John Burnet of Barns Part 8

I was both angry and surprised. Who was this man to address me thus?

"I pray you to finish the letter," I said curtly.

He read on for a little while, then he lifted his head and looked at me with so comical an expression that I had almost laughed. Before, his face had been greedy and cold; now it was worse, for the greed was still there, but the coldness had vanished and left in its place a sickly look of servility.

"Pardon me, pardon me, good Master Burnette; I was in a great mistake.

I had thought that you were some commoner from the North, and, G.o.d knows, we have plenty of them. I pray you forget my words. The college is most honoured by your presence, the nephew, or is it the son, of the famous Doctor Burnette. Ah, where were my eyes-the lord of much land, so says the letter, in the valley of the Tweed. Be sure, sir, that you can command all the poor learning that I have at my disposal. And if you have not already found lodging, why if you will come to my house, my wife and daughters will welcome you."

I thanked him coldly for his invitation, but refused it on the ground that I had already found an abode. Indeed, I had no wish to form the acquaintance of Vrow Sandvoort and her estimable daughters. He gave me much information about the hours of the lectures, the subjects which he proposed to treat of, and the method of treatment; nor would he let me depart before I had promised to dine at his house.

Outside the door I found the porter waiting for me. He led me across the hall to another door, the room of Master Quellinus, the professor of Greek.

Here I found a different reception. A rosy-cheeked little man, with a paunch as great as a well-fed ox, was sitting on a high chair, so that his feet barely touched the ground. He was whistling some ditty, and busily mending his finger-nails with a little knife.

"Why, whom have we here?" he cries out, when he saw me; "another scholar, and a great one. Why, man, what do you at the trade, when you might be carrying a musket or leading a troop of pikemen?"

I was tempted to answer him in his own way.

"And what do you," I asked, "at the trade, when you might be the chief cook to the French king, with power to poison the whole n.o.bility?"

He laughed long and loudly. "Ah, you have me there, more's the pity.

But what though I love my dinner? Did not Jacob the patriarch, and Esau, the mighty Esau, though I have little credit by the ensample? But come, tell me your name, for I begin to love thee. You have a shrewd wit, and a pleasing presence. You may go far."

I gave him my letters, and when he had read them, he came down from his perch and shook me by the hand.

"You are a Scot," he said. "I never knew any Scot but one, and he was hanged on a tree for robbing the Burgomaster's coach. I was a lad at school, and I mind me 'twas rare sport. So I have a kindly feeling for your nation, though may G.o.d send you a better fate than that one. But what do you seek to learn? Greek? Faugh, there is no Greek worth a straw, save Anacreon, and he is not a patch upon our moderns, on Francois Villon of Paris, whose soul G.o.d rest, and our brave Desportes.

Philosophy? Bah! 'Tis all a monstrous fraud. I have sounded all the depths of it, and found them but shallows. Theology? Tush! You will learn more theology in an inn in the Morschstraat than in all the schools. Such are my beliefs. But G.o.d has compelled me for my sins to teach the h.e.l.lenic tongue to a perverse generation at the small sum of five crowns. We study the Republic of Plato, and I trust you may find some profit. You will dine with me. Nay, I will take no denial.

To-night, in my house, I will show you how a quail should be dressed. I have the very devil of a cook, a man who could dress a dry goatskin to your taste. And wine! I have the best that ever came from the Rhineside and escaped the maw of a swinish Teuton. You will come?"

I could only escape by promising, which I did with a good grace, for if there was little profit in Master Quellinus's company, there was much pleasure.

CHAPTER II

I VISIT MASTER PETER WISHART

The life at the college of Leyden was the most curious that one could well conceive; yet ere I had been there a week, I had begun heartily to like it. The students were drawn from the four corners of Europe: Swedes, great men with s.h.a.ggy beards and invincible courage; neat-coated Germans, Dutchmen by the score, and not a few Frenchmen, who were the dandies of the place. We all gathered of a morning in the dusky lecture-hall, where hung the portraits of the great scholars of the past, and where in the cobwebbed rafters there abode such a weight of dust that a breeze coming through the high windows would stir it and make the place all but dark. Nor had I fault to find with the worthy professors, for I found soon that Master Sandvoort, though a miserly churl, had vast store of Latin, and would expound the works of Cornelius Tacitus in a fashion which I could not sufficiently admire. His colleague, too, who was the best of good fellows in the seclusion of his house, in his lecture-room was dignified and severe in deportment. You never saw such a change in a man. I went on the first morning expecting to find little but buffoonery; and lo! to my surprise, in walks my gentleman in a stately gown, holding his head like an archduke's; and when he began to speak, it was with the gravest accents of precision.

