During this period, however, Buchanan had other occupations besides his tutorship and his literary work. He was made "director of the Chancery,"
whatever that may mean, and in 1570 was elevated to the post of Keeper of the Privy Seal, in which capacity he served in various Parliaments: and was also a member of the Privy Council. When the conspiracy arose against the Regent Morton which ended in his temporary deprivation of the regency, Buchanan seems to have taken part against him, though on what argument we are not told: for it was Morton"s power which had brought about the re-establishment of peace and order to which he refers in the dedication of his book. And it is a feasible conjecture that it was by his crafty suggestion that the Regent"s fict.i.tious plaints of being weary of his high office and desiring nothing more than that the King"s Majesty should take the government into his own hand, were ingeniously twisted so as to give his dismissal the air of a gracious consent to Morton"s own wishes. An old man like Buchanan, well acquainted with the wiles of logic and the pretexts of state, was more likely to use an advantage in which there is a certain grim humour, and to take the adversary in his own toils, than such an inexperienced politician as young Mar, or any of the undistinguished n.o.bles who carried out that stratagem. Whether Buchanan supported his old pupil, Mar, in his attempt to seize the governorship of the castle and the King"s person out of the hands of his uncle, or in what aspect he was regarded when Morton returned to the head of affairs, we have no means of knowing. Whatever his influence might be at the King"s ear or amid the secret meetings of the malcontents, neither as Lord Privy Seal nor as King James"s tutor did he come in public collision with any public authority. His action, whenever he appears publicly, is perfectly characteristic of his real position and faculties. He took part in a commission for the establishment of a system of munic.i.p.al law: he was one of the Church"s commissioners on two occasions in determining her policy and discipline. When the reform of the Universities of Scotland, so often taken up since then, and so slow to be accomplished, was brought under the consideration of Parliament, Buchanan was one of the chief of the commissioners appointed to consider it. He is reported to have been the author of a scheme of reconstruction to be employed in the University of St. Andrews; and it is interesting to find in this new system that special attention was enjoined to be given to Greek, and that the study of Hebrew was also recommended to the students. The latter language, we believe, still remains an established part of the studies of young men in preparation for the ministry in the Church of Scotland. Buchanan desired that the Princ.i.p.al of his own College, St.
Leonards, should lecture on Plato. And he made a present of a number of Greek books, still carefully preserved, to Glasgow University, though why he should have chosen to send them there, instead of to his own smaller and poorer University, we have nothing to show. It is thus apparent that in his active public work Buchanan"s chief attention was given to his own proper subjects. There is no evidence that he did more than was indispensable to his official character in matters more exclusively political.
His old age thus pa.s.sed, in a certain learned leisure which it is very difficult to imagine as existing in so tumultuous a period and amid so many violent changes and vicissitudes. He had many learned correspondents throughout the world, almost all the great scholars of the time being numbered among his friends; and the letters which he received from all quarters implied a considerable amount of letter-writing on his side. He sent copies of his books to his friends as if he had been the most modern of novelists, and it is curious to think of the big laborious volume of solemn Latin dramas, or that thin but weighty tome, instinct with another and more living kind of interest, which set forth the rights of nations--sent by some trusty messenger, a young scholar finding in the packet entrusted to his charge the best introduction to one of the lights of learning on the Continent, or some adventurer making his way to a commission in the Scottish Archers or other service of arms more profitable for a younger son than the frays and feuds of Scotland. The learned doctors of the Sorbonne, the scholars of Geneva, and the printers of Holland, replied on their side not only with elaborate thanks and eulogies, but with responsive presents, treatises or translations of their own, some of them dedicated to the royal boy who was the pupil of their friend, and of whom he gave so wonderful a description. "I have been guilty of trifling with a sacred subject," wrote Berger with his volume of poems, "and I have dedicated my trifles to a king." Another learned correspondent sends a Plato which he has edited, one volume of which he had also inscribed to James, begging that his friend would present it to his Majesty. They would seem to have shared Buchanan"s satisfaction in his princely pupil, and it is chiefly by way of reflection, through these responses, that we perceive what his opinion of the young King was, and how much proud delight, expressed no doubt in the most cla.s.sical language, he took in the boy"s apt.i.tude and promise. The following letter, however, which is not cla.s.sical at all, but written in choice Scots and addressed to Queen Elizabeth"s envoy, Sir Thomas Randolph, gives a less dignified but very graphic description of his own circ.u.mstances and occupations. It is written from Stirling during Morton"s Regency, when peace prevailed and even prosperity had returned in some measure to the distracted kingdom.
