THA Arthur Johnston in his Poems HANKS to a harmless egotism, some poets have anticipated and indulged the desire of posterity to know something of their lives and personal characteristics. The biography of Horace has been compiled in a series of selections from his verse; and Ovid has almost spared us the trouble of gathering and piecing together. Arthur Johnston, a disciple of Ovid in the art of Latin elegiac verse, has been almost as obliging. His biographers, though they have spared no pains, have little to add to what may be gathered from his writings; and it is only from these that we can form a true idea of his character. Nowadays, however, his volumes lie unvisited except by the rare antiquary or the library moth. Yet the personal poems contain the preservative of human interest; and they are worth knowing, if only because they offer the relief of a broad and kindly humanity to the picture of Scotland in days when it was a wild of theological and political savagery. Arthur Johnston was born, as nearly as may be conjectured, in 1577, and was a Johnston of that Ilk in the parish of Leslie in Aberdeen, his father being laird of Johnston.' The fifth son of a large family, he had to make his own way in the world; and after an education at Kintore and Aberdeen, he betook himself to the Continent. At Heidelberg he continued his studies, and in brief space rose to the rank of professor. Soon after he removed to Sedan, where the Duc de Bouillon was fostering a new University. Johnston was called to the chair of Logic and Metaphysics and remained there for nearly twenty years. During the first six of these he visited Italy twice, and on the second occasion came away with the degree of Doctor of Medicine. That he kept his chair in Sedan and studied medicine 1 As he says in his poem, De Loco Suo Natali : Clara Maroneis evasit Mantua cunis in Italy part of the time seems to need explanation, though the matter has not troubled any of his biographers. Probably, like Scottish professors in the eighteenth century-Adam Fergusson, for example-professors at a French University might desert their posts when they chose, by simply securing a cheap locum tenens during their absence. His degree immediately gained him an extra chair at Sedan. Retaining his position in Logic, he become professor of Physic. For years thereafter his life seems to have been one of ordinary academic routine; nor is it until nearly the end of his residence abroad, when he would be over forty, that we find him making his first appearance as an author. The last trace of him in the records of Sedan is dated 1619; but whether he left that University then, one cannot tell. He remained on the Continent other three years, and may have returned to Heidelberg. The probability of this conjecture depends on two facts: that his poems on the troubles of the Palatinate were printed there, and that soon after the capture of the city by Tilly we find him back in Scotland, enrolled as a citizen of Aberdeen. During his residence at Sedan, Johnston was on terms of intimate friendship with Andrew Melvill and Daniel Tilenus; the one exiled from Scotland for his hostility towards episcopacy, the other-a Silesian divine of Arminian principles-being a strong counter charm to such an influence. Johnston himself may have acted as moderator to their assembly, when all three foregathered. As we see in many of his writings he was, like the humanists in general, rather indifferent to theological polemics; if he did ever take a side, it was only later, in Scotland, when the intolerable intolerance of Presbytery threatened his personal freedom. On such occasions, as we shall see in his Apologia Piscatoris, he could speak in unequivocal accents, a sturdy latitudinarian. For some time after his return to Scotland we know nothing certain of him. Sir William Geddes conjectures that his poems in support of the Princess Palatine-James's daughter Elizabethmay have proved a passport to courtly circles in London; and thinks that it was about this time he gained his title of Medicus Regius. But even if this were so-and it is very probable-there was nothing to keep him in England. As we know from one of his lighter poems, the title was long an empty one. The post was a successorship, and, as Johnston complains in this jeu d'esprit -a poem rather serious in tone to be quite successful as suchthe royal physicians one and all gave promise of longer life than was convenient for him. His circumstances did not permit him to be an idler, so in all probability he soon went north, and there settled on a farm at the back of Benachie.' None of his biographers refer to this episode of his life; but that there was a farming period is evident from several of his poems. He does not seem to have found the life altogether congenial. Yet he produced then much more and much better verse