BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 325
this performance by myself. This practice, I assure him, has by no means
novelty to recommend it, although it has not hitherto been openly avowed :-
“ Three sages in three learned ages born,
Three different polished stages did adorn.
In dreams and prophesies the 6rst excelled ;
With pies and tarts the next his pages swelled ;
His high-dressed dishes praised in loud bombast ;
But I, IN NOTHINGh,a ve them all surpass’d.”
The publication of the Essay occasioned the following epigram, by the Hon.
Andrew Erskine, brother to the musical Earl of Kelly : -
“ To find out where the bent of one’s genius lies,
Oft puzzles the witty, and sometimes the wise ;
Your discernment in this all true critics must find,
Since the subject’s so pat to jour body and mind.”
The Hon. Henry Erskine was once disputing with Arnot about the disposition
which the Deity manifests in the Holy Scriptures to pardon the errors of
the flesh-the metaphysician insisting for a liberal code, and the wit taking a
rather more confined and Calvinistic view of the case. At last, on Arnot
avowing his resolution to live in the hope of pardon, Erskine readily conceded
that great allowance is made for the $esh ; but, affecting to be doubtful in the
peculiar case of his friend, he replied-
“ Though bawdy and blasphemy may be forgiven,
To flesh and to blood, by the mercy of Heaven ;
Yet I’ve searched the whole Scriptures, and texts I find none,
Extending that mercy to skin and to bone.”
Mr. Amot’s tenuity of person, as a subject of satirical remark, was not
entirely confined to the learned. One day as he was standing in Creech, the
bookseller’s shop, an old woman-a hawker of fish from Musselburgh-came
in to purchase a Bible. To quiz the old lady a little, Hugo said he wondered
she could trouble her head reading such a nonsensical, old-fashioned book
as that. Horror-struck at his blasphemous remark, the old woman eyed Hugo
in silence a few seconds, measuring him from head to foot with inexpressibG
amazement. At length she exclaimed-“ Gude hae mercy on us I Wha wad
hae thocht that ony human-like cratur wad hae spoken that way. But you,”
she added, with an expression of the most perfect contempt-“a perfect
atomy ! ”
Mr. Arnot was long afflicted with a nervous cough. He came into Creech’s
shop one day, coughing and wheezing at a tremendous rate. Casting his eye on
Mr. Tytler of Woodhouselee, who happened to be present, he observed to him
“If I do not soon get quit of this d-d cough, it will carry me off like a
rocket.” Mr. Tytler replied, ‘‘ Indeed, Hugo, my man, if you do not mend your
manners, you will assuredly take quite a contrary directh.”