"To Maister Randolph, Squiar, Maister of Postes to the Queen"s Grace of England.
"Maister, I haif rescevit diverse letters frome you, and yit I haif answerit to nane of them--of the quhilk albeit I haif mony excuses such as age, forgetfulness, business, and disease, yet I will use nane as now, except my sweirness (reluctance) and your gentleness: and gif ye think nane of them sufficient, content you with ane confession of the falt without fear of punition to follow on my onkindness. As for the present I am occupied in writyng of our historie, being a.s.sured to content few, and to displease many therethrow. As to the end of it if ye gett it not or (before) this winter bepa.s.sit lippen (trust) not for it, no nane other writyngs from me. The rest of my occupation is with the gout quhilk halds me busy both day and night. And quhair ye say ye have not lang to lyif I trust to G.o.d to go before you, albeit I be on foot, and ye ryd _the post_: praying you also not to _dispost_ my hoste at Newark, Jone of Kelsterne. This I pray you partly for his awyn sake quhame I tho"t ane gude fellow, and partly at request of such as I dare not refuse. And thus I take my lief shortly at you now, and my lang lief when G.o.d pleases, committing you to the protection of the Almighty.
At Stirling, xxv. day of August, 1577.--Yours to command with service,
G. BUCHANAN."
The mild, aged jest about preceding his friend out of life though he must go on foot and Randolph had the advantage of commanding the Post, and his recommendation of the erring postmaster at Newark, who was a good fellow, throw a pleasant light of kindly humour into this letter.
And we thus hear for the first time of the History, the greatest work of his life, which he seems to have begun in the tranquillity of the palace-castle, notwithstanding the hostile influence of gout and years--hostile above all to so great a piece of work. He was now over seventy, and the end of his career seemed near at hand, although he had but recently taken in hand so great an enterprise. Buchanan"s History is not, more than other great histories which have succeeded it, an absolutely impartial work; but it is, throughout all his own stirring and momentous age, the record of a bystander with abundant means of knowledge and a keen apprehension of all the controversies and struggles of his time. If he may perhaps glorify too much the character of his patron and friend the Regent Murray, and take the darkest view of Mary, we can only say that he would have been more angel than man had he kept himself absolutely without bias in that hot and still unexhausted debate. And there was nothing angelical about the old scholar who had taken a part in so many historical events, from the siege of Wark Castle, where he was present as a boy, to the Conferences at York and Westminster, which were matters of yesterday. The science of history has so much developed since his time that it may almost be said to have made a new beginning; and much that was considered authoritative and convincing then has fallen into the limbo of uncertainty, when not rejected altogether. The many differing motives and agencies which can only be fully estimated when the period of discussion is past, have come to occupy a far greater s.p.a.ce in the mind of the historian than had been dreamed of in Buchanan"s days; and the careful examination of evidence with which we are now familiar was unknown either in the study of the writer or the courts of law during a time which has left endless questions from both to be debated and re-debated by succeeding generations. But yet Buchanan"s History remains the most important and dignified record of the national existence up to his time; and no one would now venture to treat the story of ancient Scotland, the chronicles of her kings, or even the still undecided questions of Mary Stewart"s life and reign, without the guidance more or less of this great authority. It was a bold step to dedicate to King James a record in which his mother"s life was denounced and condemned with such unsparing freedom; but the astonishing absence of sympathy or human understanding shown in this was shared by the greater part of Buchanan"s contemporaries, who evidently felt the facts of the mother"s guilt to be too abundantly demonstrated and universally consented to, to demand any delicacy of statement as addressed to her son. No one, we think, can entertain any doubt of the historian"s own strong conviction on this subject. Among the many fables current about Buchanan, there was one circ.u.mstantial and oft-repeated, of his repentance on his deathbed of his judgment of the Queen; but this is entirely set at rest by the affecting record which we shall quote farther on of a last visit paid to him by certain of his friends who had taken fright at the boldness of his statements, and feared that the King, now grown up and developing his own individual sentiments, might stop the issue of the book when he saw these uncompromising records.
