CHAPTER VII
THE COLERIDGE PLAGIARISM—MISCELLANEOUS LITERARY WORK
The story of the so-called Coleridge plagiarism is an old one now, but it is one which roused much feeling at the time, and likewise one on which there is considerable division of opinion even in the present day. Into this controversy Ferrier plunged by writing a formidable indictment of Coleridge's position in Blackwood's Magazine for March of 1840.
When Ferrier took up the cudgels the matter stood thus. In the earlier quarter of the century German Philosophy was coming, or rather had already come, more or less into vogue in England; and as the German language was not largely read, and yet people were vaguely interested, though in what they hardly knew, they welcomed an appreciative interpreter of that philosophy, and an original writer on similar lines, in one whose reputation was esteemed so highly as that of Coleridge. Coleridge in this matter, indeed, occupied a position which was unique; for the treasures of German poetry and prose had not as yet been fully opened up, and he was held to possess the means of doing this in a quite exceptional degree. The works of Schiller, Goethe, and the other poets came to the world—and to Coleridge with the rest—as a sort of revelation. But the poet in his own mind was nothing if not a philosopher—a kind of seer amongst men, speculating, somewhat vaguely it might be, on matters of transcendental import—and in Schelling he thought he had discovered a kindred spirit; in his writings he believed he had found the Idealism for which he had so long been seeking in Böhme, Fox, and the other mystics—a creed which, though pantheistic in its essence, yet fulfilled the condition of being both orthodox and Trinitarian in its form. This, for many reasons, was a creed presenting many attractions to the younger men of the day, especially when set forth with a certain literary flavour. We have Carlyle's immortal picture of how it influenced John Sterling and his friends.
Coleridge's Biographia Literaria, in which the principal so-called Schelling plagiarisms are contained, was published in 1817, but it was not for a considerable time after that that the plagiarisms were discovered, or at least taken notice of. The first serious indictment came from no less an authority than De Quincey, whose interest in philosophical matters was as great as Coleridge's, and who published his views in an appreciative but gossipy article in Tait's Magazine of September 1834. To commence with, he took up the question of the 'Hymn to Chamouni'; but since, in this matter, Coleridge afterwards admitted his indebtedness to a German poetess, Frederica Brun, it does not seem an important one. Nor, indeed, does De Quincey pretend to take exception to certain expressions in Coleridge's 'France' which are evidently borrowed from Milton, or to regard them as indicating more than a peculiar omission of quotation marks. But the really serious matter, one for which De Quincey cannot by any means account, is that in the Biographia Literaria there occurs a dissertation on the doctrine of Knowing and Being which is an exact translation from an essay written by Schelling. De Quincey cannot indeed explain away the mystery, but he makes the best of it, pleading excuses such as we often hear adduced in cases of 'kleptomania' when they occur amongst the well-to-do, or so-called higher classes—e.g., the evident fact that there was no necessity so to steal, no motive for stealing, even though the theft had evidently been committed. Still, though the defence may be ingenious, and though we may go so far as to acknowledge that Coleridge had sufficient originality of mind to weave out theories of his own without borrowing from others, it must be confessed that under the aggravated circumstances the argument falls somewhat flat; and this was the impression made on many minds even at the time. The ball once set rolling, the dispute went on, and the next important incident was an article by Julius Hare in the British Magazine of January 1835. This is a hot defence of the so-called 'Christian' philosopher, who is said to be influencing the best and most promising young men of the day, as against the assault of the 'English Opium-Eater'—'that ill-boding alias of evil record.' As to De Quincey's somewhat unkind but entertaining stories, there is some reason in Hare's objections, seeing that they were told of one to whom the writer owned himself indebted. But when Hare tackles the plagiarisms themselves, and endeavours to defend them, his task is harder. Coleridge had indeed stated that his ideas were thought out and matured before he had seen a page of Schelling; but at the same time, in an earlier portion of his work, he made a somewhat ambiguous reference to his indebtedness to the German philosopher, and deprecated his being accused of intentioned plagiarism from his writings. Of course it may be said that a thief does not draw attention to the goods from which he has stolen, but yet even Hare acknowledges that it is hard to understand how half a dozen pages (we now know that it really exceeded thirty) should have been bodily transferred from one work to another, and suggests that the most probable solution is that Coleridge had a practice of keeping notebooks for his thoughts, mingled with extracts from what he had been reading at the time, and that he thus became confused between the two.
