before a class of students. Mr. Barrie has
given a very amusing and quite unexaggerated account of the Professor's
normal demeanour in Edinburgh. Blackie's text books of _Greek Dialogues_
are full of the most waggish remarks.

The landlady of Kinlochewe Hotel gave some lessons in Gaelic to this
convulsive old scholar. He would come in with a Celtic Bible below his
arm, and, opening the sacred volume, read a chapter or two at a terrific
rate of speed, and whistle triumphantly when he had finished. Highland
folk did not care to converse with Blackie for three reasons: (1) he
spoke too quickly for the leisurely and composed conversation of the
Gael; (2) his pronunciation was bad, and people did not like to tell him
so or correct him--(no one ever pronounced Gaelic to perfection who did
not get the language with his mother's milk); (3) he was fond of using
literary words, taken from the older bards, in his ordinary
conversation; now, such words are obsolete in every-day talk and quite
unfamiliar to crofters and cottars. In the Highlands, Blackie's English
was better understood than his Gaelic.

Blackie was undoubtedly a very able scholar--not, indeed, of that minute
burrowing kind famous in Germany, but rather of the class that delights
in the literature and vivid force of a language. He _spoke_ Latin and
Greek, and held views on the teaching of these tongues that seemed more
eccentric in his time than they do now. He declared that the linguistic
achievement of which he was proudest was his mastery, such as it was, of
the language of the Gael.

It affords me pleasure in the retrospect to think of old Blackie at a
distribution of prizes to school-children in a town of the West some
years before his death. During the chairman's opening remarks the merry
old man continued to whistle like a mavis. When the chairman sat down,
Blackie embraced him and called him fellow-sinner. Some recitations
followed from the children, one of which was Burns's "Address to a
Haggis." When the young elocutionist came to the lines--

"Till a' their weel-swall'd kites belyve
Are bent like drums."

Blackie rolled in his chair, held his sides and uproariously expressed
his approbation. Then came the distribution of prizes, during which the
Grand Old Boy made some pun or quaint remark on each of the children's
names, as he presented the books: _"Miss Minnie Morrow_: never put off
till to-morrow what you can do to-day; _James Gle