APPENDIX. 499 



and other things belonging thereto or used therewith, be offered for 

 sale in one entire lot to the Government of Great Britain, at such price 

 as may be considered as reasonable between both parties.' 



" If the ' cases and other things belonging thereto' meant the deal 

 shelves, and did not mean the ' Cases and Histories ' of the Prepara- 

 tions themselves, then it must be inferred that Mr. Hunter himself 

 intended an imposition on the public, by first desiring his papers to be 

 destroyed, and afterwards to foist off the collection without a catalogue 

 or the means of making one. No one will believe that Mr. Hunter had 

 any such wish or intention, after reading the following paragraph, 

 extracted from his 'Life,' p. 65, by Sir Everard Home, 1794: — 



" ' His disposition was candid and free from reserve even to a fault. 

 He hated deceit, and as he was above every kind of artifice, he detested 

 it in others, and too openly avowed his sentiments. His mind was 



uncommonly active; it was naturally formed for investigation 



He was so diffident of himself that he trusted nothing to memory.' — 

 Pp. 24, 25. 



" Every one speaks of Mr. Hunter as a man of unusual talent and 

 unexampled industry: Sir Everard himself speaks of his midnight 

 labours : he did not make preparations at night. What, then, was he 

 employed upon ? 



" Can it be believed that Mr. Hunter, with his sober and inquisitive 

 mind, could have laboured so incessantly for thirty or forty years, and 

 leave nothing behind him fit to be seen by anybody but Sir Everard 

 Home ? Had that been the case, Mr. Hunter would have little merited 

 the high character which has been almost universally conceded to 

 him : and, according to Sir Everard, his only praise must be that of 

 a maker of preparations. His end and object in doing so must still 

 remain a mystery. 



" Can it be imagined for a moment that Mr. Hunter would have 

 wrought even till his last hour on subjects the nearest to his heart, 

 merely that Sir Everard might have the pleasure of destroying those 

 papers, the result of so much patient toil and study? For however 

 lightly Sir Everard may now pretend to value them, will he induce any 

 one individual to believe that Mr. Hunter considered his papers to be 

 too imperfect or too unimportant to meet the public eye, or any eye ? 

 If he had felt their imperfection, would he not have rendered them 

 more perfect? But whatever the world might have thought, Mr. 

 Hunter could not have felt their imperfection, as he had undoubtedly 

 exerted his best abilities to render them what they were, good or bad. 



" If these manuscripts were unfit to be seen, and useless, and inappli- 

 cable to the explanation of the collection, why were they not destroyed, 



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