Ossian Collection > Scottish eccentrics

118 SCOTTISH ECCENTRICS
great wit, Dr. John Arbuthnott. "Arbuthnott cared little
to establish his personality in literature apart from the
spirit of a group of humorists. We can accept the anecdote
which best illustrates his temper in this point: 'No Adven-
ture of any Consequence ever occurred on which the
Doctor did not write a pleasant Essay in a great folio
Paper-book, which used to lie in his Parlour; of these
however he was so negligent that while he was writing
them at one End he suffered his Children to tear them
out at the other, for their Paper Kites.' Arbuthnott did
not trouble to gather up his pleasant essays, or to detach
what was his from the group production of the trium-
virate to whom he was drawn. Swift and Pope looked
upon him as the principal biographer of 'Martinus Scrib-
lerus'; yet Martin came forth among their Miscellanies
and would not lose his company. The History of John
Bull was Arbuthnott's own, yet so delivered to the world
that Swift long had the credit of it; on the other hand,
Robinson Crusoe was on occasion attributed to Arbuth-
nott, and is indignantly noticed by his early biographer as
one of 'several Brats illegitimately fathered upon him'."
There is not much of the conventional, greedy, thrust-
ful Scot in this; and the case is no isolated one — indeed,
the same disposition largely accounts for the very casual
custodianship and frequent loss of valuable Scottish
manuscripts of all kinds, the way in which so much of our
literature has totally disappeared and much of the best of
what remains to us of it only preserved by accident rather
than design, and the unparalleled indifference of our
people to the proper care and preservation of our national
records.
Just as some of our most brilliant men can manifest a
negligent attitude like Arbuthnott's to the children of
their brains and any consideration of fame, so, on the
other hand, now and again one of the Philistines breaks
out in an unusual quarter. Sober-minded Scotland was
greatly concerned a year or two ago lest a project mooted
in America (and delayed from coming to anything by