cxxxii MEMOIR 



he was yet able, until the end of his life, to sport upon these 

 shores of death and mystery with the gaiety and innocence of 



children. 



IV. 



Flee- It was as a student that I first knew Fleeming, as one of 



ming's that modest number of young men who sat under his ministra- 



acquaint- 



ance with tions in a soul-chilling class-room at the top of the University 



a student. Jji s presence was against him as a professor : no 



one, least of all students, would have been moved to respect him 

 at first sight : rather short in stature, markedly plain, boyishly 

 young in manner, cocking his head ' like a terrier with every 

 mark of the most engaging vivacity and readiness to be pleased, 

 full of words, full of paradox, a stranger could scarcely fail to 

 look at him twice, a man thrown with him in a train could 

 scarcely fail to be engaged by him in talk, but a student would 

 never regard him as academical. Yet he had that fibre in him 

 that order always existed in his class-room. I do not remember 

 that he ever addressed me in language; at the least sign 

 of unrest, his eye would fall on me and I was quelled. Such 

 a feat is comparatively easy in a small class ; but I have 

 misbehaved in smaller classes and under eyes more Olympian 

 than Fleeming Jenkin's. He was simply a man from whose 

 reproof one shrank; in manner the least buckrammed of 

 mankind, he had, in serious moments, an extreme dignity of 

 goodness. So it was that he obtained a power over the most 

 insubordinate of students, but a power of which I was myself 

 unconscious. I was inclined to regard any professor as a joke, 

 and Fleeming as a particularly good joke, perhaps the broadest 

 in the vast pleasantry of my curriculum. I was not able to 

 follow his lectures ; I somehow dared not misconduct myself, 

 as was my customary solace ; and I refrained from attending. 

 This brought me at the end of the session into a relation with 

 my contemned professor that completely opened my eyes. 

 During the year, bad student as I was, he had shown a certain 

 leaning to my society ; I had been to his house, he had asked 



