making progress, but his tastes are widening and it is to be feared
that he may give in to them entirely. My sole concern now is to
move him on to a new place as soon as I see that the acquaintances
he is making are dangerous ones [dès que je m’aperçois que ses
liaisons deviennent dangereuses]. I gain time that way, but also I
do not succeed in rooting out the evil. At the moment he is in
Erlangen where he has behaved quite well. However I must take
him away from there now. As he has a particular liking for your
literature, I thought a period in Edinburgh would be useful for him.
He is good at Latin and Greek, and it is only in your country that he
will find true scholars. The letters of recommendation you have
sent me will enable him to meet men for whom he already has great
esteem. Perhaps studying under them will produce the result I
desire, that is that he will spend more time with the dead than with
the living.^9Others had doubts about Juste’s plans, including General Robert Douglas
who wrote to Keith:
The young man is, they say, a prodigy, but people add that the
father spoils him by proving too much his good qualities, & that he
will destroy the boy’s intellectuals with learning him too much. I
have a great opinion of Constant, but here, I almost join with the
voice of the multitude, & am much afraid that, with all the pains,
prodigious expence, & the often changing of his son’s education,
the young man will never turn out the scavant and home de lettres
wch his very sensible, but too fond father has laid down for a rule,
& positive maxim that his son shall be.^10After a stay of three weeks in Edinburgh with his son, Juste de Constant
left him under the protection of the historian William Robertson (1721–
93), Principal of the University, who appears to have taken a personal
interest in Benjamin’s progress.
11
We may assume that during the months
of late summer and autumn 1783 Constant familiarized himself with the
city, and probably met other students in his lodgings at the house of
Professor Andrew Duncan. His host, Andrew Duncan the elder (1744–
- was ‘both generous and hospitable to his pupils’ and a man of ‘very
social instincts’ and ‘evenly balanced temperament’,
12
and one can
speculate that it was through him that Constant met one of his drinking
companions, the doctor Richard Kentish.^13 By November 1783 Constant
was certainly acquainted with—and probably the friend of—at least two
The charms of friendship 45