第6章 ABERDEEN(1)

We came somewhat late to Aberdeen,and found the inn so full,that we had some difficulty in obtaining admission,till Mr.Boswell made himself known:His name overpowered all objection,and we found a very good house and civil treatment.

I received the next day a very kind letter from Sir Alexander Gordon,whom I had formerly known in London,and after a cessation of all intercourse for near twenty years met here professor of physic in the King's College.Such unexpected renewals of acquaintance may be numbered among the most pleasing incidents of life.

The knowledge of one professor soon procured me the notice of the rest,and I did not want any token of regard,being conducted wherever there was any thing which I desired to see,and entertained at once with the novelty of the place,and the kindness of communication.

To write of the cities of our own island with the solemnity of geographical description,as if we had been cast upon a newly discovered coast,has the appearance of very frivolous ostentation;yet as Scotland is little known to the greater part of those who may read these observations,it is not superfluous to relate,that under the name of Aberdeen are comprised two towns standing about a mile distant from each other,but governed,I think,by the same magistrates.

Old Aberdeen is the ancient episcopal city,in which are still to be seen the remains of the cathedral.It has the appearance of a town in decay,having been situated in times when commerce was yet unstudied,with very little attention to the commodities of the harbour.

New Aberdeen has all the bustle of prosperous trade,and all the shew of increasing opulence.It is built by the water-side.The houses are large and lofty,and the streets spacious and clean.

They build almost wholly with the granite used in the new pavement of the streets of London,which is well known not to want hardness,yet they shape it easily.It is beautiful and must be very lasting.

What particular parts of commerce are chiefly exercised by the merchants of Aberdeen,I have not inquired.The manufacture which forces itself upon a stranger's eye is that of knit-stockings,on which the women of the lower class are visibly employed.

In each of these towns there is a college,or in stricter language,an university;for in both there are professors of the same parts of learning,and the colleges hold their sessions and confer degrees separately,with total independence of one on the other.

In old Aberdeen stands the King's College,of which the first president was Hector Boece,or Boethius,who may be justly reverenced as one of the revivers of elegant learning.When he studied at Paris,he was acquainted with Erasmus,who afterwards gave him a public testimony of his esteem,by inscribing to him a catalogue of his works.The stile of Boethius,though,perhaps,not always rigorously pure,is formed with great diligence upon ancient models,and wholly uninfected with monastic barbarity.His history is written with elegance and vigour,but his fabulousness and credulity are justly blamed.His fabulousness,if he was the author of the fictions,is a fault for which no apology can be made;but his credulity may be excused in an age,when all men were credulous.Learning was then rising on the world;but ages so long accustomed to darkness,were too much dazzled with its light to see any thing distinctly.The first race of scholars,in the fifteenth century,and some time after,were,for the most part,learning to speak,rather than to think,and were therefore more studious of elegance than of truth.The contemporaries of Boethius thought it sufficient to know what the ancients had delivered.The examination of tenets and of facts was reserved for another generation.

Boethius,as president of the university,enjoyed a revenue of forty Scottish marks,about two pounds four shillings and sixpence of sterling money.In the present age of trade and taxes,it is difficult even for the imagination so to raise the value of money,or so to diminish the demands of life,as to suppose four and forty shillings a year,an honourable stipend;yet it was probably equal,not only to the needs,but to the rank of Boethius.The wealth of England was undoubtedly to that of Scotland more than five to one,and it is known that Henry the eighth,among whose faults avarice was never reckoned,granted to Roger Ascham,as a reward of his learning,a pension of ten pounds a year.

The other,called the Marischal College,is in the new town.The hall is large and well lighted.One of its ornaments is the picture of Arthur Johnston,who was principal of the college,and who holds among the Latin poets of Scotland the next place to the elegant Buchanan.