visited 
 these lands with Theodore Walrond and others. It is to 
 this that the first letter refers. 
 
 " STATION HOTEL, 
 
 " OBAN, 20th August. 
 
 " MY DEAR MRS. DRUMMOND It was only last night, on 
 our return here from wandering in Skye, that I got your 
 letter from the Deanery, dated 1 Qth August. The memorials 
 of the dear Dean, 1 which you mention, will be very precious 
 to me ; though no one will ever again make such good use of 
 them as he did. 
 
 The collection of curiosities which he has left to the 
 Museum at St. Andrews had better be sent addressed 
 to me ' Care of Mr. Hodge, Janitor, the United College, 
 St. Andrews/ 
 
 When I return thither I shall see them properly arranged 
 and placed in the Museum, in the way which I think the 
 Dean would have liked. In our wanderings among these 
 western shores and islands I have seen many things which 
 made me wish I had visited them with him ; as I know how 
 they would have interested him, and what light he would have 
 thrown upon them. Two things especially the Castle of 
 Dunvegan, in Skye, and two very old Pictish forts, as they 
 are called, in Glenelg. These two last are on the property 
 which will belong to Lady Francis's eldest son. I should 
 like to interest him in their preservation, and in other things 
 in those remote and romantic glens. . . . Yours sincerely, 
 
 J. C. SHAIRP." 
 
 " ST. ANDREWS, FIFE, 
 
 " 17th December 1883. 
 
 " MY DEAR MRS. DRUMMOND . . . Nothing I have 
 heard for long has given such joy as Walrond's announce- 
 
 1 His inkstands. 
 
376 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 ment that he is to do the Life. 1 . . . He of all men now 
 living is most bound by ' natural piety ' to A. P. S., and 
 therefore most fit to represent him to the world. You may 
 trust his judgment absolutely as to what should be said or 
 not said, inserted or withheld. He has asked me to do a 
 chapter ' Autumns in Scotland.' 
 
 I will gladly do my best ; but if I do, shall need much 
 help from your own and your daughter's memories, and his 
 journals and letters when there. . . . Believe me, yours 
 sincerely, J. C. SHAIRP." 
 
 An interest, doubly melancholy, attaches to this last 
 letter. Principal Shairp did not live to write, what no one 
 could have written better, the chapter for Stanley's Life 
 which he proposed to call " Autumns in Scotland," while 
 Mr. Walrond did not live to do more than collect materials 
 for the Life of the Dean. While he was occupied with the 
 latter task I asked him to send me for this book some 
 brief memorial notice of Shairp. He agreed to do so, and 
 sent me something ; but, on a sudden, he too was removed, 
 and a most admirable life cut short in its prime. In July 
 last his widow wrote : " It will perhaps interest you to 
 know that during his illness my husband gave me a short 
 sketch of his early school and college companions whose 
 friendship and intercourse had been of use to him ; and the 
 name most frequently and affectionately mentioned was that 
 of Principal Shairp." 
 
 In 1882 Shairp contributed two papers to Fraser's 
 Magazine on " St. Andrews, the Earliest Scottish University." 
 These have been republished in the posthumous volume of 
 Sketches in History and Poetry, edited by Professor Veitch ; 
 and although much had been written before about the Uni- 
 versity and its City (and possibly some things remain to be 
 written still), we have nothing better, and nothing half so 
 picturesque in its delineation, than the sketch which the 
 Principal has given us, in those seventy pages, into which he 
 has condensed the story of his University. 
 
 1 Of Dean Stanley. 
 
xv LATER YEARS AT ST. ANDREWS 377 
 
 A sentence in one of these articles is referred to, in 
 some pages which Bishop Wordsworth has written of our 
 common friend. The Bishop knew the Principal personally 
 only during the last ten years of his life ; and, although he 
 had no official relations with him in St. Andrews, he met 
 him frequently in the ordinary intercourse of social life. 
 His words are significant: 
 
 ". . . In all matters that appeared to him, either as a literary 
 man or as a man of practical energy, to require reform, he 
 exercised an influence for good which was, I believe, univer- 
 sally felt and acknowledged. 
 
 He had, to a remarkable extent, the courage of his 
 opinions. For instance, though a truly genuine and pat- 
 riotic Scot, in the highest sense of the word, his partiality 
 to his native land did not render him blind to what he 
 considered defects in the character of his countrymen ; and 
 what he saw amiss he was too honest not to reprove. I 
 remember what first attracted my notice and attention 
 towards him, before I had made his personal acquaintance, 
 was a newspaper report of a lecture delivered by him in 
 Edinburgh I forget the title, but I think it might be de- 
 scribed as ' Lights and Shades in Scottish Character.' And 
 he certainly did not spare the shades. For instance, he 
 denounced, in very homely fashion, the far too general want 
 of cleanliness in the lower classes ; the neglect of mothers 
 in allowing their children to play about in the gutters of 
 the streets, or to lie upon the pavement, in a way not to be 
 seen in England a fact which, I confess, had struck me 
 when I first came into this country. But he also went 
 deeper, and mentioned as an unlovely trait of character 
 (a trait which required at once insight to detect and courage 
 to expose to an audience of his fellow-countrymen) that 
 Scotsmen, in their closeness and want of geniality, when they 
 know of something to the praise of a friend, which it would 
 give him pleasure to hear, do not care to tell him of it. In 
 like manner, in an article which appeared many years after 
 in Eraser's Magazine (June 1882), he gave the following 
 
378 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 gloomy, but only too just, representation of the eventful 
 period in the history of this country from 1560 to 1690 
 that is, from the Keformation to the Kevolution : ' In this 
 century and a half of turbulence and disorder, when Super- 
 intendency, Tulchan Bishops, Melville Presbytery, Spottis- 
 woode Episcopacy, the Covenant, Eestored Episcopacy, and 
 Moderate or Non-Covenanting Presbytery were jostling each 
 other; when the whole kingdom was full of quarrelling, 
 fighting, plotting, convulsions, reactions, and counter-revolu- 
 tions, the calm pursuit of knowledge was impossible/ In 
 these, and such like instances, his object, I believe, was 
 simply to do good ; to perform his part as an upright citizen, 
 as a lover of his country, which, because he loved it, he was 
 not only bound but anxious to endeavour to improve. He 
 had no taste for mere fault-finding ; no inclination to depre- 
 ciate ; no petty jealousies or animosities to indulge. His 
 pleasure would have been always to praise, and he wished 
 to be able always to do so with honest truth. Though a 
 Conservative, he was not one of those who think that what 
 has been, however faulty, must continue to be, merely be- 
 cause it is Scotch ; because, not without large admixture of 
 good, it lies, as it were, embedded in the history of his 
 native land. At the same time he admirably represented the 
 
 Justum et tenacem propositi virum, 
 
 whom nothing could have moved from what he believed to 
 be right. 
 
 His monograph upon Keble is well known. It has been 
 pronounced by competent judges to surpass every other 
 attempt which has been made to form a just estimate, from 
 a literary point of view, of that singularly good and gifted 
 man. The fact is, that John Campbell Shairp had much 
 of a lay John Keble in his own character and gifts. It 
 was this that led me to think that an edition of The Chris- 
 tian Year, with notes by him, in the form of a running 
 elucidatory comment, which, in many parts, the work greatly 
 needs, would have been a literary boon of the highest value, 
 especially for younger readers ; and I made the suggestion 
 
xv LATER YEARS AT ST. ANDREWS 379 
 
 to him more than once. But his modesty, I believe, more 
 than anything else, prevented him from undertaking it; 
 much in the same spirit as my uncle, the poet, once said 
 to me : 'I should like to have written upon Christian 
 subjects as Keble has done, but I have felt that it would 
 have been unbecoming in me as a layman to attempt 
 to do so/ In his series of Ecclesiastical Sonnets he had 
 gone as far in that direction as he could properly and safely 
 venture. 
 
 In regard to his ecclesiastical position, which I ought 
 not perhaps to leave altogether unnoticed, although Prin- 
 cipal Shairp did not see his way to relinquish Presbyterian- 
 ism, which he had imbibed with his mother's milk, and which 
 was deservedly endeared to him through many holy associa- 
 tions, yet, in his later conversations with me, he made no 
 secret of his dissatisfaction with it; and practically he 
 seemed to wish to bridge over in his own person the separa- 
 tion between the two communions by attending the service 
 of the College Church in the morning, and that' of our 
 Episcopal Church not unfrequently in the afternoon. At the 
 same time, his grasp of essential principles was so firm and 
 strong that he could afford, better than most men, to sit 
 loose to ecclesiastical forms and systems in the regulation 
 of his own conduct, at a time when the doctrine of visible 
 unity has become so grievously obscured, and the practice 
 of it, as a rule of life for the generality of Christians, may 
 be said to be almost non-existent." 
 
 Professor Lewis Campbell's reminiscences of his friend 
 and colleague took the form of a letter to Mr. Campbell 
 Shairp, from which I make the following extracts. They 
 refer chiefly to the years of close intercourse "and of com- 
 mon work at St. AndreVs. Professor Campbell's concluding 
 remarks in explanation of what many misunderstood in Shairp 
 viz. his reaction from Philosophy, as due to a preference 
 for " a synthesis however vague, to an analysis which gives 
 emphasis to negation " are admirable. No one else has 
 put the case so well. 
 
380 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 Mr. Campbell refers to "the severity of self -discipline 
 with which a spirit whose chief native bent was to ' feed on 
 thoughts that voluntary move harmonious numbers' would 
 lay the humblest duties upon itself. The value of his work 
 and influence as a teacher seemed, indeed, to arise partly 
 from the unusual combination in him of educational ex- 
 perience with a temper the very reverse of pedantic. The 
 observation of his fellow-students at Glasgow had awakened 
 in him a profound sympathy for the wants and struggles of 
 the student (especially the Highland student 1 ), while Oxford 
 and Rugby had shown him the value of a closer discipline 
 than has often been found possible in our northern colleges. 
 He therefore grudged no time spent over the crudest ex- 
 ercise, and at the end of an hour might be seen at his desk 
 surrounded by weak Latinists receiving elementary criti- 
 cisms, as if he had been the merest pedagogue. Yet a few 
 minutes earlier he might have been heard discoursing 
 eloquently on the essential beauties of the highest poetry, 
 or translating Virgil in a style of noble elevation and 
 simplicity. His influence over ingenuous youth was not, I 
 believe, the less strong and permanent because in his en- 
 deavour to polish he sometimes cut against the grain. At 
 least I have known instances (and there must be more than 
 I know) in which the momentary resentment roused by 
 some rebuke has been transformed into lifelong veneration. 
 The very ardour of his hopes for the improvement of the 
 higher education in Scotland made more trying to him the 
 comparative rudeness and poverty of our actual state. And 
 this weighed on him the more heavily because of his deep 
 interest in the religious condition of Scotland. In the 
 thoughtless boorishness of some rough student his mind's 
 eye foresaw the driecli unprofitableness of the future 
 minister. In the prevalence of mere ' bread studies ' he 
 would lament the want of 'light.' He would sometimes 
 complain that men left college as uncultured as they came 
 to it. Such flaws and starts of disappointment are the 
 inevitable lot of those who strive earnestly to actualise any 
 
 1 Their lack of wholesome recreation was especially felt by him. 
 
xv LATER YEARS AT ST. ANDREWS 381 
 
 spiritual ideal. I rejoice to think that in this respect his 
 spirit had found some satisfaction before the close. 
 
 One grave disappointment there was, which must not 
 be passed over, the failure of the College Hall. When I 
 came to St. Andrews in 1863 things seemed to bid fair for 
 the successful realisation of what appeared to be a felicitous 
 enterprise. To graft something of the English tutorial 
 system on the life of a Scottish University, to create a 
 miniature college with a ' little Temple ' at the head of it, 
 to induce parents who now sent their sons to Rugby or 
 Winchester to avail themselves of equally good means of 
 education nearer home, this attempt, originating, I believe, 
 with your father, and most energetically seconded by 
 Principal Forbes, had much to recommend it at first sight. 
 And it did actually provide an opportunity, for which those 
 who enjoyed it in the years I now refer to are still most 
 grateful. Could arrangements have been made for continu- 
 ing the first warden, I think it possible (although the 
 inherent difficulties of the task were very great) that the 
 Hall might be even now alive and flourishing. As it was, 
 clouds rose after a fair opening of the day, and the institu- 
 tion which he had reared and tended was threatened with 
 decay. Few things in your father's life are more character- 
 istic than the resoluteness with which he determined and 
 the firmness with which he executed the resolve, that the 
 College Hall should not die a lingering death. Either it 
 should live to serve high ends, or it should be no more. 
 
 Other purposes for which he strove, the University 
 Education of Teachers, University Extension to Dundee, 
 the foundation of inter-University scholarships, have either 
 been attained, or are being actively promoted by others. 
 Perhaps of all his efforts for the good of St. Andrews, the 
 foundation of the Guthrie Scholarship through his mediation 
 has been the most fruitful in results. 
 
 I have just spoken of your father's resoluteness in 
 action. There was another occasion on which this quality was 
 shown. This was when, at the request of a majority of the 
 College, his services were continued in the Latin Chair after 
 
382 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 he had given notice of an intention to resign it. All the 
 circumstances are present to me now, but none more vividly 
 than the almost solemn way in which he expressed the 
 principle which guided him in acting at that difficult junc- 
 ture, by repeating the words ' Salus reipullicce summa lex.' 
 
 I have thought sometimes that for his own immediate 
 usefulness he had too lofty a scorn of ' popularity.' Yet 
 but for the persistent loyalty to a practical ideal which was 
 the motive of that scorn, but for the manly perseverance 
 with which, through rough and smooth, through evil and 
 good report, he fought against what hindered or endangered 
 that high aim, I do not know where our little University 
 might be to-day. The spirit of the years I have been 
 reviewing, of which he bore the burden and the heat, may 
 be summed up in the words 
 
 For this was all thy care 
 
 To stand approved in sight of God, though worlds 
 Judged thee perverse. 
 
 There was another feature of his intellectual life that 
 was sometimes liable to misconception. In the religious 
 controversies which arose after his first youth his sympathies 
 leant practically towards what may be roughly termed the 
 ' orthodox side.' This sometimes caused surprise to those 
 who remembered the joyous eagerness with which at Oxford 
 he had entered on the path of speculative thought. But it 
 would be a mistake to refer this reaction in his case to 
 intellectual narrowness. It had a deeper source. His 
 jealousy of the Aufklarung was but a result of the 'old 
 quarrel of poetry with philosophy.' Imagination fused 
 together past and present in an unbroken whole, which 
 criticism seemed to threaten with dissolution. At any 
 moment when to think clearly and to feel deeply appear as 
 opposite terms of an antinomy, the heart of the religious 
 poet prefers a synthesis, however vague, to an analysis which 
 almost inevitably gives undue emphasis to negation, and 
 thus interferes with the sense of that which is ' more deeply 
 interfused.' In some such way I would seek to explain an 
 
xv LATER YEARS AT ST. ANDREWS 383 
 
 attitude, which was sometimes difficult to understand, and 
 differed at different times with changing circumstances, at 
 one time clinging pertinaciously to Presbyterian tradition, 
 at another cherishing the echoes of a wider Christendom 
 and a more distant past, but remaining constant to the 
 main lines of ethical and religious thought which he set 
 forth in writing on the ' Moral Dynamic ' and on ' Eeligion 
 and Culture.' I would add that in this and all respects his 
 views of men and things appeared to me latterly to have 
 been greatly softened and mellowed by the eye that had 
 ' kept watch o'er man's mortality ' and by ' the years that 
 bring the philosophic mind.' . . ." 
 
 The way in which Principal Shairp impressed strangers, 
 and how, with sympathetic natures, acquaintanceship soon 
 became intimacy, and intimacy ripened into friendship, has 
 a good illustration in the following letter from the Eev. H. 
 D. Kawnsley, of Crosthwaite Vicarage, Keswick : 
 
 " It was at the dinner-table of - at St. Andrews that 
 I first saw a man for whom a very short intercourse in- 
 spired me with affectionate reverence and regard. He 
 looked sad, and was very silent for a time. A good story 
 was told ; he seemed to wake from a sorrowful dream, and 
 was a changed being. For the rest of that evening he was 
 merriest of the merry, and I remember saying that he had 
 the humour of Euskiu, and the fun and sallies of wit with 
 which in old Oxford days the Slade Professor made his 
 breakfast-table so delightful to his undergraduate friends. 
 
 Next day I called at his invitation, and before five 
 minutes of general conversation had passed Principal 
 Shairp was deep in reminiscences of the Lake country, and 
 in talk about its Poetry. 
 
 What struck me was the absence of worldliness in the 
 man ; his simplicity and straightforwardness in the expression 
 of his real self ; his transparent candour. 
 
 . . . Here was a man, gray-headed, but with the heart of a 
 child, who knew that the child's heart beats in every human 
 breast, and who dared to speak openly of what that heart 
 
384 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 felt, to a younger man, whose sole claim for confidence 
 was summed up in the fact that he was a fellow-student of 
 Wordsworth, and a lover of and resident at the English Lakes. 
 
 I remember feeling a confidence in that serenely simple 
 ingenuous soul as it appeared to me, and that confidence was 
 never shaken. 
 
 A few letters passed between us, and one I well remem- 
 ber. A railway was threatening to invade Borrowdale, and a 
 Slate Company was intending to destroy, in the best interests 
 of its shareholders, not only Honister Crag, but the quiet 
 and beauty of the shores of Derwentwater. Some of us 
 were up in arms, and one of the fiercest bits of invective 
 against the modern shortsight of commercial utilitarianism 
 came to me from Principal Shairp's pen. It opened a new 
 door into his character for me. Patriotism and poetic 
 fervour and prophetic warning burned within his words. 
 Prophet and poet he surely was, but first he was true patriot. 
 
 A year or two after, I chanced to be wandering down 
 the High Street at Oxford, when, with his Scotch plaid 
 wrapped around him, the kindly Professor of Poetry touched 
 me on the shoulder, and bade me turn into his room at 
 University College. He was to deliver a lecture on some 
 aspect of Wordsworth's poetry on the morrow, and he wanted 
 to read it over and talk about it. ... ' I want the young men,' 
 he said, 'to turn with all their Christian armour upon them 
 and find wellsprings of faith and comfort in the poems of 
 one who has marvellously helped me from my youth up until 
 now.' Such or some such words were his. . . . 
 
 He read his lecture with great earnestness and con- 
 stant pause. Sometimes I felt he was perhaps a little im- 
 patient of the views he combated, a little unable to allow 
 
 That light divine 
 In other forms and lines may shine, 
 
 and yet be light ; but the humility of the Professor of Poetry 
 struck me. He seemed to feel that he was only at the 
 beginning, and not at the end of life and the knowable ; and I 
 came away from the earnest talk in the quiet little room in 
 
xv LATER YEARS AT ST. ANDREWS 385 
 
 University College, with the thought of the gracious mellow- 
 ness and docility of a good life and gentle thought, which 
 has grown upon me since the day that 
 
 By Argyle's inland solitudes forlorn, 
 God's finger touched him and he slept. 
 
 The last talk I had with him was at St. Andrews, 
 where, after some affectionate words about Dean Stanley 
 and Euskin, and what England and Scotland owed them, he 
 went off into a glowing description of Highland scenery. 
 Told me about his father's home, and then spoke of Yarrow. 
 Specially did he speak of the flowers that grew upon the 
 Scotch braes, and the glory of being alone by a Scotch 
 burn. But of his own song as inspired by these sights and 
 sounds he never uttered a word. You could not know 
 from his own lips that on him too had fallen 
 
 The light that never was on sea or land, 
 The consecration and the poet's dream. 
 
 High thinker, true singer, he has gone, and we are the 
 poorer by his sleep ; and though nothing can bring back 
 the hour of happy communion with a spirit so pure, so 
 generous, so sincere, 
 
 We will grieve not, rather find 
 Strength in what remains behind, 
 In the primal sympathy 
 Which having been must ever be." 
 
 Amongst the interests of Shairp's later years in St. 
 Andrews mention must be made of the large amount of 
 philanthropic work he used to carry on little known to his 
 friends and colleagues, to the students, or to the community 
 generally but, though silent and unostentatious, most fruit- 
 ful of good. He realised in practice as well as theory what 
 his great poet used to call 
 
 That best portion of a good man's life 
 His little, nameless, unremembered acts 
 Of kindness and of love. 
 
 As Dr. Eodger, the minister of the College Church, said, in 
 
 2 c 
 
386 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 the sermon he preached on the first Sunday of the Uni- 
 versity session after his death : " If you were to go to-day 
 into many a poor room in St. Andrews, you would be told 
 how he had carried delicacies to the sick, and had read to 
 the aged, and had knelt beside the dying." 
 
 Special mention should also be made of his interest in the 
 Memorial Cottage Hospital in St. Andrews. The women's 
 wards in this hospital were opened in 1865 by the children 
 and friends of Lady William Douglas of Grangemuir, a 
 relative of Mrs. Shairp. The men's wards were opened in 
 1 8 8 in memory of John Adamson, M.D., and Oswald Home 
 Bell, M.D., Professor of Medicine in St. Andrews, the physi- 
 cian-friend of the Principal. Shairp was president of the 
 committee of management from the formation of the 
 hospital. " Along with Mrs. Shairp," says Dr. Cleghorn (in 
 his general report for 1886), " he took a most active part in 
 founding the hospital. He was a generous contributor, and 
 by personal kindness to the inmates ever manifested a 
 deep interest in the welfare and prosperity of the institu- 
 tion." In the notice in memoriam in the twentieth annual 
 report of the hospital it is said, " Than Principal Shairp 
 the institution had no truer friend Sunday after Sunday, 
 during the months of the year which he spent in St. 
 Andrews, he visited it, reading and praying with the sick 
 inmates ; did this humbly and lovingly, and with no sense 
 of superior knowledge or learning. He valued most highly 
 the work which the hospital does, and used often to say 
 how much he did so. At every critical juncture in its 
 history, and whenever wise judgment was called for, he was 
 both willing and able to give it." 
 
 One of the most interesting letters in reference to Prin- 
 cipal Shairp is the following from Cardinal Newman. It 
 was originally a private letter; and in consenting to its 
 publication now, the Cardinal asks me to add that nothing 
 in it is to be taken as implying that he considers that there 
 is any other refuge for the spirits of men than the Church 
 to which he now belongs : 
 
xv LATER YEARS AT ST. ANDREWS 387 
 
 "7th January 1887. 
 
 " Neither my fingers nor my eyesight allow me to express 
 in writing the debt of gratitude which I owe to the late 
 Principal Shairp for the kindness with which he has so 
 many times spoken of me in his publications, nor the deep 
 sorrow with which I heard of his death. My hitherto un- 
 fulfilled wish to comply with your request on this point 
 has been a trouble day after day, amid my existing engage- 
 ments, but it could not be helped. I am too old to be able 
 to do a thing because I wish it. 
 
