Greyfriars Church.] SCOTT?S FIRST LOVE AFFAIR. ? 383
son, buried respectively I 7 67 and I 8 I 7, Alexander
Monro $rimus, the great anatomist, and Alexander
Monro secwidm, who in 1756 was admitted joint
Professor of Anatomy and Surgery with his distinguished
father.
In the same ground, in 1799, were laid Professor
Joseph Black, the great chemist ; Dr. Hugh Blair, in
1800 ; Henry Mackenzie, ? the Man of Feeling,? in
1831 ; Alexander Tytler, another distinguished
Zittivatear; John Kay, the caricaturist, in 1826 ;
and Dr. McCrie, the well-known biographer of John
Knox.
The monument to Dr. Hugh Hair was erected
in 1817, and is placed on the south side of the
church, in the same compartment with that of Professor
MacLaurin. Thus, one of the most eminent
philosophers and one of the most distinguished
preachers that Scotland has produced are commemorated
side by side.
On the eastern gable of the Old Greyfriars
Church, a grim, repellent, and remarkable monument
catches the eye. In the centre is sculptured
a skeleton, festooned around with surgical implements,
but the inscription is nearly obliterated by
time and the fire of the church, yet it is always an
object of much curiosity.
It marks the grave of James Borthwick, whose
portrait is the oldest now hanging in the Hall of
the Royal College of Surgeons, the incorporation
of which he entered in 1645 ; he was a cadet of
the House of Crookston, and nearly related to
Lord Borthwick, who defended his castle of that
name against Oliver Cromwell after the battle
of Dunbar. He acquired the estate of Stow, in
which he was succeeded by his son James, who
erected this hideously grotesque memorial to his
memory.
Another monument of a different kind, in the
form of a brass plate inserted into a stone, on the
western wall of the church, bore some fine elegiac
verses to the memory of Francisca, daughter of
?< Alexander Swinton, advocate ; who died . . . . .
aged 7 years.?
But these verses were quite obliterated by 1816.
They ran thus :-
? The sweetest children, like these transient flowers,
Which please the fancy for a few short hours,-
Lovely at morning, see them burst in birth,
At evening withered-scattered on the earth,
Their stay, their place, shall never more be known,
Save traits enpven on those hearts alone
That fostered these frail buds while here beneath ;
Yes, these shall triumph o?er the powers of death,
Shall spring eternal in the parent?s mind
Till hence transplanted to a realm refined.?
Northward of the two churches stands the tomb
and grave of Duncan Ban Maclntyre, commonly
known in the Highlands as Donnachan ban nun
Oran, who died in the year 1812, and who, though
he fought at Falkirk, outlived all the bards and
nearly all the warriors associated in the Highland
heart with the last chivalrous struggle for the House
of Stuart.
A handsome monument marks the place where
his ashes lie. Though little known in the Lowlands,
Duncan is deemed one of the-sweetest of
the Gaelic poets, and was so humble in his wants
that he had no higher ambition than to become a
soldier in the old City Guard.
The burial-place of Sir Walter Scott?s family lies
on the west side of the ground. ? Our family,? he
wrote, ?heretofore (Dec., 1819) buried close by the
entrance to Heriot?s Hospital, on the southern or
left-hand. side as you pass from the churchyard.?
Here the father, Walter Scott, W.S., and several of
his children who died in the old house in the College
Wynd, are interred. Mrs. Scott, her sisters,
and her brother, Dr. Rutherford, are interred in
the burial-ground attached to St. John?s Church, at
the west end of Princes Street. Sir Walter purchased
a piece of ground there, ?moved by its
extreme seclusion, privacy, and security; for,? as
he wrote to brother Thomas, who was paymaster
of the 70th Foot, conveying an account of their
mother?s death, ?when poor Jack (their brother)
was buried in the Greyfriars Churchyard, where my
father and Anne (their sister) lie, I thought their
graves more encroached upon than I liked to
witness.?
The Greyfriars Churchyard is, curiously enough,
noted as being the scene of Scott?s first love affair
with a handsome young woman. Lockhart tells us
that their acquaintance began in that place of
dreary associations, ? when the rain was beginning
to fall one Sunday, as the congregation were dispersing.
Scott happened to offer his umbrella, and
the tender being accepted, so escorted her to her
residence, which proved to be at no great distance
from his own. I have neither the power nor the
wish,? adds his biographer, ?? to give in detail the
sequel to this story. It is sufficient to szy that
after he had through several long years nodrished
the dream of an ultimate union with this lady-
Margaret, daughter of Sir John and Lady Jane
Stewart Belshes of Invermay-his hopes terminated
in her being married to the late Sir William Forbes,
Bart., of Pitsligo.?
In December, 1879, there were interred in the
Greyfriars Churchyard, under the direction of the
city authorities, the great quantity of human bones
