HOW TO GET STRONG
especially to the study of Greek, German, and Italian, and classical philology. Returning home, he published a metrical translation of Faust, in 1834, which attained great popularity; and of which a new edition has recently appeared. Then he was called to the Bar, and for a few years was a successful practitioner, shrewd and canny, and wellnigh invincible in argument. His great talents were not to be given, however, to courts of law. In 1841 a new chair of Latin literature was established at the old Mareschal College at Aberdeen; and he was called to fill it. For eleven years he held the place, with a reputation filling all Scotland and overflowing into all the lands of the earth for thorough scholarship, and a peculiar ability to win the attention and mould the minds of his pupils. The personal appearance of Dr. Blackie was at once striking and attractive. He was familiar to every wayfarer on the streets of Edinburgh. A man of middle stature, lightly built, of finely chiselled features, cleanly shaven; a wealth of silken silver locks trembling on his slender shoulders; a dark frock-coat; a Shakespeare collar; a Cavalier hat; a gray Scottish plaid intricately wrapped around the chest; humming a German student's song, or a chorus from Æschylus. He was a picturesque figure in his study too; clothed in a voluminous blue dressing-gown coming to his heels, and confined at the waist by yards upon yards of red silk sash.… Outwardly he is the most picturesque of his race, inwardly the most youthful and brilliant of his kind."
In a charming little book, Blackie's Sayings and Doings, his nephew, Mr. Angus Kennedy, says:
"Few men had such a brilliant list of visitors and correspondents— Gladstone; Carlyle; Ruskin, 'a small edition of Carlyle, but a delicate and dainty edition'; Browning; Froude; Max Müller; F. W. Newman, and his brother the Cardinal; Bunsen; the Duke of Argyll; Lord Rosebery, 'the wise young Laird of Dalmeny'; Sir David Brewster; Sir William Hamilton; Dean Ramsey; Cardinal Manning; Kingsley; Guthrie; Macleod; Blaikie; 'Christopher North'; Dr. Trench; Lord Neaves; Mrs. Bishop; Sir Noel Paton; Sir George Reid; Sir Henry Irving; Miss Mary Anderson; and his neighbor, Principal Rainy, 'a fellow incapable of talking nonsense'—these are a few of the names.
"One curious but inevitable result of the English style of teaching Greek is that our great Greek scholars, when they visit Greece, cannot even make themselves understood. It is said that Mr. Glad-
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