Scenes and legends of the north of Scotland : $b or, The traditional history of Cromarty — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
Scenes and legends of the north of Scotland : $b or, The traditional history of Cromarty
John Stuart Mill · en
During the eventful period which intervened between the death of Sir
Thomas’s father and this unfortunate year, he was too busily engaged
with science and composition to take an active part in the affairs
of the kingdom. “In the usual sports of country gentlemen, he does
not seem,” says Dr. Irvine, “to have taken any great share;” and a
characteristic anecdote which he relates in his “Logopandacteision,”
shows that he rated these simply by what they produced, estimated at
their money value, and accordingly beneath the care of a man born to
extend the limits of all human knowledge. “There happened,” he says,
“a gentleman of very good worth to stay awhile at my house, who one
day, amongst many others, was pleased in the deadest time of all the
winter, with a gun upon his shoulder, to search for a shot of some
wild-fowl; and after he had waded through many waters, taken excessive
pains in quest of his game, and by means thereof had killed some five
or six moorfowls and partridges, which he brought along with him to
my house, he was, by some other gentlemen who chanced to alight at my
gate as he entered in, very much commended for his love of sport; and
as the fashion of most of our countrymen is not to praise one without
dispraising another, I was highly blamed for not giving myself in that
kind to the same exercise, having before my eyes so commendable a
pattern to imitate. I answered, though the gentleman deserved praise
for the evident proof he had given that day of his inclination to
thrift and laboriousness, that nevertheless I was not to blame, seeing,
whilst he was busied about that sport, I was employed in a diversion
of another nature, such as optical secrets, mysteries of natural
philosophie, reasons for the variety of colours, the finding out of
the longitude, the squaring of a circle, and wayes to accomplish all
trigonometrical calculations by signes, without tangents, with the same
comprehensiveness of computation; which, in the estimation of learned
men, would be accounted worth six hundred thousand partridges and as
many moorfowls. That night past--the next morning I gave sixpence to
a footman of mine to try his fortune with the gun during the time I
should disport myself in the breaking of a young horse; and it so fell
out, that by I had given myself a good heat by riding, the boy returned
with a dozen of wildfowls, half moorfowl half partridge; whereat,
being exceedingly well pleased, I alighted, gave him my horse to care
for, and forthwith entered in to see my gentlemen, the most especiall
whereof was unable to rise out of his bed by reason of the gout and
siatick, wherewith he was seized through his former day’s toil.”