We first became acquainted with the genius of Dr. Robert Knox in 1852, through a work issued in that year, entitled "Great Artists and Great Anatomists: a Biographical and Philosophical Study." It was a small book, but unique and racy to a remarkable degree. Full of erudition, bold, sarcastic, witty, heterodox, and abounding in acute suggestions, it combined fresh biographical glimpses of such men as Cuvier, Geoffroy St.-Hilaire, Da Vinci, Angelo, and Raphael, with an original and philosophical treatment of the art, the literature, and the science of the epochs in which these great characters lived. The humor, freedom, and pungency of this little brochure induced us to look further into the writings of this author, and we found in "The Races of Men" a book rich in information, and written in the same vivid and fascinating style. The relations of anatomy to art was a favorite subject with Dr. Knox, and he contributed much toward its development. He published (also in 1852) "A Manual of Artistic Anatomy, for the Use of Sculptors, Painters, and Amateurs," with illustrations by Dr. Westmacott. This work contains a great deal of information, set forth in the author's peculiar style; and the third part of the volume gives an interesting analysis of beauty, a theory of the beautiful, and an exposition of the author's views on the objects and aims of art. The bias of the anatomist, however, is perceptible, as he is disinclined to recognize poetry, music, and the drama, as belonging to the fine arts, shows little favor to architecture, and holds that sculpture alone is entitled to the rank of high art. The most brilliant lecturer of his time in England, he applied, in 1841, for the vacant position of anatomical lecturer to the art-students of the Scottish Academy; but, though strongly backed, he failed as Sir Charles Bell had previously thrice failed in his application for the professorship of anatomy to the Royal Academy in London. Knox failed, though super-eminently the man for the place, because an incompetent rival, Mr. James Miller, surgeon, offered his services gratuitously—a consideration which, with the canny Scotch, outweighed all others. Of course, Mr. Miller, at the end of the year, asked for his predecessor's salary, and, after due manipulation and management, obtained it. It was such miserable chicanery and trickiness in education by which "mediocrity gets intrenched and consolidated and founded on adamant," that roused the indignation of Dr. Knox, and led to those scathing denunciations of official and conventional stupidity that did so much to stir up animosity against him. He would call a spade a spade, which, in a state of society despotically ruled by etiquette, was an unpardonable sin.
We have referred to Dr. Knox's work on the "Races of Men," and probably the most powerful cause of that unpopularity that was turned so fatally against him in the hour of his calamity was his early and uncompromising advocacy of the most advanced views upon this subject. He was one of the eminent founders of the modern science of anthropology. Ethnological questions had been systematically entered upon before his time, but the core of the inquiry had hardly yet been reached.
The dissertation of Blumenbach "De Generis Humani Varietate Natura" (1775), was the first great treatise on the races of men, and formed the textbook of Cuvier, Lawrence, Pritchard, Nott and Gliddon, Latham, Waitz, Morton, Pickering, and others. Dr. Knox became an early and independent student of the great problem of the human races, and its comprehensive investigation was a controlling object of his life. He sought to give a new direction to the study of race. He aimed at a knowledge of man in his scientific completeness, geographical, historical, and physical, and as a foundation of such knowledge he wished to have a
