66

THEREIN.

SIR,

YOUR readers will discover in me an old acquaintance, and one, too, who comes forward occasionally, as he trusts, for their good: I am to my countrymen what the old-fashioned brownie was to those Highland families to which he took a liking, for, on important emergencies, he made his appearance always to their advantage. Besides, as he frequently changed his shape, and showed himself in different places, so do I; for, in your Magazine, I treated to them of the improvement of our Scotch Judicatories, and the noted Entail case of Agnew of Seuchan: before that, in the New Edinburgh Review, I illustrated to them the Scotch Poor Laws, and the state and future prospects of the Landed Interest; and at still a remoter period, in the year 1816, under the signature which I have written below, I addressed them in a series of letters on the then important subjects of Corn and Money, which, being copied from one Newspaper into another, found their way into almost all the Journals of Scotland.

In those letters, Sir, I mentioned what I am; but as most people are apt to forget their friends, especially if they have been obliged to them, I must recall my history a little to their remembrance. Like the greatest part of boys about Edinburgh, in the middling ranks of life, I was an alumnus of the High School of your city. My first four years were passed there under the tuition of the stern, but accurate Cruickshanks, from whose tawse Latin "nouns, pronouns, verbs, participles, adverbs, prepositions, interjections, and conjunctions," passed into my aching and unfortunate fin

gers, just as the electrical fluid does into the body of a patient submitting to the working of the machine; and I can tell you, too, they did so with as smart sensation. "In the course of the rolls," as a writer would say, I came under the charge of Rector Adam. His merits, both as a classic and disciplinarian, are too well known to need comment; but to the last of these I can bear ample testimony, for I have frequently been made by him to ride the strongbacked cuddy, and undergo the ameliorating operation of cocking.

Oh, ye who teach the ingenuous youth of nations,

Holland, France, England, Germany, or Spain,

I pray ye flog them upon all occasions, It mends their morals-never mind the pain.

So sang Lord Byron, in an after day. But in due time I escaped from such nurture, and came to play ball in the College, instead of the High-School-Yards; yet I neglected not my studies, for, under our excellent Latin Professor Hill, I read portions of Livy, Horace, and Virgil, and the famous 10th Satire of the 4th Book of Juvenal-Omnibus in terris, &c. I could give you the whole of it, Sir, would it not fatigue your readers, but I shall spare them. We were, besides, well instructed in the niceties of synonimes, and heard also from the chair many delightful puns and jokes, most of which we recollected better than the graver disquisitions we got on Roman Antiquities; so necessary is it, or at least proper, to join the utile with the dulce. With our able Greek Professor, Dal

zell, I began with alpha, beta, gamma, &c.-went through the grammar, and a few chapters of John,-listened to the song of Anacreon, whose lyre would sound nothing but love-a most important lay to a youth of fourteen or fifteen,-got acquainted with Chryseis and Briseis, in the First Book of the Iliad,—and became quite satisfied that Achilles was the greatest hero, Agamemnon the greatest general, and Homer the greatest poet that ever existed; and all of them far superior to what degenerated human nature can possibly produce in these puny modern times.

These, Sir, were the bounds of my classical instruction. But I threw not my learning at my heels, as many do, when no longer subject to the ferula, or under the regulations of

the hen-class for what was so well driven into my tail, has never escaped from my head; and I have kept up my acquaintance with the ancients and their languages more than almost any man does who has bustled so much in the world as you will see in the sequel that I have done. I have been anxious to tell you these things, for, had they been otherwise, there would have been not a little presumption in my now addressing you on this topic. So far as to my bookish education-my knowledge of accounts I got from my worthy writing-master Allan Masterton, whose name will never die, as it stands in the imperishable verses of my old friend Burns; he having been one of the social three who joined in drinking the brewing of Willy Nicol's peck o' maut. That information, however, was but very limited; it being then generally the idea, that the knowledge of the quantity of a few Latin words, or the translation of a few ancient verses, which would likely be never recited more, was far more important to a lad setting out in the modern world, than Practice, Tare and Tret, and the science of Double Entry. This notable fancy was founded on the dictum of an eminent pedagogue who wielded the split-leather-thong in the town of Dunse for forty years, and who was wont to say, with not a little selfgratulation on his own success,"As for a young fellow, rot him, (which was a favourite phrase of

VOL. XV.

the old gentleman's) cram him well with Latin and Greek, and pack him off to the West Indies, and there will be no fear of him."

