Читать книгу My Schools and Schoolmasters; Or, The Story of My Education - Hugh Miller - Страница 12

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"At Wallace' name what Scottish blood

But boils up in a spring-tide flood!

Oft have our fearless fathers strode

By Wallace' side,

Still pressing onward, red wat shod,

Or glorious died."—Burns.

I first became thoroughly a Scot some time in my tenth year; and the consciousness of country has remained tolerably strong within me ever since. My uncle James had procured for me from a neighbour the loan of a common stall-edition of Blind Harry's "Wallace," as modernized by Hamilton; but after reading the first chapter—a piece of dull genealogy, broken into very rude rhyme—I tossed the volume aside as uninteresting; and only resumed it at the request of my uncle, who urged that, simply for his amusement and gratification, I should read some three or four chapters more. Accordingly, the three or four chapters more I did read;—I read "how Wallace killed young Selbie the Constable's son;" "how Wallace fished in Irvine Water;" and "how Wallace killed the Churl with his own staff in Ayr;" and then Uncle James told me, in the quiet way in which he used to make a joke tell, that the book seemed to be rather a rough sort of production, filled with accounts of quarrels and bloodshed, and that I might read no more of it unless I felt inclined. But I now did feel inclined very strongly, and read on with increasing astonishment and delight. I was intoxicated with the fiery narratives of the blind minstrel—with his fierce breathings of hot, intolerant patriotism, and his stories of astonishing prowess; and, glorying in being a Scot, and the countryman of Wallace and the Graham, I longed for a war with the Southron, that the wrongs and sufferings of these noble heroes might yet be avenged. All I had previously heard and read of the marvels of foreign parts, of the glories of modern battles, seemed tame and commonplace, compared with the incidents in the life of Wallace; and I never after vexed my mother by wishing myself big enough to be a sailor. My Uncle Sandy, who had some taste for the refinements of poetry, would fain have led me on from the exploits of Wallace to the "Life of the Bruce," which, in the form of a not very vigorous imitation of Dryden's "Virgil," by one Harvey, was bound up in the same volume, and which my uncle deemed the better-written life of the two. And so far as the mere amenities of style were concerned, he was, I daresay, right. But I could not agree with him. Harvey was by much too fine and too learned for me; and it was not until some years after, when I was fortunate enough to pick up one of the later editions of Barbour's "Bruce," that the Hero-King of Scotland assumed his right place in my mind beside its Hero-Guardian. There are stages of development in the immature youth of individuals, that seem to correspond with stages of development in the immature youth of nations; and the recollections of this early time enable me, in some measure, to understand how it was that, for hundreds of years, Blind Harry's "Wallace," with its rude and naked narrative, and its exaggerated incident, should have been, according to Lord Hailes, the Bible of the Scotch people.

