Chalmers was a perfect
scholar, but he was not agreeable. He had black finger-nails, and
wore dirty collars. Having a lively remembrance of his friend's
"general acquaintance" with Latin prosody, Chalmers' opinion of
Providence was much modified when he discovered what Providence was
doing for Butts. Clem took to the Church when he started for
himself. It would have been madness in him to remain a Dissenter.
But in private, if it suited his purpose, he could always be airily
sceptical, and he had a superficial acquaintance, second-hand, with a
multitude of books, many of them of an infidel turn. I once rebuked
him for his hypocrisy, and his defence was that religious disputes
were indifferent to him, and that at any rate a man associates with
gentlemen if he is a churchman. Cultivation and manners he thought
to be of more importance than Calvinism. I believe that he partly
meant what he said. He went to church because the school would have
failed if he had gone to chapel; but he was sufficiently keen-sighted
and clever to be beyond the petty quarrels of the sects, and a song
well sung was of much greater moment to him than an essay on paedo-
baptism. It was all very well of Chalmers to revile him for his
shallowness.
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