22 FAMOUS SCOTS 



the mutiny at the Nore, the battle of Camperdown 

 under Duncan, and sharing the Egyptian campaign of 

 Abercromby. Even on his discharge, he was still ready 

 in 1803 to shoulder a musket as a volunteer, when 

 Napoleon at Boulogne 'armed in our island every 

 freeman.' The scientific interest, too, of the man may 

 be judged from the fact that in the Egyptian expedi- 

 tion, during the landing, he managed to transfer a 

 murex to his pocket from the beach, and the first 

 ammonite which formed the nucleus of his nephew's 

 geological collection was also brought home from an 

 English Liassic deposit. Facts like these and the 

 presence of such men should go far to dispel much 

 of the cheap sentiment introduced into the current 

 of Scottish life by writers such as Smiles and others, 

 who profess to be ever finding some 'peasant' or 

 'uneducated genius' in the subjects of their all too 

 unctuous biographies. Such a class has really no exist- 

 ence in Scotland, and between such men as Miller, 

 Burns, or even the unfortunate and sorely buffeted 

 Bethunes, there is a great gulf fixed when they are 

 sought to be brought into relation with men like 

 John Clare and Robert Bloomfield. All the Scotch- 

 men, born in however originally humble circumstances, 

 had the advantage of education at the parish school ; 

 and, slight though in some cases the result may have 

 been, it yet for ever removes the possibility of illiteracy 

 which the English reader at once conjures up at the 

 sound of such surroundings. The more the critic 



