[232] Milton's _Paradise Lost_, Bk. i.
[233] See Cases in Court of Session, vol. vii. S. p. 527.
[234] John Graham, who afterwards assumed the name of Gilbert; born
1794, died 1866.
He was at this time painting Sir Walter for the Royal Society of
Edinburgh. When the portrait was finished it was placed in the rooms of
the Society, where it still hangs. The artist retained in his own
collection a duplicate, with some slight variations, which his widow
presented to the National Portrait Gallery, London, in 1867.
[235] Sir Walter, in common with the majority of his contemporaries,
evidently believed that Dr. Robert Knox was partly responsible for the
West Port atrocities, but it is only just to the memory of the talented
anatomist to say that an independent and influential committee, after a
careful examination, reported on March 13th, 1829, that there was no
evidence showing that he or his assistants knew that murder had been
committed, but the committee thought that more care should have been
exercised in the reception of the bodies at the Anatomical Class-room.
Lord Cockburn, who was one of the counsel at the trial of Burke, in
writing of these events, remarks: "All our anatomists incurred a most
unjust and very alarming, though not an unnatural, odium; Dr. Knox in
particular, against whom not only the anger of the populace, but the
condemnation of more intelligent persons, was specially directed. But,
tried in reference to the invariable and the necessary practice of the
profession, our anatomists were spotlessly correct, and Knox the most
correct of them all."
At this date Dr. Knox was the most popular teacher in the Medical School
at Edinburgh, and as his class-room could not contain more than a third
of his students, he had to deliver his lectures twice or thrice daily.
The odium attached to his name might have been removed in time had his
personal character stood as high as his professional ability, but though
he remained in Edinburgh until 1841 he never recovered his position
there, and for the last twenty years of his life this once brilliant
teacher subsisted as best he could in London by his pen, and as an
itinerant lecturer. He died in 1862.
[236] _King John_, Act iv. So. 2.
[237] Archibald, second Lord Douglas, who died in 1844.
[238] John Greenshields, self-taught sculptor. See _Life_, vol. ix. p.
281-288. He died at the age of forty in 1835.
[239] _As You Like It_, Act II. Sc. 3.
[240] Sir Henry Seton Steuart's work on _Planting_ was reviewed by Scott
in the _Quarterly_.--See _Misc. Prose Works,_ vol. xxi. Sir H. Steuart
died in March 1836.
[241] See letter in _Life_, vol. ix. pp. 281-287.
[242] Originally published in London in 8vo, 1764. This contemplated
edition does not appear to have been printed.
[243] _Ante_, p. 118 n.
[244] _As You Like It_, Act II. Sc. 3.
[245] See Beaumont and Fletcher, _Knight of the Burning Pestle_, Act I.
Sc. 3.
[246]
Coelo supinas si tuleris manus Nascente luna, rustica Phidyle, etc.
Hor. Lib. iii _Od_. 23.--J.G.L.
[247] This letter, brimful of anecdote, is printed in Croker's
_Correspondence_, vol. ii. pp. 28-34.
[248] _As You Like It_, Act II. Sc. 7.