And I roundly affirm that no man ever made more good matter come out of Plato. He would show wherein he erred and wherein he was wiser than those who sought to refute him; he would weigh with the nicest judgment the _variae lectiones_ on each pa.s.sage; and he would ill.u.s.trate all things with the choicest citations. In truth, I got a great wealth of good scholarship and sound philosophy from my squire of bottle and pasty.

I was not the only Scot in Leyden, as I soon discovered; for forbye that I had letters to Master Peter Wishart, who taught philosophy in the college, there abode in the town Sir James Dalrymple, afterwards my Lord Stair, the great lawyer, and sometime a professor in my old college, whose nephew I had so cruelly beaten before I bade farewell to Glasgow.

He was a man of a grave deportment, somewhat bent with study, and with the look of exceeding weight on his face which comes to one who has shared the counsel of princes. There were also not a few Scots lords of lesser fame and lesser fortune, pensioners, many of them, on a foreign king, exiles from home for good and evil causes. As one went down the Breedestraat of a morning he could hear much broad Scots spoke on the causeway, and find many fellow-countrymen in a state ill-befitting their rank. For poverty was ever the curse of our nation, and I found it bitter to see ign.o.ble Flemings and Dutch burghers flaunting in their finery, while our poor gentlemen were threadbare. And these folk, too, were the n.o.blest in the land, bearing the proudest names, descendants of warriors and statesmen-Halketts of Pitfirran, Prestons of Gorton, Stewarts, Hays, Sinclairs, Douglases, Hamiltons, and Grahams. It was their fathers and grandfathers who had won the day at Rijnemants, under Sir Robert Stuart, when, says Strada, "Nudi pugnant Scoti multi." They had fought to the death on the Kowenstyn d.y.k.e when Parma beleaguered Antwerp. And in all the later wars they took their share-Scotts of Buccleuch, Haigs of Bemersyde, Erskines, Grants, and Kilpatricks. In the Scots brigade in Holland had served John Graham of Claverhouse, as some will have it, the greatest soldier of our age. I saw nothing of him, for while I was in the Low Lands he was already riding in the western hills, shooting and hanging and dealing martial law to herds and weavers. But I saw often the gallant figure of that Colonel Hugh Mackay who met Claverhouse in that last and awful fight in the Highland pa.s.s when the mountaineers swept on the lowlanders like a winter storm, and who marched to his death long after on the field of Steinkirk, and fell with the words on his lips, "The will of the Lord be done." This valiant soldier had made the Scots brigade into some semblance of that doughty regiment which Lord Reay commanded under the great Gustavus. He had driven out all the foreign admixture, and, by keeping it to Scotsmen of gentle blood, rendered it well-nigh invincible. But the pay was poor, and they who entered it did so for the sake of honour and for no notions of gain.

But though it cheers me yet to tell of such fellows, and though it pleased me vastly to meet them in that distant land, it is not of such that I must write. As I have said, forbye attending the two cla.s.ses of Greek and Latin, I resorted to the lectures of Master Wishart, who hailed from Fife, and had taught philosophy with much success among the Hollanders for some twenty years. He was well acquainted with my family, so what does he do but bid me to his house at Alphen one Sat.u.r.day in the front of March. For he did not abide in Leyden, never having loved the ways of a town, but in the little village of Alphen, some seven miles to the northeast.

I accepted his bidding, for I had come there for no other cause than to meet and converse with men of learning and wisdom; so I bade Nicol have ready the two horses, which I had bought, at eleven o'clock in the forenoon. One of the twain was a bay mare, delicately stepping, with white pasterns and a patch of white on her forehead. The other was the heavier, reserved for Nicol and what baggage I might seek to carry, black and deep-chested, and more sedate than his comrade.