At this point Ferrier steps in and takes the whole matter under review—a matter which he looked upon as serious (perhaps more serious than we should now consider it) from a national as well as an individual point of view. He held that the reputation of his country was at stake, as well as that of a single philosophic thinker, and that neither De Quincey nor Hare had gone into the matter with sufficient care or knowledge, or ascertained how large it really was. It was undoubtedly the case that Coleridge's reputation in philosophic matters—and in these days that reputation was not small—was derived from what he had purloined from the writings of a German youth, and whatever the poet's claim on our regard on other scores may be, it was certainly due to Schelling that the debt should be acknowledged. As far as the Biographia Literaria is concerned, the facts are plain. Coleridge makes certain general acknowledgments of indebtedness to Schelling to begin with. He acknowledges that there may be found in his works an identity of thought or phrase with Schelling's, and allows him to be the founder of the philosophy of nature; but he claims at the same time the honour of making that philosophy intelligible to his fellow-countrymen, and even of thinking it out beforehand. Having said so much, there follow pages together—sometimes as many as six or eight on end—which are virtually copied verbatim from Schelling, though with occasional interpolations of the so-called author here and there. Ferrier has examined the whole matter most minutely, and made a long list of the more flagrant cases of copying: thirty-one pages, he points out, are faithfully transcribed, partially or wholly, from Schelling's works alone, without allowing for what the author admits to be translated in part from a 'contemporary writer of the Continent.' And Schelling was not the only sufferer, nor was it only in the region of metaphysics that the thefts were made. The substratum of a whole chapter of the Biographia Literaria is, Ferrier discovered, taken from another author named Maasz, and Coleridge's lecture 'On Poesy or Art' is closely copied and largely translated from Schelling's 'Discourse upon the Relations in which the Plastic Arts stand to Nature.' This was a blow indeed to those who had boasted of the profundity of Coleridge's views on art; but his poetry surely remained intact. But no, 'Verses exemplifying the Homeric Metre' are found to be—unacknowledged—a translation from Schiller; and yet worse, because less likely to be discovered, the lines written 'To a Cataract' have the same metre, language, and thought as certain verses by Count von Stolberg, which were shown to Ferrier by a friend.
The whole matter is a very strange one and not easy to explain. Of course the references to Schelling's labours in similar lines are there, and may in a sense disarm our criticism. But then, unfortunately, there also are the statements that the ideas had been matured in Coleridge's mind before he had seen a single line of Schelling's work, and he clearly gives us to understand that he had toiled out the system for himself, and that it was the 'offspring of his own spirit.' It is this overmuch protesting that makes us, like Ferrier, disposed to take the darkest view of the affair: anything that can be said in Coleridge's defence is found in the manner in which it was taken by the one who had most right to feel aggrieved. In the life of Jowett,[10] recently published, there is an interesting account of Schelling's views on Coleridge, taken from a conversation, notes of which were made by the late Sir Alexander Grant, Ferrier's son-in-law, when still an undergraduate. Jowett, while at Berlin, had, it appears, seen Schelling, and talked to him of the plagiarisms. He took the matter, Jowett states, good-naturedly, thought Coleridge to have been attacked unfairly, and even went so far as to assert that he had expressed many things better than he could have done himself—certainly a very generous acknowledgment. Probably the most charitable construction we can put on Coleridge's act is that which Jowett himself advances in saying that the poet is not to be looked upon or judged as an ordinary man would be, seeing that often enough he hardly could be said to have been responsible for his actions; while his egotism, which was extreme, may have likewise led him—it may be almost unconsciously—into acts of doubtful honesty. But evidently, in spite of Ferrier's work, Jowett, and possibly even Schelling himself, had no idea of the extent to which the plagiarisms extended. There would, of course, have been comparatively little harm in Coleridge's action had he been content to borrow materials which he was about to work up in his own way, or to do what his biographer Gillman says is done by the 'bee which flies from flower to flower in quest of food,' but which 'digests and elaborates' that food by its native power. Unfortunately, the more we read Coleridge's philosophic writings, the more we feel constrained to agree with Ferrier that the matter is not digested as Gillman suggests, but taken possession of in its ready-made condition. The parts which he adds do not assist in throwing light on what precedes, but are evidently padding of a somewhat commonplace and superficial kind. We can only say, like Jowett, that the manner of his life may have injured Coleridge's moral sense, and that his desire to pose as a philosopher who should yet be a so-called 'Christian' may have led him to encroach upon the spheres of others, instead of keeping to those in which he could hold his own unchallenged.
A labour of love with Ferrier, on very different lines than the above, was to bring out in five volumes the works of his father-in-law, John Wilson, 'Christopher North,' including the Noctes Ambrosianæ, and his Essays and Papers contributed to Blackwood. This was published in 1856, but must, of course, have meant a considerable amount of work to the editor for some time previously. One of the most interesting parts of the work is Ferrier's preface to the famous 'Chaldee Manuscript,' in vol. iv. The story of the 'Chaldee MS.' is now a matter of history, fully recorded in the recently published records of the famous house of Blackwood. In 1817 the Whigs ruled in matters literary, mainly through the instrumentality of the Edinburgh Review, then in its heyday of fame. A reaction, however, set in, and the change was inaugurated by the publication of the so-called 'Chaldee MS.,' a wild extravaganza, or jeu d'esprit, hitting off the foibles of Whiggism, under the guise of an allegory describing the origin and rise of Blackwood's Magazine, the rival which had risen up in opposition to the Review, and the discomfiture of another journal carried on under the auspices of Constable. It was in the seventh number of Blackwood that the satire appeared—that is, the first number of Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine as distinguished from the Edinburgh Monthly Magazine, published from Blackwood's office to begin with, but on comparatively mild and inoffensive lines. One may imagine the effect of this Tory outburst on the society of Edinburgh. All the literati of the town were involved: Sir Walter Scott himself, Mackenzie, Sir David Brewster, Sir William Hamilton, Professor Jamieson, Tytler, Playfair, and many others, some of whom emerged but seldom from the retirement of private life. Nowadays it would be difficult, if not impossible, to identify the different characters, were it not for the assistance of Professor Ferrier's marginal notes; but in those days they were no doubt recognisable enough. Of course the magazine went like wildfire; but the ludicrous description in semi-biblical language of individuals with absurd allegorical appendages, constituted, as Ferrier acknowledges, an offence against propriety which could not be defended, even though no real malevolence might be signified. Whether Ferrier was justified in republishing the Noctes, in so far as they could be identified with Wilson, has been disputed; but, as the publisher, Major Blackwood, points out, the time was past for anyone to be hurt by the personalities which they contained, and the only harm the republication could inflict was upon the Noctes themselves. The conception of the 'Chaldee Manuscript,' he tells us, was in the first part due to Hogg; and Wilson and Lockhart were held responsible for the last. There is a tradition, too, though Ferrier does not mention it, that Hamilton was one of the party in Mr. Wilson's house (53 Queen Street) where the skit was said to have been concocted, and that he even contributed to it a verse. This may have been the case, as Wilson and Lockhart were his intimate friends; but it seems strange to think of so thoroughgoing a Whig being found mixed up in such a plot, and with such companions.
