The Creevey Papers
Thomas Creevey to Elizabeth Ord, 18 January 1825
“Raith, 18th January, 1825.
“. . . On Sunday I went to Kirk to hear the great luminary of this county, Dr. Chalmers,* Professor of Humā-nity at
Glasgow, and an author upon many subjects. He dined here on Saturday, and was
treated as a regular Jeroboam. His appearance on that day was that of a very
quiet, good kind of man, with very dirty hands and nails; but on Sunday I never
beheld a fitter subject for Bedlam than he was. . . . The stuff the fellow
preached could only be surpassed by his
* In 1823 he was Professor of Moral Philosophy in St.
Andrews, but in 1824 he was transferred to the chair of Theology in
Edinburgh. |
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| 1825-26.] | TWO SCOTTISH DIVINES. | 85 |
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manner of roaring it out. I
expected he would have carried the poor Kirkcaldy pulpit clean away. Then his
Scotch too! His sermon was to prove that the manner of doing a kindness was
more valuable than the matter, in support of which I remember two notable
illustrations.—‘If,’ said he, ‘you
suppose a fā-mily to be suddenly veesited with the cā-lā-mity of po-verty,
the tear of a menial—the fallen countenance of a domestick—in
such cases will afford greater relief to the fā-mily than a speceefick sum
of money without a corresponding sympathy.’ A pretty good start,
was it not—for Scotland, too, of all places in the world! but it was
followed by a still higher flight.—‘Why,’ said he, or
rather shouted he, ‘Why is it that an epple
presented by an infant to its parent produces greater pleesure than an epple found by the raud-side? Why, because it is the
moral influence of the geft, and not the speceefick quality of the epple that in this case constitutes the pleesure of
the parent.’ Now what think you of the tip-top showman of all
Scotland? . . .
“Having heard that the London artist
Irving had formerly to do with Kirkcaldy, I asked
Fergus and he replied—‘Oh yes: he kept
an acā-demy for youth at Kirkcaldy and was the greatest tyrant of a dominie
that ever I hard of. He had three different
indictments found against him for beating his
pupils.’—‘Oh!’ said I, ‘you
joke.’—‘No,’ replied
Fergus, ‘I never made a joke in my life. I
have seen, with my own eyes, his pupils carried home, from his having
bruised them so unmercifully; and the truth is, I canno bear to hear his
name mentioned.’ The said Fergus is a man of
70 years of age at least, and Provost of Kirkcaldy. Is it not a capital account
of the London charmer to whom the fine ladies, Jemmy McKintosh, and Canning, and anybody else of any fame, fly in all
directions?”
George Canning (1770-1827)
Tory statesman; he was foreign minister (1807-1809) and prime minister (1827); a
supporter of Greek independence and Catholic emancipation.
Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847)
Scottish divine and leader of the Free Church of Scotland; he was professor of moral
philosophy at St. Andrews (1823-28) and professor of divinity at Edinburgh
(1828-43).
Sir James Mackintosh (1765-1832)
Scottish philosopher and man of letters who defended the French Revolution in
Vindiciae Gallicae (1791); he was Recorder of Bombay (1803-1812) and
MP for Knaresborough (1819-32).
