for such of his strange animals as he kept alive. Even when most extensively engaged in practice, he used to spend every morning, from sun-rise till eight o'clock, in his museum. Yet, in addition to his private practice, and a very long course of lectures which he delivered every winter, he had for many years to perform the laborious duties of surgeon to St. George's Hospital, and deputy surgeon-general to the army,-superintending, at this time also, a school of practical anatomy at his own house. Still he found leisure, in the midst of all these avocations, not only for his experiments upon the animal economy, but for the composition of various works of importance, and for taking an active part both in the deliberations of the Royal Society, of which he had been early elected a Fellow, and in other schemes for the promotion and diffusion of natural knowledge. He was the originator, in particular, of the Lyceum Medicum Londinense,-a medical society comprising many eminent individuals, which met at his lecture rooms, and rose to great reputation. That he might have time for these multiplied objects of attention, he used to allow himself to sleep only four hours at night, and an hour after dinner.

In order to procure subjects for his researches in comparative anatomy, his practice was to apply to the keeper of the wild beasts in the Tower, and the proprietors of the other menageries in town, for the bodies of such of their animals as died, in consideration of which he used to give them other rare animals to exhibit, on condition of also receiving their remains at their death. His friends and former pupils, too, were wont to send him, from every part of the world, subjects for his favourite investigations. "In this retreat (at Brompton), he had collected," says Sir Everard Home, many kinds of animals and birds; and it was to him a favourite amusement in his walks

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F

their habits, and to The fiercer animals

to attend to their actions and make them familiar with him. were those to which he was most partial, and he had several of the bull kind from different parts of the world. Among these was a beautiful small bull he had received from the Queen, with which he used to wrestle in play, and entertain himself with its exertions in its own defence. In one of these conflicts, the bull overpowered him and got him down; and had not one of the servants accidentally come by, and frightened the animal away, this frolic would probably have cost him his life." On another occasion, "two leopards," says the same biographer, “that were kept chained in an out-house, had broken from their confinement, and got into the yard among some dogs, which they immediately attacked. The howling this produced alarmed the whole neighbourhood. Mr. Hunter ran into the yard to see what was the matter, and found one of them getting up the wall to make his escape, the other surrounded by the dogs. He immediately laid hold of them both, and carried them back to their den; but as soon as they were secured, and he had time to reflect upon the risk of his own situation, he was so much affected that he was in danger of fainting."

Mr. Hunter died in the sixty-sixth year of his age, in 1793. After his death, his museum was purchased by Parliament for the sum of fifteen thousand pounds; and it is now deposited in the hall belonging to the Royal College of Surgeons, in Lincoln's Inn Fields. It is understood to contain about twenty thousand anatomical preparations, which are arranged so as (in the language of Sir Everard Home) expose to view the gradations of nature, from the most simple state in which life is found to exist, up to the most perfect and most complex of the animal creation,-man himself." The extreme beauty

to

of these preparations is striking even to an unlearned eye; and their scientific value is such as to render the collection one of the most precious of its kind in the world. It is certainly one of the most splendid monuments of labour, skill, and munificence, ever raised by an individual.

It is important to remark, that, with all his powers, this wonderful man never entirely overcame the disadvantages entailed upon him by the neglect in which he had been allowed to spend his early years. He used to dwell, we are told, on the advantage which is gained in regard to clearness of conception by the committing of one's ideas to writing, comparing the process to the taking of stock by a tradesman, without which he cannot know with certainty either what he has or what he wants. Yet he himself continued to the end of his life an awkward, though by no means an unpractised writer. After coming to London, he entered himself of St. Mary's Hall, Oxford, probably with the view of being able to maintain at least some pretension to scholarship, but in does not appear that he carried his assumption of the academical character much farther. attained little acquaintance with the literature even of his own profession; and it not unfrequently happened, indeed, we are told, that upon communicating a supposed discovery of his own to some one of his more erudite friends, he had to suffer the disappointment of learning that the same thing had been already found out by some other well known anatomist. But he felt his literary deficiencies chiefly as a lecturer, the capacity in which his more regularly educated brother so greatly excelled. It is asserted by Dr. Adams, who has written a life of John Hunter, that he always used to swallow thirty drops of laudanum before going to lecture. If these were heavy penalties, however, which he had to pay for what

He

was not so much his fault as that of others, the eminence to which he attained in spite of them is only the more demonstrative of his extraordinary natural powers, and his determined perseverance.

The portrait which we have given of this great man is engraved from an original painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds, the property of the College of Surgeons (by the permission of whose council our engraver has had access to it); it was also engraved by the late Mr. Sharp. Sharp's plate has now become of considerable rarity.* The picture is reputed to be a very happy and characteristic likeness, and certainly bears on it the impress of great vigour and originality of mind. Every eye will acknowledge the justice of the remark made upon it by Lavater,— "This man thinks for himself."

We do not quote these names as those of individuals, the single or chief peculiarity in whose history is, that they commenced life in a low station, and ended it in a high, or a higher one. If it were our object to exemplify either the freaks of fortune in lifting humbly-born men to the upper places of society, or that particular sort of talent or dexterity in men themselves which fits them to battle with fortune, and in either way to elevate themselves to conspicuous stations, as it were in spite and mockery of all her endeavours to keep them down— it would be easy to bring together an assemblage of far more extraordinary and surprising instances than any we have yet noticed, of such good luck or persevering and triumphant ambition. But our business

**

Sharp was himself a very extraordinary character. He raised himself from the lower walks of his profession as an engraver chiefly by his print of Hunter. He worked for a year or more on this plate. In England, it found few purchasers, originally; but coming into great demand on the Continent as a specimen of art, it gradually became valued in this country. See page 59.