Though it is easy to understand that Ferrier felt the editing of his father-in-law and uncle's work was a duty which it was incumbent upon him to perform, one cannot help surmising that it may have been a less congenial task to him than many others. There was little in common between the two men, both distinguished in their way, and Wilson's humour and poetic fancy, however bright and vivid, was not of the sort that would appeal most to Ferrier. A few years before his death Ferrier gave up the project he had in view of writing Wilson's life, partly in despair of setting forth his talents as he felt they should be set forth, and partly from the lack of material to work from. He says, in a letter written at the time, 'It would do no good to talk in general terms of his wonderful powers, of his genius being greater (as in some sense it was) than that of any of his contemporaries—greater, too, than any of his publications show. The public would require other evidences of this beyond one's mere word—something might have been done had some of us Boswellized him judiciously, but this having been omitted, I do not see how it is possible to do him justice.' The book was eventually undertaken, and successfully accomplished, by Wilson's daughter, Mrs. Gordon.
We have spoken of Ferrier's interest in German literature; so early as 1839 he published a translation of Pietro d'Abano by Ludwig Tieck, one of the inner circle of the so-called Romantic School to which the Schlegels and Novalis also belonged—the school which opposed itself to the eighteenth-century enlightenment, making its cry the return to nature, and demanding with Fichte that a work of art should be a 'free product of the inner consciousness.' Another specimen of Ferrier's translating powers is given in a rendering from Deinhardstein's Bild der Danæ, a love story in which Salvator Rosa figures. This appeared in Blackwood of September 1841, and an extract from it is published in the Remains.
But one of the earliest and most remarkable of Ferrier's literary criticisms in Blackwood's Magazine was an anonymous article on the various translations of Goethe's Faust published in 1840. We have seen that Ferrier had made a special study of the writings of Schiller and Goethe, and that his work had been much appreciated both by Lytton and De Quincey. In this article the writer takes seven different renderings of the drama, carefully analyses them, points out their deficiencies, and even adventures on the difficult task, for a critic, of himself translating one or two pages. Now that German is so widely read in England, we are all too well aware of the insufficiency of any translation of Faust to regard even the best in any other light than as a makeshift. But then things were different, and it was possible that wrong impressions of the original might be conveyed by inadequate translations. Ferrier's point was that Goethe, while writing in rhyme and in exquisitely poetical language, managed at the same time to find words such as might really be used by ordinary mortals; but the translators, in endeavouring rightly enough to keep to the rhyming form, entirely fail in their endeavour after the same end. He considers that though in prose we may deviate from the ordinary proprieties of language, we may not do so in rhyming poetry; for though the poet has to describe the thought and passion of real men in the language of real life, his dialect must at the same time be taken out of the category of ordinary discourse because of the use of rhyme; and he is therefore called upon as far as possible to remove this bar, and reconcile us to the peculiarity of his style by the simplicity of his language; otherwise all illusion will be at an end. Rhymes brought together by force can succeed in giving us no pleasure; the writer should possess the power of mastering his material and compelling it to serve his ends.
Ferrier's speculative instincts naturally led him to discuss the often-discussed motive of the play. Is it so, as Coleridge says, that the love of knowledge for itself could not bring about the evil consequences depicted in the character of Faust, but only the love of knowledge for some base purpose? Ferrier replies, No, the love of knowledge as an end in itself would people the world with Fausts. 'Such a love of knowledge exercises itself in speculation merely, and not in action; and if the experiences of purely speculative men were gathered, we think that most of them would be found to confess, bitterly confess, that indulgence in an abstract reflective thinking (whatever effect it may have ultimately upon their nobler genius, supposing them to have one) in the meantime absolutely kills, or appears to kill, all the minor faculties of the soul—all the lesser genial powers, upon the exercise of which the greater part of human happiness depends. They would own, not without remorse, that pure speculation—that is, knowledge pursued for itself alone—has often been tasted by them to be, as Coleridge elsewhere says, 'the bitterest and rottenest part of the core of the fruit of the forbidden tree.' This seems a strange confession for a thinker reputed so abstract as Ferrier, but of course the truth of what he says is evident. Knowledge regarded as an end in itself might have brought Faust into his troubles, it is true, and he might likewise have found himself ready to rush into what he conceives to be the opposite extreme; but a greater philosopher than Ferrier has said that though 'knowledge brought about the Fall, it also contains the principle of Redemption,' and we take this to signify that we must look at knowledge as a necessary element in the culture and education of an individual or a people, which, though it carries trouble in its wake, does not leave us in our distress, but brings along with it the principle of healing, or is the 'healer of itself.'
