Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 3.djvu/274

302 trivances and inventions, for he constructed many machines himself in a very neat manner. He bad also a good taste in astronomy, as well as in natural and experimental philosophy, and was possessed of a happy manner of explaining himself in a clear, easy, and familiar way. His general mathematical knowledge, however, was little or nothing. Of algebra he understood but little more than the notation; and he has often told me that he could never demonstrate one proposition in Euclid's Elements; his constant method being to satisfy himself as to the truth of any problem, with a measurement by scale and compasses." He was a man of very clear judgment in any thing that he professed, and of unwearied application to study: benevolent, meek, and innocent in his manners as a child: humble, courteous, and communicative: instead of pedantry, philosophy seemed to produce in him only diffidence and urbanity—a love for mankind and for his Maker. His whole life was an example of resignation and Christian piety. He might be called an enthusiast in his love of God, if religion founded on such substantial and enlightened grounds as his was, could be like enthusiasm. After a long and useful life, unhappy in his family connections, in a feeble and precarious state of health, worn out with study, age, and infirmities, he died on the 16th of November, 1776.

"Ferguson's only daughter," says Mr Nichols in his life of Bowyer, "was lost in a very singular manner, at about the age of eighteen. She was remark- able for the elegance of her person, the agreeableness and vivacity of her conversation, and in philosophic genius and knowledge, worthy of such a father. His son, Mr Murdoch Ferguson, was a surgeon, and attempted to settle at Bury, staid but a little while, went to sea, was cast away, and lost his all, a little before his father's death, but found himself in no bad plight after that event. He had another son, who studied at Marischal college, Aberdeen, from 1772 to 1777, and afterwards, it is believed, applied to physic."

The astronomer has been thus elegnntly noticed in "Eudosia, a poem on the universe" by Mr Capel Lloft:

FERGUSSON,, an ingenious poet, like his successor Burns, drew his descent from the country north of the Forth. His father, William Fergusson, after serving an apprenticeship to a tradesman in Aberdeen, and having married Elizabeth Forbes, by whom he had three children, removed, in 1746, to Edinburgh, where he was employed as a clerk by several masters in succession. It appears that the father of the poet had himself in early life courted the muses, and was at all periods remarkable as a man of taste and ingenuity. When acting as clerk to Messrs Wardrop and Peat, upholsterers in Carrubber's close, he framed a very useful book of rates; and he eventually attained the respectable situation of accountant to the British Linen Company, but whether in its ultimate capacity of a bank has not been mentioned. Previous to his arrival in Edinburgh, he had two sons and a daughter, born in the following order: Henry, 1742; Barbara, 1744; John (who seems to have died young), 1746.