Read Ebook: The Book-Hunter A New Edition with a Memoir of the Author by Burton John Hill

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The next letters here offered belong to the beginning of his Edinburgh life, and relate to a feat of mental exertion equal to his bodily performances. He was at the time living in lodgings, for the purpose of passing his legal examinations preparatory to coming to the Bar; but he may be allowed to give the history of this part of his life entirely in his own words.

"MY DEAR MOTHER,--I have just arrived here, and as there is a friend of Mr Dauney's just about to set off for Aberdeen, I preferred letting you get a bit of a note or so to sending you a newspaper. Of course I have nothing to write you about but my own concerns. A delightful moonlight night for travelling, but the coach rather full: there were three nice children, with whom I contrived to amuse myself. All went on well till we came to Burntisland Ferry, where we had to proceed so far in an open boat. The sea poured in in a rather disagreeable manner; and while I thought every one was getting a good ducking but myself, a large miscreant of a wave contrived to escape every other passenger, and to settle right upon my shoulders. I have not yet secured a lodging in Edinburgh, but have been wandering through all the streets admiring. Of the Old Town I think far more than of the New, it is so majestic and magnificent, and am resolved, if I can, to live in it.

"I dined at Mr Dauney's to-day. He has requested me to stay with him till I can get lodgings conveniently, but I expect to be stowed away to-morrow. I delivered Mr Innes's parcel; and remain, my dear mother, your most affectionate son, J. HILL BURTON.

"MY DEAR MOTHER,--I take the opportunity of Mr Innes's parcel, which leaves this to-morrow afternoon, to give you a more succinct account of my affairs than you could derive from my laconic epistle of last week. I must, however, preface by requesting you to write me as soon as you conveniently can, either by Innes or L. Smith's conveyance, as I am anxious to hear the state of your cold, and how James is succeeding at school.

"Immediately on leaving B.'s I went to Dauney, who appeared glad to see me, and kindly asked me to dine with him. He has a very handsome house. Mrs Dauney is a very agreeable person, and they have two children. He would not hear of my leaving him till I had got accommodated with good lodgings. The rooms I now occupy I did not enter till yesterday. They were inhabited by a person just about to leave them, and I had no recommendation to others so well situated. The person who keeps the lodgings is named M'Gregor. I have a room and closet, neat enough, for which I pay 8s. a-week, which includes coals. I could not have a place nearly so cheap in the New Town. The situation is delightful. It is behind the Old Town, and the windows look across towards it and the Castle, just as those in Union Terrace look towards Belmont Street. The view extends as far as the Firth of Forth.

"There are, moreover, other advantages. Heriot's Hospital and the old city wall are close by; and when I choose I may, in going to the New Town, pass through the West Port and the Grassmarket.

"I have been a good deal annoyed about my luggage, which has not yet been sent up, so that you may imagine some of my present drapery has been worn long enough.

"I directed a person, calling himself the Clyde Shipping Company's agent here, to get them sent up last Saturday, which was to be done 'pointedly.' I amused myself from day to day annoying the man, till at last his patience appeared determined to weather out mine, so I went to Leith to-day and saw after them myself--found the man had nothing to do whatever with the concern, and neither could nor did give directions. The clerk, after blessing himself the usual number of times, stated his opinion that it would have been better for both parties had they left his office some time ago, so I expect to see them early to-morrow. I will let you know of their safe arrival if before three. I read your poetry all over, but did I begin to remark on it here I would exceed the limits which a narration of facts has left me. It has afforded me much pleasure in the loneliness, which, of course, I feel a little at first. However, I cannot say it makes me at all sad. There is something independent and free in the idea that none of the vast multitude you are among cares more for your life or welfare than the breeze that passes. I begin my studies to-morrow, and if I behave properly will have a good deal to do.

"Hoping your cold is better, I remain, my dear mother, your affectionate and dutiful son,

"J. HILL BURTON."