Soon after the above, Ferrier contributes to the same journal an article entitled 'The Tittle-Tattle of a Philosopher,' or an account of the 'Journey through Life' of Professor Krug of Leipzig. Krug appears to have been a sort of Admirable Crichton amongst philosophers, to whom no subject came amiss, and who was ready to take his part in every sort of philosophical discussion. By Hegel and the idealist school he is somewhat contemptuously referred to as one of that class of writers of whom it is said 'Ils se sont battus les flancs pour être de grands hommes.' Anyhow, his recollections are at least amusing, if not philosophically edifying.
A review of the poems of Coventry Patmore a few years later is a very different production. It carries us back to the old days of Blackwood, when calm judgment was not so much an object as strength of expression, withering criticism, and biting sarcasm. Ferrier no doubt believed it would be well for literature to turn back to the old days of the knout; but few, we fancy, will agree with him, even if they suffer for so differing by permitting certain trashy publications to see the light. Too often, unfortunately, the knout, when it is applied, arrives on shoulders that are innocent. Of course Ferrier believed that the worst prognostications of a quarter of a century before were now being realised by the application not being persevered in; but as to this particular piece of criticism, whatever our opinion of Patmore's poetic powers may be, surely the writer was unreasonably severe; surely the work does not deserve to be dealt with in such unmeasured terms of opprobrium. It is refreshing to turn to an appreciative, if also somewhat critical review of the poems of Elizabeth Barrett, published in the same year, 1844, part of which has been republished in the Remains. In this article Ferrier urges once more the point on which he continually insists—the adoption of a direct simplicity of style: one which goes straight to the point, or, as he puts it, which is felt to 'get through business.' Excepting certain criticism on the score of style and phraseology, however, Ferrier is all praise of the high degree of poetic merit which the writings revealed—merit which he must have been amongst the first to discover and make known.
The last of Ferrier's work for the magazine in which he had so often written, was a series of articles on the New Readings from Shakespeare, published in 1853. These articles were in the main a criticism of Mr. Payne Collier's 'Notes and Emendations' to the Text of Shakespeare's 'Plays' from early MS. corrections which he had discovered in a copy of the folio 1632. Ferrier, who was a thorough Shakespeare student, and whose appreciation of Shakespeare is often spoken of by those who knew him, had no faith in the authenticity of the new readings, though he thinks they have a certain interest as matter of curiosity. He goes through the plays and the alterations made in them seriatim, and comes to the conclusion that in most cases they have little value. In fact, he proceeds so far as to say that they have opened his eyes to 'a depth of purity and correctness in the received text of Shakespeare' of which he had no suspicion—a satisfactory conclusion to the ordinary reader.
Besides his work for Blackwood, Ferrier was in the habit of contributing articles to the Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography on the various philosophers. Two of these, the biographies of Schelling and Hegel, are printed in the Remains, but besides these he wrote on Adam Smith, Swift, Schiller, etc., and occasionally utilised the articles in his lectures.
On yet another line Ferrier wrote a pamphlet in 1848, entitled Observations on Church and State, suggested by the Duke of Argyll's essay on the Ecclesiastical History of Scotland. This pamphlet aims at proving that the Assembly of the Church is really, as the Duke argues, not merely an ecclesiastical, but a national council, or, as Ferrier terms it, the 'second and junior of the Scottish Houses of Parliament.' Being therefore amenable to no other earthly power, it was justified in opposing the decrees of the Court of Session; though, however, the Free Church ministers were right in defending their constitutional privileges, Ferrier holds that they were wrong in doing so as the 'Church' in opposition to the 'State,' and that this brought upon them their discomfiture. They should not, in his view, have acknowledged that the Church's property could be forfeit to the State, and consequently should not have voluntarily resigned their livings. The pamphlet shows considerable interest in the controversy raging so vehemently at the time.
In St. Andrews there was no social meeting at which Ferrier was not a welcome guest. When popular lectures, then coming into vogue, were instituted in the town, Ferrier was called upon to deliver one of the series, the subject chosen being 'Our Contemporary Poetical Literature.' He says in a letter: 'I am in perfect agony in quest of something to say about "Our Contemporary Poets" in the Town Hall here on Friday. I must pump up something, being committed like an ass to that subject, but devil a thing will come. I wish Aytoun would come over and plead their cause.' However, in spite of fears, the lecture appears to have been a success: it was an eloquent appeal on behalf of poetry as an invaluable educational factor and agent in carrying forward the work of human civilisation, and an appreciation of the work of Tennyson, Macaulay, Aytoun, and Lytton. In the same year, but a few months later, Ferrier was asked to deliver the opening address of the Edinburgh Philosophical Institution. This Institution has for long been the means of bringing celebrities from all parts of the country to lecture before an Edinburgh audience, and its origin and conception was largely due to Professor Wilson, Ferrier's father-in-law, who was in the habit of opening the session with an introductory address. His health no longer permitting this to be done, the directors requested Ferrier to take his place. The address was on purely general topics, dealing mainly with the objects of the Institution, then somewhat of a novelty. He concluded: 'Labour is the lot of man. No pleasure can surpass the satisfaction which a man feels in the efficient discharge of the active duties of his calling. But it is equally true that every professional occupation, from the highest to the lowest, requires to be counterpoised and alleviated by pursuits of a more liberal order than itself. Without these the best faculties of our souls must sink down into an ignoble torpor, and human intercourse be shorn of its highest enjoyments, and its brightest blessings.' This is characteristic of Ferrier's view of life. One-sidedness was his particular abhorrence, and if he could in any measure impress its evil upon those whose daily business was apt to engross their attention, to the detriment of the higher spheres of thinking, he was glad at least to make the attempt.
