Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 51.djvu/26

 posed painting of the new Houses of Parliament important as a public measure.’ In 1845 he sent to the Scottish Academy an extraordinary picture of ‘The Dead rising after the Crucifixion,’ with figures larger than life, ‘a work,’ according to his brother, ‘to be looked upon once, with awe and wonder, not to be imitated, not to be spoken lightly of.’ In 1847 he produced, in violent contrast to this terrible work, a picture called ‘The Triumph of Love,’ in which he indulged in a riot of colour. Besides many powerful separate drawings of such subjects as ‘The Sirens’ and ‘Self-accusation, or Man and his Conscience,’ he executed sets of drawings of ‘The Anchorite,’ ‘Unhappy Love,’ and ‘Scenes in the Life and Thoughts of a Student Painter.’ Among his last works were forty illustrations to ‘The Pilgrim's Progress,’ and a very beautiful series of eighteen imaginative designs to the ninth edition (1851) of Professor Nichol's ‘Architecture of the Heavens.’ Both series were engraved and published after his death. His last picture was ‘Hope passing over the Sky of Adversity.’ Since his residence in Italy Scott's health had always been feeble, and he died at Easter Dalry House on 5 March 11849. On his deathbed, at the early age of forty-three, he said: ‘If I could but have time yet, I think I could meet the public in their own way more and yet do what I think good.’ An etching of his head, drawn two days before his death by his brother William, is reproduced in the latter's ‘Autobiography’ (i. 261).

Scott was a man of undoubted genius and spiritual imagination, perpetually setting himself tasks beyond his grasp. Unfortunately, even when he reached a high measure of success, as in his illustrations to ‘The Ancient Mariner’ and ‘The Architecture of the Heavens,’ he failed to reap the appreciation which his soul desired. In many respects like Benjamin Haydon, though of finer fibre and less robust physique, he was the victim of his own temperament, and his life was a series of disappointments, the result of restless and ill-judged ambition. For some time before his death his perpetual sufferings were augmented by a nervous disease which chiefly affected the muscles of his neck. He kept a diary which painfully reflects the sufferings of a highly sensitive mind tortured by disappointment, self-distrust, religious doubt, hopeless love, and, latterly, ill health. He wrote too a great many poems, chiefly during his last years. One of these, called ‘Trafalgar, or British Deed,’ he offered in vain for publication. His face and figure were of uncommon beauty, and in his portrait of himself at the age of twenty-five he appears the very type of gloomy poetic genius. Most of his works are in private collections in Scotland, but ‘The Vintager’ and ‘Ariel and Caliban’ are in the National Gallery at Edinburgh, and ‘Achilles addressing the Manes of Patroclus’ in the Art Gallery at Sunderland. An exhibition of his works was held at 29 Castle Street, Edinburgh, in 1849. A reproduction of the fine portrait bust by Sir John Steell, R.S.A., in the National Gallery of Scotland, is prefixed to John M. Gray's ‘David Scott and his Works,’ 1884.

[Scott's Memoir of David Scott, R.S.A.; Autobiographical Notes of William Bell Scott, ed. Minto; Emerson's English Traits; Cunningham's British Painters, ed. Heaton; Life of B. R. Haydon; North British Review, No. xxi.; Hogg's Instructor, vol. iii.; Art Journal, ii. 120; Blackwood, cxxx. 589; Gilchrist's Life of Blake.]  SCOTT or SCOT, GEORGE (d. 1685), of Pitlochie, Fifeshire, writer on America, was the only son of Sir John Scott or Scot [q. v.] of Scotstarvet, by his second wife, Margaret, daughter of Sir James Melville of Hallhill. In 1685 he published at Edinburgh ‘The Model of the Government of the Province of East New Jersey, in America; and Encouragement for such as design to be concerned there.’ It was, says the author, the outcome of a visit to London in 1679, when he enjoyed ‘the opportunity of frequent converse with several substantial and judicious gentlemen concerned in the American plantations.’ Among these were James Drummond, fourth earl of Perth [q. v.], to whom the book is dedicated, and probably William Penn. The most valuable part of the work is a series of letters from the early settlers in New Jersey. ‘The Model’ was plagiarised by Samuel Smith in his ‘History of New Jersey,’ 1721, and is quoted by Bancroft; but James Grahame, author of the ‘Rise and Progress of the United States,’ first attached due importance to it. It was reprinted for the New Jersey Historical Society in 1846, in W. A. Whitehead's ‘East Jersey under the Proprietory Government’ (2nd edition 1875). Copies of the original, which are very rare, are in the British Museum, the Edinburgh Advocates' Library, at Göttingen, in Harvard College library, and in the library of the New Jersey Historical Society, and two others are in private hands in America. In some copies a passage (p. 37) recommending religious freedom as an inducement to emigration is modified. In recognition of his services in writing the book, Scot received from the proprietors of East New 