It was a clear, mild day when we set out, with no trace of frost, and but little cold. The roads were dry underfoot, and the horses stepped merrily, for they were fresh from long living indoors. The fields on either side were still bleak, but the sowers were abroad, scattering the seeds of the future harvest. The waters that we pa.s.sed were alive with wild-fowl, which had wintered in the sea-marshes, and were now coming up to breed among the flags and rushes of the inland lakes. The tender green was sprouting on the trees, the early lark sang above the furrows, and the whole earth was full of the earnest of spring.

Alphen is a straggling line of houses by a ca.n.a.l. They are all well sized, and even with some pretension to gentility, with long gardens sloping to the water, and shady coverts of trees. Master Wishart's stood in the extreme end, apart from the rest, low-built, with a doorway with stuccoed pilasters. It was a place very pleasant to look upon, and save for its flatness, I could have found it in my heart to choose it for a habitation. But I am hill-bred, and must have rough, craggy land near me, else I weary of the finest dwelling. Master Wishart dwelt here, since he had ever a pa.s.sion for the growing of rare flowers, and could indulge it better here than in the town of Leyden. He was used to drive in every second day in his great coach, for he lectured but three times a week.

A serving-man took my horse from me, and, along with Nicol, led them to the stable, having directed me where, in the garden, I should find my host. I opened a gate in a quickset hedge, and entered upon the most beautiful pleasure-ground that I had ever beheld. A wide, well-ordered lawn stretched straitly down to the very brink of the ca.n.a.l, and though, as was natural at that season of the year, the gra.s.s had not come to its proper greenness, yet it gave promise of great smoothness and verdure.

To the side of this, again, there ran a belt of low wood, between which and the house was a green all laid out into flower beds, bright even at that early time with hyacinths and jonquils. Below this the low wood began again, and continued to the borders of the garden, full of the most delightsome alleys and shady walks. From one of these I heard voices, and going in that direction, I came of a sudden to a handsome arbour, at the side of which flowered the winter-jasmine, and around the door of which, so mild was the day, some half-dozen men were sitting.

My host, Master Wishart, was a short, spare man, with a long face adorned with a well-trimmed beard. He had the most monstrous heavy brows that I have ever seen, greater even than those of our Master Sandeman, of whom the students were wont to say that his eyebrows were heather-besoms. His eyes twinkled merrily when he spoke, and but for his great forehead no one might have guessed that he stood in the presence of one of the most noted of our schoolmen.

He rose and greeted me heartily, bidding me all welcome to Alphen, saying that he loved to see the sight of a Scots face, for was he not an exile here like the Jews by the waters of Babylon? "This is Master John Burnet of Barns," said he, presenting me to a very grave and comely man some ten years my senior, "who has come all the way from Tweedside to drink at our Pierian Spring." The other greeted me, looked kindly at me for a second, and then asked me some question of my family; and finding that a second cousin of his own on his mother's side had once married one of my race, immediately became very gracious, and condescended to tell me his opinions of the land, which were none so good. He was, as I did not know till later, Sir William Crichtoun of Bourhope; that Sir William who in after times was slain in the rout at Cromdale when the forces of Buchan and Cannon were caught unawares on the hillside.

I had leisure now to look around me at the others, and a motley group they were. There was Quentin Markelboch, the famous physician of Leyden, who had been pointed out to me in the street some days before, a little, round-bellied man with an eye of wondrous shrewdness. There was likewise Master Jardinius, who had lectured on philosophy at one time in the college, but had now grown too old for aught save sitting in the sun and drinking Schiedam-which, as some said, was no great pity. But the one I most marked was a little, fiery-eyed, nervous man, Pieter van Mieris by name, own cousin to the painter, and one who lived for nothing else than to fight abstruse metaphysical quarrels in defence of religion, which he believed to be in great peril from men of learning, and, but for his exertions on its behalf, to be unable to exist. It was he who first addressed me.

"I have heard that the true religion is wondrous pure in your land, Master Burnet, and that men yet worship G.o.d in simple fashion, and believe in Him without subtleties. Is that so, may I beg of you to tell me?"

"Ay," I answered, "doubtless they do, when they worship Him at all."

"Then the most pernicious heresy of the pervert Arminius has not yet penetrated to your sh.o.r.es, I trust, nor Pelagianism, which, of old, was the devil's wile for simple souls?"