"Breakfasted to-day with the B.'s. At the theatre with Mellis day before yesterday. I hope Mary continues better.--Your affectionate son, J. HILL BURTON."

"If you consent to my arrangements, you must send me a certificate of my age--an extract from the Register of Baptisms, or something of that sort. I suppose Cordiner can give it you....

"Should I not pass my Civil Law trial immediately, I will still have the satisfaction of passing at some early period, avoiding an additional ?60 which it is intended will be imposed, and from which no advantage, either real or fortuitous, is to be expected. Now the Widows' Fund, you know, when one has a widow, will be a very good sort of thing--?80 per annum, I believe. So if any lady wishes me to marry her, she had better advise me by all means to join the scheme. I know of no way of making one's own by it just now but by marrying some old advocate's widow who is on the list.

"MY DEAR MOTHER,--I this morning received your and Mr Alcock's letters, enclosing a bill for ?200 and order for ?33, and having no opportunity to-morrow, I take this occasion to acknowledge receipt and return thanks. Tell Mr Alcock I am afraid I will never be able to repay him his kindness in procuring me this sum upon my very cavalier notice. With regard to yourself, you know, I suppose, we have a pretty long account together, and the balance somewhat against me, as it will always remain.

"I suppose you will have received my hurried note of last night. I thought you had entirely forgot my ?20 amid the other weighty matters you had to settle for me. I am still preparing and covering the Civil Law with rapid strides, but to make one's self master of a subject so intricate in a fortnight is something of a consideration; however, I do not despair. I am doing my best, and if I do not use my utmost endeavour, after what has been done for me by others, I will allow you to call me anything you please.

"I remain, my dear mother, your sincerely affectionate son, J. HILL BURTON."

"MY DEAR MOTHER,--I supposed you received my last letter, written somewhat hurriedly, but of which I suppose you were able to discover the principal fact. Since writing, I have been relaxing myself a little, and going about making a few calls, a thing I have neglected of late; but I beg you will not suppose this to be a hint that I am to grow idle. I intend, indeed, to be very busy all winter. I expect to hear from you soon, and to know what is doing in Aberdeen. I called upon Mrs H. to-night, who told me my grand-aunt had been very unwell lately. I trust this is a mistake; but not having heard from your quarter for some days, the fact may be so, without my having known it.... I just despatched the oysters, and I would wish that you could send to Mr Dyce, and inquire whether they have come free of expense, as I left money with the seller to pay the coach-hire. I have not sent you any, as they are rather dear--8s. 8d. for a barrel with two hundred. Now, I presume you might buy the same number in Aberdeen for about quarter the sum.

"I live here in a sort of honourable solitude--few acquaintances, and few annoyances; it is just the sort of life I like. I am to have one or two of the young men I know to spend Saturday evening with me, and to discuss your nice plum-cakes which I have just cut. Among them is a young Pole--a Count Lubienski, a very agreeable and intelligent gentleman--a class-fellow.

"Finding, on inquiry, that there would be no opportunity of being examined after the 14th, I will allow I was a little startled, but still stuck fast, and had a sort of feeling I would be able to pass, as I do not like setting about what I cannot perform.

BEGINNING OF LITERARY LIFE.

If genius is to be defined as the power of taking a great deal of trouble, Dr Burton certainly possessed genius. His most remarkable power was that of mental labour. It did not seem to fatigue or excite him. In his best years his capability for mental work was limited only by the need of food and sleep, and he could reduce these needs to a minimum, and apparently without any future reaction.

He has told the writer that he did not go to bed at all during the fortnight's preparation for his Civil Law trial, described in the last chapter, but worked continuously, day and night, living almost entirely on strong tea and coffee. After his examination was over, he felt no actual fatigue or discomfort. He went to bed at his usual hour, but slept till the night of the second day was falling, a period of wellnigh forty-eight hours. He sustained no injury to health, and became entitled to style himself Advocate.