I quitted the dame's school at the end of the first twelvemonth, after mastering that grand acquirement of my life—the art of holding converse with books; and was transferred straightforth to the grammar school of the parish, at which there attended at this time about a hundred and twenty boys, with a class of about thirty individuals more, much looked down upon by the others, and not deemed greatly worth the counting, seeing that it consisted of only lassies. And here, too, the early individual development seems nicely correspondent with an early national one. In his depreciatory estimate of contemporary woman, the boy is always a true savage. The old parish school of the place had been nobly situated in a snug corner, between the parish churchyard and a thick wood; and from the interesting centre which it formed, the boys, when tired of making dragoon-horses of the erect head-stones, or of leaping along the flat-laid memorials, from end to end of the grave-yard, "without touching grass," could repair to the taller trees, and rise in the world by climbing among them. As, however, they used to encroach, on these latter occasions, upon the laird's pleasure-grounds, the school had been removed ere my time to the sea-shore; where, though there were neither tombstones nor trees, there were some balancing advantages, of a kind which perhaps only boys of the old school could have adequately appreciated. As the school-windows fronted the opening of the Firth, not a vessel could enter the harbour that we did not see; and, improving through our opportunities, there was perhaps no educational institution in the kingdom in which all sorts of barques and carvels, from the fishing yawl to the frigate, could be more correctly drawn on the slate, or where any defect in hulk or rigging, in some faulty delineation, was surer of being more justly and unsparingly criticised. Further, the town, which drove a great trade in salted pork at the time, had a killing-place not thirty yards from the school-door, where from eighty to a hundred pigs used sometimes to die for the general good in a single day; and it was a great matter to hear, at occasional intervals, the roar of death outside rising high over the general murmur within, or to be told by some comrade, returned from his five minutes' leave of absence, that a hero of a pig had taken three blows of the hatchet ere it fell, and that even after its subjection to the sticking process, it had got hold of Jock Keddie's hand in its mouth, and almost smashed his thumb. We learned, too, to know, from our signal opportunities of observation, not only a good deal about pig-anatomy—especially about the detached edible parts of the animal, such as the spleen and the pancreas, and at least one other very palatable viscus besides—but became knowing also about the take and curing of herrings. All the herring boats during the fishing season passed our windows on their homeward way to the harbour; and, from their depth in the water, we became skilful enough to predicate the number of crans aboard of each with wonderful judgment and correctness. In days of good general fishings, too, when the curing-yards proved too small to accommodate the quantities brought ashore, the fish used to be laid in glittering heaps opposite the school-house door; and an exciting scene, that combined the bustle of the workshop with the confusion of the crowded fair, would straightway spring up within twenty yards of the forms at which we sat, greatly to our enjoyment, and, of course, not a little to our instruction. We could see, simply by peering over book or slate, the curers going about rousing their fish with salt, to counteract the effects of the dog-day sun; bevies of young women employed as gutters, and horridly incarnadined with blood and viscera, squatting around the heaps, knife in hand, and plying with busy fingers their well-paid labours, at the rate of sixpence per hour; relays of heavily-laden fish-wives bringing ever and anon fresh heaps of herrings in their creels; and outside of all, the coopers hammering as if for life and death—now tightening hoops, and now slackening them, and anon caulking with bulrush the leaky seams. It is not every grammar school in which such lessons are taught as those in which all were initiated, and in which all became in some degree accomplished, in the grammar school of Cromarty!

The building in which we met was a low, long, straw-thatched cottage, open from gable to gable, with a mud floor below, and an unlathed roof above; and stretching along the naked rafters, which, when the master chanced to be absent for a few minutes, gave noble exercise in climbing, there used frequently to lie a helm, or oar, or boathook, or even a foresail—the spoil of some hapless peat-boat from the opposite side of the Firth. The Highland boatmen of Ross had carried on a trade in peats for ages with the Saxons of the town; and as every boat owed a long-derived perquisite of twenty peats to the grammar school, and as payment was at times foolishly refused, the party of boys commissioned by the master to exact it almost always succeeded, either by force or stratagem, in securing and bringing along with them, in behalf of the institution, some spar, or sail, or piece of rigging, which, until redeemed by special treaty, and the payment of the peats, was stowed up over the rafters. These peat-expeditions, which were intensely popular in the school, gave noble exercise to the faculties. It was always a great matter to see, just as the school met, some observant boy appear, cap in hand, before the master, and intimate the fact of an arrival at the shore, by the simple words, "Peat-boat, Sir." The master would then proceed to name a party, more or less numerous, according to the exigency; but it seemed to be matter of pretty correct calculation that, in the cases in which the peat claim was disputed, it required about twenty boys to bring home the twenty peats, or, lacking these, the compensatory sail or spar. There were certain ill-conditioned boatmen who almost always resisted, and who delighted to tell us—invariably, too, in very bad English—that our perquisite was properly the hangman's perquisite,[2] made over to us because we were like him; not seeing—blockheads as they were!—that the very admission established in full the rectitude of our claim, and gave to us, amid our dire perils and faithful contendings, the strengthening consciousness of a just quarrel. In dealing with these recusants, we used ordinarily to divide our forces into two bodies, the larger portion of the party filling their pockets with stones, and ranging themselves on some point of vantage, such as the pier-head; and the smaller stealing down as near the boat as possible, and mixing themselves up with the purchasers of the peats. We then, after due warning, opened fire upon the boatmen; and, when the pebbles were hopping about them like hailstones, the boys below commonly succeeded in securing, under cover of the fire, the desired boathook or oar. And such were the ordinary circumstances and details of this piece of Spartan education; of which a townsman has told me he was strongly reminded when boarding, on one occasion, under cover of a well-sustained discharge of musketry, the vessel of an enemy that had been stranded on the shores of Berbice.

