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tified with the Hunterian Museum than any other man, living or dead.
It is not intended in this brief memoir to place the name of Clift even in juxta-position with that of Hunter, although fellow-labourers in the same field of industry. I will, however, endeavour to do justice to him who was great, because he was good; who was faithful to a sacred trust, under circumstances of peculiar embarrassment and temptation; whose mind was fortified against betrayal by high principle, strengthened by lasting affection, and engendered by a term of brief companionship with him who first raised in his breast the ardour of a congenial occupation; who was uncontaminated by the world, and the world’s vices; who carried to the grave the same single-mindedness and simplicity of character, that stamped with truth, every act of his past life.
Such was William Clift, and such the bond of fidelity that fixed on his character its indelible stamp!
Mr. Clift was born at Burcombe, near Bodmin, in 1775; and he owed his connection with Mr. Hunter to the circumstance of an intimacy subsisting between a lady resident at Bodmin, and Miss Home, who had then become the wife of Mr. Hunter, by whom he was recommended on the ground of his promising abilities, and graphic powers.
He was received into Mr. Hunter’s house as an apprentice, in the year 1792, and devoted to him his services as an amanuensis, anatomist, and artist. Mr. Hunter died in 1793, from which date until 1800, when the Collection was purchased by the Government, it was placed under the exclusive care of Mr. Clift, who, with two gallons of spirit meted out occasionally, and seven shillings a week granted for his own
