Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 1.djvu/79

 and impartiality as legislators, their prudence as politicians, or their bravery as warriors, for Malcolm the Maiden and the terms upon which William the Lion effected his release from captivity must only be considered as exceptions to the general excellence of their conduct. But with the death of Alexander III., the peace and prosperity of the country was broken up; and much as he was lamented by the people, and gloomy as were their forebodings on his decease, no anticipation could exceed the real calamities in which the country was involved by his unhappy and untimely end.

, a painter of great merit, was born at Alloa, February 13th, 1744. He was the son of Mr David Allan, shore-master at that small port. The mother of Allan, whose maiden name was Gullan, brought him prematurely into the world, and died a few days after his birth. The young painter had so small a mouth that no nurse could be found in the place fitted to give him suck: at length, one being heard of, who lived at the distance of some miles, he was packed up in a basket amidst cotton, and sent off under the charge of a man who carried him on horseback, the journey being rendered additionally dangerous by a deep snow. The horse happened to stumble, the man fell off, and the tiny wretch was ejected from the basket into the snow, receiving as he fell a severe cut upon his head. Such were the circumstances under which Mr David Allan commenced the business of existence.

Even after having experienced the tender cares of his nurse, misfortune continued to harass him. In the autumn of 1745, when he must have been about eighteen months old, a battery was erected at Alloa, to defend the passage of the Forth against the attempts of Prince Charles's army. While the men were firing the cannon for experiment, the maid entrusted with the charge of young Allan ran across the open space in front, at the moment when they were discharged, and he only escaped death by a hair-breadth.

His genius for designing was first developed by accident. Being confined at home with a burnt foot, his father one day said to him, "You idle little rogue, you are kept from school doing nothing! come, here is a bit of chalk, draw something with it upon the floor." He took the chalk, and began to delineate figures of houses, animals, and other familiar objects; in all of which he succeeded so well that the chalk was seldom afterwards out of his hand. When he was about ten years of age, his pedagogue happened to exercise his authority over some of the boys in a rather ludicrous manner: Allan immediately drew a caricature of the transaction upon a slate, and handed it about for the amusement of his companions. The master of the ferule, an old vain conceited person, who used to strut about the school dressed in a tartan night-cap and long tartan gown, got hold of the picture, and right soon detected that he himself was the most conspicuous and the most ridiculous figure. The satire was so keen, and the laugh which it excited sunk so deep, that the object of it was not satisfied till he had made a complaint to old Allan, and had the boy taken from his school. When questioned by his father how he had the effrontery to insult his master, by representing him so ridiculously on his slate, his answer was, "I only made it like him, and it was all for fun!"

The father observed the decided genius of his son, and had the good sense to offer it no resistance. At this time, the establishment of the Messrs Foulis' academy of Arts at Glasgow was making some noise in the country. Allan, therefore, resolved to apprentice his son to those gentlemen upon the terms given out in their prospectus of the institution. On the 25th of February, 1755, when exactly eleven years of age, the young draughtsman was bound apprentice to the Messrs Foulis for seven years, to attend their painting academy in the university of Glasgow. In Newhall house there is a sketch in oil, done by him,