 But passing by my personal feelings, I lament the 
 Principal's loss to us on a more serious account. In this 
 day of religious indifference and unbelief, it has been long 
 my hope and comfort to think, that a silent and secret 
 process is going on in the hearts of many, which, though 
 it may not reach its limit and scope in this generation or 
 the next, is a definite work of Divine Providence, in pros- 
 pect of a state of Eeligion such as the world has never 
 yet seen; issuing not indeed in a Millennium, but in a Public 
 Opinion strong enough for the vigorous spread and exalta- 
 tion, and thereby the influence and prosperity of Divine 
 Truth all over the world. The world may not in the Divine 
 Decrees last long enough for a work so elaborate and multi- 
 form ; so without indulging in such great conceptions, one 
 can fancy such a return to primitive truth to be vouchsafed 
 to particular countries which at present are divided and 
 broken up into a hundred sects, all at war with each other. 
 
 I am too tired to go on, and I ought not to have 
 begun what I cannot finish, especially since I have not 
 brought home what I hav been saying to the subject of 
 Principal Shairp. J. H. CARD. NEWMAN." 
 
 The duties of the Chancellor of a Scottish University do 
 not bring him frequently within its precincts, but the 
 Principal has often to correspond with him on official 
 matters, and at St. Andrews the Chancellor and the Prin- 
 cipals were personal friends. Eeference has already been 
 
388 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 made to Shairp's visits to Inverary, and after his death the 
 Duke of Argyll wrote thus 
 
 "INVERARY, 1 6th August 1887. 
 
 "I can only say of Principal Shairp that of all the men 
 I have ever known with extraordinary personal charm, he 
 stands among the very first. It was impossible to have 
 any converse with him without loving him. It was indeed 
 a 'loyal nature and a noble mind' most refined, most 
 sympathetic, most catholic, in the best sense of that much- 
 abused word. I felt that a light was gone out when I heard 
 of his death." 
 
 The Duke's eldest son, the Marquis of Lome who was 
 a student in the United College writes 
 
 " St. Andrews was fortunate in the men she possessed in her 
 University when John Campbell Shairp was a Professor there. 
 Honoured as were the names of Forbes, Terrier, and Sellar, it 
 is doing their memory in this place no injustice to say that 
 a feeling akin to love attached itself especially among the 
 students to Shairp. His nature had in it much of what the 
 Americans call ' magnetic ' power, the power that through 
 sympathy attracts and interests. There was indeed no phase 
 of human feeling that he could not understand. In his 
 kindly blue eye and open brow there was a look of gentle ab- 
 straction of mind. . . . For his was a soul full of poetry, and 
 of the love of mountain and wood and sky and sea, and 
 ever ready to speak of these. Nor was it only the picture 
 of these things which memory retained, and liked to think 
 of. The human interests connected with each scene, the 
 historic pageant contained in the past actions of the people's 
 life, was what he loved to contemplate. If his face ever 
 assumed a stern look, it was when thinking of some act of 
 cruelty or even of want of consideration for the lowly. 
 
 Nor was this gentleness, and delight in dwelling on 
 the distant, too engrossing to distract him from the work 
 that lay to his hand. The strong fair eyebrows gave 
 a sagacious look to his face a look which told that 
 
xv LATER YEARS AT ST. ANDREWS 389 
 
 he was well able to take his part in present contro- 
 versies, and to influence the conduct of those whom he 
 taught, and whose respect and affection he never failed to 
 win. He would turn from the pages of some book con- 
 taining Scottish poetry, and illustrated by Scottish art, to 
 discourse with fine judgment on the politics of the day, 
 on the work of his profession, or on thorny theological 
 questions ; and to praise those he admired in the arena of 
 action, with the . same earnestness and charm with which 
 he had been pointing out the glories of literature and art. 
 None of open heart and mind were not the better of inter- 
 course with him. He left with all a desire to have a record 
 such as his, as devoid of guile, and as devoted to all that is 
 of good report, and worthy of a Scottish gentleman." 
 
 Principal Shairp took a great interest in Lord Selborne's 
 election by the students as Eector of the University, and 
 Lord Selborne writes of him thus 
 
 "30 PORTLAND PLACE, W., 
 
 March 1887. 
 
 "... He always attracted me, by the candour and 
 gentleness of his disposition, combined with a high degree 
 of intellectual power, chastened and tempered by reverence 
 and sympathy for all that was true and good, and by a very 
 loving spirit. He was at once a sound and discriminating, 
 and a very sympathetic critic qualities which (my own 
 experience tells me) it is difficult to combine as he did; 
 for I feel that, when I am most discriminating, I am 
 least sympathetic ; and when I am most sympathetic, least 
 discriminating. It was not so, however, with him." 
 
CHAPTEE XVI 
 
 THE RIVIERA ORMSARY 
 
 THE pressure of various interests and cares, and the nervous 
 strain which occasional worries superinduced, began to tell 
 upon a constitution more than usually robust, five years be- 
 fore the close of his life. In many of his letters after 1880 
 there are pathetic allusions which give hint of his foresight 
 of the end. To one he wrote of the death of a friend, and 
 said, " The shadows are lengthening ; may we be faithful till 
 the end comes." Meeting another old lifelong friend, he 
 said, " A few more such meetings, and then the kirkyard." 
 He had left the house in which this Memoir has been 
 written which had been his home since 1866 in May 
 1880, and spent the rest of that summer in Edinburgh, 
 where his son was studying law. His last house in St. 
 Andrews was in Murray Park, where many a pleasant 
 evening was spent in the society of congenial friends, and 
 where as well as at Cuil-aluinn his last literary work 
 was done. 
 
 In 1882 he greatly enjoyed an autumn visit at Cuil-aluinn 
 from Professor Lushington, his old teacher in the University 
 of Glasgow ; and in the same autumn he took Dr. Butler, 
 then Headmaster of Harrow, to Killiecrankie, and, as Dr. 
 Butler says, "reverently showed me every stage of the 
 battle, and the spot where Claverhouse fell." Just as another 
 friend writes of a journey from Oban round Cruachan, when 
 "he told us all the legends, stories, histories one hardly 
 knew which -he made them all so real." 
 
 Two papers in Fraser's Magazine on " The Earliest 
 
CHAP, xvi THE RIVIERA ORMSARY 391 
 
 Scottish University," since republished in his volume of 
 posthumous essays, and a sketch of his old Balliol tutor 
 afterwards his colleague at Eugby and lifelong friend, 
 Archbishop Tait were amongst his latest bits of work. 
 
 This last character-study which Shairp wrote has not 
 yet been published, but it will appear in the forthcoming 
 Memoir of the Archbishop. He goes back to the Edinburgh 
 Academy days, and traces, in his appreciative way, his own 
 experience of his friend in the subsequent stages of his life 
 as a scholar and tutor at Oxford, as Headmaster at Eugby, 
 as Dean of Carlisle, and as occupant of the sees of London and 
 of Canterbury. It would be unfair, however, to anticipate 
 any of the interest of that Life, by giving extracts from 
 Shairp's paper here, although the Dean of Windsor, who is 
 writing the Memoir, has generously allowed me to do so. 
 
 'An account of the last years and of the closing days of 
 the Principal's life has been written by Mrs. Shairp, and 
 from her letter I make the following extracts, in the form 
 in which she desires it : 
 
 " MY DEAR PROFESSOR KNIGHT When my husband's 
 friends have written their various recollections of him so 
 fully and freely, I must not shrink from the pain of giving 
 you the details of the last days. 
 
 In looking back to the last few years of his life, I feel 
 that the failure in bodily health and vigour began in 1880. 
 Then it was that the wear and strain which comes to so 
 many men's lives in these days, from within and from with- 
 out, began to tell on him. We were all at Oxford and in 
 London in. June of that year, and he saw Sir Andrew Clarke, 
 who told him that he must be careful of his health, and 
 give up long walks or climbing hills. 
 
 The beginning of the end dates from the first weeks of 
 December 1884. I remember only too well his looks on 
 entering his own house late in the evening of the 6th of 
 December, on his return from Edinburgh after attending Sir 
 Alexander Grant's funeral on the previous day. In his 
 Journal he writes : ' Monday, 1st December. Startled by the 
 
392 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 announcement of the sudden death of Sir Alexander Grant ; 
 only became ill on Monday morning at 2 A.M. apoplexy. 
 " Be ye also ready." ' In the evening for some time wrote 
 memoranda of A. C. Tait, for his son-in-law. 
 
 He was at this time much interested and occupied in get- 
 ting subscriptions from old friends for a copy of Eichmond's 
 picture of Archbishop Tait for Balliol Hall, and this last work 
 for one of his best and oldest friends had a happy issue in Eich- 
 mond executing the copy himself. On his return journey from 
 Edinburgh on 6th December he got a chill, but this did not 
 prevent his going to the Holy Communion at the College 
 Church on 7th December according to his habitual practice 
 when in St. Andrews. 
 
 On Friday, the 30th of January, the day of Lord Eeay's 
 installation as Eector of the University, he was unable to be 
 present officially as Principal. 
 
 When sufficiently well to leave St. Andrews for our 
 intended visit to the Eiviera, he went to Houstoun, and after 
 a happy reposeful week the last but one in his earliest home 
 we travelled to York, stayed all night at the Eesidence, 
 with Canon and Mrs. Baillie. He spent an hour in the 
 Minster with great interest. That afternoon to London; 
 rested, then across to Paris, and by easy stages to San Eemo, 
 where we arrived on the llth of April. 
 
 Our few weeks there proved a time of peace, repose, 
 and blessed sunshine, though not one free from anxiety. We 
 turned our eyes and thoughts to Florence, and found our- 
 selves there on the 13th May. He writes in his Journal: 
 'Ascension Day. Drove straight to the Duomo. The first 
 sight of the Duomo and Giotto's Tower, an impression never 
 to be forgotten. A great celebration going on within ; the 
 inside not at all equal to the outside ; but two things im- 
 pressed me, first, some of the grand old Catholic chants 
 sung under the dome, and next, Michael Angelo's Dead 
 Christ behind the altar; never beheld anything in marble 
 like it/ 
 
 And again he writes: ' IQth May. A lovely morning. 
 At eleven drove out and up to the Via de Colli to the " Place 
 
xvi THE RIVIERA ORMSARY 393 
 
 Michael Angelo," looking over Florence, perhaps the finest 
 view I have ever seen. Florence at our feet flowed through 
 by Arno in full flood, Fiesole Hill beyond and to the right 
 and east, the Apennine ranges white with snow, westward 
 high hills, running down from the Apennines to the Western 
 Sea all fresh and green in the spring sunshine.' To him 
 our fortnight was one of daily and intense interest. And at 
 San Marco : ' ~LSth May. Spent nearly two hours there most 
 delightedly, looking at the exquisite Fra Angelicos, and at 
 the cell and relics of Savonarola.' 
 
 Left Florence on the 27th of May, and travelled by 
 way of Bologna and Milan to Varesi. We left beautiful 
 Varesi 5th of June on our way homewards. 'Drove for 
 nearly three hours a delightful route or road through the hills 
 to Luino ; passed Madonna della Monte, with its many 
 chapels on the crag. Then through glens walled from the 
 sun and shaded with beautiful Spanish chestnuts, walnuts, 
 and acacias in white flower. . . .' And we hastened on 
 by the St. Gothard and its wonderful railway after a night 
 at Luino, and a passing glimpse of Lago Maggiore to 
 Lucerne, 6th June, leaving on the 8th by Basle and Amiens. 
 A beautiful cathedral certainly, but an ungenial air ! The 
 first plunge back into gray skies and chilliness from sun- 
 shine and light airs. 
 
 ' We crossed the silver streak,' he writes, ' and travelled 
 gladsomely through Kent with Mr. and Mrs. Stirling of 
 Kippendavie, reaching London on the 10th of June.' On 
 Friday the 19th, till 22d, we ran down to Salisbury to visit 
 his old friend the Dean and Mrs. Boyle. Back to Edin- 
 burgh, and on the 26th the last visit (how little we know 
 when last things are to come !) to his dear old home Hous- 
 toun ; six days there ; then Cuil-aluinn, 2d July, the last 
 home-coming. 'Arrived at Cuil-aluinn about seven o'clock. 
 Evening very fine, the outlook to Ben Lawers calm and 
 soothingly beautiful.' 
 
 'Sunday 12th. Eefreshed my memory of Keble's poem 
 for the 6th Sunday after Trinity.' 
 
 ' 2Ist. Warm weather begun. Such views of Schie- 
 
394 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 hallion, eastward to Ben-y-Gloe, and the Athol hills from 
 Lochnacraig. Tea by the loch.' 
 
 'Sunday, 26th. I read J. H. N.'s wonderful sermon, 
 " The greatness and littleness of human life." ' 
 
 '28th July. Another warm day. At 6 P.M. drove down 
 to call at Edradynate. Delightful evening and pleasant east 
 wind the first pleasant east I ever knew ; lights along the 
 braes so lovely made us more than ever regret our leaving.' 
 
 ' 30th July, Thursday. My sixty-sixth birthday. Makes 
 one serious to think of only a few more there can be even 
 at longest. Have written numberless letters to-day. . . . And 
 so have passed like a dream our four quiet pleasant weeks 
 here, and so will all life be when it comes to an end.' 
 
 We then went to St. Andrews. 
 
 'Sunday, 9th August. Wet morning at home. Read 
 the services and J. H. K on " The thought of God the stay 
 of the soul." In the evening George M'Donald preached at 
 the College Church a very earnest impressive sermon to a 
 crowded audience, " If ye know these things, happy are ye 
 if ye do them." ' And I remember that next day he called 
 on us. They had of late met at Bordighera. 
 
 At St. Andrews one day the east wind struck him in 
 the College Green. A few days after there came quite 
 unexpectedly an invitation to Ormsary from our young 
 friend, Farquhar Campbell. On Tuesday, 1st September, 
 his Journal entry is as follows : ' Warm sun, but cold east 
 wind, from which I hope to find a refuge at Ormsary.' We 
 reached Ormsary 3d of September in the afternoon, travelling 
 from Greenock by steamer to Ardrishaig, and driving thence 
 to Ormsary a long but beautiful drive. Shortly before 
 leaving St. Andrews he had repeated his favourite lines 
 
 And stepping westward seemed to be 
 A kind of heavenly destiny ; 
 
 and there was relief to us all in the feeling that we had left 
 the east far behind us. The weather, so bad when we 
 started, brightened on our way from Greenock. Ever since 
 his first visit to Ormsary in the autumn of 1881, and the 
 
xvi THE RIVIERA ORMSARY 395 
 
 friendship then formed with the late Mrs. Campbell, he had 
 loved the place. 
 
 The following is from his Journal of 1884 : 
 
 ' OKMSARY, 23d August 1884. After breakfast Camp- 
 bell, 1 Maitland, and I went to the hill. I walked with 
 them as far as Loch-na-Torrin ; about twelve o'clock saw 
 Eilan More, over Knapp, -so lovely. Lunched near the 
 loch, then left the shooters to go on, and returned. From 
 the heights again, such views over Knapp and Eilan More 
 and Jura Eilan More looking so pale and visionary, such 
 deep blue and lilac colouring, and then the sun -gleams 
 breaking out of a shadowy sky, and travelling over the sea 
 to light up the shores of Islay.' 
 
 '29th August 1884. A fine fresh breeze. Farquhar, 
 
 Emily Campbell, Mr. and Mrs. M , and I left in the 
 
 yacht at a quarter to one o'clock ; cast anchor in Keills Loch 
 at half -past two. For full an hour and a half Farquhar, Emily, 
 and I explored the famous cross, and the old roofless chapel 
 with its sculptured gravestones. Then to the ridge above 
 such a view ! The cross and the old chapel in all the 
 " imploring beauty of decay," below it the blue slip of Loch 
 Eilan Dana in such variety of colours ; then across Loch 
 Swein to grand old Castle Swein in its woods on the farther 
 shore. I know no view that for variety of feeling it calls 
 up can equal it. Started again at five o'clock, got briskly 
 out of the loch, then a dead calm, and we lay for full an 
 hour opposite Carraignan Dainibh ; a brief breeze took us 
 through the strait between Eilan More and Coreilan ; much 
 and heavy rain returning and going such lights over Jura 
 and the islands ; dark rain-clouds, so purple-black yet 
 dashed with white sunshine. Ashore at Ormsary 8.30 P.M.' 
 
 Ee turning to 1885 and September 
 
 ' I shall not attempt long expeditions this time,' he said, 
 ' but just take the near walks.' 
 
 On the 5th he went out down to the shore and sat 
 
 1 His son. 
 
396 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 there, and next day (Sunday) was by the shore with his son, 
 while the family went to church. He had felt faint before 
 luncheon, and when his friends returned from church he 
 talked with interest for awhile about Highland matters and 
 crofters with the minister of the parish. He felt ill again 
 while talking, and a sudden pain came on in his left side, 
 and he went to his room. The boat was sent across the 
 loch to Ellary where Dr. Jefferson of Leamington was on 
 a visit regular medical aid being distant at Ardrishaig. 
 Everything that care and forethought could do was done by the 
 loving household at Ormsary, and by Mrs. Tarratt of Ellary. 
 
 On the 10th Dr. Grainger Stewart came, in consequence 
 of Dr. Jefferson's wish for more advice, and his visit did not 
 bring much comfort, but confirmed the fear that lung and 
 heart were much affected. He said to Dr. Grainger Stewart, 
 ' I have wished to be acquainted with you e'er this, but it 
 is now in the end of the day.' 
 
 Then followed a week of alternating hopes and fears, 
 much sleeplessness and some painful suffering. That suffer- 
 ing was borne with unmurmuring patience. ' Tell him I 
 have been wonderfully supported,' was his message to his 
 brother-in-law. His last day on earth was Thursday, the 
 17th September. That morning his pulse was very low. 
 It was a beautiful autumn afternoon, and a wonderful sun- 
 set time the lights across the loch and away to Jura. He 
 woke up and said, ' Get the Prayer-Book quickly and read 
 me the Collect, Epistle, and Gospel for Sunday.' Our friend, 
 
 MissM C ,fetched the book and opened it at the 2 2d 
 
 Sunday after Trinity, and was turning the page to the right 
 place, when he put his hand hurriedly on the page before 
 her and said, ' Eead these quickly.' So she did not wait 
 to find the Collect for the 15th Sunday, but read as desired. 
 When she came to the words in the Epistle, 'And this I 
 pray,' etc., he folded his hands together, and repeated the 
 words after her, but in such a low voice that it seemed only 
 a movement of his mouth. At the end of the Epistle M 
 asked if he was tired ' No ; please go on ; ' so she read the 
 Gospel ; then with shut eyes he said some words, impossible 
 
xvi THE RIVIERA ORMSARY 397 
 
 to catch except one word, ' support ' that she caught clearly, 
 and then a beautiful smile. He now asked for the blind 
 to be drawn up. He sat up in bed, and said, ' My eyes are 
 dim, but I shall see light clearer soon.' The blind was 
 then drawn down again, as the window was so near his bed 
 it remained down till I came in from breathing the air. 
 On my telling him of the lovely evening, and again raising 
 the blind that he might see what I had been looking at 
 from that side of the house, he gazed from his bed towards 
 it and said, ' I know it all.' Then, as before, he spoke in 
 a quick and hurried way, ' Get me The Christian Year; read 
 the one for the 16th Sunday after Trinity.' It was read 
 close beside him by the fading evening light, from the first 
 lines 'Wish not, dear friends, my pain away' down to the last. 
 How terribly true it felt ; but had we known it was our last 
 evening, could we have got through it at all ? Eather later 
 his son and I each took a hand, and had a little chat with 
 him, to cheer him as we thought, and to try to cheer our- 
 selves ! poor selves and blind ! His strength seemed to 
 revive during the evening, and he spoke in a clear tone. 
 After ten o'clock came our usual evening prayer, and it was 
 ended with the words, ' Lighten our darkness, we beseech 
 Thee, Lord.' So often had that been his concluding 
 prayer in his own evening worship with his family. At 
 11 P.M. he said, ' Let not the faintest whisper be heard,' 
 that he might get to sleep, but he did not. About one 
 o'clock he was asked to turn on his side, which he did, and 
 quietly lay on it no symptom alarmed any one, when 
 suddenly came two loud startling breathings. They were 
 his last. It was syncope of the heart. . . . We left 
 Ormsary on Monday 21st, taking him with us to Houstoun. 
 He was carried to the room where he was born. . . . God's 
 will be ours, now and for ever. He was with us to uphold 
 us. Believe me, yours very sincerely, ELIZA SHAIRP." 
 
 One who was at Ormsary wrote thus to a friend at Oxford 
 
 " I remember his saying on his arrival, ' This air is balm 
 
 to me.' Ill as we all thought him, I do not think he was 
 
398 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 apprehensive on his own account. He was happy and con- 
 tented with everything around him. I remember how 
 easily and with what geniality he joined in the talk of 
 those assembled round the dinner-table in the evenings ; 
 they were chiefly young people. I recall how, without 
 losing anything of its brightness, the conversation seemed 
 to take a higher tone. Unconsciously, I think we all 
 brought him of our best. Indeed, who could be with him 
 without being, or at least wishing to be, better than we were ! 
 
 A visit he had made in the spring of that year to 
 Florence had been a source of great pleasure to him, and he 
 often spoke of it. ' If you have never visited Florence,' he 
 said to one of our party, 'do so by all means. It is an 
 education to any one who is awake.' On those last days 
 I cannot do more than touch. For himself, he was to the 
 end just what we had always known him, and there seemed 
 a fitness that when that end came it should be 'in the 
 dear hopeful west.' " 
 
 The funeral was from the old House of Houstoun to the 
 family vault within the Parish Church, on a day of still 
 autumn sunshine. 
 
 " Last Thursday," said Dr. Eodger in his funeral sermon, 
 " I followed his mortal remains to their last resting-place at 
 his ancestral home. It was a bright autumn day, and the 
 sunshine which fell on harvest-fields and tinted woods spoke 
 not of the darkness of the tomb, but of the light beyond." 
 
 It is a quaint old church, and in the family vault there 
 is a marble tablet in the west wall to this effect 
 
 " In this Aisle 
 
 beneath the stone which 
 
 bears his name 
 
 lies 
 
 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP, 
 
 third son of Norman Shairp 
 
 and E. Binning Campbell his wife, 
 
 Born at Houstoun, 30th July 1819, 
 
 Died at Ormsary, Argyll, 18th Sept. 1885. 
 
 This tablet is placed here 
 
 by his three sisters 
 in loving remembrance." 
 
xvi THE .RIVIERA ORMSARY 399 
 
 The inscription on the stone over the grave is to the 
 following effect : 
 
 " In Christ shall all be made alive." 
 
 " In most loving Remembrance of 
 
 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP, LL.D., 
 
 1 6 years Principal of the United 
 
 College, St. Andrews, and 8 
 
 years Professor of Poetry 
 
 in the University of Oxford, 
 
 this stone is placed by his 
 
 widow and their son." 
 
 "One family we dwell in Him." 
 
 On the east wall of the aisle there are tablets in memory 
 of the Principal's grandfather, Thomas Shairp, of his brother 
 Norman, who was in the navy, and of his three sisters, 
 Anabella, Mary, and Christian. 
 
 On the south wall there is a tablet in memory of his 
 father and of his mother; and for the north wall there is 
 one to Sir Stephen Shairp. 
 
