The Regular Staff.
It is, we think, laid down in that strange book of Robert Forsyth’s on morals, that the gratification of the desire of knowledge is, at least on this earth of ours, the true end of man; and, no doubt, were we to judge of the strength of this desire in forcing man down into the bowels of the earth, and up into the heavens, across unknown seas, and over equally unknown continents, we would not be slow to confess its great power. And yet how many there are who assign the same place to the power of mammon, while others stand up for love and the social affections! We will not presume to decide where the range goes from the things of earth to those of heaven; but it appears pretty certain that there have been a good many Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpes, who have lauded, while in health, the practice of leaving the body to the doctors, and who yet have shrunk from the personal example when the shadow of the dark angel was over them. There have been also, we suspect, fewer Jeremy Benthams, who actually have left their carrion to the vultures of science, than of Merryleeses, who have robbed churchyards, and sold the stolen article for money.[4] Nor, in estimating the motives of the few scientific testators, can we say that we have much belief in their professions, if it is not more true that they are only seekers of notoriety, sometimes, as in the case of the author of the Fallacies, so weak as to be bribed by the offer of having their skins tanned and distributed in slips—the skin being, in such instances, the most valuable part of their corporations.
In pursuance of these notions, we may safely infer that if the wants of the halls had been left to be supplied by the scientific zeal of the amateurs, the state of anatomy would have been less perfect than we find it under the auspices of such men as Schwann, or Bell, or Hall, in our day. And we say this without being much satisfied that all the boasted discoveries have led to much more than the conviction that we get deeper and deeper into the dark, while—admitting many ameliorations—the people recover from operations, or die of diseases, very much as they used to do. What are called the high cases might very well be left alone, so that we might be still bound to admit that Nature’s purpose, in imposing the sacred feeling for the dead, is consistent with her determination, that if in this defeated by man, he shall earn nothing by trying to get at her secrets. But there was no necessity that the matter of purveyance should be left to the students. There have always been body-thieves; but the time had come in Scotland, when not only their number behoved to be increased, but their energies also, by the multiplied demands of the halls.
How far this increase might have progressed, but for the great drama of “The Scotch Court of Cacus,” it is impossible to say; but for a time the staff of Knox’s artists were rather put upon their wits and exertions, than increased by dangerous bunglers. The trade was perilous, and required attributes not very often found united,—a total bluntness of feeling, a certain amount of low courage, much ingenuity of device, clever personal handling, and total disregard of public opinion—the love of money being the governing stimulant. Few classes of men could have afforded a better study in the lower and grosser parts of human nature. There was one called Merrylees, or more often Merry-Andrew, a great favourite with the students. Of gigantic height, he was thin and gaunt, even to ridiculousness, with a long pale face, and the jaws of an ogre. His shabby clothes, no doubt made for some tall person of proportionate girth, hung upon his sharp joints, more as if they had been placed there to dry than to clothe and keep warm. Nor less grotesque were the motions and gestures of this strange being. It seemed as if he went upon springs, and even the muscles of his face, as they passed from the grin of idiot pleasure to the scowl of anger, seemed to obey a similar power. Every movement was a spasm, as if the long lank muscles, unable to effect a contraction through such a length, accomplished their object by the concentrated energy of violent snatches. So, too, with the moral part: the normal but grotesque gravity was only to be disturbed by some sudden access of passion, which made him toss his arms and gesticulate. So completely was he the cause of fun in others, that often on the street some larking student would cry out, “Merry-Andrew,” for no other purpose than to see him wheel about, clench his hands, and throw his face into all manner of furious contortions. All this only conspired to make him a butt, and the loud laugh which always came when there was nothing to laugh at, or rather something which would have produced gravity in another, helped the consummation.
Yet withal this same idiot was the king of Knox’s artists. Nothing dared him, and nothing shamed him, if he was not even proud of a profession which was patronised by gentlemen and men of science, and paid at a rate which might have put industrious and honest tradesmen to the blush. Like many other half simpletons, too, he had a fertility of device in attaining his object, which insured success, when others apparently more intelligent despaired. So he was a leader upon whom often depended the hopes of the students, when their material was scarce or awanting. When not engaged in his rural exploits, he was always hanging about the Infirmary, where, no doubt, he was in secret communication with the élèves of that institution connected with Knox’s rooms. From these he got intelligence of likely deaths, where there was a chance of the persons not being soon claimed by their relatives. Now was the opportunity of this genius. He kept a brown black suit for the occasion of a mourner, repaired to the Infirmary, and acted the part of the relative to such perfection, that the nurses at least—for the medical men could wink—were deceived. Nay, he looked at all times so much the afflicted, that the personation even to something like tears was as easy to him as to the weeper in the House of Commons, who cried “like a crocodile with his hands in his breeches’ pockets.” The moment the body was got outside in the white coffin, the bearers actually ran with it to the hall, under the inspiration of the, to such glandered hacks in the shape of men, so enormous a reward.
