Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 8.djvu/62

10 to linger near a group of boys playing at marbles; and while studying their attitudes and the expression of their countenances, he neither thought of the class hour that had elapsed, nor the punishment that awaited his remissness. After striving against the bent, Mr Nichol saw that he could not transform his pupil into a lover of Latin and Greek; but his pupil had long been of the same opinion. He felt within himself not only his natural tendency, but a vague conception of the eminence to which it would lead him; and his usual reply to paternal remonstrance was, "Father, in spite of all this spending of money hi learning Latin, I will be a painter." A painter accordingly it was consented that he should be, but his noviciate in the profession was sufficiently humble; he was bound apprentice to a coach-builder in Leith Walk, to paint the armorial bearings on the panels of carriages. But Hogarth himself had a less promising commencement. "William Allan, although a stripling not more than thirteen years of age, soon gave such indications of pictorial excellence, that he was employed in the delicate task of painting certain anatomical preparations at Surgeon's Square Hall. At the commencement of his labours there, he was locked up by mistake at night in the room where he had been occupied all day, and was thus compelled to spend the hours of darkness amidst the skeletons and mangled relics of the dead. The hideous effects upon the imagination of a timid susceptible boy in such a charnel-house; the sights he saw by the glimmer of the moon through the crevices of the window-shutters, and the still more terrible phantasms which his fancy conjured up, formed such a night of horror as no artist but Fuseli could have relished. Allan himself was wont at a late stage in life, and amidst the literary circles of Edinburgh by which he was surrounded, to detail the particulars of this ghastly bivouac with a force of description and amount of merriment that never failed to set the hearers in a roar. It was making Yorick's skull to speak anew, for the mirth of a present, as well as past generation.

The high promise of excellence which the coach-panel painting of William Allan afforded, so won upon his employer, that, through the influence of the latter, he was entered in the Trustees' Academy, where he was a pupil for several years; and it is worthy of remark that Wilkie entered this school at the same period with Allan, sat on the same form, and copied from the same models and drawings. This circumstance, independently of their mutual enthusiasm for the art in which they were afterwards so distinguished, ripened an affection between them which no jealous rivalry could subsequently disturb. Their friendship continued unabated till the close of Wilkie's life; and Allan was wont, while training his scholars, to refer to his illustrious fellow-pupil, as their best model and example. After he had spent several years in the lessons of the Trustees' Academy, where he had a faithful and efficient teacher in Mr. Graham, of whose instructions he always spoke with gratitude and respect, Allan went to London, and was admitted to the school of the Royal Academy. On commencing active life, however, he soon experienced the difficulties with which the Fine Arts, as a profession, have to contend in the great metropolis of merchandise: his superiority was not appreciated with that readiness which his youthful enthusiasm had anticipated, and the demands upon his pencil were so few, as would soon have been insufficient to furnish him with the means of a mere subsistence. Like his countrymen so situated, he resolved to try the experiment elsewhere, and find, or make a home, wherever his talents could be best appreciated. The place which he selected for trial was Russia, a