Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 3.djvu/195

 DAVID ERSKINE.—DAVID STEWART ERSKINE. 223

gical learning of the western churches; an absurdity which retarded the progress of true science for many centuries, and was not finally put down till the days of Bacon. The subsequent life of this great scholar is doubly obscure. He is said to have been a professor of mathematics and astronomy at Oxford, about the time of Alfred the Great, or at least to have delivered lectures at that seminary of learning. But nothing is known with certainty respecting Oxford till a much later period. From Oxford he is said to have retired to the abbey of Malmesbury, where for some time he kept a school. Behaving, however, with great harshness and severity among his scholars, they were so irritated, that they are reported to have murdered him with the iron bodkins then used in writing. The time of his death is generally referred to 883.

A great multitude of works have been attributed to Erigena ; but the following are all that have been printed:—1. "De Divisions Naturas," Oxon. by Gale, folio, 1651.—2. "De Prasdestinatione Dei, contra Goteschalcum," edited by Gilb. Maguin, in his Vindiciae Praedestinationis et Gratiae, vol. i. p. 103.—3. "Excerpta de Differentiis et Societatibus Graeci Latinique Verbi," in Macrobius's works.—4. "De Corpore et Sanguine Domini,"' 1558, 1566, 1653; Lond. 1686, 8vo.—5. "Ambigua S. Maximi, seu Scholia ejus in Difficiles locos S. Gregorii Nazianzeni, Latine versa," along with the "Divisio Naturae," Oxford, 1681, folio.—6. "Opera S. Dionysii quatuor, in Latinam linguam conversa," in the edition of Dionysius, Colon., 1536.

ERSKINE, DAVID, better known by his judicial designation of lord Dun, an eminent lawyer and moral writer, was born at Dun, in the county of Angus, in the year 1670. After receiving his education, partly at the university of St Andrews, and partly at that of Paris, he was, in 1696, called to the Scottish bar, where he soon distinguished himself as a pleader. Though the representative of the celebrated laird of Dun, whose efforts in behalf of the Reformation have endeared his name to the Scottish people, David Erskine was a zealous Jacobite, and friend to the non-jurant episcopal clergy. As a member, more- over, of the last Scottish parliament, he gave all possible opposition to the union. In 1711, the tory ministry of queen Anne appointed him one of the judges of the court of session ; and in 1713, through the same patronage, he became a commissioner of the court of justiciary. These offices he held till 1750, when old age induced him to retire. In 1754, lord Dun published a volume of moral and political reflections, which was long known under the title of "Lord Dun's Advices," but is now almost forgotten. His lordship died in 1755, aged eighty-five. By his wife, Magdalen Riddel, of the family of Riddel of Raining, in Selkirkshire, he left a son, John, who succeeded him in his estate, and a daughter, Anne, who was first married to James, lord Ogilvy, son of David, third earl of Airly, and secondly to Sir James Macdonald of Sleat.

ERSKINE,, earl of Buchan, lord Cardross, was born on the 1st of June, 1742, O. S., and was the eldest surviving son of Henry David, the tenth earl, and Agnes, daughter of Sir James Stewart of Goodtrees, his majesty's solicitor-general for Scotland. He was educated, " in all manner of useful learning, and in the habits of rigid honour and virtue," under the care of James Buchanan, a relation of the poet and historian, and learned the elements of the mathematics, history, and politics from his father, who had been a scholar of the celebrated Colin Maclaurin. At the university of Glasgow he engaged ardently in "every ingenious and liberal study;" but what will be better remembered, was his connexion with the unfortunate academy of Foulis the printer, which he attended, and of his labours at which he has left us a specimen, in an etching of the abbey of Icolmkill, inserted in the first volume of the Transactions of the Scottish Antiquaries.