BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 157
Between the years 1781 and 1785 Mr. Lawson published a full detail of the
proceedings in his case, in a pamphlet occupying nearly 300 pages of letterpress ;
also, '' Three Letters addressed to candid Christians of all denominations."
He immediately thereafter went to London, where he was well received hy
several Dissenting clergymen, and from whom he obtained a license to preach,
which he continued to do for a few years, in connection with the Relief body.
Mr. Lawson died at Leith on the 27th of August 1788.
No. LXVI.
AN EXCHANGE OF HEADS.
HUG0 ARNOT, ESQ.-MR. 'CVILLIADI MACPHERSON,
AND ROGER HOG, ESQ.
THE " Exchange of Heads " is supposed to have taken place betwixt two
individuals, so very opposite in every describable feature, that the one has been
denominated a shadow, while the other, par excellence, may as appropriately be
termed substance. The space between shadow and substance is ingeniously
devoted to the full development of a back view of a third party, who, differing
entirely from either, displays a rotundity of person more than equal to the
circumference of both.
Some account has already been given of MR. ARNOT, whose head, forming
the apex to the solid pyramid of Macpherson's trunk, appears first to the left in
the trio of figures. Respecting his substantial friend, however, whose ponderous
head, as if poised on a needle, seems like an infringement of the laws of gravity,
some amusing gossip has been preserved.
MR WILLIAM MACPHERSON, whose father was sometime deacon of
the masons in Edinburgh, was a Writer to the Signet, and, in many respects,
a man of very eccentric habits. He lived in that famed quarter of the city, the
West Bow, three stairs up, in a tenement which immediately joined the city
wall, and looked towards the west, but which has been recently removed to
make way for the improvements now in progress, and which have all but annihilated
the Bow. Mr. Macpherson continued a bachelor through life, and seemed
from many circumstances to have conceived a determined antipathy to the
" honourable state of matrimony." He had two maiden sisters who kept house
with him ; but whether they entertained similar prejudices, or remained single