We must add one pretty story of Buchanan"s kindness to his brethren in scholarship and literature which shows the sharp and cautious scholar in a very pleasant light. A certain Thomas Jack, a schoolmaster in Glasgow, had composed in Latin verse a little book upon the ancient poets, called the _Onomasticon Poetic.u.m_, and encouraged by the friendship already, as he says, shown to him by Buchanan, carried the book to him for revision.
"I found him in the royal palace of Stirling, diligently engaged in writing his History of Scotland. He was so far from being displeased by the interruption that he cheerfully took my work from my hands, and after reading two or three pages of it, collected together his own papers which were scattered on the table, and said, "I will desist from my work till I have done what you wish." This promise he accurately fulfilled; and within a few days gave me a paper written with his own hand, and containing such corrections as he thought necessary."
One can imagine the old scholar seated with his doc.u.ments before him in the light of a broad window, perhaps arrived at some knotty point which wanted consideration, and turning from the crabbed papers, which would not fit themselves in, with that delight in a lawful interruption and temptation to idleness which only hard-working students know. Much has been said about the misery of such interruptions to the absorbed writer, but no one has pointed out the occasional relief and comfort which they bring. Buchanan must have hailed this occasion of evading for a moment his legitimate work with all the pleasure of an old critic and connoisseur suddenly appealed to with such a congenial demand. Even in our ashes live their wonted fires, and where is the scholar who does not turn with delight from his history or his sermon to criticise a copy of verses, to _savourer_ a fine latinism or dig his pen through a false quant.i.ty as if he were cutting down an enemy? Thomas Jack has departed into oblivion along with his _Onomasticon_: but this record of the friendly reception he and his book met with affords a delightful gleam of light upon the historian"s waning days.
It is more remarkable when we find another witness describing our somewhat irascible and sharp philosopher as growing young again in the boys who surrounded him, and adapting his mind to all ages and cla.s.ses of men. Probably by the time he came to be the King"s preceptor Buchanan had ceased to be so compliant, or very probably conceived it appropriate, on principle, to be less indulgent to a pupil whose danger it would be to have too many flatteries and caresses.
We have no very clear record when it was that the tutelage of James was supposed to be over, or if Buchanan was ever formally freed from his office. Informally the King would have seemed to be more or less his own master at the end of Morton"s Regency, when, though subject to "raids"
like that of Gowrie and the contending influence of one party after another, there was no longer any Regent thought of, and the business of the country was conducted formally in the King"s name. It would seem, however, from the dedication of the History, that Buchanan had ceased for some time before its publication to take an active part in James"s education. He speaks in this of "the incurable illness" which made him incapable of "discharging the office entrusted to me of cultivating the genius" of the young King; and presents the book as making up in some degree for that personal failure. The History ends with the death of the Regent Lennox, he who was killed in Stirling almost under the historian"s eyes, and when Scotland was still distracted between two parties, and in a state of civil warfare. It has been made a subject of reproach to Buchanan that he stopped his chronicle before the beginning of the Regency of Morton, because of his personal hatred to that brave and able personage--a singular charge, seeing that Buchanan lived only a few months after the last Regent of Scotland; and he has expressly mentioned in one of his dedications the increased tranquillity which was the result of Morton"s government.
It is in Edinburgh we find the old man of letters in the last scene of his long and laborious life. In September 1581 he was visited by three gentlemen from St. Andrews, one of whom gives us the most lifelike and interesting account of this last interview. It would have been still more interesting had they afforded some indication where they found him, whether he had some pleasant room granted to him in Holyrood, after so many years with the King, a suitable retreat for his old age; or if he had retired to some private lodging in the Canongate to end his days.