Before coming to Edinburgh, I had been taught penna, regnum, and even amo, in that place. My father was a friend of this schoolmaster; and it was on his maxim, though reared, as I afterwards was, in the great city, that I was educated in the manner I have described, and sent off to Jamaica_ to reap the fruits of my pursuits. On my arrival there, I was appointed a book-keeper; and I began to fear that my friends had mistaken the matter a little, for it did seem to me that less Latin, and more of debtor and creditor, might have been better for me. There ap

peared, however, no help for it then; but I still hoped, like Gil Blas, when he rode his uncle's mule to Madrid, that I would bring my Latin and Greek to good account. You have probably heard, Sir, of a scramble in the West Indies,-something like what boys occasionally make when they come huzzaing out of durance vile, after the hour of dismissal has struck; but the West-India one was a far more serious thing. Importation of negroes into our colonies is now over, but it was not so then; and when a cargo of living human flesh was brought in by our traders, we white men scrambled, as we called it, to lay hold of and buy it. We rushed all at the same time on the poor creatures, who were generally in the utmost terror, for they had no doubt but we were to devour them alive; such having been the fate which their insidious native priests in their own country had told them awaited them. Now, I being a stout young fellow, my master permitted me to try my hand at one of those marts, and part of my purchase I found to be a male and a female negro from the northern part of Africa. "'Tis all well," thought I. "The Hellenes and the Pelasgi, the original Grecian tribes, came from thereabouts, and in all probability these people can speak Greek." I therefore addressed the girl, (and a smart young huzzy she was,) out of the Anacreon, with thelo, thelo phelesai; but gallant though my speech was, she stared at me in perfect ignorance. To the

Tt

negro fellow I spoke from my acquaintance, the First Book of Homer, but soon found, not a little to my surprise, that he knew nothing of the matter. Again it occurred to me-Of what use is all my Greek to me?I then gave him a touch of Latin, quoting extensively from Terence, because he was an African, and had been a slave; but they answered me with their own gibberish, which I began gravely to suspect was just as good as my own.

But to proceed with my narrative. Strange is the perversion of language! The term book-keeper, which designated my office, does not, in the colonies, mean, as one would suppose, a person who keeps books, but one who drives negroes. With a long whip, I often conjugated the Greek verb tupto over the back and shoulders of poor blacky,-a practice which, I am happy to learn, is greatly diminished now; for that harshness which so frequently exist ed towards the slaves is very much over. As we gentlemen of the lash, however, were not then under such salutary restraint, I was resolved that my education should not be alto gether thrown away; besides, I recollected the excellent lessons of flogging, which, to my cost, I had received in my youth, though I could not practise it in the same manner as I was wont to see it done, having no such aid as our Rector had from the patient and excellent cuddy.

It is needless here to recite all my plantation life. Suffice it to say, that I thrived like a green-bay tree planted by a river-made much sugarrealized my property-and came home, undevoured by musquitoes, and in tolerably good health, not withstanding all my broiling. My fortune, however, was moderate, but I was contentus parvo, (you see, Sir, I have not forgot all my Latin even yet.) I bought a neat house and garden in my native village, and married a wife, an honest man's daughter in the neighbourhood, by whom I have two sons, Jock and Tom, whom, as Roderick Random said of his family, I devoutly believe to be my own. My days are spent in walking about, and reading a little, and my evenings frequently in playing a hit at backgammon, or a rubber at whist, with

a few good-natured, social neighbours, who are well pleased to come in to me, as we generally have a welsh rabbit, and a jug or two of warm toddy, made from some of the best rum that ever came from the West Indies, and which I had caused to be manufactured for my own use. Sir, should you happen to come our way, we will be most happy to see you, and you shall taste it.

In my former letters, I mentioned a little club which we have. It consists of the minister, the schoolmaster, the exciseman, the doctor, and an extensive farmer or two, living within a mile; and gash, sensible fellows they are, for being self-educated, they have more knowledge than learning. We have also two other persons, one of whom was a merchant, and the other an advocate; but who having passed through the warfare of life, have now hung up their armour, and retired. We meet at the sign of the Harrow, in honour of agriculture; and patriotically moisten our clay with ale and whiskypunch for the good of the revenue, unless when I occasionally present the party with a few gallons of my excellent Jamaica.