 The following stanza closes one of Shairp's poems called 
 The Blue Bells : 
 
 In your old haunts, happy blue bells ! 
 
 Ye, when we are gone, shall wave, 
 And as living we have loved you, 
 
 Dead, one service would we crave, 
 Come, and in the west winds swinging, 
 
 Prank the sward that folds our grave. 
 
 And there last season they were to be seen, gathered 
 by loving hands, and placed in reverent and affectionate 
 memory over the spot where he reposes. 
 
 The following letter in reference to the Oxford Chair of 
 Poetry was dictated at Ormsary on the night of Sunday, the 
 12th September 1885 : 
 
 " ORMSARY, ARDRISHAIG. 
 
 "MY DEAR VICE-CHANCELLOR I have now held the 
 Professorship of Poetry at Oxford for eight years, and if 
 
400 JOHN CAMPBELL SHA1RP CHAP. 
 
 things had so suited had hoped to have continued to hold 
 it to the end, but during the last year I have received 
 warnings which seem to show me it is time to demit. 
 
 Last winter, owing to severe bronchial affection, I was 
 not able to fulfil my duties to the University at Lent or 
 Easter term. I shall never forget the kindness with 
 which, acting on behalf of the University, you made this 
 easy for me. I had hoped to have returned to my duties 
 in October with renewed strength, but I have lately been 
 made to feel that this is not to be reckoned upon. 
 
 I therefore thought it right, both to the University and 
 myself, to place in your hands my resignation of a position 
 which has been to me a source of continual gratification, and 
 I hope not wholly without profit to some of the younger 
 members of the University." 
 
 In December of the same year a proposal was brought 
 before the College of which he had been Principal, to raise 
 a fund to erect some memorial of his connection with it. 
 The following circular was issued to friends throughout the 
 country : 
 
 " Memorial to John Campbell Shairp. 
 
 II DEAR SIR It has occurred to some friends of the late 
 Principal Shairp, that a memorial of his long and intimate 
 connection with the University of St. Andrews, and especi- 
 ally with the United College, might be most appropriately 
 placed within the chapel of Saint Salvator's College, where 
 he habitually worshipped. 
 
 The stained -glass windows in that chapel have been 
 placed there in memory of Dr. Chalmers, Principal John 
 Hunter, and other distinguished men associated with the 
 University of St. Andrews, while the canopies of the Pro- 
 fessors' Stalls were erected as a memorial of Principal 
 James D. Forbes, by his own bequest. One window still 
 remains undecorated, and Principal Shairp frequently ex- 
 pressed his desire to have the blank supplied. 
 
xvi THE RIVIERA ORMSARY 401 
 
 On this ground, and because of the deep interest which 
 he took in the College services, and in the religious life of 
 the students, it is now proposed that a Memorial Window 
 should be placed in the Chapel, with an inscription to per- 
 petuate his memory, and that at the same time, should 
 sufficient funds be available, a portrait of him by some good 
 artist should be put in the Hall of the College. A com- 
 mittee of the United College has been appointed to take 
 the necessary steps for carrying this proposal into effect." 
 
 One hundred and seventy-nine persons responded to this 
 appeal, and the sum of more than 460 was raised. 
 
 After much consultation the Committee selected a design 
 for the memorial window, by Mr. Henry Holiday, A.E.A. It 
 was executed by Messrs. James Powell and Son, of White- 
 friars Glass Works, London, and placed in the College Church 
 in December 1886. 
 
 The following is Professor Campbell's description of the 
 window: " The subject of the design is taken from the words 
 of Scripture in 2 Peter i. 5-7 : 'Add to your faith, virtue ; 
 and to virtue, knowledge ; and to knowledge, brotherly kind- 
 ness ; and to brotherly kindness, charity.' 
 
 In the central light Faith is represented threading a 
 dark wood. She treads on brambles which break into bloom 
 beneath her feet. Her head is slightly depressed as in meek 
 submission. In the compartment under her is a group of 
 smaller figures, Stephen before the Sanhedrim. He is 
 looking upwards, at the moment when they ' saw his face 
 as it had been the face of an angel' (Acts vi. 15). 
 
 To the left of Faith, and to the spectator's right, stands' 
 Knowledge or Contemplation. She holds a book, but is 
 looking off from it, as if feeding upon thoughts that have a 
 distant range. Under her is St. Paul on Mars Hill, mak- 
 ing known the unknown God (Acts xvii.). The locality 
 (Athens) is shown by the Greek sculptures represented. 
 The Stoic, the Epicurean, Dionysius the Areopagite, and the 
 woman named Damaris, are all finely indicated. 
 
 To the spectator's left, and to the right of Faith, is 
 
 2 D 
 
402 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 Virtue, a strong martial figure, like a Christian Pallas, 
 recalling the lines 
 
 Self-reverence, self-knowledge, self-control, 
 
 to live by law, 
 
 Acting the law we live by without fear, 
 And because right is right, to follow right 
 Were wisdom in the scorn of consequence. 
 
 In the space under Virtue is Brotherly Kindness, in the 
 person of the Good Samaritan. The story is well told 
 the perspective being so arranged that the retreating figures 
 of the Priest and Levite, intent on their pious preoccupa- 
 tions, are visible along the winding pathway. 
 
 In an upper space, under the crown of the arch, is 
 Charity with children at her knees. 
 
 The remaining interspaces are filled with decorative foli- 
 age, and Gothic canopies surmounted by angels. 
 
 Under the principal figures are the words 
 
 VIRTUS. . FIDES. . SCIENTIA. 
 
 Sufficient room has been reserved at the foot for the in- 
 scription, which runs as follows : commencing from the 
 centre 
 
 JOANNI CAMPBELL SHAIRP : 
 Qui Huic COLLEGIO PR^EFUIT : MDCCCLXVIII-MDCCCLXXXV. 
 
 Great care has been spent on the selection and arrange- 
 ment of the colours, and the whole effect is rich, yet simple 
 and dignified." 
 
 The portrait was kindly undertaken by the late Mr. 
 Robert Herdman, U.S.A., who painted it from memory, 
 with the help of photographs and the suggestions of friends. 1 
 The following is his own account of it : 
 
 " ST. BERNARD'S, BRUNTSFIELD CRESCENT, 
 "EDINBURGH, 12th October 1886. 
 
 "... I have wished to represent the Principal mainly 
 in repose, but to suggest the activity of his nature by turning 
 
 1 This portrait, which is partly taken from the last photograph by Mr. 
 Marshall Wane, has been recently engraved. 
 
xvi THE RIVIERA ORMSARY 403 
 
 the head a little aside as though something of interest drew 
 his attention. The expression of countenance which I most 
 sought for, was kindly steadfastness of purpose, and the 
 ideality which seemed to dwell visibly in the eyes and ex- 
 pressive brow ; and I have endeavoured, in the general effect 
 and composition, to suggest the deep rich well-balanced nature 
 of the man. 
 
 The three books point to where his special sympathies 
 lay, in literature and thought ; while the robe, hood, and cap 
 sufficiently indicate his academic position. The column 
 behind him may point to classic culture, whilst more obvi- 
 ously the bit of distant open-air nature, floating cloud and 
 misty hilltop, disclose themselves as in peculiar affinity 
 with the poetic side of his character. 
 
 All this may look fanciful, and I do not expect, or in- 
 deed wish, that it should be apparent to the ordinary spec- 
 tator ; but it has been under the impulse to express such 
 things that I have worked. If those who knew and valued 
 the man, should find that he is sympathetically recalled to 
 them by the portrait, I may be well satisfied." 
 
 In another letter Mr. Herdman says, " I did it mainly 
 because of my strong and early affection for St. Andrews, 
 and the old College, where I passed my youthful days." 
 
 This portrait now hangs in the Hall of the United 
 College. On the frame are inscribed the words, 
 
 " JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP, LL.D., 
 Principal of the United College 
 of St. Salvator and St. Leonard 
 
 from 1868 to 1885. 
 Born 1819 ; died 1885." 
 
 Steps were taken to ascertain whether a tablet to his 
 memory should be put up in Rugby Chapel, and it was 
 thought that Mr. Walrond might write an inscription. The 
 proposal was not carried out, but this was simply because it 
 might be supposed that the promoters of it were thinking 
 more of Rugby than of him. They therefore united in the 
 
404 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 realisation of the other memorials. A window has been 
 recently placed in the Balliol Library which in his under- 
 graduate days was the College Hall to commemorate his 
 relation to Oxford. Virgil, Wordsworth, and Scott are the 
 figures represented in that window. 
 
 From the numerous letters written to Mrs. Shairp after 
 her husband's death the following extracts may be given. 
 
 Professor Lushington, now Lord Eector of the University 
 of Glasgow, wrote 
 
 " LLYADINDUR, NEWBRIDGE-ON-WYE, 
 
 "RADNORSHIRE, 25^ September 1885. 
 
 " It was a startling shock of pain to me to see the 
 notice of so dear and honoured a friend's removal. From 
 my first year at Glasgow College, where his richly poetical 
 nature first attracted and impressed me, whatever I have 
 seen of him has always strengthened my regard and ad- 
 miration. I never knew a better or more lovable man, 
 nor a more affectionate and warm-hearted friend. Inspired 
 with the truest and noblest feelings, he was also in a 
 rare degree gifted with a winning frankness and simplicity, 
 which made his expression of them touchingly graceful 
 and beautiful. Sincerity and genuine goodness were mani- 
 fest in every word and look and tone of his voice. ... I 
 feel I ought to be grateful for the blessing of having known 
 intimately one whose character was so pure and lofty, so 
 worthy of all esteem and love ; and I will hope that the 
 lasting influence of that intimacy may be helpful and 
 strengthening to me, as it ought to be." 
 
 Again, at a later date 
 
 " Whenever we met, I found the same kindly courtesy, 
 joined to earnest sincerity, and a generous tolerance towards 
 dissimilar views ; the same vivid interest in all matters of 
 high import ; freshness and richness of thought, sustained by 
 quick insight, and recognition of whatever was beautiful and 
 true; the most genial and warm sympathy with all aspects 
 of good, which made his conversations always delightful 
 
xvi THE RIVIERA ORMSARY 405 
 
 and inspiring. Whoever saw much of him must have felt 
 his own better nature strengthened, and the more intimately 
 he came to know him the stronger this influence would 
 grow." 
 
 The Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, wrote 
 
 "MARSHAM, 24th September 1885. 
 
 " The sad news has reached us here, and struck sadness 
 into my heart. There are very few men of whom I have 
 seen so little whom I loved and honoured so much as the 
 noble-hearted Principal. In his looks and in his character 
 there was a Christian chivalry, as well as a genius, which 
 made him one of the purifying and elevating powers of our 
 day. How many young spirits has he turned to lofty 
 thought and feeling ! . . ." 
 
 The Master of Balliol wrote from Oxford, 19th September 
 1885- 
 
 " He was a noble-minded and generous man, whom we 
 all loved and respected. It is about forty-five years since 
 I first made his acquaintance, when he came up to Balliol, 
 as Snell Exhibitioner, full of life and joy and happiness, 
 taking a great interest in the place, and in the persons 
 whom he met there. I see him now swinging in a chair, 
 and talking merrily to a knot of undergraduates whom he 
 had gathered round him one summer's evening. I received 
 a great deal of affection and kindness from him, for which 
 I am grateful. . . ." 
 
 Mr. Patrick Cumin wrote 
 
 "16 CHESTER SQUARE, 6th October 1885. 
 
 " It is now more than forty years since I first knew him, 
 and during all that time I never met a more truly good 
 man, or one who commanded more affection or respect. I 
 never was in his company without feeling a kind of moral 
 elevation, and a desire to be more like him. I cannot help 
 
406 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 thinking that by this kind of influence he did more good to 
 his generation than it is easy to estimate. ..." 
 
 Eev. Dr. Whyte, Edinburgh, wrote from Strachur, Argyle- 
 shire 
 
 ". . . We never met without plunging immediately into 
 the world of books, and many were the delightful talks we 
 had. We had many favourite authors in common, and I 
 often thought of the Principal, as I read them. He was an 
 ^altogether unique man in his combination of learning and 
 culture, refinement and Christian faith. . . ." 
 
 His old Kugby friend, Mrs. Bradley, the wife of the 
 Dean of Westminster, wrote 
 
 " 15th October 1885. 
 
 "... There was always a special tenderness and rever- 
 ence in our talk of him, and the expression used frequently 
 to arise : ' What a fresh, wholesome, mountain breeze his 
 presence is ! Like nobody else's/ We were so sorry when 
 the vortex of London seemed to deprive us of the enjoy- 
 ment of seeing him in the old familiar way. . . . Ever 
 since I was a girl I have felt how delightful, and how 
 wholesome, and how loving a friend he was to my husband ; 
 how the singlemindedness, loftiness of ideal, and poetic 
 truthfulness of his nature was an element in our Rugby 
 life, distinctly purifying and elevating. I can recall now 
 his face and voice as he used to stand with his back against 
 the chimneypiece in our Rugby dining-room, whilst we 
 were taking an early breakfast ; walking in from first lesson, 
 so full of some subject that he hardly ever remembered to 
 look round or say good-morning, but would break at once 
 into the middle of whatever occupied his thoughts, as if he 
 had been with these thoughts all along, and must needs 
 take up the thread, and march along there and then. How 
 we used to say, ' Who is there but himself, who could pour 
 out things new and old, of heaven and earth, metaphysics 
 and poetry, as fresh as a mountain stream, after first lesson 
 on a winter morning, and before breakfast ? ' These are 
 
xvi THE RIVIERA ORMSARY 407 
 
 things we never forget, and that go to enrich one's life. 
 How we did miss all things when he left Bugby ! And 
 yet, in after days, one always learned more and more of his 
 lovableness and unique largeness of soul. I used so often, in 
 old days, to think of him, when we were reciting Shelley's 
 'Lark.' . . .? 
 
 Mr. Edward Scott, Eugby, wrote 
 
 "16th August. 
 
 11 1 well remember how he used to find fault, though 
 always very gently, with those people who were not con- 
 tent to ' be themselves.' He was himself to the last, in his 
 intercourse with myself, and with others." 
 
 Again 
 
 " I feel the debt which I owe to his friendship to be 
 greater than that laid upon me by any other person. And, 
 what is more, it seemed to me that my obligation increased 
 with every visit, and that it drew within its circle those who 
 are nearest to me as well as myself. In years long past, 
 my mother, and more recently my wife and my children, 
 regarded him with affection, which was based on different 
 grounds from mine, but was not less real, or seemed to 
 arise more naturally." 
 
CHAPTEE XVII 
 
 ESTIMATES IN MEMORIAM 
 
 THE following paper was written for this Memoir by one of 
 his oldest friends, Lord Coleridge, and one of the " Balliol 
 scholars " celebrated in Shairp's poem : 
 
 " HEATH'S COURT, OTTERY ST. MART, 
 "December 1887. 
 
 " With copious eulogy in prose or rhyme 
 Graven on the tomb we struggle against Time, 
 Alas ! how feebly ! but our feelings rise 
 And still we struggle when a good man dies. 
 
 These well-known lines describe in a general way the 
 feeling which oppressed me when I learnt that you desired 
 me to tell you what I could recollect of John Campbell 
 Shairp, especially of his undergraduate days, that what I 
 wrote might be embodied in a book to keep alive his 
 memory if it may be, and tell at least to this generation 
 something of the remarkable man whom we have lost. 
 How difficult, how all but impossible it is to go back nearly 
 fifty years, and give colour and reality to scenes which have 
 faded and become indistinct in the misty distance, and to 
 breathe life into characters who, seen even ' by the habitual 
 light of memory,' are now but the shadows of a confused 
 dream ! I have no contemporary journals or memoranda 
 of any kind to refer to ; I know how lapse of years impairs 
 accuracy, what tricks it plays with recollection and belief; 
 how assertions as to fact are often made in perfectly good 
 faith, but with absolutely no foundation ; how present feel- 
 
CHAP, xvn ESTIMATES IN MEMORIAM 409 
 
 ings and judgments are confounded with the past, so that a 
 narration of events is not so much a narration of what the 
 events actually were, as a record of the impression they 
 make upon us now, and an account of what we wish to 
 believe they were then. There are those living who, if 
 they care to read the following lines, may probably be able 
 to convict me of error and mistake ; and, making at once 
 the confession that they are very likely to be right, I will 
 do my best to recall that time. 
 
 A term or two his senior in University standing, I well 
 remember the coming of John Campbell Shairp amongst us 
 at Balliol. You will no doubt have recorded that he was 
 one of that distinguished line of Glasgow Exhibitioners to 
 whom Balliol owes so much of its reputation a line to 
 which, to mention no others, Lockhart and Christie and Sir 
 William Hamilton and Tait (the Archbishop) and Inglis 
 (the Lord President) belonged. He talked Scotch at least 
 what seemed so to us Englishmen. He rejoiced in waistcoats 
 of a rainbow brilliancy, which dazzled all our eyes ; he rode 
 well and enthusiastically, pulled up a horse dead-beat in a 
 ploughed field, and leaped a ladder which two men were 
 carrying across High Street, because it obstructed his course 
 up that academic stadium to Quarterman's (I think it was) 
 Stables. 
 
 To some of us this sort of thing was just at first 
 startling and even, perhaps, unpleasing. But it soon 
 appeared how much of goodness, of cordial kindness, of 
 high feeling, of true modesty, underlay his slightly rollick- 
 ing exterior. The unruffled good temper with which he 
 bore a rude remark from one of us as to the silence be- 
 coming in a freshman, not only made the utterer ashamed 
 of himself, but laid the foundation of a lifelong friendship. 
 And as he came to be known so was he by us all more 
 and more respected and beloved. We joked about 'old 
 Shairp,' his waistcoats, his enthusiasms, his recitations be- 
 coming all but inarticulate from his emotion, his straining 
 to make us feel if we could not comprehend the indefinite 
 (one of us, I remember, christened him the Great Aorist). 
 
410 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 / We joked, I say, but our jokes had no bitterness in them, 
 nothing but kindliness and good humour on both sides ; they 
 drew us closer together and were the subject of many a 
 pleasant recollection in after years. But there was much 
 more than this even at that time in our friend. The in- 
 tellectual and religious interests prevalent in the place were 
 such as to arouse and satisfy his best powers and instincts 
 the influences such as were peculiarly fit to mould, 
 strengthen, purify, exalt such a character as his. A few 
 months only before he came to Oxford Wordsworth had 
 received in the theatre an enthusiastic welcome, a cordial, 
 reverent homage which I at least have never seen equalled, 
 and an honour which, although it has no doubt been 
 often given before and since to men unworthy of it, is yet 
 the highest which the University can bestow. Frederick 
 Kobertson has recorded that the cheers in the theatre, 
 and the acknowledgment of them by their object, seemed 
 to him out of keeping with the austere simplicity of the 
 poet -sage, and the lofty and unworldly character of his 
 writings. Most of us did not think so then, and on re- 
 flection it seems to me that we were right. Wordsworth 
 was at that time at the very height of the fame which he 
 ever achieved in his lifetime; he had got away even from 
 the echoes of Lord Jeffrey's shallow and silly mockery ; his 
 renown was fulfilled ; and to many of us he was an object 
 of worship, and of an honour ' on this idolatry ' which, if it 
 was but the due of him it was paid to, ennobled also those 
 who paid it 
 
 We who had loved him so, followed him, honoured him, 
 
 Lived in his mild and magnificent eye, 
 Learned his great language, caught his clear accents, 
 
 Made him our pattern to live and to die. 
 
 But we had small patience then (I will own that I have 
 none now) for the ' critical deductions/ the patronage, the 
 measured praise, the superior censure of men as incapable of 
 seeing his greatness as a blind man of seeing colours, and 
 who were hopelessly unaware that they were the contem- 
 
xvii ESTIMATES IN MEMORIAM 411 
 
 poraries of one who had changed English poetry, drawn new 
 tones (how sweet and how deep !) from ' the still sad music 
 of humanity,' and invested alike the humblest and the 
 sublimest forms of Xature with fresh splendour and un- 
 dying beauty. 
 
 Looking back to those days and to the Shairp of 
 that time, it seems strange, but it is most certainly true, 
 that he, afterwards one of the most powerful, the most 
 enthusiastic, and withal the most reflective and philoso- 
 phical of the admirers of Wordsworth, was then but a 
 half-hearted though respectful student of the great poet. 
 Eemembering what I have heard of the literary storms 
 which he raised by his book on Burns and his lectures 
 upon Shelley, it is also strange, but it is also most certainly 
 true, that in 1840-42 he-placed Burns and Shelley upon a 
 higher level than Wordsworth. He thought they had more 
 of the divine afflatus, more spontaneity, more ' go ' (forgive 
 the slang), and while he respected and admired Wordsworth, 
 he revelled in, perhaps he was intoxicated by, the magni- 
 ficent passion and energy of Burns, and the exquisite 
 diction, the lovely melody, the magic beauty of Shelley's 
 verses. Again and again in endless but delightful disputes 
 did we w^age war on one another's views, never convincing 
 one another at the time, but perhaps each leading the other 
 to a truer and higher appreciation of his friend's favourites. 
 
 There was a society called the Decade in those days 
 (a Balliol scout, long since gone to his rest, persisted in 
 embodying the external world's judgment on it by always 
 calling it the Decayed) which I think did a good deal for 
 the mental education of those of us who belonged to it 
 those of us, at least, who carne from public schools where we 
 were taught to construe, to say by heart, to write verses and 
 Greek and Latin prose, but where our minds were allowed 
 to lie fallow and to grow on unclouded by thought in 
 an atmosphere of severe and healthy unintelligence. Who 
 has the books of the Decade I do not know, and I cannot 
 pretend from memory to give a list of its members. But 
 amongst them Shairp found when he joined it Sir Benjamin 
 
412 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 Brodie (the second Baronet), Deans Church and Lake and 
 Stanley, Bishop Temple, the present Master of Balliol, 
 Arthur Clough, Matthew Arnold, James Eiddell, John 
 Seymour, I think Lord Lingon, Constantine Prichard, 
 Theodore Walrond, Canon Butler, and a number more 
 whose names have faded from a memory decaying, or per- 
 haps, like the club, decayed. We met in one another's 
 rooms. We discussed all things human and divine we 
 thought we stripped things to the very bone we believed 
 we dragged recondite truths into the light of common day 
 arid subjected them to the scrutiny of what we were pleased 
 to call our minds. We fought to the very stumps of our 
 intellects, and I believe that many of us I can speak for 
 one would gladly admit that many a fruitful seed of know- 
 ledge, of taste, of cultivation, was sown on those pleasant 
 if somewhat pugnacious evenings. I believe they did 
 Shairp great good. They pressed upon him the knowledge 
 that Scotland was not the world, that Scottish Presby- 
 terianism was not the only form of Christianity which 
 could fill and sustain the heart and mind of reasonable 
 men, that other hills besides the Highlands were robed in 
 the gold and purple of gorse and heather, that other lakes 
 as clear reflected skies as blue, that there were worlds of 
 religious of poetical of philosophical thought, to which he 
 had been a stranger, but which lay open to his intelligent 
 and genial inquiry. At this time he was intensely he was, 
 to say the truth, excessively Scottish, and, if one may dare 
 speak of Scotland as a province, he was provincial. To the 
 end of his life he remained intensely Scottish ; but though 
 prejudices, especially political prejudices, grew upon him, he 
 could never after his Oxford days be truly described as 
 narrow-minded. On few men did Oxford ever exert so dis- 
 tinct and so beneficent an influence. He lived on intimate 
 terms with the ablest, but, what was more, with the best 
 men in the University; bright days, happy evenings, 
 hard work, half -jesting but half -serious discussions with 
 them day after day opened his mind, enlarged his sym- 
 pathies, kindled his affections, ripened his whole nature. 
 