His visitors make no mention of such unimportant circ.u.mstances, but they leave us a most touching and faithful picture of the end of his life.
These visitors were the famous Andrew Melville, Princ.i.p.al of the New College at St. Andrews, a scholar almost as distinguished as himself, who had at an earlier period been Buchanan"s pupil, and who had acquired his great knowledge in the same way, in the famous schools of the continent; James Melville, his nephew, minister of Kilrenny on the sh.o.r.es of Fife; and Thomas Buchanan, the cousin of the dying historian.
James Melville relates this last visit as follows:--
"That September in time of vacans, my uncle Mr. Andrew, Mr. Thomas Buchanan and I, hearing that Mr. George Buchanan was weak, and his Historie under the press, past over to Edinbruck annes errand (expressly) to visit him and see the work. When we came to his chalmer we found him sitting in his chair, teaching his young man that servit him in his chalmer, to spell a, b, ab, and e, b, eb, etc. Efter salutation Mr. Andro says, "I see, sir, ye are not idle."--"Better this," quoth he, "nor stealing sheep--or sitting idle which is as ill." Thereafter he shew us the Epistle Dedicatorie to the King, the which when Mr. Andro had read he told him that it was obscure in some places, and wanted certain words to perfeyt the sentence. Sayes he, "I may do na mair for thinking on another matter."--"What is that?" sayes Mr. Andro. "To die," quoth he; "but I leave that and manie more things for you to help."
"We went from him to the printer"s workhouse, whom we found at the end of the 17 book of his Cornicle at a place which we thought verie hard for the tyme, which might be an occasion for staying the haill work, anent the burial of Davie. Therefore staying the printer from proceeding, we came to Mr. George again, and fand him bedfast by his custom, and asking him how he did, "Ever going the way of weilfare,"
says he. Mr. Thomas, his cousin, shawes him of the hardness of that part of his Storie, that the King would be offendit with it, and it might stay all the work. "Tell me, man," says he, "gif I have told the truth?"--"Yes," says Mr. Thomas, "Sir, I think so."--"I will bide his feud and all his kin"s then;" quoth he. "Pray, pray to G.o.d for me, and let Him direct all." So by the printing of his Cornicle was endit, that maist learned, wyse, and G.o.dly man endit this mortal life."
He was a pedagogue, perhaps something of a pedant, a hot partisan, a special pleader; but few lives can show a more dignified and n.o.ble end.
If it was the truth he had written this old man cared for nothing else, not even for that fame which is the last infirmity of n.o.ble minds. The King might keep back the great work of his life, but he could not silence the lips in which no fear of man was. Whatever might happen afterwards, Buchanan"s record was clear; to have told the truth was all with which he had anything to do.
There is a touch of what for want of a better word we must call cynicism in the humorous indifference with which the old philosopher is said to have discussed his own burial. Finding, as the story goes, that there was not money enough in the house for the last expenses, he ordered what there was to be given to the poor, declaring that he was not concerned as to what was to become of his remains. If they did not choose to bury him they might let him lie, he said in grim jest. He was, however, reverently buried by the authorities of Edinburgh, in the historical churchyard of the Greyfriars, attended by "a great company of the faithful," though no stone seems ever to have been placed to indicate the spot where he was laid. Thus in some unknown corner he rests, like so many other ill.u.s.trious persons--a man who never rested in his life, and carried down his labours to the very verge of the grave. It is a curious satire upon human justice that his name should have been kept green in Scotland by the rough jests of an imaginary Geordie Buchanan, commonly supposed to have been the King"s fool, as extraordinary a travesty as it is possible to conceive. It is almost as strange a twist of all the facts and meaning of life that the only money of which he could be supposed to be possessed at his death should have been one hundred pounds (Scots, no doubt), _arrears_ of the pension due to him from the Abbey of Crossraguel, given by Queen Mary to that learned pupil of the Sorbonne and lover of Lutetia with whom she read Latin at Holyrood in the early days before trouble came.
