Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 2.djvu/280

574 tance; 2. the Curve of Quickest Descent. lb. 542, 1701.—Specimen of determining the Quadrature of Figures. lb. v. 24, 1703.—Solution of Bernouilli's Problem. lb. 90, 1704.—Of the length of Curve Lines. lb. 406, 1708.—Method of making Logarithms. lb. 609, 1710.—Description of the head of a monstrous Calf. lb. 668, 1712."

CRAIG,, author of the Treatise on the Feudal Law, and of other learned works, was probably born in the year 1538. It is uncertain whether he was the son of Robert Craig, a merchant in Edinburgh, or of William Craig of Craigfintry, afterwards Craigston, in the county of Aberdeen. In 1552, he was entered a student of St Leonard's college, in the university of St Andrews, but does not appear to have completed the usual course of four years, as he left the college in 1555, after receiving his degree as bachelor of arts. He then repaired to France, and studied the civil and canon law in some of the flourishing universities of that country. On his return, about the year 1561, he continued his studies under the superintendence of his relation, John Craig, the subject of a preceding memoir. After distinguishing himself in a very eminent degree as a classical scholar, he was called to the bar in February 1563, and in the succeeding year was placed at the head of the criminal judicature of the country, as justice depute, under the hereditary officer, the justice general, an honour vested in the noble family of Argyle. Among his earliest duties in this capacity, was that of trying and condemning Thomas Scott, sheriff-depute of Perth, and Henry Yair, a priest, for having kept the gates of Holyrood house, to facilitate the assassination of Rizzio. In 1566, when James VI. was born, Craig relaxed from his severer studies at the bar, hailed the birth of the royal infant, and predicted the happiness which such an event promised to his unsettled country, in a Latin poem entitled, "Genethliacon Jacobi Principis Scotorum." This, says Mr Tytler, in his elegant work, the life of Sir Thomas Craig, is a poem of considerable length, written in hexameters, and possessing many passages not only highly descriptive of the state of Scotland at this time, but in themselves eminently poetical: it is to be found in the Delitiae Poetarum Scotorum. " Craig," says Mr Tytler, " appears to have been a man of a modest and retiring disposition, averse to any interference in the political intrigues of the times, devoted to his profession, and fond of that relaxation from the severer labours of the bar, which is to be found in a taste for classical literature. While his contemporaries are to be found perpetually implicated in the conspiracies against their mistress the queen, and their names have come down to us contaminated by crime, the character of this good and upright man shines doubly pure amid the guilt with which it is surrounded. Although a convert to the reformed opinions, and from this circumstance naturally connected with the party which opposed the queen, his sense of religion did not confound or extinguish his principles of loyalty. His name appears only in the journal books of the court in the discharge of the labours of his profession, or it is found in the justiciary records under his official designation of justice-depute, or it is honourably associated with the literature of his country; but it is never connected with the political commotions which the money and intrigues of England had kindled in the heart of our nation." Craig pursued an extensive practice at the bar for a period of upwards of forty years, and during all that time, his name is scarcely ever found mingling with the political movements of the times. During the later part of his career, he devoted much of his time to the composition of his learned treatise on the Feudal Law, upon which his reputation principally rests. To describe the law of our country, as he found it established by the practice of the courts in his own age; to compare it with the written books on the feudal law; and to impart to it somewhat of the form and arrangement of