Benjamin Constant

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into madness in 1783–5. If Wilde had moments of black despair or dementia, they are
unrecorded: he went on to crown a brilliant academic career by becoming joint Professor
of Civil Law with Robert Dick in 1792, and sole occupant of the Chair in 1796. It was not
until 1799–1800 that John Wilde had become so much indisposed as to be clearly unfit
for lecturing.^72 An arrangement was then arrived at whereby Wilde continued to receive
his salary for the Chair, but the work was done by a joint Professor, Alexander Irving.
While his friend was perhaps about to begin his struggle against a private nightmare,
Constant in 1783–5 found himself in the altogether more serene atmosphere of the lecture
hall. In the 1780s a student’s work at Edinburgh University was, in some respects, closer
to that of a schoolboy today. Constant’s teachers Andrew Dalzel and Alexander Fraser
Tytler would perhaps require the occasional essay from him, but there were no written
examinations and the stress was on the question-and-answer method. To graduate—
which few people ever did—a student was required to spend four sessions working in the
University and to study Latin, Greek, Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, Logic and
Philosophy.^73 Constant was among the large number of non-graduands: he studied Greek
and History in 1783–4, and in the following session failed to register for any subject,
probably because of his uncertainty about being recalled by his father and sent to Paris.
C.P.Courtney has shown that, although there is no written record, Constant also appears
to have studied Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics while in Edinburgh, though with
little pleasure, since the only things he loved were ‘metaphysics and languages’.^74
Gustave Rudler states that he was unable to find either a list of lectures given by
Constant’s Edinburgh teachers or a record of Constant’s borrowings from the University
Library.^75 As we have seen, Constant did not borrow books from the Library, which
solves Rudler’s second problem; as for his first, we are exceptionally fortunate in that
both Dalzel and Tytler published details of their teaching. In 1780 Dalzel’s Syllabus of
Lectures on Poetry appeared, and in 1821 his Substance of Lectures on the Ancient
Greeks and on the Revival of Greek Learning in Europe gave an account of Dalzel’s
teaching which undoubtedly did not differ greatly from that which Constant had known.
Tytler for his part published a Plan and Outlines of a Course of Lectures on Universal
History, Ancient and Modern delivered in the University of Edinburgh (1782), and it was
Tytler’s course that seems to have made the greatest impression on Constant. Dalzel was,
according to Lord Cockburn, ‘an exciter of boys’ minds’: ‘He could never make us
actively laborious. But when we sat passive and listened to him, he inspired us with a
vague but sincere ambition of literature, and with delicious dreams of virtue and
poetry’.^76 Whether Constant found Alexander Tytler’s lectures entirely to his taste is
uncertain. Tytler’s outline of the course is largely in note form, so that in some places we
do not know the exact nature of his argument. What is overwhelmingly clear, however, is
the Whiggishness of his stress on man’s gradual progress, but at the same time a
pronounced Christian bias, particularly in his treatment of ancient religions. This could
not have been to Contant’s liking at this time. Some extracts from the lecture summaries
will illustrate this:


Of the Egyptians
.... Extraordinary superstitions.—Their morality very
reprehensible.—General idea of their character....
History of Greece

The charms of friendship 61
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