[Ill.u.s.tration: GREYFRIARS CHURCHYARD]
PART IV
THE MODERN CITY
CHAPTER I
A BURGHER POET
After the extraordinary climax of dramatic interest which brought the history of Edinburgh and of Scotland to the knowledge of the whole world, and which has continued ever since to form one of the most exciting chapters in general history, it was inevitable that when that fated Court dispersed, and the lady who was its charm and head disappeared also under the tragic waves which had been rising to engulf her, there should fall a sudden blank into the record, a chill of dulness and tedium, the charm departed and the story done. In fact, it was not at all so, and the metropolis of Scotland continued to seethe with contending elements, and to witness a continued struggle, emphasised by many a martyrdom and deed of blood, and many a desperate battle both hand to hand and head to head in the streets and in the council chambers, all with more or less the religious question involved, and all helping to work out the final settlement. When that final settlement came after all the tumults and blood it had cost, it is scarcely possible not to feel the downfall from those historical commotions to the dead level of a certain humdrum good attained, which was by no means the perfect state hoped for, yet which permitted peace and moderate comfort and the growth of national wellbeing. The little homely church towers of the Revolution, as they are to be seen, for instance, along the coast of Fife, are not more unlike the Gothic spires and pinnacles of the older ages, than was the limited rustical provision of the Kirk, its restricted standing and lowered pretensions, unlike the ideal of Knox, the theocracy of the Congregation and the Covenant.
Denuded not only of the wealth of the old communion, but of those beautiful dwelling-places which the pa.s.sion of the mob destroyed and which the policy of the Reformers did not do too much to preserve--deprived of the interest of that long struggle during which each contending presbyter had something of the halo of possible martyrdom about his head--the Church of the Revolution Settlement lost in her established safety, if not as much as she gained, yet something which it was not well to lose. And the kingdom in general dropped in something like the same way into a sort of prose of existence, with most of the picturesque and dramatic elements gone. Romance died out along with the actual or possible tragedies of public life, and Humour came in, in the development most opposed to romance, a humour full of mockery and jest, less tender than keen-sighted, picking out every false pretence with a sharp gibe and roar of laughter often rude enough, not much considerate of other people"s feelings. Perhaps there was something in the sudden cessation of the tragic character which had always. .h.i.therto distinguished her history, which produced in Scotland this reign of rough wit and somewhat cynical, satirical, audacious mirth, and which in its turn helped the iconoclasts of the previous age, and originated that curious hatred of show, ceremony, and demonstration, which has become part of the Scottish character. The scathing sarcasm--unanswerable, yet false as well as true--which scorned the "little Saint Geilie," the sacred image, as a mere "painted bradd," came down to every detail of life; the rough jokes of the Parliament House at every trope as well as at every pretence of superior virtue; the grim disdain of the burgher for every rite; the rude criticism of the fields, which checked even family tendernesses and caresses as shows and pretences of a feeling which ought to be beyond the need of demonstration, were all connected one with another. Nowhere has love been more strong or devotion more absolute; but nowhere else, perhaps, has sentiment been so restrained, or the keen gleam of a neighbour"s eye seeing through the possible too-much, held so strictly in check all exhibitions of feeling. Jeanie Deans, that impersonation of national character, would no more have greeted her delivered sister with a transport of kisses and rapture than she would have borne false testimony to save her. There is no evidence that this extreme self-restraint existed from the beginning of the national history, but rather everything to show that to pageants and fine sights, to dress and decoration, the Scots were as much addicted as their neighbours. But the natural pleasure in all such exhibitions would seem to have received a shock, with which the swift and summary overthrow of Mary"s empire of beauty and gaiety, like the moral of a fable, had as much to do as the scornful destruction of religious image and altar. The succeeding generations indemnified themselves with a laugh and a gibe for the loss of that fair surface both of Church and Court: and the nation has never given up the keen criticism of every sham and seeming which exaggerated the absolutism of its natural character, and along with the destruction of false sentiment imposed a proud restraint and restriction upon much also that was true.
