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Hugo Arnot, looking so like his meat.

Most of the jokes about poor Hugo’s person have been frequently printed—as Harry Erskine meeting him on the street when he was gnawing at a spelding or dried haddock, and congratulating him on looking so like his meat; and his offending the piety of an old woman who was cheapening a Bible in Creech’s shop, by some thoughtless remark, when she first burst out with: ‘Oh, you monster!’ and then turning round and seeing him, added: ‘And he’s an anatomy too!’ An epigram by Erskine is less known:

‘The Scriptures assure us that much is forgiven

To flesh and to blood by the mercy of Heaven;

But I’ve searched the whole Bible, and texts can find none

That extend the assurance to skin and to bone.’

Arnot was afflicted by a constitutional irritability to an extent which can hardly be conceived. A printer’s boy, handing papers to him over his shoulder, happened to touch his ear with one of them, when he started up in a rage, and demanded of the trembling youth what he meant by insulting him in that manner! Probably from some quarrel arising out of this nervous weakness—for such it really was—the Edinburgh booksellers, to a man, refused to have anything to do with the prospectuses of his Criminal Trials, and Arnot had to advertise that they were to be seen in the coffee-houses, instead of the booksellers’ shops.