CHAPTER VIII
PROFESSORIAL LIFE
The St. Andrews University has the reputation of being given to strife, and never being thoroughly at rest unless it has at least one law-plea in operation before the Court of Session in Edinburgh, or an appeal before the House of Lords in London. In a small town, and more especially in a small University town, there is of course unlimited opportunity for discussing every matter of interest, and battles are fought and won before our very doors—battles often just as interesting as those of the great world outside, and more engrossing because in them we probably play the part of active participators, instead of being simple spectators from outside. Of this time Sheriff Smith, however, writes: 'Never was the University set more social, and less given to strife than in Ferrier's day. Grander feats I have often seen elsewhere, but brighter or more intellectual talk, ranging from the playful to the profound, never have I heard anywhere.' In this respect it contrasts with the more self-conscious and less natural social gatherings of the neighbouring city of Edinburgh, whose stiffness and formality was unknown to the smaller town. The company, without passing beyond University bounds, was excellent. There was Tulloch at St. Mary's, still a young man at his prime, and a warm friend of Ferrier's in spite of the traditional decree that St. Mary's dealings with the other College should be as few as might be; there was Shairp, afterwards Professor of Poetry in Oxford, and always a delightful and inspiring companion; in the Chair of Logic there was Professor Spalding, whose ill-health alone prevented him from sharing largely in the social life; and he was succeeded by Professor Veitch, afterwards of Glasgow, whose appreciation of Ferrier was keen, and with whom Ferrier had so much intercourse of a mutually enjoyable sort. Then there was Professor Sellar, a staunch friend and true, and likewise Sir David Brewster, the veteran man of science, whom Scotland delights to honour. When Brewster resigned the Principalship of the United College in 1859, Ferrier was pressed to become a candidate for the post, and Brewster himself promised his support, and urged Ferrier's claims; but there were difficulties in the way, and his place was filled by another follower of science, Principal Forbes.
Ferrier's students are now, of course, dispersed abroad far and wide. One of their number, Sheriff Campbell Smith of Dundee, writes of them as follows:—'His old students are scattered everywhere—through all countries, professions, and climates. To many of them the world of faith and action has become more narrow and less ideal than it seemed when they sat listening to his lofty and eloquent speculations in the little old classroom among earnest young faces that are no longer young, and nearly all grown dim to memory; but to none of them can there be any feeling regarding him alien to respect and affection, while to many there will remain the conviction that he was for them and their experience the first impersonation of living literature, whose lectures, set off by his thrilling voice, slight interesting burr, and solemn pauses, and holding in solution profound original thought and subtle critical suggestions, were a sort of revelation, opening up new worlds, and shedding a flood of new light upon the old familiar world of thought and knowledge in which genius alone could see and disclose wonders.' And this sometime student tells how in passages from the standard poets undetected meanings were discovered, and new light was thrown upon the subject of his talk by quotations from the classics, from Milton and Byron as well as from his favourite Horace. His eloquence, he tells us, might not be so strong and overwhelming as that of Chalmers, but it was more fine, subtle, and poetical in its affinities, revealing thought more splendid and transcendental. 'In person and manner Professor Ferrier was the very ideal of a Professor and a gentleman. Nature had made him in the body what he strove after in spirit. His features were cast in the finest classic mould, and were faultlessly perfect, as was also his tall thin person,—from the finely formed head, thickly covered with black hair, which the last ten years turned into iron-grey, to the noticeably handsome foot…. A human being less under the influence of low or selfish motives could not be conceived in this mercenary anti-ideal age. If he made mistakes, they were due to his living in an ideal world, and not to either malice or guile, both of which were entirely foreign to his nature.'[11] And yet there was nothing of the Puritan about the Professor's nature. There are celebrations in St. Andrews in commemoration of a certain damsel, Kate Kennedy by name, which are characterised by demonstrations of a somewhat noisy order. Some of the Professors denounced this institution and demanded its abolition. But Ferrier had too much sense of humour to do this; he did not rebuke the lads for the exuberance of their spirits, but by his calm dignity contrived to keep them within due bounds.
A picture of Ferrier was painted about a year before his death by Sir John Watson Gordon, and it may still be seen in the University Hall beside the other men of learning who have adorned their University. It was painted for his friends and former students, but though a fairly accurate likeness, it is said not to have conveyed to others the keen, intellectual look so characteristic of the face. It was the nameless charm—charm of manner and personality—that drew Ferrier's students so forcibly towards him. As his colleague, Principal Tulloch, said in a lecture after his death: 'There was a buoyant and graceful charm in all he did—a perfect sympathy, cordiality, and frankness which won the hearts of his students as of all who sought his intellectual companionship. Maintaining the dignity of his position with easy indifference, he could descend to the most free and affectionate intercourse; make his students as it were parties with him in his discussions, and, while guiding them with a master hand, awaken at the same time their own activities of thought as fellow-workers with himself. There was nothing, I am sure, more valuable in his teaching than this—nothing for which his students will longer remember it with gratitude. No man could be more free from the small vanity of making disciples. He loved speculation too dearly for itself—he prized too highly the sacred right of reason, to wish any man or any student merely to adopt his system or repeat his thought. Not to manufacture thought for others, but to excite thought in others; to stimulate the powers of inquiry, and brace all the higher functions of the intellect, was his great aim. He might be comparatively careless, therefore, of the small process of drilling, and minute labour of correction. These, indeed, he greatly valued in their own place. But he felt that his strength lay in a different direction—in the intellectual impulse which his own thinking, in its life, its zealous and clear open candour, was capable of imparting.'
