“Awake!  Arise, or be for ever fallen."[232]

January 15.—­Day began with beggars as usual, and John Nicolson has not sense to keep them out.  I never yield, however, to this importunity, thinking it wrong that what I can spare to meritorious poverty, of which I hear and see too much, should be diverted by impudent importunity.  I was detained at the Parliament House till nearly three by the great case concerning prescription, Maule v.  Maule.[233] This was made up to me by hearing an excellent opinion from Lord Corehouse, with a curious discussion in apicibus juris. I disappointed Graham[234] of a sitting for my picture.

I went to the Council of the Royal Society, which was convened at my request, to consider whether we ought to hear a paper on anatomical subjects read by Mr. Knox, whose name has of late been deeply implicated in a criminal prosecution against certain wretches, who had murdered many persons and sold their bodies to professors of the anatomical science.  Some thought that our declining to receive the paper would be a declaration unfavourable to Dr. Knox.  I think hearing it before Mr. Knox has made any defence (as he is stated to have in view) would be an intimation of our preference of the cause of science to those of morality and common humanity.  Mr. Knox’s friends undertook to deal with him about suffering the paper to be omitted for the present, while adhuc coram judice lis est.[235]

January 16.—­Nothing on the roll to-day, so I did not go to the Parliament House, but fagged at my desk till two.

Dr. Ross called to relieve me of a corn, which, though my lameness needs no addition, had tormented me vilely.  I again met the Royal Society Council.  Dr. Knox consents to withdraw his paper, or rather suffers the reading to be postponed.  There is some great error in the law on the subject.  If it was left to itself many bodies would be imported from France and Ireland, and doubtless many would be found in our hospitals for the service of the anatomical science.  But the total and severe exclusion of foreign supplies of this kind raises the price of the “subjects,” as they are called technically, to such a height, that wretches are found willing to break into “the bloody house of life,"[236] merely to supply the anatomists’ table.  The law which, as a deeper sentence on the guilt of murder, declares that the body of the convicted criminal should be given up to anatomy, is certainly not without effect, for criminals have been known to shrink from that part of the sentence which seems to affect them more than the doom of death itself, with all its terrors here and hereafter.  On the other hand, while this idea of the infamy attending the exposition of the person is thus recognised by the law, it is impossible to adopt regulations which would effectually prevent such horrid crimes as the murder of vagrant wretches who can be snatched from society without their being missed, as in the case