[DR. WILLIAM HUNTER.]
The name of Hunter is still of high account in the profession, which was raised and adorned by the talents and virtues of the two brothers. Indeed it is as inseparably connected with the progress of medical science in Great Britain, as is that of Wren with architecture, or that of Erskine with trial by jury. The career of the elder of the distinguished brothers is well worthy of attention, and eminently calculated to stimulate industry.
Dr. Hunter was not only a Scotchman, but to some extent a patriot; and an adventurer of mark or likelihood from that country, without a genealogy, would be like the year without the spring, or like the spring without the flowers. It serves to support his pride, and to sustain him in his poverty. In this respect the great physician was not deficient, his grandfather having been a younger son of Hunter of Hunterstone, chief of the name. Moreover, the parentage of this eminent man was respectable; for about the beginning of last century his father resided, in all the pride of territorial dignity, on the small hereditary estate of Long Calderwood, in the county of Lanark. The laird was, no doubt, a frugal-enough swain, with ideas as old-fashioned as the language in which they were expressed; but who lacked not sagacity, nor a stout heart and a strong hand. He had need of such qualities; for, however barren or the reverse might have been his acres, it appears that “the leddy,” though doubtless exemplary and diligent in “doubling his joys and all his cares dividing,” was, if any thing, inconveniently prolific; for with alarming rapidity, as years glided on, he was presented with no less than half a score of children—a progeny surely large enough, in all conscience, to daunt the bravest speculator on the probabilities of the future.
In the rustic abode, most likely one of those “thatched mansions” at that period commonly the residence of the lesser proprietors of the soil of North Britain, on the 23d of the merry month of May, 1718—if, indeed, all seasons were not then alike in that impoverished country, where, in the words of the clever but clumsy satirist,
“No flowers embalmed the air but one white rose,
Which on the tenth of June by instinct blows,”—
William Hunter, destined to be one of the most famous of medical practitioners, anatomists, and lecturers, was born and swaddled, with the usual form and ceremony. He was the seventh child of his parents; and ten years later, in the same place, appeared his brother, who is styled “the Prophet of the Healing Art,” and whose wise countenance, as portrayed by the potent pencil of Reynolds, made Lavater exclaim—“That man thinks for himself!”
Young Willie was, no doubt, a shrewd, grave, talented boy, whose time was divided between learning that quantity of Latin prescribed by statute to the son of every owner of a portion of Caledonian soil, however stern and wild, poor or paltry, it might be. Indeed, in his case there was another reason for attention to classical learning, it being originally intended that the Church of Scotland should have the benefit of the talents and abilities with which Nature had blessed him. Sir Robert Walpole boasted over his cups that, if the intention of his taking orders had been carried into effect, he would have one day been Archbishop of Canterbury; and had Hunter applied his intellect as vigorously to the study of divinity and Scottish ecclesiastical affairs as he did to those of the profession of which he became so eminent a member, he might possibly have climbed to the position, earned the fame, and exercised the influence, of an Erskine, a Blair, or a Chalmers. It was otherwise appointed:
“Scire potestates herbarum, usumque medendi
Maluit, et mutas agitare inglorias artes.”
At the distance of a mile and a half from his paternal mansion stood the village of Kilbride; and there, in the school-room belonging to the parish, some “Dominie Sampson,” whose sayings and doings have been consigned to oblivion, imparted instruction with a stentorian voice, and flourished the odious leathern scourge, before which many an erring urchin has shrunk, and winked, and howled. To this establishment, in all probability, would Hunter travel daily, on the back of a donkey or shaggy pony, with a wallet on his shoulder; save when, to his heart’s delight, a fall of rain or a snow-storm afforded a decent pretext for remaining at home, and making his escape at noon to the weekly market, or to one of the four parochial fairs held during the year.
At the customary age he was sent to the University of Glasgow; and no doubt, as it would likely be his first visit, gazed with wonder on such buildings as were there to be seen. The place was then very different from what it has since become. But to a boy, who hitherto had witnessed no scene more striking than a rural fair, who had only dreamt of greater things while reposing on a summer’s day by the margin of some haunted and murmuring streamlet, or while driving the cows in the gloaming to the modest grange, the venerable precincts of the college and of the ancient cathedral, described with so much felicity in the pages of “Rob Roy;” the battlemented mansion, that had lately been the residence of an archbishop; the tall masts of the vessels that had brought colonial produce to an extending market; and last, though not least, the Exchange, whose covered pavement was traversed by those proud “Virginians”—the aristocracy of tobacco—who wrapped themselves closer in their red cloaks, shook their flowing wigs, grasped more firmly their long gold-headed canes, and raised their eyes with haughty stare, when any inquisitive stranger approached the scene of their operations, must have seemed grand indeed.