MEMOIR OF JOHN HUNTER. 7$ 



he owed his professional success; besides being se- 

 lected by Mr Hunter as executor over that pro- 

 perty which had absorbed his fortune, and to which, 

 as the anticipated monument of his posthumous 

 fame, he had devoted the indefatigable exertions of his 

 life ; besides being appointed to the honourable of- 

 fice of keeper of his relative's museum, and finally, 

 one of its Trustees, for the public interest, Sir Eve- 

 rard, unfortunately for himself, determined at all 

 risks to become an author. He was long one of 

 the Vice- Presidents of the Royal Society, and one 

 of its most unwearied and voluminous contributors, 

 on subjects connected with Natural History; he was 

 also a lecturer on Comparative Anatomy, and pub- 

 lished, at various times, several splendid volumes on 

 this most popular and captivating* science; and the 

 materials of these volumes and papers in the Philo- 

 sophical Transactions, which astonished Europe, 

 sometimes by their originality, and still more by 

 their multiplicity, were clandestinely, and without 

 acknowledgment, pilfered from Mr Hunter's ma- 

 nuscripts. It is impossible to conceive a more ex- 

 traordinary infatuation. His base conduct was sus- 

 pected at the time, and the fact of the spoliation, as 

 well as the desperate resource to which he betook him- 

 self in order to destroy the means of his detection, 

 have been irrefragably established before a Commis- 

 sion of Parliament. Thus, Mr Clift, the present 

 unassuming and devoted keeper of the museum, long 

 the assistant and friend of Sir Everard, being inter- 