He never had much practice at the bar; and the need of earning a livelihood first led him to literary publication.

The two letters next offered refer to the following years of his life, when the little family was reunited in Edinburgh. Their mother's absence on a visit to relations in Aberdeen gave occasion for the letters.

"MY DEAR MOTHER,--I take the opportunity of Spalding's going to Aberdeen to write you a few lines. James received the other day two letters--one from you, and one from Mary.

"The latter mentioned you had sent a letter for me, which has not yet arrived. I hope to receive it soon, or that you will write me another, giving a more particular account of your health than the letters to James have stated.

"I am at all events glad to hear yourself say you are not worse, and hope that a little such exertion and variety as you must meet will tend to strengthen you. We have been going on just as usual; perhaps I have been a little more idle than usual during the past week, being the last of the session. I have had one or two friends in to dine, but did not give them very splendid entertainments. James is most particular in his care of the cat, and we both prowl about occasionally looking for gooseberries.

"I caught a hedgehog the other evening, which has been let loose in the garden. I have been unable to discover his place of abode, but we sometimes meet him taking an evening stroll through the walks. He is an object of great interest to the cat, whose curiosity, however, he seems decidedly to baffle....

"I am sorry to hear Robertson is unwell, but I suppose he is able to write, and he must really be at the trouble of sending me a letter before I can trouble myself farther about his trunks.

"I shall be engaged to-morrow and next day in the Justiciary Court, and shall be otherwise very busy during the rest of the month....

"With kindest remembrances to grand-aunt and Mrs Brown.--My dear mother, your affectionate son,

"JOHN HILL BURTON."

The fondness for animals and for gooseberries were lifelong tastes. That for animals did not extend to taking much trouble about them; but Dr Burton had none of a student's nervousness about slight noises or interruptions. He would have thought a house dull without the sounds of birds or other pets in it, and one of his favourite amusements was to watch the ways of animals. He had examples, in his acquaintance among dogs and cats, of heart and conscience in the two species respectively, too trivial for notice here.

Dr Burton has stated in the letters previously quoted some of the studies which he pursued at college in Edinburgh. His contribution to Mrs Gordon's 'Life of Professor Wilson' furnishes a lively picture of college life and experience in Edinburgh. He attended the course of the late Sir William Hamilton, and gained some distinction in the study of moral philosophy and metaphysics, so much that his appointment as assistant and successor to Sir William was seriously considered by himself and others. Had he become Professor of Logic and Metaphysics, he would no doubt have discharged the duties of the situation well. At that time of his life, great versatility, along with extraordinary diligence, was the chief characteristic of his mind. In later years he did not pursue the study of mental science.

"MY DEAR MOTHER,-- ... I was extremely glad to receive your letter by post this morning, showing me that you are able to go about, and that you are enjoying yourself as much as possible. James and I have been getting on very well and very comfortably.

"JOHN HILL BURTON."

This letter describes the beginning of the life of literary labour which John Hill Burton's was to the end. He would not have liked to see it described as labour. He even disliked the word work as applied to his own pursuits, and he did indeed work as easily as most men play. He was unconscious of his own powers of mental application: his mind worked with as much ease as his lungs breathed. The great bulk of his earlier writings must be quite irrecoverable now. He wrote school-books, specially a set of historical abridgments for the use of schools, under the name of Dr White; he also compiled much of the information in Oliver and Boyd's 'Almanac,' and almost all the letterpress of Billings's 'Ecclesiastical and Baronial Antiquities.'

Dr Burton's whole resources at this time were derived from his pen. He has described this mode of life as a somewhat anxious but by no means unhappy one. The anxiety lay in that in which all sorts of business share--the finding work, looking for employment. The employment once found was agreeable to him. He rapidly acquired a power of mastering almost any subject on which he had to write, though he always looked forward with hope to the time, which eventually came, when he might live securely on a fixed income, free to write from the fulness of his mind and not from outward pressure.

