naturalist, and an ardent worshipper of the closest of all
observers, John Hunter. Now mark what satisfies such a man on such
an occasion as this. He was wrong and Mr. Ryde was right, because
Mr. Ryde described HIS skull as having RED HAIR; and in Aubrey's
Lives of Eminent Men, 'I find evidence quite sufficient for any
medical man to come to the conclusion that Ben Jonson's hair was in
all probability of a red colour, though the fact IS NOT STATED IN SO
MANY WORDS.' In so many words! I think not! Actually all that
Aubrey says on the subject is, 'HE WAS, OR RATHER HAD BEEN, OF A
CLEARE AND FAIRE SKIN'! (Lives, ii, 414.) And this, too, in spite
of our knowing from his own pen, and from more than one painting,
that his hair was as black as the raven's wing! Besides, he was
sixty-five years old when he died, and we may be sure that the few
locks he had left were neither red nor black, but of the hue of the
'hundred of grey hairs' which he described as remaining eighteen
years before. Mr. Buckland's statement will be found in the Fourth
Series of his Curiosities of Natural History, one of the most
entertaining little volumes with which we are acquainted." {26}

In reviewing the various incidents connected with the foregoing
cases of exhumation one is perhaps most struck with the last two.
That an illustrious man of science, and his son, who at that time
must already have been a scientific naturalist, should have
cooperated in so stupendous a blunder as the mere inspection of Ben
Jonson's skull, without taking so much as a measurement or drawing
of it, would be incredible, but for the fact that both are dead, and
nothing of the sort has come to light: and it is scarcely less
surprising that the Swedenborgians, who believed themselves to be in
possession of their founder's skull, should not have left on record
some facts concerning its shape and size.