The parish schoolmaster was a scholar and an honest man, and if a boy really wished to learn, he certainly could teach him. He had attended the classes at Aberdeen during the same sessions as the late Dr. Mearns, and in mathematics and the languages had disputed the prize with the Doctor; but he had failed to get on equally well in the world; and now, in middle life, though a licentiate of the Church, he had settled down to be what he subsequently remained—the teacher of a parish school. There were usually a few grown-up lads under his tuition—careful sailors, that had stayed ashore during the winter quarter to study navigation as a science—or tall fellows, happy in the patronage of the great, who, in the hope of being made excisemen, had come to school to be initiated in the mysteries of gauging—or grown young men, who, on second thoughts, and somewhat late in the day, had recognised the Church as their proper vocation; and these used to speak of the master's acquirements and teaching ability in the very highest terms. He himself, too, could appeal to the fact, that no teacher in the north had ever sent more students to college, and that his better scholars almost always got on well in life. But then, on the other hand, the pupils who wished to do nothing—a description of individuals that comprised fully two-thirds of all the younger ones—were not required to do much more than they wished; and parents and guardians were loud in their complaints that he was no suitable schoolmaster for them; though the boys themselves usually thought him quite suitable enough.

He was in the habit of advising the parents or relations of those he deemed his clever lads, to give them a classical education; and meeting one day with Uncle James, he urged that I should be put on Latin. I was a great reader, he said; and he found that when I missed a word in my English tasks, I almost always substituted a synonym in the place of it. And so, as Uncle James had arrived, on data of his own, at a similar conclusion, I was transferred from the English to the Latin form, and, with four other boys, fairly entered on the "Rudiments." I laboured with tolerable diligence for a day or two; but there was no one to tell me what the rules meant, or whether they really meant anything; and when I got on as far as penna, a pen, and saw how the changes were rung on one poor word, that did not seem to be of more importance in the old language than in the modern one, I began miserably to flag, and to long for my English reading, with its nice amusing stories, and its picture-like descriptions. The Rudiments was by far the dullest book I had ever seen. It embodied no thought that I could perceive—it certainly contained no narrative—it was a perfect contrast to not only the "Life and Adventures of Sir William Wallace," but to even the Voyages of Cook and Anson. None of my class-fellows were by any means bright;—they had been all set on Latin without advice of the master; and yet, when he learned, which he soon did, to distinguish and call us up to our tasks by the name of the "heavy class," I was, in most instances, to be found at its nether end. Shortly after, however, when we got a little farther on, it was seen that I had a decided turn for translation. The master, good simple man that he was, always read to us in English, as the school met, the piece of Latin given us as our task for the day; and as my memory was strong enough to carry away the whole translation in its order, I used to give him back in the evening, word for word, his own rendering, which satisfied him on most occasions tolerably well. There were none of us much looked after; and I soon learned to bring books of amusement to the school with me, which, amid the Babel confusion of the place, I contrived to read undetected. Some of them, save in the language in which they were written, were identical with the books proper to the place. I remember perusing by stealth in this way, Dryden's "Virgil," and the "Ovid" of Dryden and his friends; while Ovid's own "Ovid," and Virgil's own "Virgil," lay beside me, sealed up in the fine old tongue, which I was thus throwing away my only chance of acquiring.

