160 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES.
Rather than allow any person whom he had been employed to prosecute to be
put in jail, he has been frequently known to advance the sum himself, even
when he had not the most distant chance of repayment.
Mr. Macpherson died on the 9th of May 1814. His sister, Sodom, died in
Gillespie’s Hospital.
The centre figure, ROGER HOG, ESQ. of Newliston, whose amplitude
of back is so well delineated, was formerly one of the Directors of the Bank of
Scotland, and a regular attender of their meetings, He has been already pretty
fully described in No. XVII.
No. LXVII.
THE REV. JOHN M‘LURE,
CHAPIAIN TO THE GRAND LODGE.
MR. M‘LURE was originally educated for the church, and obtained the clerical
title by being licensed to preach, after undergoing the usual trials. It was
not his fortune, however, to obtain a kirk. A few embarrassing years of
“ hopes deferred” entirely deadened his ambition for the pulpit ; and at last,
abandoning all intention of “clinging by the horns of the altar,” he settled
down in Edinburgh as a teacher of writing, arithmetic, and book-keeping.
In the memorable year 1745, Mr. hl‘lure, being: then a young man, was a
member of the Trained Band. Marching on one occasion to Musselburgh, in
expectation of meeting with a party of the rebels, it is told of the teacher, that
having made up his mind to be shot, he had fixed a quire of paper-symbolic
of his profession-to his breast, on which the following memorandum was
written :-“This is the body of John MLure, writing-master in Edinburghlet
it be decently interred !” This sepulchral direction happily proved unnecessary.
John was not slain, but lived to become for many years ‘( Grand
Chaplain I’ of the “ Grand Lodge of Scotland ;” and throughout a long life
maintained “ the character of a good man and an excellent mason, being considered
the oracle of the craft in Edinburgh.”
He was married, and left several children, two
of whom, Alexander and Hamilton, were bred to the medical profession. The
former went abroad. The latter was several years a surgeon in Edinburgh,
and died not long after his father.
Mr. M‘Lure died in 1787.