The house in Howard Place was carefully managed by his mother. On a life spent entirely in town proving unsuitable to her health, Dr Burton took for her a little cottage at Brunstane, which served as country quarters for the family for several years.

In 1844 Dr Burton married Isabella Lauder, daughter of Captain Lauder of Flatfield, in Perthshire. He then occupied a house in Scotland Street, and his mother and sister left him to reside in the little cottage called Liberton Bank. There his beloved and revered mother died, in 1848. His sister still lives in the cottage with a little flock of young relatives which her kindness has gathered around her.

Dr Burton's first appearance in independent authorship was in 1846, when he published his 'Life and Correspondence of David Hume.' This work at once gained for him a recognised position among men of letters.

In 1847 he published a volume containing the Lives of Simon Lord Lovat and Duncan Forbes of Culloden. This is an eminently readable work, as are all his minor productions. Literary persons did not consider its merits quite equal to the promise given in its predecessor. During these years much of the spare time left by the need of frequent publication was filled by the task of editing Mr Jeremy Bentham's literary remains, to which Dr Burton was joint editor along with Dr , Bowring. He published, as a precursor to the greater work, one styled 'Benthamiana; an Introduction to the Works of Jeremy Bentham.'

In 1849 he wrote for Messrs Chambers a little book entitled 'Political and Social Economy: Its Practical Application.' May the writer here be permitted to state that she considers this small and little-noticed work the best of all her husband's productions? Though the subject is usually considered particularly dry, there is an ease, rapidity, firmness, and completeness in this little book, which carries the reader on in spite of himself or his prejudices.

Mrs Burton was fond of society, and her husband had not then become positively averse to it. His acquaintance in Edinburgh gradually increased. It included Lord Jeffrey and his family, Lord Murray, who remained a fast friend during his life, and all the remaining members of the old Edinburgh circle.

About the year 1848, the writer first saw Dr Burton, accompanied by his wife, as guests at one of those late evening parties given by Mrs Jeffrey during the last years of her husband's life--a very faint reflection of the earlier hospitalities of Craigcrook and Moray Place.

In 1848 Dr Burton left Scotland Street for a house in Royal Crescent, better suited for occasional reception than the other. But in 1849 the heaviest blow of his life fell on him in the loss of his wife. His five married years had been a period of perfect domestic happiness. He found himself left with three infant daughters; their guide and his gone from him. He has described his sufferings at this time to the writer as fully realising to him the common phrase, "a broken heart." As each day passed, and each night returned, he rose and lay down with the feeling that his heart was broken. He of course shunned all society, and never again recovered any real zest for it. He sometimes thought of imitating his grandfather under like circumstances with a difference--he thought of flying, not to London, but to the backwoods of America, or some place where he should never see a white face, and becoming a "wild man," a savage--a personage of whom he always believed himself to share many of the characteristics. Only consideration for his little girls deterred him from such a course. Although an excessively affectionate parent, Dr Burton had no pleasure in the company of children, owing to his want of any system with them. He could not, according to the common phrase, "manage" children at all--a necessary art for any one who has much of their company. He secured the services of a former governess of his wife, a Miss Wade, as care-taker of his children; and, as soon as he could, removed from the house in Royal Crescent to a small one in Castle Street, and afterwards, from a wish to let his children amuse themselves with little gardens of their own, to one in Ann Street. He has told the writer's father, Cosmo Innes, then his most intimate friend, that the first relief to his oppressed spirits was obtained from the nearest realisation of the "wild man" life to be found within his own country. He took long walks in all weathers, sometimes walking all night as well as all day, at times with a companion, oftener with none. The late Alexander Russel, then editor of the 'Scotsman,' was his companion in some of these rambles, Joseph Robertson in others, and Cosmo Innes in others. It was Mr Russel who accompanied him in the run across Ireland, which took place about this time, and of which his printed sketch is one of the liveliest of his minor writings. His pace was so rapid, and his powers of walking so inexhaustible, that with the lapse of years it became more and more difficult to find a companion who could keep up with him. He has described to Mr Innes one particular walk taken alone to the waterfall called the Grey Mare's Tail. The whole excursion was performed in pitiless rain and wind, which gave the waterfall every advantage, and it was while battling with the elements in climbing the hill to view it that Dr Burton felt the first return of his natural elasticity of spirit. He soon found also the best medicine of all in hard work. The years between the death of his first wife and his second marriage were the most active of his literary life, at least in the line of periodical literature. He contributed regularly to 'Blackwood's Magazine,' besides other periodicals. In 1852 he published narratives from Criminal Trials in Scotland. In 1853 a 'Treatise on the Law of Bankruptcy in Scotland,' and in the same year his 'History of Scotland from the Revolution to the extinction of the last Jacobite Rebellion.'