One morning, having the master's English rendering of the day's task well fixed in my memory, and no book of amusement to read, I began gossiping with my nearest class-fellow, a very tall boy, who ultimately shot up into a lad of six feet four, and who on most occasions sat beside me, as lowest in the form save one. I told him about the tall Wallace and his exploits; and so effectually succeeded in awakening his curiosity, that I had to communicate to him, from beginning to end, every adventure recorded by the blind minstrel. My story-telling vocation once fairly ascertained, there was, I found, no stopping in my course. I had to tell all the stories I ever heard or read; all my father's adventures, so far as I knew them, and all my Uncle Sandy's—with the story of Gulliver, and Philip Quarll, and Robinson Crusoe—of Sinbad, and Ulysses, and Mrs. Radcliffe's heroine Emily, with, of course, the love-passages left out; and at length, after weeks and months of narrative, I found my available stock of acquired fact and fiction fairly exhausted. The demand on the part of my class-fellows was, however, as great and urgent as ever; and, setting myself, in the extremity of the case, to try my ability of original production, I began to dole out to them by the hour and the diet, long extempore biographies, which proved wonderfully popular and successful. My heroes were usually warriors like Wallace, and voyagers like Gulliver, and dwellers in desolate islands like Robinson Crusoe; and they had not unfrequently to seek shelter in huge deserted castles, abounding in trap-doors and secret passages, like that of Udolpho. And finally, after much destruction of giants and wild beasts, and frightful encounters with magicians and savages, they almost invariably succeeded in disentombing hidden treasures to an enormous amount, or in laying open gold mines, and then passed a luxurious old age, like that of Sinbad the Sailor, at peace with all mankind, in the midst of confectionery and fruits. The master had a tolerably correct notion of what was going on in the "heavy class;"—the stretched-out necks, and the heads clustered together, always told their own special story when I was engaged in telling mine; but, without hating the child, he spared the rod, and simply did what he sometimes allowed himself to do—bestowed a nickname upon me. I was the Sennachie, he said; and as the Sennachie I might have been known so long as I remained under his charge, had it not been that, priding himself upon his Gaelic, he used to bestow upon the word the full Celtic pronunciation, which, agreeing but ill with the Teutonic mouths of my school-fellows, militated against its use; and so the name failed to take. With all my carelessness, I continued to be a sort of favourite with the master; and, when at the general English lesson, he used to address to me little quiet speeches, vouchsafed to no other pupil, indicative of a certain literary ground common to us, on which the others had not entered. "That, Sir," he has said, after the class had just perused, in the school collection, a Tatler or Spectator—"That, Sir, is a good paper;—it's an Addison;" or, "That's one of Steele's, Sir;" and on finding in my copy-book, on one occasion, a page filled with rhymes, which I had headed "Poem on Care," he brought it to his desk, and, after reading it carefully over, called me up, and with his closed penknife, which served as a pointer, in the one hand, and the copy-book brought down to the level of my eyes in the other, began his criticism. "That's bad grammar, Sir," he said, resting the knife-handle on one of the lines; "and here's an ill-spelt word; and there's another; and you have not at all attended to the punctuation; but the general sense of the piece is good—very good indeed, Sir." And then he added, with a grim smile, "Care, Sir, is, I daresay, as you remark, a very bad thing; but you may safely bestow a little more of it on your spelling and your grammar."

