MEMOIR OF DR Willi. H'l 



cut off by a bilious fever, at the early age of twenty- 

 four. The tributes of respect which were paid to his 

 memory, evince the strong feeling which his death 

 had excited among his brother officers ; and several of 

 the poetical effusions transmitted to Dr Wright on 

 the occasion, discover taste as well as genius of no or- 

 dinary kind * His illness had only been of eight days' 

 duration, but it had not overtaken him unprepared 

 for the event. On the supposition of his having died 

 intestate, a Court of Inquiry was ? appointed to ar- 

 range the affairs of the deceased, and make an in- 

 ventory of his effects. But the court was antici- 

 pated in this melancholy duty, by the arrangements 

 which Mr Wright had himself directed to be made. 

 In the short and comprehensive terms of a military 

 codicil, he named two brother officers his executors, 

 and bequeathed his whole property to his uncle; whom 

 failing, to his parents ; whom failing, to his sisters, in 

 equal proportions ; thus leaving, at his death, a lesson 

 of that propriety and prudence for which his short but 

 interesting and instructive life had been a steady ex- 

 ample. 



If, with some imaginative persons, we could believe 

 in the possibility of being visited with a preternatu- 

 ral presentiment of approaching dissolution, the idea 

 would seem to be corroborated by the terms of a let- 

 ter, addressed to Dr Wright, and found in his ne- 



by his friend Dr Andrew Berrie, at that time stationed at Fort 

 St George. 

 • See Scottish Register for 1 794. 



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