SCOTT, DAVID, a remarkable Scottish painter, was born in Edinburgh, Oct. 10, or 12,1606. Ile may be said to have commenced his career as an artist by an apprentice ship to his father, who was a landscape engraver; but endowed as be was with a deep, stern, somber genius, it was soon visible to all who knew him that be was meant to he a painter. The first production that lie ventured to send to the British institution, "Lot and his Daughters Fleeing front the Cities of the Plain," was returned as too large; but Scott was too •• imperiously original" to take advice, and went on courageously painting Pictures which. it has been said, "would have required a hall for,their exhibition, and which the public would neither admire nor buy. In 1831 he exhibited the "Mono grams of Man," a series of singularly suggestive sketches; and the first of his illustra tions to Coleridg,e's Ancient Mariner, which are almost equal to the poem itself in weird and vivid beauty. In 1832, among others, " Sarpedon carried by Sleep and Death," /I very fine work. In the autumn of the same year he set out for Rome, visiting most of the famous artistic cities on his way. Notting, however, that he saw in Italy or France materially affected the bent of his genius, and his picture of "Dikord, or the House hold Gods Destroyed," painted there, exhibits all the Fte'culiarities of his style and thought in a rampant and even repellent manner. In 1834 lie returned to Edinburgh,
and resumed his solitary brush. Passing over several interesting wcrks, we may spe d:Ay mention, as belonging to the year 1838, "Ariel and Caliban," and the "Alchyinist," two of his best efforts in point of execution. Between 1840 and 1843 his chief pro ductions were "Philoctetes," "Queen Elizabeth in the Globe Theater," '• The Duke of Gloucester taken into the Water-gate of Calais," "Silenus praising Wine," "Richard III. ; " his illustrations (40 in number) of The Pilgrim's Progress, in which, as in those of 7'be Ancient Mariner, he rivals the genius of the author he illustrates. In 1847 he pro d iced the masterpiece of his whole career, "Vasco da Gama Encountering the Spirit of the Cape." But Scott, always delicate, and even drooping in health, had now exhausted himself, and on March 5, 1849. he died, when fame was only beginning to encircle his name. Scott contributed some vigorous essays on "The Characteristics of the Goat Master"; " to Blackmood's An unusually interesting Memoir by his brother, W. B. Scott, was published in 1850.