so6 Ifcfn0s of tbe 1Rofc, IRffle, an& (Bun 



rushed at him, seized him by the throat and nearly 

 strangled him. It was only after a desperate struggle 

 that Stoddart shook off that hangman's grip. Boiling 

 with rage, Stoddart set off to the Fiscal's to take out a 

 summons for assault. But on the way his anger cooled 

 maybe the sight of Tweed, making sweet music over his 

 pebbles, brought thoughts of peace and the summons 

 was not applied for. Thenceforward the two rivals lived 

 so far amicably that they kept their hands off one another. 



Unlike Russel of The Scotsman, Thomas Tod 

 Stoddart had the gift of eloquence. He lectured now 

 and then on subjects congenial to him, particularly the 

 Imaginative in Poetry and Art, and those who heard him 

 were fascinated by the beauty of his language and the 

 fire of his delivery. 



He was, too, a fine reader and an excellent mimic. 

 His famous " Gaelic sermon " has been immortalised in 

 the " Noctes." Stoddart did not know a word of Gaelic, 

 but he once heard an eloquent Highland minister deliver a 

 sermon in that tongue with such dramatic and impressive 

 power that he grasped the meaning from the effect 

 produced on the excited hearers, and reproduced every 

 gesture and sound with such marvellous fidelity that a 

 party of Highland drovers, who overheard him give the 

 sermon to some friends on board the Clansman, listened 

 entranced, never doubting that it was Gaelic they heard. 

 They expressed the opinion, however, that it was not their 

 own Gaelic but that of Ross-shire, as indeed it was in 

 accent, for it was there that Stoddart heard the words the 

 sound of which he so faithfully reproduced in his own 

 dramatic and deceptive gibberish. 