than he had done during his professorial period. In due course he published several volumes of sacred and of secular verse. The most notable was a complete Latin version of the Psalms. By this time he had formed an acquaintance with some of the leading men of the time; whether by correspondence or by frequent visits to Aberdeen, it is impossible to say. But his circumstances may have changed and he may have removed to the city. He can hardly have remained the busy farmer he pictures himself in his Epistle to Dr. Robert Baron; for we next find him appointed Rector of the University and King's College of Aberdeen. According to Irvine, the position was a sinecure; Geddes, with more reason, makes it out to have been sufficiently arduous. The next certainty is the last. In 1641 he went to Oxford to visit a daughter who had married a clergyman of the English Episcopal Church. There he fell ill, and died. This is all, or nearly all, we know of the life of Arthur Johnston. Add to it a few details of genealogy; the complete list of his works, with dates of publication; the fact that he was twice married, first to a Belgian lady and next to a Scottish; and the sum is complete. It was the humdrum life of a scholar who shunned the strife of politics and theology. A lawsuit or two about property flushed it with what would seem to have been enormous excitement, which found vent in over-heated verse. An incident of travel, when he was robbed of some clothes by the crew of the ship he sailed in, is made the occasion of a blistering satire on sailors in general. Probably, on these occasions, the poems were more to him than the events that called them forth. The poems of Johnston that are still worth reading relate almost entirely to his life in Scotland, and are not very numerous. The translation of the Psalms may now be regarded as a mere literary tour de force; and much of the secular verse can only reward the curious antiquary. Yet, though few have the qualities of permanent literature, the sum of the lines of those few is quite as large as the residuum of many an unforgotten poet whose work has been sifted by the centuries. A reader who is versed only in modern literature may not think them poetry at all, may say that they are only good talk metred. But in ancient times, and even in the eighteenth century, the functions of verse and prose were not so distinctly differentiated as they have been since. The verse of Johnston that may still rank as literature is good talk, in metre, and satisfies the old definition of poetry.1 Sometimes it even satisfies the narrower modern conception. The following poems are presented only in translation; yet they suggest a personality that helps to mellow the usual picture of those times. Let us take first the Epistle to Dr. Robert Baron, the most distinguished of the famous group of divines, known as the Aberdeen Doctors, who were celebrated by Clarendon as resisting the Covenant. It was sent with some poems; and, while inviting the severest criticism, apologises for the shortcomings of the work by explaining the conditions of the author's life. As we read we are reminded of the words of Macaulay in the first chapter of his History: Scotsmen whose dwellings and whose food were as wretched as those of the Icelanders of our time wrote Latin verse with more than the delicacy of Vida.' The historian was thinking particularly of Buchanan, but it will be seen that he might equally well have had in mind the circumstances in which Johnston strove to guard the fire within' and cultivate the art he loved. TO ROBERT BARON. From Gadie's banks I send this little book— The hand that held the pen now holds the plough, These are my tilling-team. I follow them And leaning hard to drive the coulter deep. 1Távта μéтpov ëxovra dóyov, to quote the definition of Gorgias, in Plato's dialogue. 2 The use of the word Gadiacis suggests that the poet meant a play on the word, Gades or Cadiz being on the outskirts of Roman civilization. Sometimes I ply the goad, often I chant, Myself, half-naked, three-pronged graip in hand, In Autumn, see me reaping hook in hand! One part quern For bruising; and a third, the precious flax, Must in the stream be steeped. But, twixt those cares,— I dig for fodder for the winter fire. Deep down I delve,—ay, down so deep I go That fancy, or my very eyes, behold The under-world of Shades. And they, methinks I hear them cry, 'That's Johnston! Poor old slave !' Care follows care, as on a stormy sea Billow on billow rolls in endless wrath. Scarce in the dead of night my eyes are closed And wrap in shaggy comfort back and foot, Then break my fast on what would break your heart,— Hold such a luckless, miserable soul. I am not what I was. My looks would scare 1 Rapa. This is usually translated turnip, but the turnip was not then known in Scotland. A point for antiquaries. |