114 BIOGRA’PHICAL SKETCHES.
pensities, have become popular. He had some pretensions to the character of
a wit, and was withal a person well fitted for rendering himself agreeable at the
table of those in the upper ranks of life, while he possessed various qualities
equally calculated to gain the esteem of the rudest and most uncultivated among
the numerous miners of his parish.
He was a man of great muscular power, and of a disposition not easily to
be intimidated. On returning home one evening from a party, he was insulted
by a band of colliers, one of whom swore that, if it were not for “his coat,”
he would give him a sound beating. Lapslie, who was in no mood to be trifled
with, immediately doffed the sable habiliment, saying, as he threw it into the
ditch, “ Lie you there, divinity-here stands Jamie Lapslie ! The belligerents
instantly set to work, and the collier was severely chastised for his impertinence.‘
’ From circumstances, as to the origin of which we shall not speculate, Mr.
Lapslie appeared always to be in a condition more ready to receive than to
bestow. In settling accounts he was ranked amongst the dreighest of the dreigh,
and nothing in the shape of a gift came amiss to him. He held his incumbency
upwards of forty years, having been presented to the living, which is in the
gft of the Crown, in 1783, in the room of the Rev. William Bell, who had
been thirty-six years minister of the parish.
In the pulpit Mr. Lapslie possessed a very energetic style of delivery, and
was, at least externally, a perfect enthusiast in religion. In Peter’s Letters to his
Kinsfolk, the oratory and personal appearance of Mr. Lapslie, abaut the year
181 6, are graphically described. Peter is detailing the procedure of the General
Assembly, and the case under consideration was that of a minister from the
Hebrides, who had been accused of illicit intercourse with his housekeeper :--
“The more conspicuous of the clerical orators mere Dr. Skene Keith, a shrewd,
bitter, sarcastic humorist from Aberdeenshire, and Mr. Lapslie, an energetic
rhapsodist from the West of Scotland. The last mentioned individual is undoubtedly
the most enthusiastic speaker I ever heard. He is a fine, tall, bony
man, with a face full of fire, and a bush of white locks, which he shakes about
him like the thymus of a bacchanal. He tears his waistcoat open-he bares his
breast, as if he had scars to show-he bellows-he sobs-he weeps-and sits
down at the end of his harangue, trembling all to the fingers’ ends, like an
exhausted Pythoness. . . . The poor minister was at last found innocent;
and for how much of his safety he might be indebted to the impassioned defence
of Mr. Lapslie, I shall not pretend to guess.”
He was succeeded by the
Rev. Dr. Norman M‘Leod, of Glasgow,
Mr. Lapslie died on the 1 lth of December 1824.’
1 The collier had been refused baptism to his child, Mr. Lapslie accusing him of drunkenness.
a Of his family, we have heard that a son is still alive, somewhere in the West Indies. From
a letter in the possession of the Publisher of this Work, addressed to his father, it appears that
Mr. Lapslie had been very anxiouq to have one of his 8ons indentured with him to a mechanical
profession.
116 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES.
Whether he had taken the giant’s altitude by his shadow, as geometricians were
wont to measure steeples,’ or had recourse to the less scientific assistance of
chairs and stools, we know not; but to this day the secret has never been disclosed.
From what the taciturn tailor inadvertently disclosed, it appeared that
the great man was much tickled by the process, as he jocularly said to his little
friend-“ You and I may yet grace the windows of the print-shops.” O’Brien
was not far wrong in his conjecture ; and he perhaps spoke from some knowledge
he had of the caricaturist. Kay endeavoured by every means to catch a
likeness of the foreman. He sent for him to various “houffs” to coax him
with strong drink, but the important little man had no notion of being handed
down to posterity j and, the more securely to conceal his precious person, he
constantly kept a screen on the shop window, that the artist might not espy
him at the board. Thus defeated in his endeavours to catch the real “Simon
Pure,” the artist conferred the honour on Convener Ranken, who, opportunely
enough, had rendered himself somewhat conspicuous in city matters.
AIR. PATRICK COTTER O’BRIEN-“ the wonder of the age,” and one
of the tallest men seen in Scotland since the days of Dunnnm, in the somewhat
fabulous reign of Eugene II., who measured eleven feet and a half-was born
at Kinsale in 1760. Of his history little more is known than that he travelled
the country for many years, exhibiting himself to all who chose to gratify their
curiosity at a trifling expense. He was eight feet one inch in height, and
weighed five hundredweight ; but, judging from the portraiture, he appears to
have been deficient in symmetry.’ “This man,” says a notice in an old
magazine, “when he first began to derive a subsistence from an exposure of his
person to the public, was deeply affected by a sense of humiliation ; and often
shed tears when, among the crowd whom curiosity attracted, any spectator
treated him with respect. In time, however, all these tender feelings were
entirely subdued ; and he was latterly as much distinguished for his pride as he
was before for modesty. Such transitions, however,” concludes the notice, ‘‘ are
not uncommon in great men.” As an instance of his capricious temper, it is said
that when the tailor went home with his greatcoat, the giant found innumerable
faults with it-“By St. Patrick it wasn’t a coat at all, at all, at all !” The
little foreman, much discomfited, was in the act of retiring with “ the greatcoat
under his arm,” when O’Brien’s servant, tapping him gently on the shoulder,
gave a word of consolation. “ Och, botheration, I see ye arn’t up to the great
man. Just keep the coat beside you till I let you know when he is in good
1 In that strange collection of advertisements preserved by Captain Grose, in his “Guide to
Health, Wealth, Riches, and Honour,” London, 8v0, a tailor announces the important fact that he
makes breeches by geometry I Perhaps O’Brien’s schemer may have studied under this scientific
artificer.
An eye-witness thus describes his appearance :-“ He was in fact a perfect excrescence. His
hand was precisely like a shoulder of mutton. He had double knuckles-prodigious lumps at his
hip bones-and when he rose off the table, on which he always sat, his bones were distinctly heard
as if crashing against one another. To support himself, he always placed the top of the door under
his oxtel. [arm-pit].”
