Unlikely Stories Mostly by Alasdair Gray

Author:Alasdair Gray [Alasdair Gray]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781847675026
Publisher: Canongate Books
Published: 1997-06-11T16:00:00+00:00

ARTS

At home our arts have come under the scourge of an uncontrolled Kirk whose hierarchical jurisdiction is neither monarchical, aristocratical or democratical, but a meer Plutarchy, Plutocracie or rather Plutomanie; so madly do they hale after money and the trash of this world, which I here ensample by but one instance. The great Doctor Liddel, astronomical disciple of Tycho Brahe and professor of the sciences of sensible immaterial objects in Heidelberg, bequeathed fourty pounds English money a year to Aberdeen university for the maintenance of a mathematical professor, with this proviso, that the nearest of his own kinsmen, caeteris paribus should be preferred before any other. The chair falling vacant when the Doctor’s nephew, Master Duncan Liddel, was of sufficient age and skil to exercise that duty, did the good Senators of Aberdeen attend the honest doctor’s will? No, forsooth, the oracle must first be consulted with; ministerian philoplutaries, my tongue forks it, I have mistaken it seems one word for another, I should have said philosophers, decide his uncle’s testament must be made void; for, say they, Master Duncan Liddel hath committed the hainous sin of fornication, he hath got a young lass with childe! Which presbyterian doctrine, had it bin enforced in the daies of Socrates, would have pearched him up on a penitentiary pew for having two wives at once (neither whereof, either Xanthippe or Myrto, was as handsome as Master Liddel’s Concubine) and cast all the later ages of man kind under a cloud of ignorance by quenching the light of Plato, Aristotle and Euclid, who would have betaken themselves to some other profession than philosophy, if the presbytery of Athens had supplyed the academical chair thereof with the bum of a more sanctified brother, whose zealous jobbernolism would have mudded and fowled at its source the world’s first clear fountain of pure learning. Such a sort was that covenanting gentleman who burnt a great many historical and philosophical books thinking they had been books of popery, because of the red letters he saw on their titles and inscriptions. The nation of Scotland hath produced many excellent spirits whose abilities, by the presbyterian’s persecutions, have been quite smothered, and hid as a candle under a bushel; while many excellent books have perished for want of able and skillful printers, the author happening to dy; whereupon the wife and children, to save a little money, make use of his papers, without any regard to the precious things in them, to fold perhaps their butter and cheese into. So unfortunate a thing is it that good spirit should be struck by presbytery into penury and have their writing fall into the hands of ignorants. That poverty is an enemy to the exercise of vertue, is not unknown to anyone acquainted with the sovereign power of money; and if the great men of the land would be pleased to salve that sore, which, possibly would not be expensive to them as either their hawks or hounds, then per-adventure by

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