SECOND STAGE OF LITERARY LIFE.

In 1854 Dr Burton was appointed Secretary to the Prison Board, at a salary of ?700 per annum, and was thus relieved of the necessity, which had pressed on him for more than twenty years, of maintaining himself by his pen. On his appointment to this office he removed from Ann Street to the house then 27 Lauriston Place, the site of which is now occupied by the Simpson Memorial Hospital. In 1854 the situation was half rural. The house stood in a good old-fashioned garden of its own, beyond which lay a field containing some old trees; and the house possessed good offices, stables, &c., which were soon adapted to a workshop for Dr Burton himself, and rabbit and pigeon houses for his children.

Dr Burton, while a widower, had become a more and more frequent visitor at the house of Cosmo Innes in Inverleith Row. The writer does not recollect ever seeing him there along with other company--he preferred finding the family alone. She has met him occasionally in company in other houses--memorably in that of the late Mrs Cunningham, Lord Cunningham's widow--but never, so far as she can remember, in that of her father. He was at that time considered a good talker--his company was sought for the sake of his conversation. His defect in conversation was that he was a bad listener. His own part was well sustained. His enormous store of varied information poured forth naturally and easily, and was interspersed with a wonderful stock of lively anecdotes and jokes. But he always lacked that greatest power of the conversationalist, that subtle ready sympathy which draws forth the best powers of others.

On the 3d of August 1855 John Hill Burton married Katharine Innes as his second wife. He had by that time become accustomed to combine office with literary work, and, with the extraordinary activity and adaptability of his intellect, found them helpful to each other. About the time of his second marriage he conceived the project of his complete 'History of Scotland,' and directed his studies and investigations towards its execution, continuing, as his manner was, to throw off slight foretastes of his greater work as articles for 'Blackwood,' &c. His mode of life at that time was to repair to the office of the Prison Board, in George Street, about eleven. He remained there till four, and made it matter of conscience neither to do any ex-official writing, nor to receive ex-official visits during these hours. He gave his undivided attention to the duties of his office, but has often said that these made him a better historian than he could have been without them. He conceived it highly useful for every literary man, but especially for a historian, to get acquainted with official forms and business. He has himself expressed this opinion fully in his printed works. Returning from his office to dinner at five, he would, after dinner, and after a little family chat in the drawing-room, retire to the library for twenty minutes or half an hour's perusal of a novel as mental rest. His taste in novels has been already described. Although he would read only those called exciting, they did not apparently excite him, for he read them as slowly as if he was learning them by heart. He would return to the drawing-room to drink a large cup of extremely strong tea, then again retire to the library to commence his day of literary work about eight in the evening. He would read or write without cessation, and without the least appearance of fatigue or excitement, till one or two in the morning.

Always an excellent sleeper, he would go to bed and to sleep till nine or ten of the same morning, seldom joining the family breakfast, but breakfasting by himself immediately before going to his office.

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