Ferrier was not, perhaps, naturally endowed with any special capacity for business, but the business that fell to him as a member of the Senatus Academicus was performed with the greatest care and zeal. With the movement for women's University education, which has always been to the front in St. Andrews, he was sympathetic, although it was not a matter in which he played any special part. 'No one,' it was said, 'had clearer perceptions or a cooler and fairer judgment in any matter which seemed to him of importance.' Principal Tulloch tells how on one occasion in particular, where the interests of the University were at stake, his clear sense and vigilance carried it through its troubles. His loyalty to St. Andrews at all times was indeed unquestioned. It is possible that had he made it his endeavour to devote more interest to practical affairs outside the University limits, it might have been better for himself. There may, perhaps, be truth in the saying that metaphysics is apt to have an enervating effect upon the moral senses, or at least upon the practical activities, and to take from men's usefulness in the ordinary affairs of life; but one can hardly realise Ferrier other than he was, a student whose whole interests were devoted to the philosophy he had espoused, and who loved to deal with the fundamental questions that remained beneath all action and all thought, rather than with those more concrete; and the former lay in a region purely speculative. Such as he was, he never failed to preserve the most perfect order in his class, and to do what was required of him with praiseworthy accuracy and minute attention to details.
'Life in his study,' says Principal Tulloch, 'was Professor Ferrier's characteristic life. There have been, I daresay, even in our time, harder students than he was; but there could scarcely be anyone who was more habitually a student, who lived more amongst books, and took more special and constant delight in intercourse with them. In his very extensive but choice library he knew every book by head-mark, as he would say, and could lay his hands upon the desired volume at once. It was a great pleasure to him to bring to the light from an obscure corner some comparatively unknown English speculator of whom the University library knew nothing.'
We are often told how he would be found seated in his library clad in a long dressing-gown which clung round his tall form, and making him look even taller—a typical philosopher, though perhaps handsomer than many of his craft. 'My father rarely went from home,' writes his daughter, 'and when not in the College class-room was to be found in his snug, well-stocked, ill-bound library, writing or reading, clad in a very becoming dark blue dressing-gown. He was no smoker, but carried with him a small silver snuff-box.'
Professor Shairp says that now and then he used to go to hear him lecture. 'I never saw anything better than his manner towards his students. There was in it ease, yet dignity so respectful both to them and to himself that no one could think of presuming with him. Yet it was unusually kindly, and full of a playful humour which greatly attached them to him. No one could be farther removed from either the Don or the Disciplinarian. But his look of keen intellect and high breeding, combined with gentleness and feeling for his students, commanded attention more than any discipline could have done. In matters of College discipline, while he was fair and just, he always leant to the forbearing side…. Till his illness took a more serious form, he was to be met at dinner-parties, to which his society always gave a great charm. In general society his conversation was full of humour and playful jokes, and he had a quick yet kindly eye to note the extravagances and absurdities of men.' And the Professor goes on to narrate how on a winter afternoon he would fall to talking of Horace, an especial favourite of his, and how then he would read the racy and unconventional translation he had made up for amusement. And afterwards he would talk of Wordsworth and the feelings he awoke in him, showing 'a richness of literary knowledge, and a delicacy and keenness of appreciation, of which his philosophical writings, except by their fine style, give no hint.' Hegel and Plato were the favourite objects of his study. Of the former he never satisfied himself that he had completely mastered the conception. But the insight that he had got into his dialectic and into the doctrine of Reality contributed very largely to making his philosophy what it was. He endeavoured to apply the system in various directions, and ever continued in his efforts to work it out more fully.
Another former student, who has been quoted before, writes in his Recollections of student life at St. Andrews:[12] 'Ferrier had not Spalding's thorough method of teaching. He had no regular time for receiving and correcting essays; he had only one written examination; for oral examination he had an easy way, in which the questions suggested the answers; yet all these drawbacks were atoned for by his living presence. It was an embodiment of literary and philosophical enthusiasm, happily blended with sympathy and urbanity. It did the work of the most thorough class drill, for it arrested the attention, opened the mind, and filled it with love of learning and wisdom. Intellect and humanity seemed to radiate from his countenance like light and heat, and illumined and fascinated all on whom they fell…. Let me recall him as he appeared in the spring of 1854. The eleven-o'clock bell has rung. All the other classes have gone in to lecture. We, the students of Moral Philosophy, are lingering in the quadrangle, for the Professor, punctual in his unpunctuality, comes in regularly two or three minutes after the hour. Through the archway under the time-honoured steeple of St. Salvator's he approaches—a tall somewhat emaciated figure, with intellectual and benevolent countenance. As he hurries in we follow and take our seats. In a minute he issues gowned from his anteroom, seats himself in his chair, and places his silver snuff-box before him. Now that he is without his hat and in his gown, he has a striking appearance. His head is large, well-developed, and covered with thick iron-grey hair; his features are regular, his mouth is refined and sensitive, his chin is strong, and his eyes as seen behind his spectacles are keenly intelligent and at the same time benevolent. He begins by calling up a student to be orally examined; and the catechising goes on very much in the following style:—
'"Professor.—Well, Mr. Brown, answer a few questions, if you please. What is the first proposition of the lectures?
