CXXX11 



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. 



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

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



Flee- 

 ming's 



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

 a student. buildings. His 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 



