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 dinings 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 Relativity of Knowledge, but luxuriating with fullest soul in Wordsworth. 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 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 undergraduate, and seen the notable men who were the leaders of the new ecclesiasticism. . . . Scotsman and Presbyterian as 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 formulæ, 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 gropings-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 constraining power in Shairp's intellectual and moral convictions. 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 as 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 sections of evangelical dissent. Towards the close of his life his sympathy was certainly greatest with the doctrines of Atonement and Redemption, 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 Erskine of Linlathen. 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 symbolism 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 foregone 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." CHAPTER XI LITERARY WORK AND FRIENDSHIPS: MR. ERSKINE AND DR. JOHN BROWN It was after his settlement in St. Andrews that Shairp became 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 Fort William and Corpach, September 30; 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, dated 17th November. How many unspeakable 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." "This day at ten o'clock in my classroom Thomas the janitor told me of the death of Prince Albert. 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 A fine afternoon and sunset." man. "22d August 1862. "Started from Linlithgow at seven o'clock for Stirling. Met Stanley and Mr. Pearson in Gibb's Hotel. Rain 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 Edinburgh, 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. |