'"Student repeats it.
'"Professor.—Quite right, Mr. Brown. And, Mr. Brown, is this quite true?
'"Stud.—Yes.
'"Prof.—Quite right, Mr. Brown. At least, so I think. And, Mr. Brown, is it not absurd to hold the reverse?
'"Stud.—Yes.
'"Prof.—Yes, yes. Thank you, Mr. Brown. That will do."
'The Professor then begins his lecture. As long as he is stating and proving the propositions in his metaphysical system, his tone is simple and matter-of-fact. His great aim is to make his meaning plain, and for that purpose he often expresses an important idea in various ways, using synonyms, and sometimes reading a sentence twice. But when he comes to illustrate his thoughts, his manner changes. He lets loose his fancy, his imagination, and even his humour; and his whole soul comes into his voice. His burr, scarcely distinguishable in his ordinary speech, now becomes strong, and his whole utterance is slow, intense, and fervid. He is particularly happy in his quotations from the poets, and he has a peculiarity in reading them which increases the effect. When rolling forth a line he sometimes pauses before he comes to the end, as if to collect his strength, and then utters the last word or words with redoubled emphasis. The effect of his eloquence on the students is electrical. They cease to take notes; every head is raised; every face beams with delight; and at the end of a passage their feelings find vent in a thunderstorm of applause.
'The two most remarkable features of his lectures were their method and clearness. Order and light were the very elements in which his mind lived and moved. He kept this end in view, threw aside the facts that were unnecessary, arranged the facts that were necessary, and expressed them with a precision about which there could be no ambiguity. In fact, each idea and the whole chain of ideas were visible by their own light. So perspicuous were the words that they might have been called crystallised thoughts.
'Out of the classroom Ferrier was equally polite and kind, especially to those students who showed a love and a capacity for philosophy. It was no uncommon thing for him to stop a student in the street and invite him to the house to have a talk about the work of the class. I have a distant recollection of my first visit to his study; I see him yet, with his noble, benignant countenance, as he reads and discusses passages in my first essay, gravely reasoning with me on the points that were reasonable, passing lightly over those that were merely rhetorical, and smiling good-naturedly at those that attacked in no measured language his own system.'
Professor Ferrier was never failing in hospitality to his students as to his other friends. Dr. Pryde goes on: 'Every year Ferrier invited the best of his students to dinner. At the dinner at which I was present there were two of his fellow-professors, Sellar and Fischer. It was a great treat for a youth like me. Mrs. Ferrier was effervescent with animal spirits and talk; Ferrier himself, looking like a nobleman in his old-fashioned dress-coat with gold buttons, interposed occasionally with his subtle touches of wit and humour.' The Professor appears to have been an inveterate snuffer. His students used to tell how the silver snuff-box was made the medium of explaining the Berkeleian system, and how to their minds the system, fairly clear in words, became a hopeless tangle when the assistance of the snuff-box was resorted to. And Dr. Pryde narrates how he used to see Professor Spalding and Professor Ferrier seated side by side in the students' benches, looking on the same book, listening to their young colleague Professor Sellar's inspiring lectures, and at intervals exchanging snuff-boxes. He gives the following account of his last visit to Ferrier, when he was on his deathbed, but still in his library among his books: 'He told me that his disease was mortal; but face to face with death he was cheerful and contented, and had bated not one jot of his interest in learning and in public events. He was very anxious that I should take lunch with Mrs. Ferrier and the rest of the family; and though he could not join us, he sent into the dining-room a special bottle of wine as a substitute for himself. Two months afterwards he had passed away.'
Tulloch writes after the sad event had occurred:[13] 'I have, of course, heard the sad news from St. Andrews. What sadness it has been to me I cannot tell you. St. Andrews never can be the same place without Ferrier. God knows what is to become of the University with all these breaks upon its old society; and where can we supply such a place as Ferrier's?' And his biographer adds: 'The removal of that delicate and clear spirit from a little society in which his position was so important, and his innate refinement of mind so powerful and beneficial an influence, was a loss almost indescribable, not only to the friends who loved him, but to the University. His great reputation was an honour to the place, combining as it did so many associations of the brilliant past with that due to the finest intellectual perception and the most engaging and attractive character. Even his little whimsicalities and strain of quaint humour gave a charm the more; and the closing of the cheerful house, the centre of wit and brightness to the academical community, was a loss which St. Andrews never failed to feel, nor the survivors to lament.'