ESTIMATES IN MEMORIAM 413 
 
 It was a simple, noble nature, which assimilated all that 
 was good in its surroundings, and from which all that was 
 harsh, illbred, impure, quietly fell away. To the end of his 
 days he generously recognised what Balliol and Oxford had 
 done for him. In more than one letter he has said in 
 terms that he found in his High Church friends something 
 which, though he did not intellectually agree with it, was 
 strangely and specially attractive to his moral nature. I 
 have no gift for reproducing those young men as they were 
 when Shairp lived in their company ; but if I had, I should 
 shrink from attempting either to rival or to supplement 
 those beautiful and loving sketches of some of them which 
 Shairp himself made in verses as well known as anything 
 he ever wrote, and destined, I believe, to be as long remem- 
 bered. That poem shows how he felt towards them ; it 
 suggests quite truly how they must have felt towards him 
 what mutual benefits he and they both gave and took. . . . 
 But no notice of Shairp no notice of any Oxford man 
 of that period who took life seriously and gave himself the 
 trouble to think can omit that great penetrating influence, 
 that waking up of the soul, that revelation of hopes, desires, 
 motives, duties not of this world, not ending here, even if 
 they had here their beginning, which came to us week by 
 week from the pulpit of St. Mary's, and day by day from 
 the writings and the silent presence amongst us of that 
 great man who still survives at Birmingham in venerable 
 age, but with undimmed mental eye and unabated force of 
 genius, a Eoman cardinal in title, but the light and guide 
 of multitudes of grateful hearts outside his own communion 
 and beyond the limits of these small islands. No man has 
 described better than Shairp that wonderful preaching, no 
 one has done fuller justice than Shairp to the prose-poetry 
 of Cardinal Newman. I can recollect the beginnings ; I 
 followed the gradual, half-reluctant, and doubtful, yet at 
 last hearty and most generous growth of his admiration. 
 Cardinal Newman's was at that time the only really reli- 
 gious teaching to which undergraduates were subject. A 
 lecture on the Thirty-Nine Articles and a terminal address 
 
414 JOHN CAMPBELL SHA1RP CHAP. 
 
 before the terminal Communion were supposed to supply 
 them abundantly with any religious guiding they might 
 need. The tutors, many of them, were not only good men, 
 but I believe very good men ; they only followed the tradi- 
 tions of the place. But the authorities, as in the case of 
 Wesley so in the case of Newman, altogether objected to 
 any one else doing what they did not do themselves. In 
 the rougher days of Wesley they encouraged the pelting of 
 him, as he went to church, with mud and pebbles. In our 
 day other means were used : four tutors protested, six 
 doctors suspended, Hebdomadal Boards censured, deans of 
 colleges changed the Sunday dinner-hour, so as to make the 
 hearing of Newman's sermon and a dinner in Hall incom- 
 patible transactions. This seemed then it seems now 
 miserably small. It failed, of course ; such proceedings 
 always fail. The influence so fought with naturally widened 
 and strengthened. There was imparted to an attendance at 
 St. Mary's that slight flavour of insubordination which 
 rendered such attendance attractive to many, to some at 
 any rate, who might otherwise have stayed away. In 1839 
 the afternoon congregation at St. Mary's was, for a small 
 Oxford parish, undoubtedly large probably two or three 
 times the whole population of the parish; but by 1842 it 
 had become as remarkable a congregation as I should think 
 was ever gathered together to hear regularly a single 
 preacher. There was scarcely a man of note in the 
 University, old or young, to whatever school of thought 
 he might belong, who did not, during the last two or three 
 years of Newman's incumbency, habitually attend the ser- 
 vice and listen to the sermons. One Dean certainly, who 
 had changed the time of his College dinner to prevent 
 others going, constantly went himself ; and the outward 
 interest in the teaching was but one symptom of the deep 
 and abiding influence which Cardinal Newman exercised 
 then, and exercises now, over the thoughts and lives of 
 many men who perhaps never saw him, who certainly never 
 heard him. Of this Shairp was a very striking instance. 
 He came under the wand of the enchanter, and never threw 
 
xvii ESTIMATES IN MEMORIAM 415 
 
 off, or wished to throw off, the spell ; to the end of his days 
 there was no one with whose writings he was more familiar, 
 no one who exerted a more poetical influence over his 
 thoughts, his feelings, his whole nature. I do not mean 
 that he ever became in doctrine what is commonly called a 
 High Churchman ; Newman taught principles of life and 
 action rather than dogmas, though no doubt he himself drew 
 his principles from what he believed to be dogmatic truths ; 
 and so it has happened in a hundred instances, of which 
 Shairp is one, that men who have been unable to follow 
 the Cardinal to his dogmatic conclusions have been pene- 
 trated and animated by his religious principles, and have 
 lived their lives and striven to do their duty because of 
 those principles which he was God's instrument to teach 
 them. His loyalty to Cardinal Newman ended only with 
 his life ; what kindled it in him and in others I cannot de- 
 scribe without danger of seeming to exaggerate. How it 
 was appreciated I hope the world will learn from your book 
 in the Cardinal's own words. 
 
 Whether it was under this influence I know not, but 
 he entertained for a while the thought of taking orders in 
 the Church of England. Several letters passed between us 
 on the subject, but there were obstacles, not necessary to 
 detail, which he was on the whole disinclined to encounter, 
 and, fortunately I think, the project came to nothing. After 
 we left Oxford, although our intercourse by letter was fre- 
 quent and unbroken, we met, with one or two exceptions, 
 in London only, where Shairp was never quite at home nor 
 at his best, though he enjoyed some of its diversions, espe- 
 cially what he called ' fooling ' in Hyde Park. For a time, 
 possibly under Rugby influences, his political opinions were 
 so Liberal as to be what I should call Eadical, and they 
 were expressed with characteristic force and vehemence. 
 He soon deflected from what I should call the true faith, 
 but there was nothing bitter in his politics ; he could not 
 dislike a Eadical if he was a good fellow and behaved like 
 a gentleman ; and though I must say that latterly it seemed 
 to me his Toryism became somewhat blind and extreme, yet 
 
416 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 there were plenty of other topics to discuss on paper or in 
 talk, and I believe that such differences never interposed the 
 lightest cloud between his affections and the objects of it, 
 whatever might be their opinions. 
 
 Twice I met him out of London, and I think twice 
 only once in Edinburgh, once in lona, both memorable 
 occasions to me, both places the associations of which drew 
 out many of the most interesting points in Shairp's own 
 character. Holy rood, with its memories of Queen Mary, and 
 Eizzio, and Darnley, and John Knox ; the Castle, the Grass- 
 market, the Parliament House, Arthur's Seat, St. Giles's, the 
 Flodden walls these things and many others Shairp, with 
 abundant knowledge and keen enthusiasm, displayed to a 
 friend's intelligence, which was at least sufficiently alert to 
 comprehend what he was told, and to see the beauties and 
 feel the interests of Walter Scott's ' own romantic town ' 
 when pointed out to him by such a guide. We had, I re- 
 member, a most lovely day ; and the view from the top of 
 Arthur's Seat, with him to explain its various points, was 
 something to remember for one's life. Our meeting at lona 
 was to me more interesting still. We spent the best part 
 of two days there ; we saw as thoroughly as we could that 
 venerable spot ; the collection of ruins, beautiful and strik- 
 ing indeed, grouped together on the side looking towards 
 Mull, consecrated by a thousand memories and associations 
 of profound and tender interest to the Christian, the his- 
 torian, the man of letters ; we wandered all over the little 
 island, and rowed round it in a four-oar, stopping to gather 
 pebbles on St. Columba's beach, and to watch the seals play- 
 ing in the little inlets of bright water between the jagged 
 granite reefs, thrust out into the Atlantic like the jaws of 
 some vast animal, along which, though the day was absol- 
 utely still, the sea rose and fell without a break, with slow 
 sighs of restless and resistless power, suggestive of what the 
 reefs must be in time of wind and storm. All this we 
 enjoyed together. But Shairp was anxious, to an extent 
 which I could not follow, to fix exactly all the spots of 
 St. Columba's landing, his progress across the island, and 
 
xvn ESTIMATES IN MEMORIAM 417 
 
 where precisely he had placed his rude buildings, every 
 trace of which it was certain had long since been obliter- 
 ated by the ruins of the pointed architecture which now 
 remain. The area containing all the buildings is not, I 
 suppose, much larger than twice Lincoln's Inn Fields ; and 
 when you stand on the top of the granite boulder, some 100 
 feet above the sea, and said to be the highest spot in lona, 
 you no doubt must look upon every inch of ground on 
 which St. Columba built, and probably stand on the spot 
 from which he often preached, and from which, it is said, 
 he last looked upon the settlement which he had founded. 
 But whether a particular building stood a hundred feet this 
 way or a hundred feet that ; which of two or three little 
 rills, which find their way into the sea at short distance 
 from each other, flowed by Columba's hut, questions such 
 as these, which seem of very small importance, excited 
 all the energies of Shairp's investigating powers ; and he 
 was manifestly disappointed that I failed to appreciate the 
 cogent arguments which a spit of sand or a pool in a rill 
 afforded in these grave controversies. The evening we 
 passed in company with a delightful young Scottish clergy- 
 man, a school inspector, who maintained, greatly to Shairp's 
 discomposure, the wisdom and the value of teaching English 
 in all the Highland schools, and discouraging Gaelic. He 
 showed how it weighted the young boys and girls in the 
 race of life to speak and think in a tongue unintelligible to 
 the great mass of their fellow-countrymen. Shairp grew 
 eloquent on the duty of keeping up the ancient, noble, 
 imaginative, poetical language the language of their an- 
 cestors, which had, he said, so marked an effect on the 
 characters of those who spoke it. The young clergyman, I 
 remember, very much surprised me by meeting this sort of 
 argument by the statement that at least in the Islands and 
 in many parts of the Western Highlands the Gaelic was not 
 old ; that it was as much an exotic as English would be 
 now ; that it was, in fact, but about 150 years old, before 
 which time the people of those parts had all spoken Norse. 
 I do not know whether the statement was as new to Shairp 
 
 2 E 
 
j 
 
 418 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 as it was to me, still less do I know if it was historically 
 correct, though I have no reason to doubt it ; but I remem- 
 ber being amused to see that for the time at least it silenced 
 Shairp, and appeared to have much more weight with him 
 than the practical considerations which had been urged upon 
 him with so much force. 
 
 We went back from Oban to the Trosachs by the High- 
 land Railway, and he made our journey delightful by many 
 a reminiscence of the Bruce and the Breadalbane Campbells 
 as we passed this spot or that, never ceasing all the while 
 to protest against the railway altogether, chiefly because a 
 very tender passage of his life had been spent at or near 
 Tyndrum, and that then he had seen eagles and other wild 
 and noble creatures and sights of Nature which the railway 
 had banished. We parted (I think) at Stirling, and except 
 for one or two short visits in London the last one 
 when his health was manifestly failing I never saw him 
 more. 
 
 But he was a man whom no one he honoured with his 
 friendship could possibly forget. His letters, which, though 
 not frequent, were yet constant and always full of thought 
 and striking language ; his books, his poetry, these things 
 kept alive in his friends' hearts their absent and beloved 
 companion. Above, however, and beyond all this, was the 
 character of the man, the man himself; more poetical than 
 his poetry, more affectionate than his letters ; fuller of charm, 
 weightier in influence, than even his best and ablest writ- 
 ings. Others must estimate his poetry and his criticism, 
 for me there abides, and will abide while I live and have 
 my mind, the image of the man himself his outward 
 aspect : ' his solemn yet sparkling eyes, his open and 
 thoughtful forehead, a head of virginal floridness, which 
 might be distinguished even among gray hairs, and the 
 traces of meditation and labour,' which Marzoni attributes 
 to Cardinal Fedingo in the Prosseni Sposi he himself as 
 simple as a child, open to every tender and generous im- 
 pulse, high-minded and pure-thoughted, yet full of harmless 
 fun and playful humour, a steadfast friend, whose life was a 
 
xvn ESTIMATES IN MEMORIAM 419 
 
 charm to us, and whose death was ' like a disenchant- 
 ment.' 
 
 Sir Charles Dalryinple of Newhailes, Musselburgh, who 
 said, shortly after Shairp's death, that it was " a great loss 
 to all best causes in Scotland, and far beyond it too," 
 writes 
 
 " We had many meetings in London about the different 
 University Bills. . . . The last time we had communication 
 on the subject of a University Bill was in the summer of 
 1885 (not long before his death), when I happened to be a 
 Lord of the Treasury, and responsible for the moment for 
 Scotch business in Parliament. Principal Shairp greatly 
 lamented the delay in passing a University Bill, and felt 
 sure that, with the appointment of a strong and wise Com- 
 mission, the difficulties which arose on various grounds 
 would speedily pass away. He often talked to me about 
 Scotch ecclesiastical matters, deploring the movement against 
 the Established Church. I remember his saying : ' We 
 have much to regret at present ; but I am convinced that if 
 the Established Church was gone, we should have an end of 
 that " sweet reasonableness " which, with all our defects, 
 we still have. There would be a regular war of sects, that 
 would make life intolerable. For my own part, I should 
 probably seek peace by attending the Episcopalian service, 
 which I have been familiar with ever since my Oxford days, 
 and I should at least know where I was ; but for most 
 people in Scotland there would be no such escape.' One 
 day I remember, in the lobby of the House of Commons, 
 he was deploring the style of much of our Scotch preaching, 
 and said, ' The effect on me of some of the sermons that I 
 hear in the North and in the South, except perhaps in Edin- 
 burgh, is just like buckets of cold water poured down my 
 back.' . . . The freshness and purity of his ideas were always 
 apparent, and he seemed to combine in a high degree the 
 chastened and mature thought of later life with the sim- 
 plicity and freshness of a much earlier age." 
 
420 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 The following reminiscences are by Mrs. Inge of 
 Worcester College, Oxford : 
 
 "... Our first acquaintance with him was derived 
 from his little essay on Keble in 1866. When all hearts 
 were full of the divine and minstrel who had just been 
 withdrawn from us, and all were trying to utter some- 
 thing not unworthy of him, this witness from ' over the 
 Border/ written, as we were told, by a young Presbyterian, 
 a friend of Dean Stanley's and of Archbishop Tait, came 
 upon us with a strange and sweet surprise. It seemed 
 like an echo of some of the best and noblest teaching of the 
 great ' movement,' and to prove how, apart from controversy, 
 the influence of that movement had prevailed to ennoble, 
 purify, and sanctify minds, that from circumstances were 
 outside the sphere of its direct operation. More than this, 
 the enthusiastic affection for Oxford, the discriminating ap- 
 preciation of what was best in the Oxford of his own day, 
 which characterised this little brochure, gave it a singular 
 charm, something of the delight which men feel when what 
 they know and love dearly themselves receives a graceful 
 tribute from a disinterested outsider. This delight was 
 hardly diminished by the discovery that the writer had so 
 given his heart to Oxford as to be almost more truly filial 
 in his affection than most of her English-born sons, and 
 that in sympathy of the best kind he was so truly one with 
 English churchmen that it was difficult to remember that 
 any fence existed between his field and ours. His position 
 in this respect is not easy to define, nor perhaps to consider 
 absolutely satisfactory as final ; but I think he lived, as 
 much as any man could, in the spirit of Bishop Ken's prayer, 
 to which I am almost sure I once heard him refer : ' my 
 God, amidst the deplorable divisions of Thy Church, let 
 me never widen its breaches, but give me Catholic charity 
 to all that are baptized in Thy Name, and Catholic com- 
 munion with all Christians in desire.' 
 
 Our first direct intercourse with him was in 1874. His 
 papers on ' The Three Yarrows ' and on ' The White Doe of 
 
xvii ESTIMATES IN ME MORI AM 421 
 
 Kylstone,' which appeared in Good Words, were lent to us 
 during my father's last illness, and afforded him very great 
 pleasure. I came into the room just as my mother was 
 finishing the last of these papers, reading aloud. My 
 father's eyes were glistening, and his whole frame thrilled 
 with the delight it gave him. ' I wish I could tell that 
 man how much I thank him ! ' he said. ' Why shouldn't 
 you ? ' I replied ; and accordingly I wrote for him, and sent 
 the letter with a copy of my father's own little poem on Sir 
 Walter Scott. In answer, I received the following reply, 
 which reached me on the very day of my father's death : 
 
 ' CUIL-ALUINN, 
 
 ' ABERFELDT, 2d July 1874. 
 
 MADAM I cannot tell you with how great plea- 
 sure I received your letter, and read the poem and essay of 
 Archdeacon Churton, which you so kindly sent me. The 
 poem, so mellow with thoughtful beauty, expresses exactly 
 many of my own feelings about Scott. And the essay well 
 vindicates the real friendship that existed between the two 
 great men. I have always felt somewhat indignant at the 
 insertion of that chance remark in Wordsworth's Life (vol. 
 ii. p. 444), doing, as I think it does, more injustice and wrong 
 to Wordsworth than to Scott. 
 
 As time goes on, and no other poets, at all equal to these 
 great men, arise, the world, I think, must learn to know 
 better how great were the gifts given it in them. Thank 
 you for telling me that Archdeacon Churton likes the things 
 I have written about them. To know that anything of mine 
 could have given recreation to one so honoured and revered 
 as he is, is more than I could have hoped for. Will you 
 say to him how highly I appreciate his good opinion, which 
 might well stimulate me to do anything more I could in 
 the way of interpreting these men to the world ? Often I 
 have had misgivings whether the time given to this might 
 not have been better spent. But from Scott and Words- 
 worth I have from childhood drunk in so much of what was 
 
422 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 healthful and delightful, that I wished to tell the younger 
 generation what I had found in these poets, and what, I 
 feared, they were neglecting for less wholesome fare. It 
 may, perhaps, interest the Archdeacon to know that I have 
 just edited the Journal of Miss Wordsworth's Scottish Tour, 
 1803, entire. Had I yet received any copies from the 
 publishers I should have liked to have forwarded one with 
 this letter to the Archdeacon. But they have not arrived 
 yet. Again thanking you for your most kind letter, I 
 remain, yours sincerely, J. C. SHAIRP.' 
 
 When the small volume of my father's poetical remains 
 appeared in 1875, Principal Shairp, at our request, kindly 
 wrote a notice of the book for the Guardian, and several 
 letters passed between us and him on this subject. But it 
 was not until our coming to live in Oxford that we had the 
 opportunity, so long desired, of making personal acquaint- 
 ance with him. In November 1881 his professorial lec- 
 ture brought him to Oxford, and for the first time he was 
 our guest. I do not think that we found him in any way 
 different from our expectations : his own pen had portrayed 
 him with entire truth ; only the charm of his actual presence 
 filled up the outline with life and warmth. What struck 
 us especially was the sense as of 'a finer air' which he 
 brought with him, in which it seemed that all that was true 
 and pure and lovely and of good report in those with whom 
 he conversed came fearlessly forth, elicited by his quick and 
 generous sympathy ; and all that was mean, worldly, or self- 
 ish, or, quite as much, all that was flippant or irreverent, 
 instinctively slunk away. 
 
 He was much pleased to meet his Oxford friends, espe- 
 cially Archdeacon Palmer, whom he loved for the sake of his 
 most dear friend, James Eiddell, as well as for himself. Many 
 old reminiscences rose up between them, and some stories 
 of the old master of Balliol were told with much humour 
 and enjoyment. The story of his admonishing a hunting 
 
xvii ESTIMATES IN MEMORIAM 423 
 
 undergraduate that ' if he wanted to hunt, he might hunt 
 all the Long Vacation ! ' which was told ' nameless/ brought 
 Principal Shairp to confession. ' I should know that story, 
 for I was the undergraduate ! ' ' Then, Shairp, you must 
 give us the true version.' ' I had not been hunting, as it 
 happened, but I had met with some men who had, and I 
 was riding home with them rather late in the afternoon, 
 very near Magdalen Bridge, the master saw us, and I capped 
 him. In the evening he sent for me, and said, " Mr. Shairp, 
 I am sorry to see you have taken to the idle amusement of 
 hunting. If you wish to hunt, you can hunt all the Long 
 Vacation, all over the Highlands of Scotland ! " 
 
 The question was raised whether the master knew and 
 meant the joke, or whether he said it in good faith ; but 
 Principal Shairp said he was convinced he knew what he 
 was saying. And then he said how the master used to 
 seem to know nothing, and really knew everything. 
 
 Another day he met Miss Wordsworth, and was greatly 
 interested about Lady Margaret Hall. We had much talk 
 about the higher education of women, which was an upper- 
 most subject among us just then. I do not think he was 
 so much opposed to innovations as I was then. Only I 
 remember his saying, ' Miss Wordsworth was not brought 
 up at a ladies' college ; ' and ' the real, highest education is to 
 be brought up under the shadow of a great mind and heart 
 as she was.' 
 
 He was in St. Mary's when Dean Church preached the' 
 University sermon, June 1882, and was deeply impressed 
 by it ; it led him to speak of Newman's preaching, and how 
 unlike it was to all modern preaching. Dean Church, he 
 thought, was the only man who even could remind him of 
 Newman. Afterwards he wrote, ' I have got the sermon, 
 . . . interesting as all he does is. But there is in it a tone 
 of sadness I don't say greater sadness than experience 
 warrants ; only, as life gets on, one feels more than ever 
 the need of what will hearten and strengthen one.' 
 
 He was greatly pleased with Mrs. 's saying that she 
 
424 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP. 
 
 divided the world into ' people that kindled, and people that 
 didn't! . . .' 
 
 He was with us on Sunday, and we had much deeply 
 interesting talk of a graver sort. We were but beginners at 
 Oxford, and the new statutes were still quite new, and were 
 filling the air with anxious forebodings. We spoke to him 
 of the article in The, Church Quarterly for April of this year, 
 1881, 'Kecent Fortunes of the Church in Oxford.' ... To 
 this conversation he alludes in the following letter, which I 
 received soon after he left us : 
 
 ' UNIVERSITY, ST. ANDREWS, N.B., 
 'December 7, 1881. 
 