"I have never heard of their names," I answered bluntly. "We folk in Scotland keep to our own ways, and like little to import aught foreign, be it heresy or strong ale."

"Then," said my inquisitor triumphantly, "you are not yet tainted with that most vile and pernicious heresy of all, with which one Baruch Spinoza, of accursed memory, has tainted this land?"

I roused myself at the name, for this was one I had heard often within the past few weeks, and I had a great desire to find out for myself the truth of his philosophy.

"I am ashamed to confess," I said, "that I have read none of his writings, that I scarcely know his name. But I would be enlightened in the matter."

"Far be it from me," said the little man earnestly, "to corrupt the heart of any man with so pernicious a doctrine. Rather close thy cars, young man, when you hear anyone speak his name, and pray to G.o.d to keep you from danger. 'Tis the falsest admixture of the Jewish heresy with the sc.u.m of ancient philosophy, the vain imaginings of man stirred up by the Evil One. The man who made it is dead, and gone to his account, but I would that the worthy magistrates had seen fit to gibbet him for a warning to all the fickle and light-minded. Faugh, I cannot bear to pollute my mouth with his name."

And here a new voice spoke.

"The man of whom you speak was so great that little minds are unable to comprehend him. He is dead, and has doubtless long since learned the truth which he sought so earnestly in life. I am a stranger, and I little thought to hear any Hollander speak ill of Baruch Spinoza, for though G.o.d, in his mercy, has given many good gifts to this land, He has never given a greater than him. I am no follower of his, as they who know me will bear witness, but I firmly believe that when men have grown wiser and see more clearly, his name will shine as one of the lights of our time, brighter, may be, even than the great Cartesius."

The speaker was but newly come, and had been talking with my host when he heard the declamation of Master van Mieris. I turned to look at him and found a tall, comely man, delicately featured, but with a chin as grim as a marshal's. He stood amid the crowd of us with such an easy carriage of dignity and breeding that one and all looked at him in admiration. His broad, high brow was marked with many lines, as if he had schemed and meditated much. He was dressed in the pink of the fashion, and in his gestures and tones I fancied I discerned something courtier-like, as of a man who had travelled and seen much of courts and kingships. He spoke so modestly, and withal so wisely, that the unhappy Pieter looked wofully crestfallen, and would not utter another word.

A minute later, finding Master Wishart at hand, I plucked him by the sleeve.

"Tell me, who is that man there, the one who spoke?"

"Ah," said he, "you do not know him, perhaps you do not know his name; but be sure that when you are old you will look back upon this day with pleasure, and thank Providence for bringing you within sight of such a man. That is the great Gottfried Leibnitz, who has been dwelling for a short s.p.a.ce in London, and now goes to Hanover as Duke Frederick's councillor."

But just at this moment all thoughts of philosophy and philosophers were banished from my mind by the sudden arrival of a new guest. This was no other than the worthy professor of Greek, Master Quellinus, who came in arrayed in the coa.r.s.est clothes, with a gigantic basket suspended over his shoulders by a strap, and a rod like a weaver's beam in his hand. In truth the little man presented a curious sight. For the great rod would not stay balanced on his shoulders, but must ever slip upward and seriously endanger the equipoise of its owner. His boots were very wide and splashed with mud, and round the broad-brimmed hat which he wore I discerned many lengths of horsehair. My heart warmed to the man, for I perceived he was a fellow-fisherman, and, in that strange place, it was the next best thing to being a fellow Scot.

He greeted us with great joviality. "A good day to you, my masters," he cried; "and G.o.d send you the ease which you love. Here have I been bearing the heat and burden of the day, all in order that lazy folk should have carp to eat when they wish it. Gad, I am tired and wet and dirty, this last beyond expression. For Heaven's sake, Master Wishart, take me where I may clean myself."

The host led the fisherman away, and soon he returned, spruce and smiling once more. He sat down heavily on a seat beside me. "Now, Master Burnet," says he, "you must not think it unworthy of a learned Grecian to follow the sport of the angle, for did not the most famous of their writers praise it, not to speak of the example of the Apostles?"

I tried hard to think if this were true.

"Homer, at any rate," I urged, "had no great opinion of fish and their catchers, though that was the worse for Homer, for I am an angler myself, and can understand your likings."