[Ill.u.s.tration: EDINBURGH: GENERAL VIEW]
[Ill.u.s.tration: ALLAN RAMSAY"S SHOP]
To come down from the age when Mary still reigned in Holyrood and Knox in St. Giles"s--and Edinburgh saw every phase of pa.s.sion and tragedy, wild love, hatred, revenge, and despair, with scarcely less impa.s.sioned devotion, zeal, and fury of Reformation, and all the clang of opposed factions, feuds, and frays in her streets--to the age when the Parliament House and its law courts were the centre of Edinburgh, when Holyrood was the debtors" sanctuary, and St. Giles"s a cl.u.s.ter of parish churches, even its distinctive name no longer used: and when the citizens cl.u.s.tered about the Cross of afternoons no longer to see the heralds in their tabards and hear the royal proclamations, but to tell and spread the news from London and discuss the wars in the Low Countries, and many a witty scandal, gibes from the Bench and repartees from the Bar, the humours of the old lords and ladies in their "Lodging"
in the Canongate, and the witticisms of the favourite changehouse--is as great a leap as if a whole world came between. The Court at St. Germains retained the devotion of many, but Anne Stewart was on the throne, and rebellion was not thought of, while everything was still full of hope for the old dynasty, so that Edinburgh was at full leisure to talk and jeer and gossip and make encounter of wits, with nothing more exciting in hand. In this tranquil period, his apprenticeship being finished, a certain young man from the west, by the name of Allan Ramsay, opened a shop in the High Street "opposite Niddry"s Wynd" as a "weegmaker"--perhaps, if truth were known, a barber"s shop, in all ages known as the centre of gossip wherever it appears. It is odd, by the way, that a place so entirely dedicated to the service of the male portion of the population, and where women have no place, should have this general reputation; but so it has always been. He had spent his early years as a shepherd on Crawford Moor in the Upper Ward of Clydesdale, and no doubt had there learned every song that floated about the country-side. "Honest Allan" was in every respect a model of the well-doing and prosperous Edinburgh shopkeeper of his time--a character not too entirely engrossed by business, always ready for a frolic, a song, a decorous bout of drinking, and known in all the haunts of the cheerful townsmen: tolerant in morals yet always respectable, fond of gossip, fond of fun, and if not fond of money yet judiciously disposed to gain as much as he could make, or as his apprentices and careful wife could make for him: and gradually progressing from a smaller to a larger shop, from a less to a more "genteel" business, and finally to a comfortable retirement.
In such a life there was plenty of room for enjoyment, for relaxation, and no want of leisure to tell a good story or compose a string of couplets where that gift existed, even when most busy. We may imagine that he did not sit much at his block, but rather in the front of the shop amusing his customers, while their periwigs were curled or fitted, with Edinburgh gossip and wit in the familiarity of common citizenship, or with anecdotes which enlightened the country gentlemen, especially those from the west, the last _bon mot_ of the Parliament House, or the Lord Advocate"s latest deliverance. And his clubs were as numerous as those of a young man of fashion. The "Easy Club" was composed of "young anti-unionists," which indicates the politics which the wigmaker mildly held in cheerful subjection to the powers that were. No doubt he would have gone to the death (in verse) for the privileges of Edinburgh: but the anti-unionism or sentimental Jacobitism of his cla.s.s was not of a kind to trouble any Government. And except the question of the Union, which was settled early in his career, politics do not seem to have been of an exciting character in Edinburgh. Local matters, always the most interesting of any to the inhabitants of a town not great enough to be cosmopolitan but full of distinct and striking individuality, furnished the poetical wigmaker with his first themes. It would seem that he only learned to rhyme from the necessity of taking his part in the high jinks of the club; at least all his early productions were intended for its diversion. An "Elegy on Maggie Johnstone," mistress of a convenient "public" at Morningside, then described as "a mile and a half west from Edinburgh," a suburb on "the south side," though now a part of the town--which would lie in the way of the members when they took their walks abroad, and no doubt formed the end of many a Sabbath day"s ramble--was almost the first of his known productions; and we may well believe that the jovial shopkeepers were delighted with the sensation of possessing a poet of their own, and held many a discussion upon the new verses--brimful of local allusions and circ.u.mstances which everybody knew--over their ale as they rested in the village changehouse, or among the fumes of their punch in their evening a.s.semblies. Verses warm from the poet"s brain have a certain intoxicating quality akin to the toddy, and no doubt the citizens slapped their thighs and snapped their fingers with delight when some well-known name appeared, the incidents of some story they knew by heart, or the features of some familiar character.