 ' DEAR MRS. INGE Only last night I reached home after 
 my wanderings, and I now sit down to tell you how plea- 
 sant is my retrospect. . . . Somehow it put me more in 
 mind of the old Oxford that I knew than most of my recent 
 visits there have done. I feel quite sure that a good work 
 lies before the Provost and you to do within your college 
 and beyond it ; and I trust you may be given strength and 
 guidance to do it. Amid many changes which older Oxon- 
 ians must regret, and perhaps dread, much may be done to 
 strengthen the things which remain. This will not, I think, 
 be done by minimising the good that still exists. This was 
 
 rather the tendency of 's paper last spring in The Church 
 
 Quarterly, in which, though it is " an owre true tale," I 
 seemed to see a tendency to over-despondency, and to ignore 
 good work and good men in Oxford because they do not 
 altogether follow his own way. But perhaps I have said 
 too much. What more there may be to say, I may, perhaps, 
 another day, have an opportunity of saying to the Provost 
 by word of mouth.' 
 
 The following February he came to us again. On both 
 these visits he allowed me to lay hands on the MS. of his 
 lectures, and to read them to my mother, who greatly enjoyed 
 them. . . . Mother remarked upon some passages in the Lecture 
 
xvii ESTIMATES IN MEMORIAM 425 
 
 on the Poets of the Seventeenth Century, and ventured to 
 observe that Henry Vaughan was worth more space than had 
 been allotted to him. This led to our talking over the SilexScin- 
 tillans afterwards, and he seemed much pleased to have been 
 reminded of the little volume. The next year, in May 1883, 
 he devoted an entire lecture to ' Henry Vaughan, the Silurist'; 
 and this was perhaps one of the most characteristic of his 
 later lectures. It closes with a beautiful passage, suggested 
 by the Hetreat of Vaughan, and the very remarkable re- 
 semblance between that poem and Wordsworth's Intima- 
 tions of Immortality. Principal Shairp, however, seizes 
 upon the one thought and this the best which Vaughan 
 has, and Wordsworth has not. It is this : that c hereafter, 
 in the perfected Christian manhood, the child's heart will 
 reappear Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven. It is a beau- 
 tiful, and I trust, a true faith, that a day is coming when 
 the soul shall put off the incrustations it has gathered here, 
 when we shall regain all that we have lost, and combine the 
 matured wisdom of the man with all that is lovely in the 
 child. And so our life is rounded both ways by a childhood, 
 the imperfect childhood we pass through here ; the per- 
 fect childhood which shall be hereafter.' Some who heard 
 the lecture will remember how, with the strong emotion 
 which this thought stirred in him, his voice sank lower and 
 lower, to a solemnised impassioned whisper, as was always 
 the case with him when deeply moved, so that the last 
 words were hardly audible ; then he closed his MS., took off 
 his glasses, and looked up with cordial pleasure to welcome 
 the greetings of his friends. One felt that for that soul 
 there must be very little ' incrustation ' to put off ! 
 
 But there is another side of his character which ought 
 not to be omitted. To an optimist in the best sense, as he 
 was, the pain of giving pain was acute indeed ; and one felt 
 that anything like severity from him had tenfold force from 
 the very keenness of the pain it cost him. This struck me 
 first when he was speaking of his little volume on Eobert 
 Burns. He told me with evident emotion that what he 
 
426 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP CHAP, xvn 
 
 had felt bound to say in that book had wounded his coun- 
 trymen, and almost estranged some whom he heartily 
 </ loved ; ' but,' he said, ' I felt that the idolatry of Scotchmen 
 for Burns must not be allowed to warp the moral sense ; it 
 was needful to make strong protest against the fatal doctrine 
 that men of genius hold a charter of exemption from the 
 obligations of the divine law.' 
 
 His lecture on Friendship, as exhibited in ancient and 
 modern poetry, beginning with David and Jonathan, and 
 ending, I think, with Coleridge's noble lines on hearing 
 Wordsworth's Prelude, were full of delightful bits. It was a 
 subject of genuine heartfelt experience to himself, and his 
 beautiful words about Oxford -born friendships were the 
 natural and unexaggerated description of that which he has 
 enshrined in verse, not more poetic than his prose his own 
 Balliol friendships. 
 
 Altogether, his memory is one of those precious things 
 which, as years go on, one only learns to prize more and 
 more dearly; and in days of discouragement and gloom 
 the remembrance of having even for a little while had the 
 privilege of such a friendship brings a quickening ray of 
 sunshine to revive drooping faith and hope and love. 
 
 0, if within me hope should e'er decline, 
 
 The lamp of faith, lost friend ! too faintly burn, 
 
 Then may that heaven-revealing smile of thine, 
 The bright assurance, visibly return : 
 
 And let my spirit in that power divine 
 
 Rejoice, as thro' that power it ceas'd to mourn. " 
 
APPENDIX I 
 
 THE following is an extract from a very characteristic paper 
 on Undergraduate Life at Oxford. It was written at Rugby, 
 when Shairp evidently intended to write at much greater length 
 on the subject of Oxford : 
 
 "There are few who do not look back on their first years at 
 Oxford as among the happiest and most important of their lives. 
 They were dear while present, but we knew not then how they 
 were colouring all our after -existence. They are dearer to 
 memory, and every year as we recede from them they grow in 
 beauty and dimensions. 
 
 What makes those years so fair and ideal in remembrance ? 
 Why do they stand out so singly prominent from the long 
 level of the past 1 What so endeared them to us ? the 
 peculiar time of life, or the sanctities of the place, or the 
 friends who were then our daily companions 1 Whatever be the 
 reason, no one who has himself been an undergraduate can 
 look on another just entering college life without feeling for 
 him a more than common interest. He has left behind the 
 thoughtlessness of boyhood, but not yet lost its freshness. You 
 feel that the soft light of morning is still upon him that his 
 horizon is not yet shut in ; the large uncertainties, the bound- 
 less possibilities, are on his side. He knows not himself, and 
 none know, what he may grow to how life may shape itself for 
 him. 
 
 But pass over three or four years, and he who was a fresh- 
 man will be leaving college for the world. What was promise 
 must be now ripening to performance, or withering to dis- 
 appointment. What was fluid and unfixed must be setting into 
 solid character, or have evaporated to leave him more hard and 
 shallow-hearted than he came. This result the natural lapse of 
 time would have produced, quite apart from the university. The 
 question then may fitly be asked, What does Oxford do for under- 
 
428 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP i 
 
 graduates that three years elsewhere would not have done '\ 
 with what peculiar influences are they there compassed 1 how do 
 these influences act on different natures ? what colour do they 
 give to their mental training, views, feelings, habits, their entire 
 character 1 
 
 That Oxford does lay its hand on most men in some very real 
 way gently it may be but all the more strongly for its gentle- 
 ness all acknowledge, both those who themselves have under- 
 gone this discipline, and those who from without have watched 
 its results on others. You will hear it said on all hands, in 
 praise or in blame, There is no mistaking an Oxford man, meet 
 him where you will. The impress is stamped deep, showing 
 itself not mainly in scholarship, nor in logical power, nor in 
 metaphysical, nor in historical not in one nor in all of these, 
 nor in anything which schools or lecture-rooms can teach but 
 in the constant transpiration of a common character, that breathes 
 through all their thoughts, words, actions. 
 
 To understand the agencies that are at work, we must re- 
 member how widely the English Universities differ in most things 
 from those of Scotland, Germany, indeed of all other nations 
 and further, how the peculiarities of the English system are con- 
 centrated at Oxford. Two points stand specially prominent, 
 (1) the striking fact that Oxford education is accessible only to 
 the wealthier part of the nation ; (2) the predominance of 
 Collegiate over University life. Whatever the cause may be, it 
 cannot be denied that Oxford now educates the rich, not the 
 poor. It is the inheritance not of the nation, but only of the 
 upper section of the nation. Many rejoice in this, rejoice to 
 see the flower of England's youth breathing an air of calmness 
 and of beauty, undisturbed by the world's vulgarities. To others, 
 not insensible to these things, the thought cannot but occur Is 
 that refinement worth preserving which can be secured only by 
 a selfish exclusiveness 1 To them it seems that those Universities 
 in other countries which throw wide their gates to all comers 
 gain in justice and generosity what they lose in refinement. 
 There it is no uncommon thing for poor students to travel more 
 than a hundred miles on foot yearly from secluded homes to the 
 University, to maintain themselves by labouring in their leisure 
 hours at the humblest employments, and to return in summer 
 and win their livelihood by teaching in distant schools, or 
 labouring with their hands in the fields, or teaching the children 
 of a few shepherd families in some district remote from the parish 
 school. Facts could be told of privations still greater than those, 
 undergone cheerfully for the sake of education of youths who, 
 
i . APPENDIX 429 
 
 for years ill lodged and poorly fed, worked their way through 
 Universities, which afterwards had reason to honour their names. 
 In making this contrast, it is not forgotten that even in our day 
 there have been remarkable cases of men living in Oxford on a 
 third part of what a moderate undergraduate usually spends, 
 but these, so few in comparison, hardly affect the general reckon- 
 ing. Certainly they make nothing against the statement that 
 Oxford is the University of the rich. They do not remove from 
 her institutions the reproach (for such it is) that they turn a 
 cold side to the poorer men, and bid them go elsewhere, for this 
 is no place for them. A change in this long-cherished exclusive- 
 ness might, no doubt, be difficult and intricate, might sweep away 
 many things hitherto most cherished by Oxonians. It certainly 
 would make Oxford something very different from what any now 
 living have seen it. So much is at once conceded ; still it is 
 worth considering whether the change would really destroy any- 
 thing truly valuable whether even the rich men themselves 
 might not gain by it in moral culture ; and, even if they gained 
 nothing, the present exclusiveness can hardly defend itself on 
 grounds of justice. 
 
 The second point of contrast between the two English 
 and all other Universities is, that while the former maintain 
 a strictly collegiate mode of life, in the others this is wholly 
 unknown. This feature, so familiar to university men, may 
 need explanation for strangers. In the existence of a University 
 nothing more is essential than a body of men endowed by charter 
 with the right of granting degrees to students in certain arts 
 and sciences. This is seen in Dublin University, where an under- 
 graduate, after entering his name on the college books, may live 
 in any part of the world, provided only, when his terms are 
 over, he appear again to pass his examination and take his de- 
 gree. German and Scotch Universities have generally super- 
 added to this a body of Professors, attendance on whose lectures 
 is made necessary for a degree. The Professors' lecture-room 
 then becomes the centre of university life and interests. Each 
 student must be present at one or more of these, for an hour a 
 day, and when this is over he may reside where, and live how he 
 pleases. Unless he break into open outrage the University does 
 not intermeddle with him, nor hold itself responsible for his 
 conduct. So that a man may pass through many years of such 
 lectures, and not be known except by name to any professor he 
 attends, nor even if he so pleased to a single fellow-student. 
 But the two English Universities have generally professed a 
 larger aim than this to train not the intellect only, but in some sort 
 
430 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP i 
 
 the whole man, as far as this can be done by any outward insti- 
 tution. And this has been attempted by dividing all the members 
 of the University into separate Colleges, whither men resort, not 
 merely to attend lectures once a day, but for three years together 
 to make them, as it were, their second home. 1 Before a youth 
 joins the University he must first have been entered at some College 
 with which henceforth lie his most real daily relations ; those with 
 the University are more remote. When he comes into residence, 
 the head of his College assigns him rooms within the walled and 
 gated building, hands him over as a pupil to one of the tutors, 
 and henceforth the college in general and his tutor in particular 
 charge themselves with some care of his conduct. . . . 
 
 That the collegiate system makes in the main for good, that it 
 is not well that youths just escaped from school should wander 
 wholly at will, that college rules and life, if here and there a ' sweet 
 restraint,' allow of a still more blessed range, they will be the 
 first to grant who themselves have undergone that discipline. 
 They will need no argument to justify collegiate life. None, but 
 the remembrance of those with whom for three years within the 
 same college walls they enjoyed an endearing intercourse, hardly 
 possible but under the shelter of a collegiate home. Any one 
 who looks back on his undergraduate years, and asks himself 
 what it was that then most laid hold of his character, will find that 
 besides the direct influences, such as college lectures, college dis- 
 cipline, reading for the Schools, and other things compulsory, he 
 breathed an air of influences sidelong and indirect. The former 
 do not fall to be treated here, but are reserved for a chapter by 
 themselves. The latter, though more subtle and indefinite, and 
 therefore more difficult to describe, are perhaps not less strong 
 to mould men than the other more obvious ones. By indirect 
 influences is meant whatever by its nature cannot be reduced to 
 rule and system, whatever is left to each man's will to do or 
 not to do, to feel or not to feel. Such is the feeling, so strong 
 in Oxford, that flows in upon him at all hours from the old 
 beauty of the place. Such too the tone, hardly less peculiar, 
 of tastes and manners, which he gathers insensibly from the men 
 about him, whether known or unknown, from the society of the 
 many friendly ones, the intimacy of the favourite few, from the 
 reading the place encourages, from the necessary work, from the 
 
 1 Many of these Colleges are several centuries old, and although they have 
 undergone many changes, they are still the nearest representatives of the re- 
 ligious houses of the middle ages, part of whose revenues are still preserved 
 in these foundations. There are some twenty such in Oxford. 
 
APPENDIX 431 
 
 power that lies in great names, Oxford's peculiar inheritance. 
 These, acting silently and unceasingly, sink down to the very 
 depths, and make the man if anything from without can. 
 
 Of course the same set of influences do not tell on all. 
 The disposition and circumstances of the individual must deter- 
 mine which are to be for him the telling ones. And such are 
 the varieties of men as almost to foil any attempt to describe 
 them, at once generally and discriminately. For, sort and divide 
 men into classes as you will, the real character of each still 
 escapes your classification, and clings to the individual. It is easy 
 to divide the whole body of men, by the help of set phrases, into 
 reading, and rowing, and riding men; but the same difficulty meets 
 you here as in the attempt to divide the whole mind into sepa- 
 rate faculties. When your analysis has done its best, the mind's 
 real secret remains unspoken. It were pitiable to imagine that 
 human beings really contain no more than these classifications 
 concede to them, that even the commonest man's nature can be 
 exhausted by current phrases like these. Though it seems a 
 mere truism, yet it is well to bear full in mind that these divi- 
 sions are insufficient ; that given the set a man belongs to, and the 
 outward appearance he wears, we have got but little, that there 
 is something more behind all these things. If we remember this, 
 outward facts and appearances will not be taken at more than 
 they are worth, but used only as guide-posts to fix and steady 
 the eye, in its survey of Oxford undergraduates and Oxford 
 influences. 
 
 Let us go back in thought to the opening of the academical 
 year, and think of the various characters that are gathered under 
 one chapel roof, on that first Sunday morning after a long vaca- 
 tion. The College, say, is not a close one, confined by local 
 restrictions ; for its elements, freely gathered from many quarters, 
 are happily intermingled. Each of the Public Schools has there 
 its representatives, Etonians, Wickamysts, Harrowians, Salopians, 
 Rugbeans each coloured somewhat in manner and character 
 according to the school from which they have come all agreeing 
 in that independent and self-reliant bearing, which is thought to 
 be the peculiar product of public schools ; agreeing too in a 
 classical training, and general habit of mind, more or less shaped 
 to meet university requirements. Others there are trained at 
 private schools, with less manner it may be and less scholarship, 
 but more information perhaps than most public schools furnish. 
 And then there are a few from no school at all, but educated in 
 their own home or abroad or anyhow. Their scholarship is 
 often miserable, their attainments all neglected ; much lost, some- 
 
432 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP i 
 
 thing too they may have gained. Again, these are at all different 
 stages of their undergraduateship. Some who have near]' 
 finished, some midway the journey, some who have but begun. 
 The first having re turned from some long vacation retirement, where 
 they have been labouring all summer for their approaching great 
 go, are now with their work done or undone waiting within the 
 shadow of the Schools. The second, by this time familiar with 
 college life, are beginning to look on it more gravely. Their 
 early terms have slid by, in that too dreamful and delicious 
 leisure, which for so many hangs like a golden cloud over the 
 gateways of Oxford too indolent, too delightful, but to some 
 not wholly profitless. Especially if boyhood has been spent at 
 a hard-working school, fretted and fevered there as some have 
 been by examinations and emulations without end. Here is a 
 cooling pause between that fever-heat and the world's time to 
 wake and know that there are other things than those an inter- 
 val for freer breathing and calmer growth than may ever again 
 be allowed them ; but now their day is westering, the degree 
 draws on, and they have come up resolved to break clear of that 
 leisure dream, and gird themselves in earnest to the work. 
 Lastly, there are the freshmen some now entering on that life 
 to which at school they have long looked forward ; others, with 
 few friends here, opening their eyes on this large scene where 
 friends are meeting, they strangers and solitary. Such are they 
 who meet in one chapel the first Sunday morning of term, differ- 
 ing in their past lives, to differ still more in their future, differ- 
 ing in disposition, natural powers, attainments, circumstances ; in 
 the one thing only agreeing, viz. that they have come to spend 
 three years among the best in their lives within the same 
 College walls. 
 
 Leaving the others, we shall fix our eye on the freshman 
 and follow him through the long line of experiences now opening 
 on him. A reading-man let him be, not a mere plodder either, 
 but one of keen and clear intellect, and a heart free to enjoy all 
 things true and beautiful. Setting aside college lectures and 
 discipline, what are those oblique but powerful influences which 
 will come to such an one 1 
 
 First in order, and almost in importance, are those which 
 belong to the freshman's term. The first glimpse of Oxford 
 city, and the first view of Oxford life, in both how much depends 
 on the avenue by which you approach them ! How different the 
 first term there to him who comes from a public school, and to 
 the one educated at home, or in other private way ! To the one 
 it is but a step more in the gradual ladder of his life ; to the 
 
APPENDIX 433 
 
 'other a transition as between two worlds. The one finds him- 
 ^elf welcomed at once by a host of acquaintances, cheered per- 
 haps by old school friendships renewed ; and if college life imposes 
 some few restraints and etiquettes, the restraints are freedom 
 compared with school discipline ; as for the etiquettes, he has 
 put up with the like before, and now takes them as things 
 of course. The other, a stranger amongst strangers, with few 
 introductions, knowing scarcely any one, has to pass through 
 that ordeal which there awaits every unknown freshman. 
 
 As in no place is the intercourse of friends more free and 
 warm, so in none is the stranger received with such chilling 
 stiffness if he be unknown, and have nothing peculiar in manner 
 and appearance to recommend him. At the usual hour when 
 others go out to ride or walk or row together, he strolls alone in 
 the fall of the year among the fading college gardens, or by the 
 riverside where the grey walls and autumnal decay breathe a 
 feeling not alien to his own. ' All things here,' it seems, * go on 
 as they have done from immemorial time. Along these old 
 avenues the leaves come out, and then they fall. Within these 
 colleges the generations of men arrive one after another, and then 
 depart. For centuries the great tide has flowed through them, 
 and it will flow on for centuries to come. They pass, the old 
 buildings remain; the old bells chime on, till they too pass, 
 and all be forgotten. Here is nothing new, nothing fresh and 
 buoyant ; all free impulse and individuality weighed down under 
 a load of customs and routine, that holds of an unknown an- 
 tiquity.' Such perhaps are his feelings in his lonely walk ; and 
 in the winter evening when, after hall, he passes through the 
 quadrangle to his own solitary room, and sees all others adjourn- 
 ing to wine with this or that friend or acquaintance, perhaps for 
 the time he feels strange and out of place as in a crowded wilder- 
 ness. Or if asked to wine by some senior man, bearing in mind 
 that a freshman is ' an animal to be seen, not heard,' he acqui- ' 
 esces in this condition of undergraduate society ; and after 
 sitting one whole hour speechless, listening to miscellaneous talk 
 of boat-races and doings on the river, or feats in the hunting- 
 , field, or with the drag, or to anecdotes of scholars and examiners, 
 or of college tutors and undergraduates, of all of which he has 
 no knowledge and less interest, he returns again to the solitude 
 of his own armchair. All this, however, is considerably relieved 
 fif a large band of freshmen happen to come into residence at 
 the same time. They can then herd together, can walk or wine 
 together, and go to each other's rooms without any stiffness. 
 And if the number be large and like-minded, they continue to 
 
 2 F 
 
434 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP i 
 
 pass their first term happily, with less help from the rest of the 
 college. And yet through some ordeal all freshmen must pass 
 longest and severest to those who do not come from a public 
 school, and yet not wholly to be escaped even by these. Indeed 
 to one who has been the eldest boy of a boarding-house, or 
 captain of the school, bearing there perhaps authority beyond 
 his years, looked up to by all under him, the change is often 
 felt to be trying enough. But on the whole, though elders do 
 sometimes presume on their college standing, and bear them- 
 selves too coldly and distantly to new-comers, and although on 
 some this has fallen too severely, even cruelly, yet this quaran- 
 tine to which freshmen are put is not without obvious use. 
 Where such multitudes meet there must be many gradations 
 of intimacy, and in large Colleges it is impossible that each man 
 should know every other. Here there is the rampart by which 
 college society hedges itself against forward intruders, prevent- 
 ing any from forcing themselves on other's acquaintance, and 
 enabling men to know something of each other before becoming 
 too intimate. 
 
 But a few months gone the freshman's probation over 
 and then there succeeds one of the most delightful seasons 
 that ever comes to us in ' this changeful being.' What other, 
 after men have left their homes, can compare with that one, 
 the springtime of friendship the dawn of intimacies which 
 next to home ones have made us what we are ? Eightly to 
 speak of that time, and the new feelings it awakened, one would 
 have to go back, and in thought live over how many hours of 
 delight. They say that the remembrance of sorrows shared 
 together is the surest foundation on which friendship can build ; 
 but this does not make summer friends of those whose first 
 meeting was beneath a cloudless sky. Naturally a man's earliest 
 companions are some of his own year whom he sees at lecture, 
 by whom is his place in chapel and hall, and whose rooms are 
 perhaps in his own staircase. Through these he gets to know 
 others of older standing, and these again open to him new 
 acquaintances, and every day shows him some new side of the 
 University world ; till by the end of his first year he may have 
 cast his eye over all his own College and taken his line in it, 
 besides knowing something of out-college men, and the ways of 
 the University in general, and its various kinds of under- 
 graduates. Still, whatever may have been a man's after-experi- 
 ence, his first impressions shared with his first friends outlast 
 the others. Most Oxonians who have not been at Eton will 
 remember well the day when, with some others of their own 
 
i APPENDIX 435 
 
 standing, they first ventured on the river in a skiff to Iffley, or 
 tried their hand in an eight-oar, or on a summer afternoon skiffed 
 up the river to Godstone or the Charwel to Islip. They can 
 well remember the excitement of their first rides into the 
 neighbourhood, and their first * hack ' across country. For an 
 Oxford hack has something peculiar in it, although the hacks 
 are like other hacks (only better jumpers), and the falls they get 
 like falls elsewhere, and the countrymen raise the hue and cry 
 after the fence-breakers as elsewhere only somewhat more 
 fiercely from much provocation. 
 
