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he did his school tasks fairly well for her sake ; hut after school 
hours, if he was not fishing the water, he was sketching his com- 
panions, or telling the drollest stories of things he had seen or heard, 
which were truly pictures of the vividest kind. So she concluded 
that he was horn to be an artist ; and that, no doubt, was his own 
opinion also. Yet, with all his well -merited success, it may be 
doubted Avhether they were not both of them mistaken. That he 
had genius w.as clear enough, and that he was fond of drawing 
pictures was plain to every one who knew him. But whether his 
genius would best find its true field in painting the outward or the 
inward man — faces or characters — that the gossips of Fintry could 
hardly be expected to determine. It showed some courage then, at that 
early stage of Scottish art, to devote a boy of thirteen to so precari- 
ous a means of living ; but it would, no doubt, have looked like 
very madness to bring him up for the career of a man of letters. 
Yet, excellent as his portraits are — and some of them caught not the 
features only, but the very spirit of the sitter — those who knew 
him, and can remember the delicate shades and dramatic play of 
character in the stories with which he was wont to brighten our 
social intercourse, will hardly doubt that his real power lay rather 
in word-painting than in material pigments. The patient industry 
which he devoted to art would have made him a subtle dramatist — 
a writer of such comedies as Scotland has never yet produced, or a 
novelist to rival her very best. I am not sure, then, that in making 
an excellent painter of him, we did not lose something greater still, 
for which nature had specially endowed him. 
There was a Glasgow artist, at this time, who bore the honourable 
name of John Knox, to w^iich, however, he has not added any fresh 
lustre, for he will probably be known hereafter chiefly as the 
teacher of Daniel Macnee and Horatio Macculloch. Yet there 
must have been something in him to have trained two such men. 
These two formed their life-long friendship in Knox’s studio ; and 
many a trip, doubtless, the two lads had together to the lochs of 
Argyle and Dumbarton, and many a Highland story they picked up, 
and learned to interpret well the character both of its scenery and 
its people. Afterwards Macnee came to Edinburgh, and studied 
at the Academy there, along with Thomas Duncan, Scott Lauder, 
and David Scott, who all became his warm friends. For there was 