The school, like almost all the other grammar-schools of the period in Scotland, had its yearly cock-fight, preceded by two holidays and a half, during which the boys occupied themselves in collecting and bringing up their cocks. And such always was the array of fighting birds mustered on the occasion, that the day of the festival, from morning till night, used to be spent in fighting out the battle. For weeks after it had passed, the school-floor would continue to retain its deeply-stained blotches of blood, and the boys would be full of exciting narratives regarding the glories of gallant birds, who had continued to fight until both their eyes had been picked out, or who, in the moment of victory, had dropped dead in the middle of the cock-pit. The yearly fight was the relic of a barbarous age; and, in at least one of its provisions, there seemed evidence that it was that of an intolerant age also: every pupil at school, without exemption, had his name entered on the subscription-list, as a cock-fighter, and was obliged to pay the master at the rate of twopence per head, ostensibly for leave to bring his birds to the pit; but, amid the growing humanities of a better time, though the twopences continued to be exacted, it was no longer imperative to bring the birds; and availing myself of the liberty I never brought any. Nor, save for a few minutes, on two several occasions, did I ever attend the fight. Had the combat been one among the boys themselves, I would readily enough have done my part, by meeting with any opponent of my years and standing; but I could not bear to look at the bleeding birds. And so I continued to pay my yearly sixpence, as a holder of three cocks—the lowest sum deemed in any degree genteel—but remained simply a fictitious or paper cock-fighter, and contributed in no degree to the success of the head-stock or leader, to whose party, in the general division of the school, it was my lot to fall. Neither, I must add, did I learn to take an interest in the sacrificial orgies of the adjoining slaughter-house. A few of the chosen school-boys were permitted by the killers to exercise at times the privilege of knocking down a pig, and even, on rare occasions, to essay the sticking; but I turned with horror from both processes; and if I drew near at all, it was only when some animal, scraped and cleaned, and suspended from the beam, was in the course of being laid open by the butcher's knife, that I might mark the forms of the viscera, and the positions which they occupied. To my dislike of the annual cock-fight my uncles must have contributed. They were loud in their denunciations of the enormity; and on one occasion, when a neighbour was unlucky enough to remark, in extenuation, that the practice had been handed down to us by pious and excellent men, who seemed to see nothing wrong in it, I saw the habitual respect for the old divines give way, for at least a moment. Uncle Sandy hesitated under apparent excitement; but, quick and fiery as lightning, Uncle James came to his rescue. "Yes, excellent men!" said my uncle, "but the excellent men of a rude and barbarous age; and, in some parts of their character, tinged by its barbarity. For the cock-fight which these excellent men have bequeathed to us, they ought to have been sent to Bridewell for a week, and fed upon bread and water." Uncle James was, no doubt, over hasty, and felt so a minute after; but the practice of fixing the foundations of ethics on a They themselves did it, much after the manner in which the Schoolmen fixed the foundations of their nonsensical philosophy on a "He himself said it," is a practice which, though not yet exploded in even very pure Churches, is always provoking, and not quite free from peril to the worthies, whether dead or alive, in whose precedents the moral right is made to rest. In the class of minds represented among the people by that of Uncle James, for instance, it would be much easier to bring down even the old divines, than to bring up cock-fighting.

My native town had possessed, for at least an age or two previous to that of my boyhood, its sprinkling of intelligent, book-consulting mechanics and tradesfolk; and as my acquaintance gradually extended among their representatives and descendants, I was permitted to rummage, in the pursuit of knowledge, delightful old chests and cupboards, filled with tattered and dusty volumes. The moiety of my father's library which remained to me consisted of about sixty several works; my uncle possessed about a hundred and fifty more; and there was a literary cabinet-maker in the neighbourhood, who had once actually composed a poem of thirty lines on the Hill of Cromarty, whose collection of books, chiefly poetical, amounted to from about eighty to a hundred. I used to be often at nights in the workshop of the cabinet-maker, and was sometimes privileged to hear him repeat his poem. There was not much admiration of poets or poetry in the place; and my praise, though that of a very young critic, had always the double merit of being both ample and sincere. I knew the very rocks and trees which his description embraced—had heard the birds to which he referred, and seen the flowers; and as the Hill had been of old a frequent scene of executions, and had borne the gallows of the sheriffdom on its crest, nothing could be more definite than the grave reference, in his opening line, to