Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 4.djvu/88

434 those qualifications which make the man respected and esteemed. From the youth of the scholars generally committed to his care, the professor of Greek is not only the public lecturer in his department of literature, but the instructor of its elements; and he has not only to perform the more ostentatious duty of exhibiting to and laying before them the stores of his own knowledge, but to find the means by which this knowledge shall enter the mind of each individual student. The instructor meets his pupils during a considerable portion of the day, and for several months together; and a knowledge of individuals is thus acquired, which gives the benevolent and active discerner of character an opportunity of uniting the friend and the instructor towards the young man who looks to him for knowledge. The discernment of the young respecting those who have cognizance over them is proverbially acute, and it frequently happens that while the learned world has overlooked, in the midst of brilliant talents or deep learning, the absence or presence of the other more personal qualities requisite for the instruction of youth, the pupils have discovered these, and, as a consequence, have purstied or neglected their proper studies, as they have personally respected or disliked the teacher of them. It was the consequence of the learning and personal worth of Dr Gerard, that his pupils respected his personal character, and acquired, from his knowledge and his kind friendship towards them, an enthusiasm for Greek literature, which few teachers have had the good fortune to inspire, and which has very seldom made its appearance in Scotland. A course of lectures on Grecian history and antiquities, (unfortunately never given to the world,) which he delivered to his students, is still remembered by many to whom they have formed a stable foundation for more extended knowledge of the subject.

During the latter years of his father's life, he had assisted him in the performance of his duties as professor of divinity, and on his death succeeded to that situation, where he brought, to the less irksome and more intellectual duties of instilling philosophic knowledge into more advanced minds, the same spirit of friendly intercourse which had distinguished his elementary instructions. The Scottish student of divinity is frequently a person who stands in need of a protector and friend, and when he has none to trust to but the teachers of the profession, on whom all have a claim, it is very natural that it might happen that these individuals should abstain from the exercise of any little patronage on which there is an indefinite number of claimants. It is, however, worthy of remark, to the honour of the individuals who have filled these situations, that many of them have been the best friends to their students, and that although they had at that period to look to them for no professional remuneration, they considered themselves as being from the commencement of the connexion, not only the temporary instructors, but the guardians of the future conduct, and the propagators of the future fortune, of their students. Of these feelings on the part of Dr Gerard, many now dispersed in respectable ministerial situations through the country, retain an affectionate recollection. His influence, which was considerable, was used in their favour, and where he had not that to bestow, he was still a friend. In 1811, he added to his professorship the second charge of the collegiate church of Old Aberdeen, and continued to hold both situations till his death. During the intervening period, he permitted his useful leisure hours to be occupied with the fulfilment of the duties of the mastership of mortifications for King's college, certainly rather an anomalous office for a scholar, and one which, with a salary that could have been no inducement, seems to have brought along with it the qualities of its not very auspicious name. The duties, though petty and irksome in the extreme, were performed with the same scrupulous exactness which distinguished the professor's more im-