Professor Ferrier was occasionally called upon to make a visit to London, although this did not seem to have been by any means a frequent occurrence. Business he must occasionally have had there, for in 1861 he was appointed to examine in the London University, and in 1863, shortly before his death, the Society of Arts offered him an examinership in Logic and Mental Science, in place of the late Archbishop of York, which he accepted. But of one visit which he paid in 1858, with Principal Tulloch as joint delegate from the University of St. Andrews, Mrs. Oliphant gives an amusing account, in her Memoir of Principal Tulloch.[14] The object of the deputation was to watch the progress of the University Bill through the House of Commons. This Bill was one of the earliest efforts after regulating the studies, degrees, etc., of the Scottish Universities, and also dealt with an increase in the Parliamentary grant which, if it passed, would considerably affect the Professors' incomes as well as the resources of the University. The Bill, which was under the charge of Lord Advocate Inglis (afterwards Lord Justice-General of Scotland), likewise provided that in each University a University Court should be established, as also a University Council composed of graduates. Ferrier and Tulloch no doubt did their part in the business which they had in hand: they visited all the Members of Parliament who were likely to be interested, as other Scottish deputations have done before and since, and received the same evasive and varying replies. But in the evenings, and when they were free, they entertained themselves in different fashion. First of all, they have hardly arrived after their long night's journey's travel before they burst upon the 'trim and well-ordered room where Mr. John Blackwood and his wife were seated at breakfast'—this evidently at Ferrier's instigation. Then, having settled in Duke Street, St. James's, they are asked, rather inappropriately, it would seem, to a ball, where they were 'equally impressed by the size of the crinoline and the absence of beauty.' Next Cremorne was visited, Tulloch declaring that his object was to take care of his companion. 'If you had seen Ferrier as he gazed frae him with the half-amused, half-scowling expression he not unfrequently assumes, looking bored, and yet with a vague philosophical interest at the wonderful expanse of gay dresses and fresh womanhood around him!' 'He will go nowhere without a cab; to-day for the first time I got him into an omnibus in search of an Aberdeen Professor, a wild and wandering distance which we thought we never should reach.' The theatre was visited, too; Lear was being played, very possibly by Charles Kean. In the Royal Academy, Frith's Derby Day was the attraction of the year. But quite remarkable was the interest which Ferrier—who did not appreciate in general 'going to church,' and used to say he preferred to sit and listen to the faint sounds of the organ from the quiet of his room—betrayed in the eloquence of Spurgeon, then at the height of his fame and attracting enormous congregations round him in the Surrey Garden Theatre. Tulloch wrote to his wife: 'We have just been to hear Spurgeon, and have been both so much impressed that I write to give you my impressions while they are fresh. As we came out we both confessed, "There is no doubt about that," and I was struck with Ferrier's remarkable expression, "I feel it would do me good to hear the like of that, it sat so close to reality." The sermon is about the most real thing I have come in contact with for a long time.' The building was large and airy, with window-doors from which you could walk into the gardens beyond, and Ferrier, Tulloch writes, now and then took a turn in the fresh air outside while the sermon was progressing.
After London, Oxford was visited, and here the friends lived at Balliol with Mr. Jowett, who had not yet become the Master. Ferrier would doubtless delight in showing to his friend the beauties of the place with which he had so many memories, but to attend eight-o'clock chapel with Tulloch was, the latter tells us, beyond the limits of his zeal. Just before this, in 1857, another visit was paid by Ferrier to Oxford with his family, and this time to visit Lady Grant, the mother of his future son-in-law. It was at Commemoration-time, we are told, and a ball was given in honour of the party. On this occasion Ferrier for the first time met Professor Jowett, besides many other kindred spirits, and he thoroughly enjoyed wandering about the old haunts at Magdalen, where in his youth he had pelted the deer and played the part of a young and thoughtless gownsman.
A little book was published some years ago, on behoof of the St. Andrews Students' Union, entitled Speculum Universitatis, in which former students and alumni piously record their recollections of their Alma Mater. Some of these papers bring before us very vividly the sort of impression which the life left upon the lads, drawn together from all manner of home surroundings, and equally influenced by the memories of the past and the living presence of those who were the means of opening up new tracts of knowledge to their view. One of them, already often quoted, says in a paper called 'The Light of Long Ago': 'I always sink into the conviction that the St. Andrews United College was never so well worth attending as during the days when in its classrooms Duncan taught Mathematics, Spalding taught Logic, and Ferrier taught Metaphysics and Moral Science, illustrating living literature in his literary style, and in the strange tones, pauses, and inflections of his voice. To the field of literature and speculation Ferrier restored glimpses of the sunshine of Paradise. Under his magical spell they ceased to look like fields that had been cursed with weeds, watered with sweat and tears, and levelled and planted with untold labour. Every utterance of his tended alike to disclose the beauty and penetrate the mystery of existence. He was a persevering philosopher, but he was also a poet by a gift of nature. The burden of this most unintelligible world did not oppress him, nor any other burden. Intellectual action proving the riddles of reason was a joy to him. He loved philosophy and poetry for their own sake, and he infected others with a kindred, but not an equal, passion. He could jest and laugh and play. If he ever discovered that much study is a weariness of the flesh, he most effectually concealed that discovery.'
And to conclude, we have the testimony of another former student who is now distinguished in the fields of literature, but who always remains faithful to his home of early days. Mr. Andrew Lang says: 'Professor Ferrier's lectures on Moral Philosophy were the most interesting and inspiriting that I ever listened to either at Oxford or St. Andrews. I looked on Mr. Ferrier with a kind of mysterious reverence, as on the last of the golden chain of great philosophers. There was, I know not what of dignity, of humour, and of wisdom in his face; there was an air of the student, the vanquisher of difficulties, the discoverer of hidden knowledge, in him that I have seen in no other. His method at that time was to lecture on the History of Philosophy, and his manner was so persuasive that one believed firmly in the tenets of each school he described, till he advanced those of the next! Thus the whole historical evolution of thought went on in the mind of each of his listeners.'