Another of the leaders, though far inferior to Merrylees, was the “Spune,” a name given to a man whose real one was scarcely known in the rooms, and which was supposed to indicate some superior genius in lifting out the contents of a coffin. He was a littleish man, with a clean-shaved face, surmounting a dirty black suit, worn down to the cotton, which time had glazed. One would have taken him not certainly for a remunerated Methodist preacher, but one who would have given a great amount of doctrine for as much as would have got him a dinner. Yet he was in reality a mute, being one of those dumb worshippers of philosophy whose thoughts, going down into the earth, if not up to heaven, are too deep and sacred for human speech. Nay, so grave, precise, and wise did he look, that you would have said he bore all the honours of the science to the advancement of which he contributed so much; nor is it certain that he did not really feel—so necessary if not indispensable they considered themselves to be to the professors—that he was engaged in the holy cause of the advancement of mankind and the amelioration of their natural ills,—a conviction this, on the part of the “Spune,” not modified by the reception of his fee, which he considered to be the wages of virtue; for while Merry-Andrew clutched his reward with a spasm and a spring, his compeer took his with the dignity and nonchalance of one who laboured for the benefit of his species. However ludicrous all this, one could scarcely say that it was out of place, for without the “Spune” the indagators in the hall would have had small chance of extracting anything from that deep well where it is said truth can alone be found.
Another was a man whose real name was Mowatt, but who was christened by the professional appellation of “Moudewart,” (moldewarp,) sufficiently indicative of his calling in burrowing into the bowels of the earth. An old plasterer, too lazy to work, he had betaken himself to this trade from a mere love of the money, so that he behoved to rank in a much lower grade than the “Spune.” Then, so essentially insensible was he to the honour of contributing to science, that he did not take on a particle of dignity, even from the sympathy of his fellow-labourers. It might be in vain that the “Spune” tried to impress him with the importance of his calling,—he was a man of merely so many pounds for what is in the bag, and no more. Without that principle of receptivity which enables a congenial soul to take on the reflection of the beauty or honour of an act, he was equally dead to the sublime inspiration of knowledge. Even Merry-Andrew had collected some scientific terms—such as caput, or cranium, sometimes even attempting occiput—all parts of the body with which alone he had anything to do in the process of abstraction; and as for the “Spune,” he could even discourse of tibias and fibulas, if he did not stagger under os coccygis, in a manner which might have made his companion prick up his ear at the wonder that any such head could carry such terms. But what can be done with a man who has no symptoms of a human soul but that which shews itself when the eye counts with something like pleasure the price of a human body? Yet, strange enough, and perhaps unjustly enough, the two others were not more prized by their patrons than this degraded son of science, who served their purpose equally well—a fact which would have brought down the learned dignity of his co-labourers if they had had sense enough to notice it.
The others of the staff (the names of some of whom we could give) were not to be compared to these leaders—not even to the “Moudiewart,” who, however stupid in respect to the science, was really sufficiently up to “the thing” to entitle him to rank as a successful if not respectable merchant. They were so utterly insensate, that they could not even commit the great mistake of supposing that their occupation degraded them, for the good reason that they were unconscious of degradation. Not that they were unhappy in consequence of not liking the work, for they were even fond of it as a means of getting them drink and tobacco, without the hope of which they might have been dull or sad, but not unhappy, a term which implies something like intelligence, if not sentiment. Fitted only for the humblest parts of the calling—the carrying, the watching, the calling out when intruders loomed in the distance—they had no envy towards the higher orders, and being thus free from all care, they could sing or whistle beneath the burden of a poet without thinking that they desecrated the profession of the Muses. We might thus liken them to those interlusive gentry who play the punning parts of a terribly deep tragedy, and who, not knowing where the pathos lies, as when Hamlet discourses on the skull, are contented with the duty of shovelling out either soil or song.
If we were inclined to moralise a little on the condition of such men as these, if men they can be called, we would hesitate to subscribe to the old Johnsonian notion that happiness has any relation to the number of ideas that pass through the mind, if we would not go to the other extreme, that for aught we know, there may be as much of that kind of thing between the shells of an oyster as between the ribs of a human being—at least the question must remain unsettled until we come again in the round of changes to the doctrine of transmigration of souls. The world is full of the examples of the meeting of extremes; and if you want one more, just take that afforded by the fact that these men we have been describing could carry on their shoulders in a canvas bag a Rothschild or a Byron, and never think that they were to any degree honoured by the burden. All one to them—the beautiful young creature who died of a scorned affection, the shrivelled miser who expired in a clutch of his gold, or the old gaberlunzie whose puckered lungs could no longer inflate themselves or the bagpipes which once received so joyfully the superabundant wind. But seriously, although these things have been, are we entitled to go with the fatalist, who says that what is, is as it ought to be? Though the wily fox contrived to get his neighbours to cut off their tails to make them like himself in his misfortune of being excaudated, is that any reason why nature should repeal her law and produce therefore tailless foxes? We hope not. And so also, because science run mad decreed that she should be served by such men and such acts, in opposition to the first and last throbbings of the love of kindred, is that any reason why nature should renounce her right of forming man in the image of God, and with affections which are to endure through all eternity? But we have even now, when it is whispered that subjects are again becoming scarce, men of the Christian faith who speak lightly of the dead human frame as nothing when deprived of the spirit. This may do for the logic of physics, but we have been led to believe that the religion we profess is not that of Merry-Andrew or the “Spune,” but a divine intimation that the temple of the soul is not limited to the time of the earth—yea, that it is something which, only changed, shall rise again and endure for ever. Even this is not adverse to the claims of science; but as a shade distinguishes homicide and murder, so does a shade distinguish between science in reverence to God, and science in desecration of His first and most universal laws.