 Of all seasons of the year two are specially endeared by 
 such memories the first young spring days, and the long 
 golden afternoons in that first happy idle summer term. Per- 
 haps some one of a band of friends has got over an examina- 
 tion, or other toilsome work ; a weight of care is thrown aside, 
 and the others go out with him, to make a day of it in the 
 open air. They ride to Blenheim, or as far as the Wychwood 
 Forest, with its beech-fringed glades, and endless wood rides ; 
 or they walk through the fields till they have gained some of 
 the heights that stand about Oxford, whence the eye has free 
 range, and can see on the horizon that the spring is flowing in 
 on the south-west wind, and the earth far and near awaken- 
 ing from its long dream. In that group there might riot be 
 more than two or three years' difference of age, yet much difference 
 of character. There might be there the fair face untouched by 
 pain or sorrow, the clear voice and merry laugh, that come from 
 one who might well rejoice in the birthday of the year, for in 
 his heart it seemed always spring. Another less graceful, but 
 more ardent and powerful, strong in body, strong in mind, of 
 large heart for all things, and in intellect straightforward, truth- 
 loving, and eager to grasp it. Another more thoughtful than his 
 years, yet whose thinking so blended with warm and earnest 
 feeling, you know not which was stronger though young, both 
 nature and experience had made him dwell on the sober 
 side of life, so that to him, even spring could not be wholly 
 glad. These (others might be added) so different in temper and 
 circumstances walked together that day as friends ; and if friends 
 it found them, it left them not less so. 
 
 There are few more unclouded hours than that in which 
 the young undergraduate looks for the first time on the river, in 
 the glory of the boat-races. Afterwards this, like other things, 
 may turn insipid enough, but it is otherwise when it is new. 
 With one or two others he walks slowly down the green 
 meadows of the riverside, or dropping down the stream 
 
436 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP i 
 
 leisurely in a skiff, stations himself under the willows to have a 
 good view of the finish. The sinking sun looks back from the 
 Cumner Heights, and the waters in the setting light flow calm 
 and golden. One by one the racing-boats, with their various 
 liveries, pass down to the starting-place shooting beneath the 
 toughest arms each college can furnish, and guided by the 
 steadiest eye. No need to speak of the race itself, with the 
 crowd of undergraduates thronging, shouting, holloaing from 
 the banks boats bumped and bumping, this one sweeping upon 
 its fellow, that sinking back in distress, and then the rounds of 
 cheers from the barges to crown the whole. And when all is 
 over, and the men troop home to their colleges, and meet in hall 
 for supper, or by twos and threes in each other's rooms, what 
 genial flow, and calm joy ! 
 
 Or perhaps, on some such evening, you were not disposed 
 for the crowd on the river, but with some like-minded one you 
 turned aside, to see the sun go down from Shotover, to walk in 
 Bagley Wood with its nightingales, or to wander along the range of 
 fields that from over Ferry Hinxey look down on the ' fair city, 
 seated among groves, and green meadows, and calm streams.' 
 There, as you walked apart, the shouts from the river came up 
 to you. Many voices blended into one, but they did not dis- 
 turb, only deepened the stillness. And as day wore into 
 twilight, you became attuned to the quiet, and more freely than 
 at other times your inmost feelings found themselves words. 
 And as you returned home each felt himself touched, and 
 soothed, and drawn more closely to the other. And year by 
 year, as you recede from it, that evening has a tenderer remem- 
 brance all the tenderer if some who walked with you then will 
 not walk with you any more. Of course these are not common 
 walks they did not come every day or every week. Indeed 
 after a time, perhaps, they hardly come at all, and walks at 
 Oxford as elsewhere become constitutionals. But they did, and 
 they do occur, when life there is still new ; and their remem- 
 brance blends with whatever is beautiful in the place, and dear 
 in its early friendships." 
 
APPENDIX II 1 
 
 " IT is an old subject the antiquity of Oxford, and its beauty of 
 situation yet an ever new and active influence in the life of 
 each succeeding generation. Not to speak of natures keenly 
 sensitive to beauty, or deeply interested in local histories, who 
 must always be few, it cannot be without effect even on the 
 mass of men that their place of education lies undisturbed by the 
 world's vulgarities, and encompassed on all sides by calmness, 
 beauty, and venerableness. In a place in which at all hours, 
 turn where you will, the eye rests on these things, something 
 perhaps may by degrees pass from the eye to the heart even 
 of the least susceptible. If any one doubts this, let him think 
 what the difference would have been had there grown up 
 around the University, and overshadowed it, a Birmingham or a 
 Manchester. 
 
 In the late revival of Gothic architecture, which from Oxford 
 overspread the country, it has been seen how much the re- 
 kindled imagination may draw from this storehouse of beau- 
 tiful forms. This revival, and other things connected with it, 
 may appear to some a pure evil, to others a very mixed good. 
 But without expressing any opinion of its worth, it may be cited 
 as a proof how this beauty lays hold on the minds of men. 
 And although, because the same causes can never again concur, a 
 like revival need never be looked for, yet the calmness and the 
 majesty that is there will not cease, through all changes of 
 opinion, to speak to the imagination and the heart. And indeed 
 it would not be a small gain if this action were confined to these 
 the parts of our nature to which it more immediately appeals. 
 For there is much in men not to be called out by scholastic 
 training, and starved often for lack of nutriment, under intel- 
 lectual discipline, or in the routine of life. Over these suscep- 
 
 1 The following paper, found in a detached form amongst Principal Shairp's 
 MSS.. is also evidently part of the projected work, so often referred to by him, 
 on University Life in Oxford. 
 
438 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP n 
 
 tibilities the presence of old buildings and august institutions 
 has a kindly influence, drawing forth and sheltering whatever 
 is true and healthful, rebuking what is flimsy and superficial. 
 Here each individual must feel his littleness in the presence as 
 it were of so many of the great of old. The proudest and 
 most ambitious soon learns that the University can confer 
 much honour on him, and from him can receive little. And the 
 busiest image of self must sometimes shrink abashed before 
 presences which, while generation after generation passes, seem 
 to combine their human interest with the permanence of the 
 elements. 
 
 But this influence does not stop with the feelings which are 
 ' the parents of our thoughts,' but it extends to thoughts them- 
 selves. These colleges, with their large charities, their chapels, 
 halls, libraries, cloisters, gardens, represent the past in its most 
 unselfish side, and make men realise it in thought more vividly 
 than books can do. They witness visibly that there were in 
 past ages men not wholly absorbed in themselves and their own 
 times, but with hearts large enough to think of those who 
 should come after them. A truth which, though none deny, 
 all may bear to be reminded of. For hence some have given a 
 greater largeness of view, a truer insight into history and the 
 powers with which it is bearing on us, and a juster appreciation 
 of our own place between a long past and a coming future. But 
 some will say this so-called regard for antiquity is but another 
 name for that Conservatism which is stagnation, and of which 
 Oxford has long been the chosen nursery. Without going into 
 this question now, it is at once admitted that both the home 
 prejudices and University training of undergraduates combine to 
 this result. But the Conservatism there engendered is some- 
 thing wider and more generous than that selfishness which, com- 
 fortable in itself, is deaf to the needs or claims of others ; and 
 the Liberalism which grows there is a deeper and truer and 
 humaner spirit than that which seeks to make good its own 
 ground by belying or misinterpreting the past. Thus far of 
 the intimacy of friends, and the local interest of Oxford, which 
 though in general felt more intensely by the quieter sort of 
 men are in a measure common to all undergraduates. 
 
 It is now time to fix attention more exclusively on the life of the 
 reading-men the class which of all others must be most fully 
 noticed here, since they, entering more thoroughly into the work 
 and spirit of the University, bear with them through life its 
 most lasting impress, and are to be regarded as its truest repre- 
 sentatives. Of the details of their studies little need here be 
 
APPENDIX 439 
 
 said, and that little only in a general way, since this whole sub- 
 ject will be discussed in another part of this book. 1 The indirect 
 but very powerful influences which will fall to be described are 
 such as these general reading, debating societies, subjects of 
 public interest, favourite authors, tutor friends, university pulpit, 
 men of influential character. But to describe these things in 
 succession might, unless guarded against, easily produce, not a 
 true impression, but a caricature. It might seem as if the whole 
 life of the studious were absorbed in one unnatural excitement ; 
 so that one who had himself known it would be ready to say, 
 ' How untrue all this is ! how unlike the easy, natural life we used 
 to lead there ! ' while a stranger would be apt to pity those who 
 are doomed to live in so restless and unhealthy an atmosphere. 
 
 But such a false impression may be avoided, if it be remem- 
 bered that the facts here thrown together within a few pages are 
 spread over three or four years' space, that they are but a few 
 prominent features standing out from the wide background of 
 everyday life, that this everyday life is made up of many un- 
 eventful items, not to be described, but to be borne in mind 
 throughout of hours of work, and hours of relaxation, daily 
 walks, frequent boatings, occasional rides, parties to Newnham, 
 parties to Godstow, breakfast parties, large wines, and best 
 of all, when two or three friends were met, those sweet and 
 quiet talks which closed in the evening. These fill up a much 
 larger space in time, though one narrower in description, than the 
 things here dwelt on. In themselves they may appear trivial, 
 yet (whether for good or evil) they are by no means unimportant 
 in the whole sum of agencies. It would serve no purpose to de- 
 scribe such ordinary matters even if it could be done, only it 
 will be well to keep them steadily in mind. Let us take one of 
 the higher order of studious men, one of good intelligence, ready 
 sympathy, and heart open to impressions from without, and let 
 us follow him through the objects and interests with which he 
 will come in contact. Till his residence at college begins, say 
 in his nineteenth year, his mental training has been confined to 
 acquisition, that is, to mastering the language and the thoughts 
 of others, and imitating their style. And although in all study, 
 both in the University and afterwards, this process cannot be 
 dispensed with, yet if it is ever to issue in anything beyond 
 itself, there must now advance, side by side with it, that other 
 process of thinking in some measure and judging for oneself. 
 A multitude of new outside agencies are at work new studies, 
 wider general reading, new scenes, new acquaintances, the 
 
 1 The aim and extent of his intended work may be gathered from this. 
 
440 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP n 
 
 conflux of character from many quarters, differing in nature and 
 in education, new pleasures, and with them new trials, these 
 all bear upon men from without, and make them feel the need 
 of some inward standard by which to judge of what comes 
 before them, to reduce to harmony what seems so complex and 
 confused. And from within, too, like tendencies are at work. 
 
 To all the keener-minded a time comes which is as the waken- 
 ing up of thought, when the mind that hitherto has rested satisfied 
 on the surface of things begins to discover that there is some- 
 thing more behind. To some it comes slowly, to some suddenly 
 roused, it may be, by some new book or new acquaintance to 
 almost all it comes, if ever, during their University residence. A 
 few perhaps, either being by nature prematurely thoughtful, or 
 from contact with some stirring mind, or having been reared 
 under a too forcing system, may have been urged across this 
 threshold before their time. But with most men this transition, 
 if it occurs at all, is reserved, and rightly, for their first years at 
 college. Such a change comes of itself as the natural effect of 
 time. But when once it has occurred naturally, systems of 
 education may do much either to encourage or repress it. It is 
 possible to take no account of such a state, not to seek to use 
 it nor direct it, but simply to starve it. By keeping the whole 
 attention fixed on outward studies, and things quite aloof from 
 real human interests, it is easy to sharpen the attainments, to give 
 shape and energy to the lower faculties, and to fit a youth for 
 being active and successful in a profession; but these processes, 
 having in them nothing to ennoble, often leave the whole 
 man strangely uncultivated. Whatever be the faults of Oxford 
 education, they do not lie in this direction. There is much in 
 it which falls in with whatever thoughtfulness early manhood 
 brings ; much which may call it forth when latent, and deepen it 
 if begun. Not to speak of what may seem so shadowy as that 
 historical succession of character, which some declare to have clung 
 to Oxford through centuries of change, there can be no doubt 
 that the fact spoken of has some connection, whether of effect 
 or merely of coexistence with the historical studies, and a much 
 greater with the ethical ones, which have long been native there. 
 Of these last the practical results are perhaps such as these. 
 
 They fill up that wide gap which lies between the more 
 external studies and a man's real interests ; they tend to make 
 men more thoughtful, more unworldly, more deep and stable in 
 their feelings. That the gap here spoken of does actually exist 
 is clear. For the tendency of many studies is to produce this 
 isolation. Scholarship, for instance, and Mathematics taken 
 
APPENDIX 441 
 
 alone are in this like handicrafts. That they absorb a man in 
 themselves confine him to one limited field in which he may 
 labour long enough, without once looking over the hedge to see 
 how it fares with his neighbour in the next field. Ethics on the 
 other hand approach to the nature of that architectonic science, 
 which the ancients thought should give to all other sciences their 
 due place and gradation. And though Oxford ethics are much 
 humbler in their pretensions, yet the study of Aristotle can 
 hardly fail to suggest some principles, seen from which, as from a 
 centre, the various knowledges and the facts of life fall into their 
 true relative position. No doubt the so-called Oxford science 
 would show but poorly side by side with the wide philosophic 
 courses of foreign Universities. But though of narrow range 
 and unscientific method, it has tempered speculation with a 
 soberer feeling and a warmer humanity, and has discouraged 
 that * impudent knowingness ' often so offensive in young philo- 
 sophers. The questions common in lecture-rooms and the schools 
 about the first grounds of duty, the governing powers of human 
 nature, the standard of right action, the relations of interest and 
 duty, the building up of character by formation of habits, are 
 not altogether idle speculations, but when they fall on minds 
 ready to receive them, gradually pass inwards and take a per- 
 manent place in their thoughts. The Greek terms in which 
 these questions are clothed may at first sound as foreign as an 
 algebraical notation ; but as they express unchanging facts of 
 human nature, reflection translates them into inward experience ; 
 what men feel in themselves and observe in others becomes their 
 living commentary. And although on these subjects any under- 
 graduate's thoughts will be but meagre, and such as in after 
 years he will not be likely to look back on too complacently, 
 still they are the first movements of an impulse which will 
 perhaps be permanent. 
 
 But philosophical abstractions, however sound and judicious, ' 
 are apt to fall chillingly on the character. Many humanising 
 elements were at work in Oxford to counteract this, none stronger 
 than the presence of a theology which, whatever be its faults, has 
 not of late years been wanting in religious intensity. To teachers 
 it added force and warmth to feel how directly the truths with 
 which they were dealing bore on other still higher subjects, and 
 to pupils it raised other feelings than mere curiosity when they 
 knew that men but a few years older than themselves were sacri- 
 ficing much in the endeavour to act out these principles in their 
 lives. Connected perhaps with the habit of mind so engendered 
 was the absence of worldliness, at least in its grosser forms, 
 
442 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP n 
 
 which still is very general among studious men in Oxford. Here 
 more than elsewhere emulation was so tempered that it lost 
 nearly all its evil. Of course those who were reading for honours 
 were anxious to gain them, but the life of the place was not 
 absorbed in this struggle. It was amusing to observe how soon 
 the ardour of some young aspirant, who had come up athirst for 
 college honours, would cool down in this atmosphere, where the 
 esteem of contemporaries did not rise and fall with the class list, 
 but where the worthiest looked in their friends for something 
 that makes no show in examinations. Of the better sort of 
 studious men it may be said in general, that in looking forward 
 to their future life the common idols of the market had but 
 small hold on their affections. Indeed one of the evils of Oxford 
 perhaps is, that these idols in many cases entirely disappear, and 
 leave nothing sufficiently definite of a higher kind to fill their 
 place. This may be adverted to afterwards. At present it is to 
 our purpose to remark that Oxford does somehow make men feel 
 that money-making and getting on are not the worthiest aims ; 
 and few inherit its better spirit without unlearning these grosser 
 forms of idol-worship. It is not pretended that they had no 
 idols, that they had reached that state in which a man, for duty's 
 sake, is content to toil in obscurity, and not to be known in his 
 generation. Blended with some wholly selfish feelings there 
 floated before the minds of many some image of elevated 
 character, combined with intellectual cultivation, which was not to 
 be measured by worldly success, by legal distinctions, or church 
 dignities, but which to attain were in itself reward enough with- 
 out the adjuncts of applause. In different natures these two 
 elements were variously combined ; in some the side of religious 
 duty was paramount, in others the notion of cultivation ; but in 
 none perhaps was either element altogether absent." 
 
APPENDIX III 
 
 THE following is the report which appeared in a local newspaper 
 of a Lecture which Principal Shairp gave to the University Club 
 in Dundee, of which he was elected President : 
 
 " Principal Shairp said there was perhaps nothing which more 
 marked the mental character of the century to which we belonged 
 than the growth and expansion of what was called the historical 
 spirit in every region of thought. By this he meant that men 
 had everywhere woke up to the appreciation of a fact which had 
 indeed been always as real to them as it was now, but which had 
 come home to them as a practical conviction with a force it had 
 never done before. It was this that we men of the present 
 hour were not only the heirs but the products of all the ages 
 that the thoughts and feelings within us, as much as the outward 
 framework of our lives, were an inheritance from the past that 
 of all the mental and moral furniture which makes us what we 
 are, by far the larger portion had come down to us from a remote 
 antiquity that if we would know ourselves and understand our 
 generation we must bear ever in mind that great atmosphere 
 of history which encompassed us, and in which, often all uncon- 
 sciously, we live and move. This sense of the historical con- 
 tinuity of the race, and of the power with which the past cen- 
 turies press upon us, seemed to have made itself felt during' 
 the present century with such a quickened consciousness that it 
 might almost be taken for a newly-discovered truth. The 
 tendency was seen in the new aspect literature, with the opening 
 of this century, put on. Since that day its effects in every depart- 
 ment of popular literature had been visible enough, and he knew 
 not if the force of the movement had yet spent itself. In abstract 
 studies the same tendency was at work. Last century metaphy- 
 sicians, little regarding the history of thought, made their own 
 individual consciousness the Bible of philosophy, out of which 
 they span with perfect confidence rounded a priori systems, that 
 embraced, as they believed, all projects, thought, and things. 
 
444 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP in 
 
 So changed was all this to-day that a man would be thought 
 either crazed or an ignoramus who should venture on such an 
 individualistic experiment in philosophy. Our most prominent 
 teachers had abandoned the attempt at rounded systems, and 
 had almost reduced philosophical teaching, both in thought and 
 morals, to a history of the continuous movement of thought from 
 the earliest Greek schools to the present time. In the natural 
 sciences the tendency might be seen displaying itself in the most 
 exaggerated form. There the historical spirit, breaking away 
 into the prehistoric ages, piercing to the utmost confines of 
 space and time, brought back thence a fairy tale of the doings of 
 the first monad whence all things had come, and pretended to 
 describe the earliest gyrations of the atoms out of which the 
 universe had been evolved. In its pretended revelations regard- 
 ing man it dwarfed all history and made our oldest chronicles 
 seem comparatively as recent as yesterday's newspaper. ... He 
 then noticed the changes that had taken place in the styles of 
 architecture. Next, in the highest region of all in religion we 
 saw everywhere, though in diverse forms, the sense of unity, deeper 
 than all diversities, which underlies the true branches of the 
 Christian Church the vision of the one catholic and apostolic 
 communion so filling and penetrating the hearts of men that 
 discords and divisions must die down before it, and in its pre- 
 sence mere sectarianisms could not much longer live. Their 
 education could not but share in this historic impulse. As to 
 the substance of what was taught both in universities and in 
 schools it would be interesting to show how much this had been 
 already affected by the sense of historic continuity, and how much 
 more remained yet to be done, especially in Scotland, to give 
 the historic spirit its full scope ; but from that aspect of the 
 subject he must turn aside. Last century the Universities in 
 England had fallen into such a torpor that public interest in 
 them, though it never died out, became in all save their own 
 teachers and beneficiaries very languid. At the beginning of 
 this century, however, public favour began to return to Oxford 
 and Cambridge, and now they not only were doing their work as 
 they had never done it since the Reformation, but were also 
 taking the lead in organising middle-class school education and 
 coming forward to meet those intellectual wants which the great 
 centres of industry increasingly felt, and which Mechanics' Insti- 
 tutes had proved powerless to satisfy. As centres of thought 
 they also powerfully influenced the intellectual, social, and reli- 
 gious life of the whole nation. He would not say one word in 
 disparagement of the modern foundations. There was a wide 
 
in APPENDIX 445 
 
 field of usefulness for them; but it was the more mediaeval 
 Universities which had lived down through so many centuries 
 and were alive at every pore to the influences of the present, 
 which most penetrated the world with their influence. The 
 great era of the first foundation of Universities in Europe 
 was the twelfth century, when the Universities of Paris, 
 of Bologna, of Salerno, and of Oxford were established 
 the University of Cambridge seeming to date from the 
 thirteenth century. He took the University of Paris as the 
 model of our own Universities, gave a short history of it, and 
 then gave an explanation (1) of the meaning of the name Uni- 
 versity; (2) of Faculties ; (3) of the origin of academical degrees 
 in Paris; and (4) the rise and nature of Colleges. In speaking 
 of graduation, he remarked that it was by it a University repro- 
 duced itself, and sent forth to the world persons accredited by 
 their stamp and seal as having made a certain definite progress 
 in learning. It was a momentous, not to say a sacred, trust ; for 
 society looked to the University, not only to train its youth, but 
 to send forth none with its stamp upon them but those who were 
 really possessed of some solid attainment. It was the culmina- 
 tion in the crown of a University course the flower, or rather 
 the fruit, into which a University course should ripen. As the 
 flower could not exist without the stem and root, so neither 
 could a University in the proper sense exist by mere graduation. 
 Reduce a University to a mere Examining Board, as some clever 
 men had of late proposed, and they destroyed that which was its 
 real life and soul. He stated that a University and a College 
 were often spoken and thought of as one and the same. Many 
 persons thought that a University was a school of universal 
 knowledge. This was an entire mistake. The term University 
 came from the Roman jurists, and meant a corporation or society 
 combined for some specific purpose recognised by law. In its 
 modern use University has been defined as the whole members 
 of an incorporated body of persons, teaching and learning one or 
 more departments of knowledge, and empowered to confer 
 degrees in one or more Faculties. On the other hand, a College 
 is a corporation entirely distinct from and independent of the 
 University, endowed for the purpose of maintaining a certain 
 number of graduates and scholars within its walls, living accord- 
 ing to laws and usages laid down by its founder. In fact, 
 Colleges were intended as places of residence for students, 
 instead of their living in lodgings in a University town. He 
 called attention to the founding of the Universities of St. 
 Andrews (1411), Aberdeen (1494), and Glasgow (1452), the first 
 
