Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 47.djvu/438

 of booklets, Glasgow, 1834; and he prefixed a memoir of William McGavin to the latter's ‘Posthumous Works,’ 1834.

 REID, JOHN (1809–1849), anatomist, sixth child of Henry Reid, farmer, was born at Bathgate, West Lothian, on 9 April 1809. He studied medicine at Edinburgh University, taking his diploma on 12 July 1830, and being admitted a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh, on 4 Oct. 1836. He was appointed assistant physician in the clinical wards of Edinburgh Infirmary in 1830, and in the succeeding year went to Paris to pursue his medical studies. Returning in 1832, he was sent, with three other Edinburgh physicians, to Dumfries during the outbreak of cholera there, and remained for several months actively engaged in arresting the progress of the epidemic. He subsequently became one of the most skilful demonstrators in the school of anatomy established at Old Surgeons' Hall, Edinburgh, and won further distinction by the publication of essays on subjects connected with his profession. In 1836 he was appointed lecturer on physiology at the Edinburgh Extra-Academical Medical School, and in 1838 pathologist to the Royal Infirmary, Edinburgh. On the death of Dr. Robert Briggs in 1841, Reid was appointed to the Chandos chair of anatomy in the university of St. Andrews, where he began a course of lectures on comparative anatomy and physiology, in addition to the regular work of the professorship. He also conducted systematic researches into the natural history of the marine fauna of the Fife coast, and in 1848 published a collection of papers on the subject, entitled ‘Physiological, Anatomical, and Pathological Researches,’ a volume remarkable for originality and accuracy of observation. He died, after protracted suffering, from cancer of the tongue in 1849.

 REID, MAYNE, whose name was originally (1818–1883), novelist, the eldest son of the Rev. Thomas Mayne Reid, a presbyterian minister, was born at Ballyroney, co. Down, on 4 April 1818. His mother was a descendant of the ‘hot and hasty Rutherford’ of ‘Marmion.’ Mayne Reid was educated with a view to the ministry of the presbyterian church, but, finding his inclinations opposed to this calling, he emigrated to America, and arrived at New Orleans in January 1840. After a varied career as ‘store-keeper,’ negro-overseer, schoolmaster, and actor, with occasional experiences of hunting expeditions and Indian warfare, he settled down in 1843 as a journalist in Philadelphia, where he made the acquaintance of Edgar Allan Poe. Leaving Philadelphia in 1846, he spent the summer at Newport, Rhode Island, as the correspondent of the ‘New York Herald;’ he was engaged in September upon Wilkes's ‘Spirit of the Times,’ and in December, having obtained a commission as second lieutenant in the 1st New York volunteers, he sailed for Vera Cruz to take part in the Mexican war. He behaved with conspicuous gallantry in various engagements, and particularly distinguished himself at the storming of Chapultepec (13 Sept. 1847), where he was severely wounded, and afterwards reported dead.

Returning to the United States in the spring of 1848, he wrote the greater part of the first of his novels, ‘The Rifle Rangers,’ at the house of his friend Donn Piatt, in the valley of Mac-o-Chee, Ohio.

In June 1849 he sailed for Europe in order to take part in the revolutionary movements in Bavaria and Hungary, but, arriving too late, he turned his attention finally to literature, and published his first novel, ‘The Rifle Rangers,’ London, 1850, 2 vols.

Between this date and his death he produced a long series of romances, of which no one else could have been the author, for in them are avowedly embodied the observation and experiences of his own extraordinary career. Unfortunate building speculations at Gerrard's Cross, Buckinghamshire, involved him in disaster, and after the failure of ‘The Little Times,’ a journalistic experiment, he returned in October 1867 to New York. There he founded, and for some time conducted, ‘The Onward Magazine;’ but after being confined in hospital, where his life was despaired of, from the effects of his old wound, he returned to England in 1870. During the last years of his life he resided near Ross, Herefordshire, and died on 22 Oct. 1883. He was buried in Kensal Green cemetery.

Mayne Reid married Elizabeth, only daughter of George William Hyde, who claimed relationship with the family of the first Earl of Clarendon. A carbon portrait of the novelist became the property of Mrs. Mayne Reid (Victorian Exhib. Cat. p. 128).

The following is a list of Mayne Reid's