Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 1.djvu/112

 caricatures of the well known John Kay, may be found several faithful, though somewhat exaggerated, memorials of the emaciated person of Hugo Arnot. As a natural constitutional result of this disease, he was exceedingly nervous, and liable to be discomposed by the slightest annoyances: on the other hand, he possessed such ardour and intrepidity of mind, that in youth he once rode on a spirited horse to the end of the pier of Leith, while the waves were dashing over it and every beholder expected to see him washed immediately into the sea! On another occasion, having excited some hostility by a political pamphlet, and being summoned by an anonymous foe to appear at a particular hour in a lonely part of the King's Park, in order to fight, he went and waited four hours on the spot, thus perilling his life in what might have been the ambuscade of a deadly enemy. By means of the same fortitude of character, he beheld the gradual approach of death with all the calmness of a Stoic philosopher. The magistrates of Leith had acknowledged some of his public services, by the ominous compliment of a piece of ground in their church- yard; and it was the recreation of the last weeks of Mr Arnot's life to go every day to observe the progress made by the workmen in preparing this place for his own reception. It is related that he even expressed considerable anxiety lest his demise should take place before the melancholy work should be completed. He died, November 20th, 1786, when on the point of completing his 37th year; that age so fatal to men of genius that it may almost be styled their climacteric. He was interred in the tomb fitted up by himself at South Leith. Besides his historical and local works, he had published, in 1777, a fanciful metaphysical treatise, entitled, "Nothing," which was originally a paper read before a well-known debating, club styled the Speculative Society; being probably suggested to him by the poem of the Earl of Rochester on the equally impalpable subject of Silence, If any disagreeable reflection can rest on Mr Arnot's memory for the free scope he has given to his mind in this little essay—a freedom sanctioned, if not excused, by the taste of the age—he must be held to have made all the amends in his power by the propriety of his deportment in later life; when he entered heartily and regularly into the observances of the Scottish episcopal communion, to which he originally belonged. If Mr Arnot was any thing decidedly in politics, he was a Jacobite, to which party he belonged by descent and by religion, and also perhaps by virtue of his own peculiar turn of mind. In modern politics, he w;is quite independent, judging all men and all measures by no other standard than their respective merits. In his professional character, he was animated by a chivalrous sentiment of honour worthy of all admiration. He was so little of a casuist, that he would never undertake a case, unless he were perfectly self-satisfied as to its justice and legality. He had often occasion to refuse employment which fell beneath his own standard of honesty, though it might have been profitable, and attended by not the slightest shade of disgrace. On a case being once brought before him, of the merits of which he had an exceedingly bad opinion, he said to the intending litigant, in a serious manner, "Pray, what do you suppose me to be?" "Why," answered the client, "I understand you to be a lawyer." "I thought, Sir," said Arnot sternly, "you took me for a scoundrel." The litigant, though he perhaps thought that the major included the minor proposition, withdrew abashed. Mr Arnot left eight children, all very young; and the talent of the family appeal's to have revived in a new generation, viz., in the person of his grandson, Dr David Boswell Reid, whose "Elements of Chemistry" has taken its place amongst the most useful treatises on the science, and who was selected by Government, on account of his practical skill, to plan and superintend the ventilation of the new houses of parliament, in the prosecution of which object he has for several years been conducting the most costly and prolonged, if not the most successful, experiment of the kind ever made.