446 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP in 
 
 two being modelled on the pattern of that of Paris, and the 
 latter on that of Bologna. At St. Andrews, after the foundation 
 of the Colleges the first being St. Salvator's in 1458 nearly 
 all the students resided within their walls. After the Revolu- 
 tion residence out of college became more common, and, with 
 some fluctuation, continued to increase till early in this century 
 when residence within college entirely ceased. It had ceased 
 not from any conviction that such residence was undesirable, but 
 wholly from the decay of the college rooms and the want of 
 funds to maintain them. In the two ancient Universities of 
 England, Colleges had all but absorbed the University, and had 
 monopolised most of its functions. In Scotland the opposite 
 process had taken place Colleges had all but disappeared, and 
 the Universities were all in all. In the English Universities, 
 Colleges had taken on themselves the instruction of their students 
 in arts, and the Faculty of Arts had all but disappeared. If the 
 invigorating and inspiring influence that comes from the teaching 
 of able professors speaking to the combined students of the 
 University had been lost, much had been gained from the more 
 careful superintendence and closer and more accurate tutorial 
 teaching, stricter discipline, and the influence which was exercised 
 by good tutors in well-ordered colleges. One function the English 
 Universities had retained that of public examination for degrees. 
 These examinations were carefully conducted and rigorously 
 impartial, and were carried on in that thorough and perfect 
 manner which was only acquired by the experience and tradition 
 of ages. In Scotland the stress was on professorial teaching. 
 The teaching was still in the hands of the University, and the 
 students felt the stimulating influence of professors' lectures. If 
 only with this were combined a higher standard of attainment in 
 average students when they entered the University, their influence 
 would be much more powerful. From want of this preliminary 
 training the Universities greatly suffered. The blame was not, 
 however, with the Universities, but from want of good schools in 
 sufficient number, and the unwillingness or inability of parents to 
 keep their children long enough at school. He believed that 
 with the materials at their disposal, and the state of preparation 
 with which most students went to college, the Universities could 
 hardly do more than they were at present doing. Would the 
 day ever dawn in Scotland when the average student would 
 come to the University at as ripe an age and as well prepared 
 as they now were when they entered the best Colleges of Oxford 
 and Cambridge ? As for the mode of living of the students, 
 lodging where and how they would in the town, he did not think 
 
in APPENDIX 447 
 
 anything could be said except it was the cheapest and roughest 
 way in which they could rub through. That great social evils 
 did not arise out of it he could only attribute to two things : (1) 
 the great good sense of Scotch students, which kept most of 
 them from falling into the license that might be expected from 
 so uncared for a mode of living; and (2) the fact that most of 
 them had no more money in their pockets than enabled them to 
 pay their way. Were a body of students all in easy or affluent 
 circumstances to be collected together he did not believe that 
 the mode of living now practised in our Scottish Universities 
 could last a single year. He considered the present social 
 arrangements for students in all the Scotch Universities very far 
 from what one would wish to see. It was to be justified only by 
 the great poverty of the country out of which it arose. Now 
 that Scotland could no longer be called a poor country, some 
 better mode of housing and superintending the students should 
 be attempted. If he were asked what he considered the ideal 
 of University life for students he should answer : One in 
 which the public action and teaching of the University was in 
 full play, combined with a social life of the students in colleges 
 where they were cared for, counselled, disciplined, and in some 
 measure influenced by wise, considerate, and friendly tutors. 
 All the chief and important work of teaching should be done by 
 the University Professors. In their lecture-rooms the students 
 of all the Colleges or Halls should meet, and from them receive 
 that stimulus and personal impulse which come from the living 
 voice of a really learned and enthusiastic teacher, and which is 
 the intellectual life of a University. In the colleges should be 
 carried on only such subordinate teaching as would enable the 
 students to profit by professors' prelections. The college, by its 
 usages and modes of living and regular hours, would supply that 
 sense of discipline which youth in and even beyond their teens 
 still need ; while the friendly advice, influence, and example of a 
 tutor, not perhaps more than ten years older than the student, 
 would bring to his side that timely aid which often prevented a 
 fall, and which did so much to build up the character. He 
 could not omit to mention as a further advantage that good 
 colleges used to require that regularity of worship and religious 
 observance which, though enforced as a college rule, was often 
 found to be no bondage but perfect freedom, but which when 
 left entirely to young men's free will was so apt to be neglected. 
 He regretted to have to say ' used to require,' as though it were a 
 thing of the past, for in many Colleges of Oxford, under the new 
 liberal rfyime, the old observance of morning and evening chapel 
 
448 JOHN CAMPBELL SHAIRP in 
 
 had all but disappeared. This he could not look on but with 
 regret. If colleges ceased to be leavened by habitual worship 
 they lost their finest influence and must quickly deteriorate. He 
 alluded to the cessation in St. Andrews University of an attempt 
 to establish the college system, but stated that it was caused not 
 by the feeling that it was not doing good but from want of funds. 
 Having called attention to the absence in our Universities of 
 form, ceremonial, and academic usage, he concluded by remarking 
 that he rejoiced in the formation of the Dundee University Club. 
 It might do much for the Universities on the one hand and for 
 the public welfare of all this part of Scotland on the other. He 
 believed that its members would show by their own lives, 
 characters, and influence that a University training was no vain 
 thing, but a solid advantage to a man in after life. Then, the 
 members might diffuse a truer understanding and appreciation of 
 what the Universities were. Especially they might disabuse the 
 public mind of the prevalent fallacy that to a young man in- 
 tended for trade or business a University training was useless. 
 Whatever they felt that they had brought from their University 
 a wider intelligence, mental refinement, and higher aims and 
 views of the meaning of life whatever advantages of mind 
 and character they had got from their University training, let 
 them communicate them to those around who were less favoured 
 than themselves. He trusted that the Club would long live, and 
 grow to be a centre from which benign influences would largely 
 emanate. " 
 
INDEX 
 
 ABERDEEN, Earl of reminiscences, 198. 
 
 Adams, Professor, 190. 
 
 Addresses to boys at Kugby on Sun- 
 day evenings, 159. 
 
 Albert, death of Prince, 206. 
 
 Analytic method in morals, 244-250. 
 
 Annamoe, visit to seven churches, 117. 
 
 Apostolical succession, 292. 
 
 Argyll, estimate by Duke of, 388. 
 
 Aristotle ethics, 94. 
 
 Arnold, Charles, 130, 138. 
 
 Arnold, Dr., influence at Eugby, 37 ; 
 appointment to Professorship of 
 Modern History at Oxford, 37 ; in- 
 fluence of, upon the intellectual and 
 religious life of Shairp, 37, 130. 
 
 Arnold, Matthew, death (footnote) 32 ; 
 40, 137, 207 ; essay on St. Paul, 
 215 ; testimony in favour of Shairp 
 as candidate for Chair of Moral Phi- 
 losophy at Glasgow, 239 ; letter 
 from, as to his poem of Thyrsis, and 
 Clough, 244 ; letter from Dr. John 
 Brown as to Tristram and Iseult, 
 266 ; letter from, as to Professor- 
 ship of Poetry at Oxford, 330. 
 
 Arnold, Thomas, estimate of Shairp 's 
 character, 106. 
 
 Aspects of Poetry, 370 ; letter from 
 Cardinal Newman as to, 370 ; letter 
 from Lord Coleridge as to, 371. 
 
 Balliol Scholars -a poem, 32, 58, 408. 
 
 Bannockburn poem on, 12. 
 
 Battersby, Canon, a member of read- 
 ing-party at Grasmere, 63. 
 
 Bayne, Thomas, notice, in memoriam, 
 by, 195. 
 
 Bell, Mr., tutor at Houstoun, 4. 
 
 Bell, Professor Oswald notice of, 
 372. 
 
 Ben Alder and Prince Charlie, 104 ; 
 Ben Alder and Ben Nevis, a Septem- 
 ber walk between, 254 ; letter to 
 Dr. Clerk in reference to, 257. 
 
 Benson, Archbishop, master at Eugby, 
 98 ; reminiscences, 130 ; testimony 
 in favour of Shairp as candidate for 
 Chair of Moral Philosophy at Glas- 
 gow, 240. 
 
 Billings's Scottish Castles, 132. 
 
 Biography, advice as to writing a, 227. 
 
 Blackett of Merton. 50 ; a friend of 
 Congreve, 111. 
 
 Blue Bells, The a poem, 399. 
 
 Bonspiel a song, 126. 
 
 Books, what to read, and how to read 
 them an address, 373. 
 
 Border country, appreciation of, 260, 
 263 ; speech on the Literature of the 
 Borders, 323. 
 
 Borrowdale, a visit to, 65, 112. 
 
 Bothie of Clough, 110, 113, 144. 
 
 Boyle, John, 43 ; letter to, 307 ; 
 letter to, as to volume on Burns, 
 361. 
 
 Boyle, Very Eev. G. D., Dean of Salis- 
 bury reminiscences, 56, 151, 206, 
 345 ; visit to, 393. 
 
 Bradley, Very Eev. G. G., Dean of 
 Westminster master at Eugby, 98 ; 
 companions at Eugby, 101, 130 ; 
 reminiscences, 137 ; reminiscence of 
 Shairp's visit to Oxford as Professor 
 of Poetry, 333. 
 
 Bradley, Mrs., letter from, as to death 
 of Shairp, 406. 
 
 Braes of Yarrow a poem, 19. 
 
 Brewster, Sir David, 189, 272. 
 
 Bridges, J. H., 146. 
 
 Brown, Dr. John, of Edinburgh, letter 
 from, 193 ; letters from, as to Mr. 
 
 G 
 
450 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Erskine of Linlathen, 222 ; friend- 
 ship of Shairp for, 223 ; letter from, 
 as to Mr. Erskine's published letters, 
 224 ; letters from, as to The Bush 
 aboon Traquair, 232 ; letter from, 
 as to Kilmahoe, and other Poems, 
 231 ; testimony in favour of Shairp 
 as a candidate for Chair of Moral 
 Philosophy at Glasgow, 242 ; ex- 
 cursion with, 264 ; letter from, as 
 to Moral Motive Power, 265 ; letter 
 from, as to Matthew Arnold's poem 
 on Tristram and Iseult, 266 ; letter 
 from, as to Culture and Religion, 285; 
 letters to, 304 ; letters from, as to 
 Wordsworth's Journal of Tour in 
 Scotland, 314 ; letter from, as to 
 Burns, 362 ; letters from, as to work 
 of Oxford Chair, 368 ; letter from, as 
 to Chaucer, 369. 
 
 Burns Centenary, 200 ; lecture on 
 Burns, 336; volume on Burns, 359 ; 
 criticism evoked by volume, 361, 
 411, 425. 
 
 Bush aboon Traquair, 17, 224. 
 
 Butler, Rev. Arthur T., of Oriel College, 
 Oxford reminiscences, 134; of pro- 
 fessorship of poetry, 335. 
 
 Butler, Rev. Dr., Master of Trinity 
 College, Cambridge ; visit to Killie- 
 crankie, 390 ; letter from, on death 
 of Shairp, 405. 
 
 CAMPBELL, Dr. M'Leod, influence of, 
 43 ; his work on The Nature of the 
 Atonement, 178 ; Thoughts on Revela- 
 tion, 207 ; letter to, sending copy of 
 Culture and Religion, 304. 
 
 Campbell, Professor Lewis, St. Andrews 
 reminiscences, 380 ; note on memo- 
 rial window in College Church, St. 
 Andrews, 401. 
 
 Campbell, Rev. Donald, letter to, on 
 receiving copy of his father's Re- 
 miniscences and Reflections, 304. 
 
 Card well, the late Lord, 33. 
 
 Carlyle his influence on Shairp, 38, 
 156; Miscellanies: essay on Edward 
 Irving, 38 ; earliest estimate of, 44 ; 
 Life of Sterling, 156 ; rectorial 
 address in Edinburgh, 281. 
 
 Catholicity, his, 288. 
 
 Celtic scholarship, 299. 
 
 Character studies of his friends 
 Dr. M'Leod Campbell, 305. 
 Arthur Clough, 53, 73. 
 Bishop Cotton, 119. 
 Thomas Erskiue of Linlathen, 216. 
 
 Professor Ferrier, 372. 
 Principal Forbes, 310. 
 John Macintosh, 21. 
 Dr. Norman Macleod, 23. 
 Dr. Park, 373. 
 Bishop Patteson, 91. 
 Archbishop Tait, 391. 
 
 Charles XII., prize poem on, 39 ; 
 acknowledged by King of Sweden, 
 39, 51 ; synopsis of, 52. 
 
 Charlie, interest in haunts of Prince, 
 104, 145 ; letter to Rev. Dr. Clerk 
 as to Prince's wanderings, 128. 
 
 Charm, the, of his conversation, 339. 
 
 Chaucer letter to Dr. John Brown on, 
 369. 
 
 Child's grave at Rugby letter to 
 Edward Scott as to his, 182. 
 
 Church of England thoughts of taking 
 orders in, 31, 42, 77, 82, 415. 
 
 Churton, Archdeacon, 421 ; notice of 
 poetical remains for the Guardian, 
 422. 
 
 Classics, appreciation of the, 188. 
 
 Clerk, Rev. Dr. of Kilmalie fellow- 
 student, 13 ; letter to, as to Prince 
 Charlie's wanderings, 128 ; letter to, 
 as to a September walk, 257 ; letter 
 to, as to walk from Kilmalie to 
 Rannoch, 258 ; letter to, as to walk 
 over moor of Raunoch, 260 ; close 
 intercourse and correspondence, 298 ; 
 letter to, on Ossianic poetry, 299, 
 329 ; letter to, on Rev. Mr. Clark 
 Aberfeldy, 307 ; five letters to, on 
 Highland poetry, 365. 
 
 Clough, Arthur BL, as poet and 
 thinker, 33 ; reading - party at 
 Grasmere, 33, 40 ; Dean Bradley's 
 reminiscences of, 49 ; Shairp's 
 reminiscences of, 53, 73 ; fellow 
 of Oriel, 54 ; reading - party in 
 Wales, 55 ; at Grasmere, 63 ; in 
 Scotland, 87 ; elegiac poem on, 88 ; 
 The Bothie, 106 ; instance of warm- 
 heartedness, 113 ; death of, 205 ; 
 letter from Matthew Arnold as to, 
 244. 
 
 Coleridge, influence of, 14, 208 ; con- 
 versation on, at dinner at dough's, 
 50 ; article on, in North British 
 Review, 194, 227, 228 ; written at 
 Luib Inn, 238 ; service to philo- 
 sophy, 245. 
 
 Coleridge, Hartley, 33, 71, 73. 
 
 Coleridge, Lord, 32 ; dinner at Clough's, 
 50 ; elected fellow of Exeter College, 
 65 ; letter from, as to Shairp's article 
 
INDEX 
 
 451 
 
 on Keble, 266 ; another, 267 ; letter 
 from, as to Burns, 362 ; letters to, 
 363 ; letter from, on Aspects of 
 Poetry, 371 ; another, 372 ; paper 
 in memoriani, 408. 
 
 Coleridge, Sara, letter to Dr. John 
 Brown on 'Memoirs and Letters ' of, 
 303. 
 
 College Hall, St. Andrews, 100, 189 ; 
 Principal Forbes's interest in, 273, 
 381. 
 
 College Hospital, St. Andrews Shairp's 
 interest in, 386. 
 
 Columba, St., paper in Good Words on, 
 194 ; visit to lona, 416. 
 
 Combe Abbey, visit to, 115. 
 
 Congreve, Richard, dinner at dough's, 
 50 ; Blackett, a friend of, 111. 
 
 Cordery, John, 146. 
 
 Cotterill, C. C., of Fettes College, re- 
 miniscences by, 278. 
 
 Cotton, Bishop estimate of, 119 ; close 
 friendship between, 138, 207. 
 
 Cry from Craig -Ellachie letter from 
 Dr. John Brown as to, 235 ; recita- 
 tion of, 264. 
 
 Cuckoo, The authorship of , 312 ; letter 
 from Sir William Stirling Maxwell 
 on, 312 ; letter from John Bright, 
 on, 313. 
 
 Cuil-aluinn built, 306 ; letter to Dr. 
 Clerk on meaning of name, 306. 
 
 Culture and Religion, 195, 284 ; re- 
 marks of Dr. John Brown on, 285 ; 
 of Cardinal Newman, 286. 
 
 Cumin, Patrick, Secretary, Education 
 Office, 34 ; letter from, on death of 
 Shairp, 405. 
 
 Curling, 122, 125. 
 
 DALRTMPLE, Sir Charles, reminiscences 
 of, 419. 
 
 Dalwhinnie, 104. 
 
 Davey, Sir Horace pupil at Rugby, 
 98, 123, 146 ; reminiscences of, 142 ; 
 252. 
 
 " Decade, The," 139, 411. 
 
 Deny, Bishop of, in Oxford Chair of 
 Poetry, 331. 
 
 Donach Ban's Songs, 258, 367. 
 
 Douglas, Henry, Bishop of Bombay, 
 fellow-student, 13, 34 ; letter to, on 
 first visit to Oxford, 43 ; one of a 
 reading - party at Grasmere, 63 ; in- 
 fluence upon Shairp, 207 ; drowning 
 of son of, 310. 
 
 Douglas, Col. Hugh M., Shairp's brother- 
 in-law, death of, 205. 
 
 Douglas, house of, 204. 
 
 Dream of Glen Sallach, 4, 6. 
 
 Drumnadrochit, ;110 ; background of 
 Clough's Bothie, 110. 
 
 Dundee High School, interest in, 320. 
 
 Dundee University Club, formation of, 
 319 ; extracts from address to mem- 
 bers, 437. 
 
 Ecce Homo, appreciation of, 291. 
 
 Edinburgh Academy, speech at jubilee 
 dinner of, 316. 
 
 Education, Scottish Chairs of an 
 address, 373. 
 
 English school system, appreciation of, 
 100. 
 
 " Enterkin, The," of Dr. John Brown, 
 264. 
 
 Ericht, Loch, visit to, 104 ; lines on, 
 104 ; Thomas Arnold's account of 
 visit, 104. 
 
 Erskine of Linlathen, influence of, 43, 
 203, 207, 208 ; letter from, on death 
 of Shairp's mother, 175 ; letters to, 
 176, 177 ; visits to, 205 ; reminis- 
 cences of, 207 ; letter from, as to the 
 Fatherhood of God, 210, 214 ; letter 
 from, as to internal evidences of 
 Christianity, 211 ; letter from, as to 
 Renan's Life of Christ, 211 ; letter 
 from, as to ordination vows and Sir 
 William Stirling Maxwell's rectorial 
 address, 212 ; letter from, as to Pro- 
 fessor Flint's candidature for Chair 
 of Moral Philosophy at St. Andrews, 
 213 ; letter to, as to Matthew Arnold's 
 papers on St. Paul, 215 ; character- 
 study and estimate of, 216 ; in 
 memoriam, notice of, in Scotsman, 
 222 ; letters of Dr. John Brown as to 
 illness and death, 222 ; letters from, 
 as to Shairp's candidature for Chair of 
 Moral Philosophy at Glasgow, 240. 
 
 Essays and Reviews, opinion of, 201. 
 
 Ethics, Shairp as a contributor to,228. 
 
 Evans, Canon, master at Rugby, 130, 
 138. 
 
 Evans, Charles, master at Rugby, 130, 
 138. 
 
 FARRAR, Prof., of Durham, pulpit 
 
 reference by, 341. 
 Ferrier, Prof., 190, 272 ; estimate of, 
 
 372. 
 
 Ferrier, Mrs., 191. 
 Fichte, study of, 111. 
 Fishwife's Advice to her Bairn, 237. 
 Flint, Rev. Prof., letter from Mr. 
 
452 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Erskine of Linlathen as to candi- 
 dature of, for Moral Philosophy Chair 
 at St. Andrews, 213. 
 
 Flodden, visit to, 84. 
 
 Forbes, Principal, 189 ; death of, 192, 
 270 ; historical account of University 
 and of his connection with and in- 
 terest in it, 270-275 ; joint-editor of 
 Life of, 310 ; estimate of, 310 ; 
 address on, 373. 
 
 Forrester, Kev. Mr., of Boarhills and 
 Port Elizabeth respect for, 295. 
 
 Freeman, Prof., 36, 40. 
 
 Frenchman, story of, 107. 
 
 Friendship, 200, 426. 
 
 Froude, J. A., 40 ; article on Spinoza 
 by, 151. 
 
 GILLON, Mrs., of Wallhouse, 126. 
 
 Gladstone, Dr. John Brown on, 226. 
 
 Glen Almain, 155. 
 
 Glen Desseray, 235. 
 
 God, and our moral consciousness, 93. 
 
 Golf, regret at not having learned to 
 play, 101. 
 
 Good Lord James, The, 204. 
 
 Good Words, historical papers in, 194. 
 
 Gosling, John Frederick, 155. 
 
 Goulburn, Dr. (Dean of Norwich), 
 master at Rugby, 98, 131 ; estimate 
 of Shairp, 162 ; letter from, as to 
 Oxford Chair of Poetry, 331. 
 
 Grant, Sir Alexander, 33, 41, 151, 191 ; 
 testimonial in favour of Shairp as a 
 candidate for Chair of Moral Philo- 
 sophy in Glasgow, 240 ; death and 
 funeral of, 391. 
 
 Grasmere, reading-party at, 63 ; lines 
 on, 76. 
 
 Greens owners of Pavement End, 63, 
 68. 
 
 Gruim reminiscence of his deerhound, 
 136. 
 
 Guthrie Scholarship founded through 
 his influence, 381. 
 
 HELVELLYN crossed, 66 ; Scott's and 
 Wordsworth's poems on, 66. 
 
 Herdman, Robert, R.S.A., description 
 of portrait of Shairp in Hall of United 
 College, St. Andrews, by, 402. 
 
 Hcrstane of Broadlaw, The, 261, 263. 
 
 Highton, H., master at Rugby, 130, 
 138. 
 
 History, address on the study of, and 
 the importance of the subject in a 
 university curriculum, 373. 
 
 Hodgson, Shadworth, 146 ; reminis- 
 
 cences, 153 ; letter to, 156 ; another 
 letter, 158 ; series of letters refer- 
 ring to philosophical aspects of ex- 
 perience, 244-252. 
 
 Hogg, James; referred to in Braes of 
 Yarrow, 20. 
 
 Houstoun acquired by Shairps, 1 ; de- 
 scription of, from Kilmahoe, 3. 
 
 Hunter, Dr., of St. Andrews, 272. 
 
 Hunting, his amusement at Rugby, 
 101 ; appreciation of, 102 ; story of, 
 136, 147. 
 
 Hymn of Pan, by Shelley, 155. 
 
 INFLUENCE of Dr. Arnold, 37, 130. 
 Carlyle, 38, 156. 
 Coleridge, 14, 208. 
 Bishop Douglas, 207. 
 Thomas Erskine, 208. 
 Glasgow teaching, 18. 
 Cardinal Newman, 36, 203, 413. 
 Sir Walter Scott, 16, 204. 
 Dean Stanley, 208. 
 Tractarian movement, 202. 
 Wordsworth, 11, 204, 208, 226. 
 Influence of Shairp, 136, 296, 418. 
 On Earl of Aberdeen, 198. 
 Thomas Bayne, 195. 
 Shadworth Hodgson, 153. 
 Godfrey Lushington, 160. 
 An Oxford tutor, 198. 
 Henry Rhoades, 165. 
 Students, 194, 277, 297. 
 Inge, Mrs. reminiscences, 420 ; letter 
 
 to, 421 ; another letter to, 424. 
 Irvine, Dr., of Pitlochry, 278. 
 
 JACOBITE Memoirs, 128. 
 
 Jacobite sympathy, 127. 
 
 Jenkyns, Dr., 32. 
 
 Jex-Blake, Dr. pupil of Shairp's at 
 
 Rugby, 98 ; reminiscences, 146. 
 Jowett, Prof., 33, 115, 152 ; letter 
 
 from, on death of Shairp, 405. 
 
