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of so curious a chronicle. From the first to the last
there is a remarkable similarity in his style. After
forty years' experience he was just as deficient in
grouping, and other acquired gifts in the art, as when
he first began to use the graver. It would almost
appear as if nature had designed him for that pecu-
liar style alone in which he so much excelled all
other men, and had denied him every common effect of
his art, which other men generally attain with ease.
In a profile of himself, executed about the year
1785, Mr. Kay appears with a handsome aquiline
countenance, of much delicacy and ingenuity of ex-
pression. In his latter days, when the writer of this
notice first saw him, he was a slender but straight
old man, of middle size, and usually dressed in a
garb of antique cut; of simple habits, and quiet un-
assuming manners. His head was of a singular
structure, presenting a very remarkable protuberance
in the forehead, where phrenologists, we believe,
place the organs of observation : in Kay, the profile
of this feature formed the arc of a perfect circle, be-
ginning under the hair, and terminating at the root
of the nose. According to the information of his
widow (a second spouse, whom he married in 1787),
he cared for and could settle at no employment
except that of etching likenesses. He would sud-
denly quit his lucrative employment in miniature-
drawing in order to commit some freak of his fancy
to copper, from which perhaps no profit was to be
hoped for. It was the conviction of this lady, that
if he had devoted himself to the more productive art
he would soon have acquired a competency.
Mr. Kay died in Edinburgh, some time in the year
1830. His wife survived him till 1835. After her
death the copperplates of his works were purchased
by Mr. Hugh Paton, Edinburgh, who republished
them in two quarto volumes, with biographical
sketches, under the title of Kay's Edinburgh Portraits.
The work forms a collection altogether unique, and
possesses great general as well as local interest, even
in a generation comparatively unacquainted with the
subjects of the prints,
KEILL, JAMES, a physician and philosopher of
eminence, the younger brother of the celebrated per-
son whose memoir follows this in alphabetical order,
was born in Scotland on the 27th of March, 1673.
He received his early education in Edinburgh, after-
wards studying the sciences and languages at Leyden
and other continental universities. On his return to
Britain he applied himself assiduously to the acqui-
sition of a knowledge of anatomy, studying the science
practically by constant attendance at the dissecting
rooms. Having accustomed himself to deliver his
opinions on anatomy privately to his friends, he at
last undertook public tuition, and delivered with
considerable applause lectures on anatomy at Oxford
and Cambridge, by the latter of which universities
he was presented with the degree of Doctor of Medi-
cine. In 1698 he translated from the French,
Lemery's Course of Chemistry, and soon after pub-
lished in the Philosophical Transactions, "An Ac-
count of the Death and Dissection of John Bayles of
Northampton, reputed to have been one hundred and
thirty years old."1 To No. 361 of the same journal
he gave "De Viribus Cordis Epistola." In 1708 he
published An Account of Animal Secretion, the Quan-
tity of Blood in the Human Body, and Miiscular Mo-
tion. On the subject of animal secretion, and the
manner in which the fluids of the animal body are
separated from the blood, he undertakes to show:
I. How they are formed in the blood before they
1 Phil. Trans. xxv. 2, 247.
come to the place appointed for secretion; 2. In
what manner they are separated from the blood by
the glands. Upon the former head he shows, " that
the blood consists of a simple fluid, in which swim
corpuscles of various figures and magnitudes, and
endued with different degrees of attractive force.
Hence he concludes, that of such particles as the
blood consists of must the fluids be composed which
are drawn from it. This he proceeds to show to be
not only possible, but actually so in several secre-
tions. From this principle, that the blood consists
of corpuscles of various figures and magnitudes, and
endued with various degrees of attractive power, &c.,
he attempts to show the force of the air upon the
blood in breathing, in order to demonstrate that by
the pressure of the air the cohesion of the globules
of the blood is dissolved. After this he shows how
the union of the attractive particles is hindered near
the heart, and that the particles which unite first,
after the blood is thrown out of the great artery,
must be such as have the strongest attractive force;
and that such as have the least, must unite last; and
all the intermediate ones according to their respective
attractive power."2 Besides this work, Keill pub-
lished Anatomy of the Human Body, for the use of
his pupils; and in 1717, Essays on Several Parts of
the Human Economy. He appears to have given
up public tuition, and some time previously to the
publication of his last work to have established him-
self as a practising physician at Northampton, where
he gained considerable fortune and reputation, and
remained till his death, which took place in July 16,
1719, from a cancer in his mouth. He was buried
in the church of St. Giles, where his brother John,
to whom he left his property, erected a handsome
monument to his memory.
KEILL, JOHN, an eminent mathematician and
natural philosopher, the elder brother of the preced-
ing, was born in Edinburgh on the 1st of December,
1671.3 He received the rudiments of education in
the schools of his native city, and remained at the
Edinburgh university until he was enabled to take
the degree of Master of Arts. He early displayed a
genius and predilection for mathematics, and had
the good fortune to study the science, along with the
Newtonian system of philosophy, under Dr. Gregory.
When, in the year 1694, Gregory went to try his
fortune in England, Keill followed him, and con-
trived along with him to find admission to Oxford,
where he held one of the Scottish exhibitions in
Baliol College. Keill made his first appearance be-
fore the scientific world in his Examination of Dr.
Burnef's Theory of the Earth, together with some
Remarks on Mr. Whistorf's New Theory of the Earth,
published at Oxford in the year 1698. Any "theory
of the earth," or account of its formation and state,
in anticipation of the discovery of facts to support
it, always formed a fruitful subject of debate; but
Burnet's Theory afforded more ample field for cen-
sure than any other which pretended to support from
the enlightened doctrines of modern philosophy. The
grand outlines of his theory were of themselves suffi-
ciently imaginative, and their effect was increased by
the curious speculations with which he filled up the
minor details of his edifice. He supposes the earth
to have been originally a heterogeneous mass of fluid
matter, of which the heavier portions fell to the
centre, forming there a dense body, surrounded and
coated by lighter bodies, while the water�the
lightest of all the heterogeneous mass�remained on
the outside of the whole. The air and other celes-
2 Martin's Biographia Philosophica, 460.          3 Ibid. 457.