The satisfaction of finding in what they would call poetry a host of local allusions about which there was no ambiguity, which they understood like their ABC, would rouse the first hearers to noisy enthusiasm. And thus encouraged, the cheerful bard (as he was called in those days) went on till his fame penetrated beyond the club. Another elegy of a more serious description was so highly thought of that it was printed and given to the world by the club itself. That world meant Edinburgh, its many tradesmen, the crowded inhabitants of all the lofty "lands" about that centre of busy social life where the Cross still stood, and the old Tolbooth gloomed over the street, cut in two by its big bulk and the fabric of the Luckenbooths, a sort of island of masonry which divided what is now the broad and airy High Street opposite St.
Giles"s into two narrow straits. The writers and the advocates, the professors and the clergy, Councillor Pleydell and his kind, were not the first to discover that Ramsay the wigmaker had something in him more than the other rough wits of the shops and markets. And by and by the goodwives in their high lodgings, floor over floor, ever glad of something new, learnt to send one of the bairns with a penny to the wigmaker"s shop in the afternoon to see if Allan Ramsay had printed a new poem: and received with rapture the damp broadsheet brought in fresh from the press, with a fable or a song in "gude braid Scots," or a witty letter to some answering rhymester full of local names and things. There was no evening paper in those days, and had there been it was very unlikely it would have penetrated into all the common stairs and crowded tenements. But Allan"s songs, of which Jean or Peggy would "ken the tune," and the stories that would delight the bairns, were better worth the penny than news from distant London, which was altogether foreign and unknown to that humble audience.
This no doubt was the sort of fame and widespread popular appreciation which made the statesman of that day--was it Fletcher of Saltoun or Duncan Forbes the great Lord President?--bid who would make the laws so long as he might make the songs of the people. He had in all likelihood learnt Allan"s widely flying, largely read verses, which every _gamin_ of the streets knew by heart, in his childhood. And though they might not be in general of a very enn.o.bling quality, there are glimpses of a higher poetry to come in some of these productions, and a great deal of cheerful self-a.s.sertive content and local patriotism, as well as of rough fun and jest. If it were not for the very unnecessary introduction of Apollo as the G.o.d to whom "the bard" addresses his wishes, there would be something not unworthy of Burns in the following lines. The poet has of course introduced first, as a needful contrast, "the master o" a guid estate that can ilk thing afford," and who is much "dawted (petted) by the G.o.ds"--
"For me, I can be weel content To eat my bannock on the bent, And kitchen"t wi" fresh air; O" lang-kail I can make a feast And cantily haud up my crest, And laugh at dishes rare.
Nought frae Apollo I demand, But through a lengthened life, My outer fabric firm may stand, And saul clear without strife.
May he then, but gi"e then, Those blessings for my share; I"ll fairly, and squarely, Quit a", and seek nae mair."
