“THE PROFESSOR”

Evening Star, Issue 19658, 10 September 1927, Page 18

“THE PROFESSOR”

JOHN STUART BLAGKiE MAN WHO TAUGHT SCOTLAND TO LAUGH Back in the ’eighties and early ’nineties there was to bo seen as a familiar object in tho streets of Edinburgh a venerable but lively figure of a man (writes Donald Carswell, in ‘John o’ London’s 'Weekly ’). His bizarre appearance contrasted strangely with the sober correctitude of dress and deportment that the citizens of Edinburgh are wont to observe. He is a slight little man, but he carried himself with the air of a giant, swinging a stout rustic stick as if to say “ Wha daur meddle wi’ me?” He wore a sombrero of Bohemian amplitude, and over his highly-but-toned old frock coat was folded, shepherd fashion, a tartan plaid. It was an odd rig-out, but it was undeniably becoming to a very animated old gentleman with beautifully clear-cut features and long feathorly white hair that streamed out nobly in the east wind. Such was John Stuart Blackie. emeritus professor of Greek at the University of Edinburgh. ‘THE PROFESSOR.” Professor Blackie—ho was to all Scotsmen for many a year “ the Professor ” par excellence —had a position in the regard of his fellow-country-men that was quite unique. Ho was for ever crying up his own job and anathematising everybody who did not attach tho same importance to Greek that he did, yet nobody ever thought of him as a pedant. Ho was nob a bib academic. Ho always maintained that there was nothing like Greek for broadening the mind, and to prove it he himself never lost an opportunity of giving his views with great emphasis on everything that people were talking about. To that end he used his per freely, bub far more ho preferred tlie spoken word. To get on a public platform, no matter under what auspices, and rattle off some rollicking paradoxes was the great joy of his life. And the common people beard him gladly. They could always count on a hearty laugh and the impact of a marvellously vital personality. What Blackie had to say might be all non-sense--it often was—but it was at least stimulating nonsense, and always full of that abounding patriotism that willmake a Scotsman forgive anything. In his lifetime Blackie ranked as a national divinity second only to Burns. VOCATION FOR THE CHURCH.

Blackie became a professor as Ko-Ko became Lord High Executioner—“ by a set of curious chances.” Of Border extraction, he was born in Glasgow in 1810. While lie was an infant his father, a bank manager, was transferred to Aberdeen, and there he grew up. He was originally intended for the law, but a short experience of a solicitor’s office convinced him that his true vocation, if any, was for the church. So he was sent to Edinburgh to study theology. There he imbibed such extreme evangelical opinions—he was still in his ’teens—that his father deemed it advisable to fetch him hack to tho more sober atmosphere of Aberdeen.

Next he was packed off to Gottingen where he discovered, to his surprise, what real university teaching was. That and the even more startling discovery that the Scottish view of Sabbath observance is not universally held cured him of all idea of becoming a parson. A semester at Berlin and a year in Italy completed his education, tie came back to Aberdeen with a fluent command of German and Italian, a very fair knowledge of Green, some notions of general history, and a burning desire to reform Scottish university education on German lines. He announced his determination to become a professor. Unfortunately, university chairs do not offer themselves every day. John Blackie had to find an occupation. He was called to the Scottish bar, but. though his exuberant ways made him a popular figure among the young advocates in Parliament House, they did not impress solicitors, and he got no briefs. In the usual way of the briefless, ho made a modest living by his pen, writing articles for the reviews, translating Goethe, and expounding with great enthusiasm his peculiar views of the metres of the Greek poets. POLITICAL JOBBERY.

