Hunter’s sense of his own importance was evident, and often very ingenuously expressed. “Ah, John Hunter, what! still hard at work!” said Dr. Garthshore to him, finding him in the dissecting-room late in life. “Yes, doctor,” replied Hunter, “still hard at work; and you’ll find it difficult to meet with another John Hunter when I am gone.” To Abernethy he said, “I know I am but a pigmy in knowledge, yet I feel as a giant when compared with these men.” He could not be described as a good conversationalist, yet his remarks, slowly brought out, were often wonderfully pointed and forcible. In politics he was a strenuous Tory, and “wished all the rascals who were dissatisfied with their country would be good enough to leave it.” He hated all public ceremony or display, and when begged to go to Sir Joshua Reynolds’s funeral, fairly wished Sir Joshua and his friends at the d——l. He was undeviatingly honest, eminently a lover of truth, humane and generous in disposition, warm and disinterested as a friend, a kind affectionate husband and father. Some have called him a materialist or even an atheist, but he appears to have had no doubt of the existence of a First Cause. His study of religion was no doubt limited by natural tendencies in his mind, and by his habitual concentration on his work, and the evidence of revelation did not make, so far as can be ascertained, a deep impression on his mind. As to death, his view was, “’tis poor work when it comes to that.” Hunter’s remains lay undisturbed in St. Martin’s Church, till on March 28, 1859, they were removed, mainly through Mr. Frank Buckland’s intervention, to Abbot Islip’s Chapel in Westminster Abbey and deposited in the north aisle of the nave, close to Ben Jonson’s tomb. His name and achievements are annually commemorated by orations such as those from which the subsequent extracts are made, but most of all by the Hunterian Museum and the lectures delivered in connection therewith.