The subjects of our cracks, Sir, are all the current topics of the day, to which we are led by our daily perusal of the newspapers, and of your Magazine; and frequently we have sent to us any of the new pamphlets which seem the most interesting. Among these, we have found Ă Letter to the Patrons of the High School, and the Inhabitants of Edinburgh, on the Abuse of Classical Education; and on the Formation of a National School, adapted to the spirit of the age, the wants of Scotchmen, and the fair claims of other branches of education; by Peter Reid, M.D." That Letter, with all that we see going forward on the subject, has made these matters very much our topic of late, and sundry most important questions on it have been started amongst us; as, 1st, What is the precise value and worth of classical learning as we have it? 2d, While threescore-and-ten, or, at most, four-score years, do" sum up" the life of man, (though by far the greatest part of the human race tumble through the trap-door long ere they reach such ad

vanced age,)-is it not preposterous to spend no less than seven or eight of these few fleeting years of the lives of our fine boys, in hammering, or rather thrashing into them a knowledge (and that a very imperfect one) of a dead language or two? 3dly, Suppose that such knowledge is worth the having, is it not possible to communicate it to our youngsters in a far shorter time? Sir, every thing else has increased in rapidity; and we ask, why should not this do so too? You can now reach Glasgow, from Edinburgh, in five hours, instead of a whole livelong day. You steam it now from Leith to London in two days, instead of sailing it in twenty, which was the custom forty or fifty years ago. As to the land journey there, the terms of the old song of Igo and Ago are now verified, for "to go to London's but a walk," it being a very different kind of expedition indeed, by the

daily mail, from one by the lumbering coach and six, which of old was only occasionlly dragged to the metropolis in several weeks' travel, by the same set of horses, from some hostelry or change-house in the Grassmarket, at which it was always advertised, that Mr John, or Mr Thomas Such-a-thing the coachman might be talked with. Now, while all these things are so, we inquire, why is the classical curriculum the only machine which now-a-days travels slowly?

Sir, all these questions we have discussed; and on setting out, it was my intention to have told you our reasonings on them both pro and con, and to have tried my hand on a review of Dr Reid's pamphlet; but my room is out, and I must delay them till a future letter. I am, in the meantime, Sir,

Your obedient servant,

ONE day I wander'd leisurely along

The bridges, sadly musing on the pastOn her for whom I sung a pretty song, Who left me like a rainbow in the blast

A lovely rainbow, which the boys pursue, And mourn to see it vanish from their view.

Is there a cure for sorrow? Some folks toil,

And sweat it out, like sickness, from the veins ;

Another seeks the wine-cup to beguile

His heart to happiness-and fires his brains;

While others and by far the wisest they

Bow'd down before the source of comfort, pray.

But, reader, I nor toil'd, nor drank, nor pray'd,

Though I have done, and yet can do them all;

But, in a novel manner, I essay'd

To flee from Sorrow, with her midnight.

pall,

A PLAIN MAN.

And so do all the labourers of thy kindEven Ramsay, Percy, Cromek, Diarmid, Galt;

And nameless thousands, who seem much inclin'd

To rise to fame-that is to say, exalt Themselves on borrow'd pinions, like the jay

In peacock plumes, that soon were torn

away.

I read the Signs-ay, and with higher pleasure

Than one, a blockhead border laird, who got

A dictionary, which he thought a trea

sure;

And when he boldly to the finis fought, Folks asked him if 'twas good? he made reply,

"The beuk is weel enough, but something dry."

I read the Signs-each large and lovely word,

Which, like most tombstones, generally tells lies;

For every shop's the cheapest-most absurd,

When, "the superlative (the teacher cries)

Admits of no comparison;" but grammars The merchants study less than auctionhammers.

Here's the Hat-manufacturer, a trade
Most profitable, as I understand;
And pleasant too, for it requires no aid
From intellect, if people have a hand,
Or rather two, from sheep to pluck the
wool,

And place it on the cranium of a fool. There's the Silk-mercer, with his crape and gauze,

And all those baubles ladies go from
home in;

Effeminate profession for the paws
Of man! O, give the business up to

A fellow's flinty heart, for more than half

This wicked world adore a golden calf.

Here is the Bookseller, the man of sheets, Not winding ones, for shrouding lifeless limbs ;

Not bridal ones, where Love with Pleasure meets;

But paper ones of tales, and plays, and

hymns: Deuce take their venders! they are sometimes greedy,

And authors, Heaven protect them! often needy.

Here is the Teacher-all success to them
Who "teach the young idea how to
shoot,"-
Not hares or grouse, or any sort of game,
For this is meaning that would never

suit

The tender-hearted Thomson; he but sings In metaphors, because they're glaring things.

There's the Apothecary-mercy on us!

Who saps our constitution and repairs;