It was no doubt after he had achieved this reputation of the streets--a thing more difficult than greater fame--that his imagination developed in more continuous and refined effort. Whether he himself printed his penny broadsheet as well as sold it we are not informed, but as he began after a while to combine bookselling with wigmaking we may be allowed to imagine that the press which produced these flying leaves was either in or near his shop. It is difficult to realise the swarming of life and inhabitation within the high houses of the old town in an age when comfort was little understood: and even the concentration within so small a s.p.a.ce, of business, work, interest, idleness, and pleasure, is hard to comprehend by people who have been used to appropriate a separate centre to each of the great occupations or exercises of mankind. When London was comparatively a small town it had still its professional distinctions--the Court, the Temple, the City, the place where law was administered and where money was made, where society had its abode and poverty found a shelter. But in old Edinburgh all were piled one on the top of another--the Parliament House within sight of the shops, the great official and the poor artificer under the same roof: and round that historical spot over which St. Giles"s crown rose like the standard of the city, the whole community crowded, stalls and booths of every kind enc.u.mbering the street, while special pleaders and learned judges picked their steps in their dainty buckled shoes through the mud and refuse of the most crowded noisy market-place, and all the great personages of Edinburgh paced the "plainstanes" close by at certain hours, unheeding either smell or garbage or the resounding cries of the street.
[Ill.u.s.tration: CROWN OF ST. GILES"S]
In such a crowded centre the sheets that were being read so eagerly, laughed over by the very cadgers at their booths, conned by the women at the stairheads, lying on every counter, where Allan"s new verses would be pulled to pieces by brother wits who had known him to do better, or heard a livelier witticism from his lips no farther gone than yestreen, must very soon have come to the notice of the westland lads at the college, and from them to the learned professors, and still more directly to the lively groups that went and came to the Parliament House. Already the wigmaker"s shop had thriven and prospered; the little man, short and fat and jovial, who had begun to lay out books in his window under the shadow of the curled and powdered periwigs, found the results of his double traffic more satisfactory than poets use. He boasts in one of his rhymed addresses that he thatches the outside and lines the inside of many a douce citizen, "and baithways gathers in the cash." He adds--
"And fain would prove to ilka Scot, That poort.i.th"s no the poet"s lot."
It must have been altogether an odd little establishment--the wigs set out upon their blocks, perhaps, who knows, the barber"s humbler craft being plied behind backs; the books multiplying daily on shelves and in windows, and the ragged boys with their pennies waiting to see if there was a new piece by Allan Ramsay; while perhaps in the corner, where lay the lists of the new circulating library--the first in Scotland--Miss Lydia Languish with her maid, or my lady"s gentlewoman from some fine house in the Canongate, had come in to ask for the last new novel from London, the Scotch capital having not yet begun to produce that article for itself.
One may be sure that Allan, rotund and smiling, was always ready for a crack with the ladies, and to recommend the brand new _Pamela_, the support of virtue, or some contemporary work of lesser genius. Though the general costume was like that worn in the other parts of the island, perhaps a little behind London fashions, the fair visitors would still be veiled with the plaid, the fine woven screen of varied tartan which covered the head like a hood, and could on occasion conceal the face more effectually than Spanish lace or Indian muslin--a singular peculiarity not ancient and scarcely to be called national, since the tartan came from the still-despised Highlands, and these were Lowland ladies who wore the plaid. This fashion would seem to have begun to be shaken by Ramsay"s time, for he pleads its cause with all the fervour of a poetical advocate. There is something grotesque in the arguments, and still more grotesque in the names by which he distinguishes the wearers of the plaid.
"Light as the pinions of the airy fry Of larks and linnets who traverse the sky, Is the Tartana, spun so very fine Its weight can never make the fair repine; Nor does it move beyond its proper sphere, But lets the gown in all its shape appear; Nor is the straightness of her waist denied To be by every ravished eye surveyed; For this the hoop may stand at largest bend, It comes not nigh, nor can its weight offend.
"If shining red Campbella"s cheeks adorn, Our fancies straight conceive the blushing morn, Beneath whose dawn the sun of beauty lies, Nor need we light but from Campbella"s eyes.
If lined with green Stuarta"s plaid we view, Or thine, Ramseia, edged around with blue, One shews the spring when nature is most kind, The other heaven whose spangles lift the mind."
The description of the manner in which this engaging garment is worn has all the more reason to be quoted that it was not only a new piece by Allan Ramsay, but affords a glimpse of the feminine figures that were to be seen in the High Street of Edinburgh going to kirk and market in the beginning of the eighteenth century. There is, too, a pleasant touch of individuality in the musical street cry that wakes the morn.