第24章 CHAPTER IX(3)

My tutor's peculiarities, however, were not confined to his endeavours to meet with a lady rectoress. He sometimes surprised his hearers with the originality of his abstruse theories. One morning he called me into the stable yard to join in consultation with his gardener as to the advisability of killing a pig. There were two, and it was not easy to decide which was the fitter for the butcher. The rector selected one, I the other, and the gardener, who had nurtured both from their tenderest age, pleaded that they should be allowed to 'put on another score.' The point was warmly argued all round.

'The black sow,' said I (they were both sows, you must know)

- 'The black sow had a litter of ten last time, and the white one only six. Ergo, if history repeats itself, as I have heard you say, you should keep the black, and sacrifice the white.'

'But,' objected the rector, 'that was the white's first litter, and the black's second. Why shouldn't the white do as well as the black next time?'

'And better, your reverence,' chimed in the gardener. 'The number don't allays depend on the sow, do it?'

'That is neither here nor there,' returned the rector.

'Well,' said the gardener, who stood to his guns, 'if your reverence is right, as no doubt you will be, that'll make just twenty little pigs for the butcher, come Michaelmas.'

'We can't kill 'em before they are born,' said the rector.

'That's true, your reverence. But it comes to the same thing.'

'Not to the pigs,' retorted the rector.

'To your reverence, I means.'

'A pig at the butcher's,' I suggested, 'is worth a dozen unborn.'

'No one can deny it,' said the rector, as he fingered the small change in his breeches pocket; and pointing with the other hand to the broad back of the black sow, exclaimed, 'This is the one, DUPLEX AGITUR PER LUMBOS SPINA! She's got a back like an alderman's chin.'

'EPICURI DE GREGE PORCUS,' I assented, and the fate of the black sow was sealed.

Next day an express came from Holkham, to say that Lady Leicester had given birth to a daughter. My tutor jumped out of his chair to hand me the note. 'Did I not anticipate the event'? he cried. 'What a wonderful world we live in!

Unconsciously I made room for the infant by sacrificing the life of that pig.' As I never heard him allude to the doctrine of Pythagoras, as he had no leaning to Buddhism, and, as I am sure he knew nothing of the correlation of forces, it must be admitted that the conception was an original one.

Be this as it may, Mr. Collyer was an upright and conscientious man. I owe him much, and respect his memory.

He died at an advanced age, an honorary canon, and - a bachelor.

Another portrait hangs amongst the many in my memory's picture gallery. It is that of his successor to the vicarage, the chaplaincy, and the librarianship, at Holkham - Mr. Alexander Napier - at this time, and until his death fifty years later, one of my closest and most cherished friends. Alexander Napier was the son of Macvey Napier, first editor of the 'Edinburgh Review.' Thus, associated with many eminent men of letters, he also did some good literary work of his own. He edited Isaac Barrow's works for the University of Cambridge, also Boswell's 'Johnson,' and gave various other proofs of his talents and his scholarship.

He was the most delightful of companions; liberal-minded in the highest degree; full of quaint humour and quick sympathy; an excellent parish priest, - looking upon Christianity as a life and not a dogma; beloved by all, for he had a kind thought and a kind word for every needy or sick being in his parish.

With such qualities, the man always predominated over the priest. Hence his large-hearted charity and indulgence for the faults - nay, crimes - of others. Yet, if taken aback by an outrage, or an act of gross stupidity, which even the perpetrator himself had to suffer for, he would momentarily lose his patience, and rap out an objurgation that would stagger the straiter-laced gentlemen of his own cloth, or an outsider who knew less of him than - the recording angel.

A fellow undergraduate of Napier's told me a characteristic anecdote of his impetuosity. Both were Trinity men, and had been keeping high jinks at a supper party at Caius. The friend suddenly pointed to the clock, reminding Napier they had but five minutes to get into college before Trinity gates were closed. 'D-n the clock!' shouted Napier, and snatching up the sugar basin (it was not EAU SUCREE they were drinking), incontinently flung it at the face of the offending timepiece.

This youthful vivacity did not desert him in later years. An old college friend - also a Scotchman - had become Bishop of Edinburgh. Napier paid him a visit (he described it to me himself). They talked of books, they talked of politics, they talked of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, of Brougham, Horner, Wilson, Macaulay, Jeffrey, of Carlyle's dealings with Napier's father - 'Nosey,' as Carlyle calls him. They chatted into the small hours of the night, as boon companions, and as what Bacon calls 'full' men, are wont.