BARCLAY AND THE FROGS. 25 



always spoke of him as his anatomical teacher and 

 friend. In 1830 Knox was far above his compeers, 

 and did more than any teacher, professorial or extra- 

 mural, to revive the fame of the anatomical school 

 of Edinburgh, that had been on the wane during the 

 reign of Monro tertius. He was the successor of Dr. 

 John Barclay, in 1825-6, and extended the reputation, 

 so well founded, of that distinguished anatomist/''" 

 Knox won the admiration of John Goodsir, and of 

 every intellectual student ; for who could fail to be 

 pleased with a lecturer so fluent in speech, so per- 

 suasive in style, and so generally impressive and 

 eloquent ? The plainest visaged man in Edinburgh, 

 Knox was gay in dress, with embroidered purple 

 vests, gold chains in profusion, and dandyism ; more- 

 over, he was a courtier in manners, a dramatist in 

 action, and possessed of a rhetorical faculty that 

 would have suited the Bema, the Forum, or the 

 Tribune. He had a class of 504 pupils (session 

 1829 or 1830), the largest anatomical audience ever 



* John Barclay was educated for the church, and, as a probationer, 

 was for some weeks the locum tcncns of the Rev. G. Baird of Bo'ness, after- 

 wards Principal of the University of Edinburgh. Mr. Baird, wishing to 

 ascertain how his parishioners liked Barclay, asked the opinion of a shrewd 

 villager. "Gey weel, minister, gey weel," quoth Sandie ; "but every 

 body thought him daft." " Why, Sandie ?" "0, for glide reasons, minister ; 

 Mr. Barclay was aye skinning paddocks" (frogs). This dissecting of frogs 

 changed Barclay's thoughts, and he took to medicine, and became a man of 

 mark in the anatomical school of Edinburgh. He bequeathed his hue 

 comparative anatomy collection, and other preparations, to the Royal 

 College of Surgeons. It used to be said that dogs avoided Barclay's path 

 from an instinctive diead of his dissecting them. If disliked by the 



animalities, he was miieh esteemed by his contemporaries and friends. He 

 rendered the medical school no small service. 



