ART.1.<Extracts from MS.Letters of Francis Hutcheson to the Rev.Thomas Drennan, Minister of First Presbyterian (un-subscribing) Congregation, Belfast; lent me by his grandson, Dr.Drennan> (<see p.> 64)<Glasgow, Jan.> 31, 1737.-- I am glad your present situation is agreeable to you.I must insist on your promise of a visit whenever you find honest Mr.Haliday (Mr.
Drennan's colleague) in good health, so that he could take the whole bur den for a month or six weeks.Robert Simson, with you and Charles Moor, would be wondrous happy till three in a morning; I would be with you from five to ten.Ican write you little news.Our college is very well this year as to numbers and quality of scholars, but the younger classes are less numerous as people here grow less set on a college education for lads designed for business....I must tell you a shameful story of our college.My letter I wrote from Dublin stopped Clotworthy O'Neal getting his degree upon his first application.He got some folks in this country who are tools of the court to recommend the matter to our principal.He made a compliment of twenty guineas to the college library, and the principal watched an opportunity when there was a thin meeting, but his tools all present, and carried to him a degree in --; that too, only an honorary one, and declared so in the diploma without any certificate for his learning or manners.My dissent is entered in the books, and four more masters decline signing it."<April> 17, 1738 -- Robert Simson, if he were not indolent beyond imagination, could in a fortnight's application finish another book which would surprise the connoisseurs.About November last, I sent a manuscript to Will Bruce chiefly for his and Mr.Abernethy's perusal.He showed it to the Bishop of Derry, who, it seems, is much pleased with it, and promises me a long epistle soon.Iheartily wish you had seen it, but it did not get to Dublin till February, and was in the bishop's hands till the beginning of this month.I believe Will is perusing it now.
I am not expecting it back again speedily.During our college session I get nothing done, but if I get them back during our vacation, with remarks of my friends, I shall endeavor to put the last hand to them.If I can get leisure next month, I shall endeavor to send you such a letter as Ionce gave you an imperfect promise of, if my hand be not gone out of use.We have at last got a minister in Glasgow to my taste.As I know your laziness, I really wish you and he could interchange sermons now and then.I am surprised to find some people of very good sense, laymen more than clergy, here not a little pleased with some of the notions of the foreign mystics; they have raised my curiosity of late to look into these books.I shall, sometime or other, let you know the result of my reading that way.I am persuaded their warm imaginations would make them moving preachers.I am going to read Madame Bourignon when I have leisure.You'll make Sam Haliday laugh heartily by telling him this particular.My most hearty respects to him.{464}
<Glasgow, March> 5, 1738-39 -- I had yours of the 26th of February on Friday, and could not answer sooner.I had resolved, when I first read yours, to have wrote you in the negative, being in as Much hurry at present as I have been this session by many letters of business as well as by my ordinary work.I have got on my hands almost the whole paternal care of my old pupil Lord Kilmarnock's three sons here.But upon reading over your letter this morning, with the deepest concern for that worthy, friendly, generous man, I could not refuse you altogether what you desire; though Iconcluded it must be either an unreasonable diffidence in yourself or an unjust value your friendship makes you put upon what comes from me, that occasions such requests.Ishall be forced to work in starts, with many interruptions, which never succeeds right with me; and beseech you be as busy as you can in some scheme of your own, and don't take any sudden interrupted attempts of mine as fit for all the purposes you say are expected by friends on this occasion.Ihint to you my plan that you may work upon it, and be the readier to patch up a right thing out of the two: -- "Aconsideration of what sort of life is most worthy and best suited to a being capable of such high endowments, and improvements, and actions destined to an immortal existence, and vet subjected for a certain space to a mortal existence.
in this world, and then without drawing a character, leaving it to the audience to recollect how much of this appeared in our friend's life."I hope Jack Smith has sent down to your town a "Serious Address to the Kirk of Scotland," lately published in London; it has run like lightning here, and is producing some effect; the author is unknown; he wrote with anger and contempt of the Kirk and Confession; but it has a set of objections against the Confession which I imagine few will have the brow to answer.
I really suffer with you heartily in the loss of your worthy friend; you will miss him exceedingly, and so will your cause.
A worthy lad in this town, one Robert Foulis, out of a true public spirit, undertook to reprint for the populace an old excellent book, "A Persuasive to Mutual Love and Charity," wrote by White, Oliver Cromwell's chaplain; it is a divine old-fashioned thing.Some are cast off in better paper, sold at 5d.in marble paper; the coarse one,, are sold at 5d.in blue paper, and at 4d.to book sellers.Iwish your booksellers would commission a parcel of both sorts.There has been some whimsical buffoonery about my heresy, of which I will send you a copy.