 KEBLE, essay on, 37, 56 ; extracts 
 from essay as to Newman, 58, 60 ; 
 letter from Dean Stanley as to essay, 
 
 61 ; appreciation of Christian Year, 
 
 62 ; article on, in North British Re- 
 view, 194, 227, 228 ; letter from 
 Lord Coleridge as to article on, 266 ; 
 another letter, 267. 
 
 Kennedy, George, master at Rugby, 
 
 138. 
 Kentigern, St., paper on, in Good Words, 
 
 194. 
 Kilmahoe, description of Houstoun 
 
INDEX 
 
 453 
 
 House in, 3 ; picture of his mother, 
 174, 191 ; published, 194, 230 ; 
 letter from Theodore Walrond as to, 
 233 ; letter from Snadworth Hodg- 
 son as to, 233 ; letter to, as to, 234 ; 
 press notices of, 234. 
 Kitchener, Mr., of Newcastle pupil of 
 Shairp at Eugby, 98 ; reminiscences, 
 166. 
 
 LAKE, author of article in Quarterly on 
 Stanley's Life of Arnold, 85. 
 
 Langdale Pikes, 65. 
 
 Lawley, 66, 67. 
 
 Lawrence, author of Guy Livingstone, 
 111. 
 
 Lingen, Lord, estimate by, 167. 
 
 Lockhart, J. G., met, 16, 77, 88. 
 
 Lockhart, Walter Scott, entersBalliol,77. 
 
 Lome, Marquis of, a student at St. 
 Andrews, 388 ; reminiscences, 388. 
 
 Low, Dr. Eichard, of Dundee High 
 School, regard for, 320. 
 
 Lushiugton, Prof., influence of inaugural 
 lecture, 14 ; letter from, as to Burns, 
 361 ; visit from, 390 ; letters from, 
 on hearing of Shairp' s death, 404. 
 
 Lushington, Godfrey pupil at Eugby, 
 98, 146 ; reminiscences of, 160 ; 
 visit to Yarrow and Dumfries with 
 Dean Stanley and Shairp, 182. 
 
 Lushington, Vernon pupil at Eugby, 
 98 ; letter from, as to article on 
 Wordsworth, 228. 
 
 MACAULAY, opinion of, 226. 
 
 M 'Donald, George, preaches in College 
 Church, St. Andrews, 394. 
 
 M'Intosh, Adam, John, and Donald, 
 gamekeepers in Corrour, 259. 
 
 Macintosh, John, The Earnest Student, 
 13 ; estimate of, 21 ; Life of, 28 , 
 letter from, 30 ; visit at Oxford, 65. 
 
 Macleod, Dr. Norman, makes acquaint- 
 ance of, 13 ; estimate of, 23 ; letter 
 to Dr. Clerk on death of, 28 ; visits 
 Shairp at Houstoun, 83 ; Shairp visits 
 at Dalkeith, 107, 126 ; visit of, to St. 
 Andrews, 301 ; asked to write Life 
 of, 302 ; lines on, 302 ; letter to Dr. 
 Donald Macleod on, 303. 
 
 Macleod, Mrs. (Norman's mother), 
 letter to Dr. Clerk on her death, 28. 
 
 MANNING, Cardinal, sermon by, 46. 
 Manor Water a poem, 261. 
 Margaret, St. a paper in Good Words, 
 194. 
 
 Marriott, 65, 66, 67. 
 
 Martial spirit, 141. 
 
 Maudesly's Mental Pathology, 251. 
 
 Maxwell, rectorial address at Glasgow 
 
 by Sir William Stirling, 212. 
 Merivale, Herman, article in Edinburgh 
 
 Review on Goethe festival, 152. 
 Methven Castle, visit to, 209. 
 Mill's Political Economy, 120. 
 Milton-Lockhart, visit to, 87. 
 Minchmoor, 225. 
 Moral Motive Power, article on, in 
 
 North British Review, 194, 227, 
 
 248 ; letter from Dr. John Brown as 
 
 to, 265. 
 
 Morven, Manse of, visit to, 145, 152. 
 Mozley, Canon, lecture on, 373. 
 Murray - Gartshore, Mrs., 107, 111; 
 
 verses to, after visit, 107. 
 Mythology and Natural Eeligion, 94. 
 
 NATURAL Eeligion and Mythology, 94. 
 
 Nature, love of, the master passion 
 of his life, 16, 41. 
 
 Newdigate prize at Oxford, 337. 
 
 Newman, Cardinal, influence of and 
 admiration for, 36, 203, 413 ; ex- 
 tract from Balliol Scholars, 58 ; 
 extract from essay on Keble, 58 ; 
 letter from, as to essay on Keble, 
 61 ; sermons, 124, 132 ; influence 
 of, in Tractarian days, 209 ; letter 
 from, on Culture and Religion, 286 ; 
 letter from, on The Poetic Interpreta- 
 tion of Nature, 323 ; letter from, on 
 Aspects of Poetry, 370 ; estimate by, 
 387. 
 
 " Newman's Law," 250. 
 
 Ninian, St. , a paper in Good Words, 194. 
 
 North British Revieic, series of articles 
 in, 194. 
 
 Northcote, Sir Stafford, 33. 
 
 i 
 
 ORIEL Fellowship, 41. 
 
 Ormsary, visit to, 394. 
 
 Ossian, article in Macmillan's Maga- 
 zine on, 301. 
 
 Ossianic poetry, letters to Dr. Clerk on, 
 299, 300. 
 
 Oxford, first visit to, 43. 
 
 PALGRAVE, F. T., 33 ; editor of Glen 
 Desseray, 235 ; letter from, as to 
 Oxford Chair of Poetry, 330. 
 
 Palmer, Archdeacon, 33 ; reminiscences, 
 163, 422. 
 
 Patterdale, 66. 
 
 Patteson, Bishop Coleridge, makes 
 
454 
 
 INDEX 
 
 acquaintance of, 90 ; estimate of, 
 91. 
 
 Pattison, M., 40. 
 
 Paul, St., Matthew Arnold's papers on, 
 215. 
 
 Pavement End, 63. 
 
 Peel Club one of founders, 15 ; its in- 
 fluence, 14. 
 
 Philosophical aspects of experience, 
 244. 
 
 Philosophy its sphere, 251. 
 
 Physical and Moral Interpretation of 
 the Universe and Life an address 
 on the contrast between, 373. 
 
 Plato's knowledge of God, 94 ; dia- 
 logues, 151. 
 
 Poetic Interpretation of Nature, lectures 
 on, 321 ; letter from Cardinal New- 
 man on, 323. 
 
 Poetical feeling and its utterance in 
 poetry, 92. 
 
 Poetry coexistent with the outward 
 world and the human spirit, 92 ; 
 province of poetry, subject of lecture 
 at Oxford, 331 ; knowledge and ap- 
 preciation of, 371. 
 
 Poets of the seventeenth century, 
 lecture on, 425. 
 
 Poste, Edward, visits Germany with, 119. 
 
 Price, Bonamy, master at Rugby, 98 ; 
 discussions with, at Rugby, 99 ; "a 
 remarkable man," 101 ; 138. 
 
 Price, Mrs. Bonamy, a cousin of 
 Macaulay's, 101 ; her reminiscences, 
 351. 
 
 Prichard, C. E. visit to Norman Mac- 
 leod, 29 ; estimate of Seymour by, 
 73 ; 151. 
 
 Pyper, Prof., St. Andrews, 187 ; death 
 of, 192. 
 
 Rob and his Friends, 223. 
 
 Rannoch Moor, 259. 
 
 Rawnsley, Rev. H. D., of Crosthwaite 
 reminiscences, 383. 
 
 Reading-man's life at Oxford, 35. 
 
 Reay, Lord, Lord - Rector of St. An- 
 drews University, 392. 
 
 Reformation, The, a scramble for self- 
 ishness, 115. 
 
 Religious life an address, 307. 
 
 Retrospect, or Days from out the 
 Shadoivs, 6 ; extract from, referring 
 to student days in Glasgow, 29. 
 
 Rhoades, Henry pupil at Rugby, 98, 
 148 ; reminiscences, 165. 
 
 Rhoades, James pupil at Rugby, 98. 
 
 Riddell, James, 422. 
 
 Robertson, Rev. James, of Whitting- 
 hame reminiscences, 287. 
 
 Rodger, Rev. Dr. Matthew, minister of 
 College Church, St. Andrews 
 Funeral Sermon by,' 385, 398. 
 
 Rugby, visit to Dr. Tait at, 85 ; ap- 
 pointed one of the masters, 98 ; 
 Professor Sellar's account of life at, 
 99 ; Shairp's own account, 100 . 
 proposed memorial in Rugby Chapel; 
 403. 
 
 Run, The, a lyric on hunting, 102. 
 
 ST. ANDREW'S Day at Oxford, 40, 44. 
 
 St. Andrews, delight in, 191 ; histori- 
 cal account of University, 270 ; the 
 earliest Scottish University, 376, 
 390. 
 
 Sanders, T. C., 33. 
 
 Sandford, Sir Francis, 34. 
 
 "School Time," from Retrospect, 11. 
 
 Scotland, love for, 130, 132, 135, 140, 
 142, 154. 
 
 Scott, Archdeacon, reminiscences, 111, 
 116. 
 
 Scott, Dean, of Rochester, letter from, 
 as to Chair of Poetry at Oxford, 
 331. 
 
 Scott, Edward, pupil at Rugby, 98 ; 
 reminiscence of tour in Highlands, 
 106 ; letter to, 129, 148 ; reminis- 
 cences, 148 ; letter to, as to son's 
 grave at Rugby, 182 ; letters to, 199 ; 
 letters from, on death of Shairp, 407. 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter, influence of, 16, 204 ; 
 referred to, in Braes of Yarrow, 
 20 ; disparagement of, resented, 39 ; 
 poem on Helvellyn, 66 ; as a novel- 
 ist and writer, 209; Scott, and Border 
 life and habits, 325. 
 
 Scottish Song, projected series of papers 
 on, 201. 
 
 Selborne, Lord, estimate by, 389. 
 
 Sellar, Prof., account of early years 
 by, 8 ; life at Glasgow University, 
 14 ; at Oxford, 32 ; at Rugby, 99 ; 
 account of removal to St. Andrews, 
 and earlier years there, 187 ; con- 
 cluding part of reminiscences, 342. 
 
 Seymour, death of, 46 ; dinner at 
 Clough's, 50 ; letter to, 70. 
 
 Shairp, Miss B., letters to, 14, 44, 63, 
 67. 
 
 Shairp, Campbell, allusions to child- 
 hood of, 205 ; matriculation at Ox- 
 ford, 331. 
 
 Shairp, Miss Grace, letters to, 45, 65, 
 84, 115. 
 
INDEX 
 
 455 
 
 Shairp, Sir John, 1. 
 
 Shairp, Mrs. (his mother), name, 1 ; 
 picture in Kilmahoe, 3, 174 ; death, 
 174 ; letter from Mr. Erskine of 
 Linlathen on her death, 175. 
 
 Shairp, Major Norman, 1 ; character, 
 2 ; letter to, as to curacy and chance 
 of fellowship, 77 ; letter to, as to 
 class and prospects, 81 ; letter to, as 
 to fellowship at Oriel, 86 ; letter to, 
 descriptive of Duke of Wellington's 
 funeral, 168 ; Kilmahoe, dedicated 
 to, 230. 
 
 Shairp, Mrs., letter to, descriptive of 
 Wells of Dee, 252 ; account of last 
 illness by, 391. 
 
 Shairp, Principal birth, 1 ; ancestors, 
 1 ; early education, 4 ; visit to Argyle- 
 shire, 4 ; sent to Edinburgh Academy, 
 7 ; came under influence of Words- 
 worth's poetry, 7 ; account of early 
 years by Prof. Sellar, 8 ; love of 
 home, 9 ; hunting and curling his 
 only pastimes, 10 ; Wordsworth's 
 influence, 11 ; entered Glasgow Uni- 
 versity, 13 ; friendships, 13 ; pro- 
 fessors, 13 ; discussions on Coleridge, 
 Wordsworth, Sir Thomas Brown, and 
 Jeremy Taylor in Bath Street, 13 ; 
 Peel Club, 14; election of Lord 
 Eector, 14 ; prize essay, 15 ; politi- 
 cal enthusiasm, 15 ; love of nature, 
 16 ; appointed a Snell Exhibitioner, 
 17, 31 ; class honours, 18 ; enters 
 Balliol College, Oxford, 31 ; visits 
 London, 31 ; thinks of taking orders 
 in the Church of England, 31 ; as a 
 letter- writer, 31 ; popularity at Ox- 
 ford, 34 ; love of hunting, 34 ; a 
 reading - man, 34 ; difficulty with 
 Latin prose, 35 ; love of poetry, 39 ; 
 wins Newdigate prize for English 
 poem, 39 ; takes B.A. and placed in 
 second class, 40 ; a conservative 
 in politics and religion, 42 ; in- 
 tended visit to Germany, 43 ; long- 
 lived dream of becoming a sheep- 
 farmer, 44 ; " Schools," 45 ; dinner 
 at Clough's, 50 ; reading- party in 
 Wales, 55 ; reading -party at Gras- 
 mere, 63 ; thinks of fellowship at 
 All Souls, 77 ; visits Houstoun, 79 ; 
 returns to Oxford, 80 ; visits 
 Houstoun, 83 ; visits Berwickshire, 
 Flodden, Newcastle, and Rugby, 
 84 ; candidate for fellowship at 
 Oriel, 86 ; autumn in Scotland, 
 87 ; Coleridge Patteson, 90 ; fruit 
 
 of Oxford training, 91 ; appointed 
 one of the masters of Rugby, 98, 
 119; succeeds to boarding-house, 
 99 ; as a talker, 99 ; The Run, 102 ; 
 walking excursion in Highlands, 103 ; 
 study of Fichte, 111 ; thinks of visit- 
 ing Germany, 115 ; visit to Combe 
 Abbey, 115 ; visit to Ireland, 116 ; 
 visits Germany, 119 ; extracts from 
 diary, 123 ; j.he Bonspiel, 126 ; dis- 
 like of school life, 135, 140 ; influ- 
 ence at Rugby, 136 ; difficulty as to 
 reading Litany in school, 139 ; classi- 
 cal tutor in house of Rev. R. B. 
 Mayor, 142 ; Sunday evening ad- 
 dresses to boys, 159 ; candidate for 
 Chair of Moral Philosophy in 
 Edinburgh, 171, 239 ; marriage, 
 174 ; death of his mother, 174 ; 
 death of son, 141, 177 ; lines on 
 death of child, 179 ; at Tibbie Shiels's, 
 180 ; taught Professor Lushington's 
 class in Glasgow University, 183 ; 
 assistant to Professor Pyper of St. 
 Andrews, 187, 191 ; personal interest 
 in students, 189 ; appointed Professor 
 of Humanity at St. Andrews, 192 ; 
 appointed Principal of the United 
 College, St. Andrews, 192, 269 ; 
 articles in Good Words and North 
 British Review, 194 ; Kilmahoe, and 
 other Poems published, 194, 229 ; 
 summer holidays, 205 ; death of 
 Colonel Hugh Douglas, 205 ; a 
 critic and delineator of character, 
 228 ; candidate for Moral Philosophy 
 Chair in Glasgow, 238 ; result, 246 ; 
 interest in and sympathy with 
 students, 269 ; President of Educa- 
 tional Institute of Scotland, 276 ; 
 built Cuil-aluinn, 306 ; fatal accident 
 to nephew at Moness Falls, 310 ; 
 edits Dorothy Wordsworth's Journal 
 of the Tour in Scotland, 314 ; 
 speech at jubilee dinner of Edin- 
 burgh Academy, 316 ; University 
 extension scheme, 319 ; appointed 
 Professor of Poetry at .Oxford, 
 330 ; Latin oration at Oxford, 338 ; 
 visit to Salisbury, 350 ; incidents in 
 Border wanderings, 357 ; volume on 
 Burns, 359 ; Aspects of Poetry 
 published, 370 ; account of last illness 
 by Mrs. Shairp, 391 ; visit to Hous- 
 toun, York, and the Riviera, 392 ; 
 visit to Ormsary, 394 ; death, 396 ; 
 funeral, 398 ; memorial tablet and 
 tombstone, 398 ; resignation of 
 
456 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Professorship of Poetry, 399 ; pro- 
 posed memorial, 400 ; memorial 
 window in College Church, St. 
 Andrews, 401 ; portrait in Hall of 
 United College, St. Andrews, 402 ; 
 memorial window in Balliol Library, 
 Oxford, 404, 
 
 Shelley, lecture on, 336, 411. 
 
 Shiels's, Tibbie, cottage, meeting of 
 Professor Veitch and Shairp at, 
 180. 
 
 Sinton, Rev. Thomas reminiscences, 
 276. 
 
 Sketches in History and Poetry a 
 posthumous volume, 376. 
 
 Smith, Prof. H. S., 33. 
 
 Smith, Rev. John, minister of Eccles- 
 machan, 124, 223. 
 
 Song of the South Countree, 260. 
 
 Sophocles and Shakespeare, essay on, 
 15. 
 
 Spalding, Prof., 190. 
 
 Stanley, Dean, 33 ; affection for, 131 ; 
 letter from, as to Duke of Wellington's 
 funeral, 170 ; visit to Yarrow and 
 Dumfries, 182 ; delight in Scottish 
 history and admiration for Sir Walter 
 Scott, 208 ; influence of, 208 ; death 
 of, 373 ; letter from Shairp to Mrs. 
 Drummond of Megginch on death of, 
 373 ; legacy to United College, 375 ; 
 Shairp's letters to Mrs. Drummond, 
 375. 
 
 Stanley, Lady Augusta, her regard for 
 Mr. Erskine of Linlathen, 207. 
 
 Studies in Poetry and Philosophy, 194, 
 227 ; letters from Bishop Patteson 
 as to, 267, 268. 
 
 Sweetheart Abbey, 264. 
 
 Systems of Philosophy, 95. 
 
 TATT, Archbishop, invites Shairp to be- 
 come a master at Rugby, 98, 99 ; his 
 influence secures for Shairp the Chair 
 of Humanity at St. Andrews, 183 ; 
 estimate of, 391 ; Richmond's por- 
 trait of, 392. 
 
 Talker, Shairp as a, 202. 
 
 Temple, Bishop, of London, 32 ; testi- 
 monies in Shairp's favour as a candi- 
 date for Chair of Moral Philosophy 
 at Glasgow, 239. 
 
 Tennyson, 38, 139. 
 
 Theology in perfect accord with 
 neither the High Church doctrine 
 nor Broad Church theology, 41 ; 
 discussion with Bonamy Price at 
 Rugby, 99. 
 
 Thompson, E. M. keeper of MSS. in 
 British Museum pupil at Rugby, 
 98. 
 
 Three Friends in Yarrow, 1. 
 
 Threave Castle, 204. 
 
 Thyrsis, by Matthew Arnold, 244. 
 
 " Toper-na-fuosich," 105. 
 
 Torphichen, 125, 126. 
 
 Tractarian experiences, 132 ; influence 
 upon Shairp, 202, 207 ; the move- 
 ment, 228, 382, 412. 
 
 Tulloch, Principal, 190, 213 ; his opinion 
 of Shairp, 298. 
 
 UNDERGRADUATE life at Oxford, 55 ; 
 extract from paper on, 427. 
 
 Universities, Wants of the Scottish, 
 and some of the Remedies a pam- 
 phlet, 183 ; extracts from, 183. 
 
 University Club in Dundee, lecture to, 
 443. 
 
 University life in Oxford, paper on, 
 437. 
 
 University System, characteristic feat- 
 ures of Scottish as distinguished from 
 English an address, 373. 
 
 Uses of the Study of Latin Literature 
 subject of inaugural lecture as Pro- 
 fessor of Humanity, 192. 
 
 VAUGHAN lecture on, Henry, 425. 
 
 Veitch, Prof., of Glasgow University- 
 reminiscences, 180 ; bond of sym- 
 pathy between, and Shairp, 190 ; 
 appointed Professor of Logic at St. 
 Andrews, 202 ; reminiscences of 
 years at St. Andrews, 202 ; excur- 
 sion to Braemar Highlands, 252 ; 
 reminiscences of Border wanderings, 
 263 ; conclusion of reminiscences, 
 356. 
 
 Virgil, lecture on, 283. 
 
 WALLACE, Rev. Edwin, notice of, 373. 
 Walrond, Theodore, death of (footnote) 
 
 32 ; 33 ; 138 ; love of tennis, 41 ; 
 
 master at Rugby, 98 ; resigned 
 
 mastership, 99 ; death of, and letter 
 
 from widow, 376. 
 Ward, 132. 
 Wellington, Duke of, 46 ; description 
 
 of funeral of, 168 ; letter from Dean 
 
 Stanley as to funeral of, 170. 
 Wells of Dee, description of, 253. 
 " White Doe of Rylstone, The," 421. 
 Whyte, Rev. Dr., of Edinburgh, letter 
 
 from, as to Shairp's death, 406 
 Wilderness, The, lines on, 104. 
 
INDEX 
 
 457 
 
 Williams, Archdeacon, Rector of Edin- 
 burgh Academy, 9. 
 
 Wilson, Prof. (Christopher North), 
 contrasted with, 17. 
 
 Wordsworth, influence of, 11, 204, 
 
 226 ; sees at garden gate, 33, 76 ; 
 religion of, 47 ; poem on Helvellyn, 
 66 ; delighted to quote, 155 ; article 
 on, in North British Review, 194, 
 
 227 ; his estimate of, 227 ; letter 
 from Vernon Lushington as to article 
 on, 228 ; as an interpreter of, 282. 
 
 Wordsworth, Bishop, of St. Andrews 
 
 reminiscences, 377. 
 Wordsworth, Dorothy, Journal of the 
 
 Tour in Scotland, 314 ; letters from 
 
 Dr. John Brown as to, 314. 
 Wordsworth, Miss reminiscences, 
 
 352 ; meeting with, 423. 
 Wythburn Church, 67. 
 
 YARROW, lines on visit to, 179 ; visit 
 
 to, with his sisters, 181. 
 Yarrcnvs, The Three, 420. 
 
 THE END 
 
 Printed by R. & R. CI.ARK, Edinburgh. 
 
Jmw^ 
 
 d = 6- 
 
 14 DAY USE 
 
 H RETURN TO DESK FROM WHICH BORRC 
 
 LOAN DEPT. 
 
 F This book is due ^^$* t %& ' 
 
 Renewedbooks are subject to immediate recall. 
 
 IFORNIt 
 
 3uNO\ 
 
 
 TSTD~SEP 1 1 1981 
 
 V!) 
 
 ITY OF CA 
 
 /fa 
 
 CA 
 ^T 
 
 ____^i 
 
 
 B 
 
 I 
 
 ~~^ 
 
 
 DRNIA 
 
 ,, 
 
 _ 21A-50rn-4,'59 
 (A1724slO)476B 
 
 LD 
 
 General Library . 
 University of California 
 Berkeley 
 
 IVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
* 
 
 5>~ ^ 
 
 IBRARY Of THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LI 
 
 NIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 NIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 Lll