Then in 1833—seven years after his return from the Continent —ho acliieved his ambition by getting the Regius Professorship of Latin at Marischal College, Aberdeen. The chair was a new and very poor one, and Blackio’s appointment to it was a flagrant political job, due to the strong Whig interest his father was able to mobilise. But it proved a good job. Bla'ckie made reputation in his own queer, slap-dash, noisy way, and kept up a hot propaganda for the liberalising of the Scottish universities. In 1852, to the general surprise and the profound scandal .of all respectable pedagogues, the Town Council of Edinburgh elected him professor of Greek at their university. There were no further events in Blackie’s life. The long remainder of his years consisted merely of amusing incidents and a reputation. He was always busy, of course, for ii reputation of the kind ho had needs to bo kept going, and that means hard work. Ho published without ceasing pamphlets, books, and articles on university reform, Greek, politics, morals, Scottish nationality, and anything elso on which ho thought the public mind required edification, besides a vast amount of doggerel rhyme—sentimental, religious, patriotic, and facetious. A GAELIC REVIVAL. Ho toured the Highlands and most of Europe, was frequently in London, and met everybody he could there. He lectured. He sang. He even danced as King David did. In 1861 he visited Eversley and “helped Kingsley to drain n bottle of Burgundy.” In 1863, while spend'ng a holiday in Skye, he suddenly realised that Gaelic was an Aryan tongue and straightway set to work upon a Celtic revival in Scotland. _ In 1864 ho lectured at the Royal Institution on the laws of Sparta so bellicosely that an indignant Quaker protested and walked out.

Ho also breakfasted at Mr Gladstone’s, where he had an acute disagreement with a Cambridge don over

tho pronunciation of ( k being “not impertinent, only dr y and -distinctly explosive.” iB6O he published a translation oi Homer, which has merits, but is not now read. In 1867 ho met Browning, whom he considered a more agreeable being than Tennyson, and of whom some years later he records that “ he loves me like a brother.” In 1871 he wont to Berlin to witness the German triumph, wrote a sonnet on Bismarck, and sent it to the subject, who unfortunately omitted to acknowledge receipt of same. In 1872 ho collogued with Cardinal Manning and dabbled in Spiritualism, for which he was severely admonished by Carlyle. CONVERTING BRADLAUGH. In 1874 ho heard Charles Bradlaugh lecture, and so took to the man that he wrote him a long letter hoping “ that in the Socratic way I may do him some good ” —wherein ho was disappointed, though Bradlaugh was very civil about it. In 1882 he resigned his chair, and devoted all his energies to maintaining his position as a Scottish national institution. T In 1885, after service at Lyndhurst Road Congregational Church, Hampstead, ho burst into the vestry and kissed Dr Horton on both cheeks in token of his appreciation of tho sermon. In 1888, at a party at Lord Rosebery’s town house, he was instigated by Mrs Gladstone to oblige the company with ‘ The Bonnie House o’ Airlie ’ in order (so his own account says) to stop the G.O.M. from discoursing on French novels and Ropery —“ both unlovely subjects.” Blackie’s ' appearance was not so much distinguished as distinctive, and all his life he was at some pains to make it so. Tho costume already described was arrived at after a number of freakish experiments in dress in his earlier years. Ho had not always worn the plaid, but' he gravely scandalised Edinburgh propriety by wearing tartan trousers of appalling cut, which, it is alleged, nearly ruined his chances when ho was a candidate for tho chair of Greek. There were several tailors on the Edinburgh Town Council, and they could not bring themselves to vote for a man who held their craft in such open contempt. LONG-SUFFERING FRIENDS. During one period ho wore a wig of singular shape and hue which excited uproarious derision among his students. If you called on him at his house you would find him still wearing the sombrero —his eyes were weak—though the plaid and frock coat would have been exchanged for a brown dressing gown trimmed with red. This was the guise in which he worked and received his friends, who, if they did not mind exhortations, puns, guffaws, jingles, kisses, punches in the ribs, and slaps on the back, enjoyed his company immensely. „ “ The Professor died on March 2, 1895, in his eighty-sixth year, and was deeply mourned. For over a generation "ho had been an adored public figure—not in virtue of his learning (which was not very great), or his books (which- are not very good), or his opinions (which were usually wrong), but because he had the insight to see that the great danger of Victorian Scotland was that it was forgetting how to laugh. He set himself steadily to re-educate them in the divine faculty of laughter, and he succeeded. He was the Scottish Democritus.