Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 3.djvu/291

Rh tion of refined, or recondite ingenuity. The subjects were judiciously chosen, and the most instructive and intelligent treatment of them preferred. His reasoning was cogent and correct; his illustrations rational and just; and his style, which neither courted nor rejected ornament, was classically pure, and appropriate. His manner was still less florid than his duties. He carried to the pulpit the same unpretending simplicity, with which he appeared in society; and from his care to avoid affectation and all rhetorical attempts of doubtful success, he might, to the undiscerning have some appearance of coldness; but by those who felt such an interest in the matter, as was due, to its excellence, no defect of energy or animation in the manner was observable. If it had no artificial decoration, it had no offensive meanness. As a preacher, Dr Finlayson was nearly what Cowper describes in the following lines:

During the course of the year in which he obtained his license, the duke of Athole offered Mr Finlayson the living of Dunkeld. Of this offer he would have been exceedingly glad to accept, had he not received information from Sir William Murray, that a plan was in agitation to procure for him the chair of logic in the university of Edinburgh. This unlocked for prospect gave an entirely different direction to his ambition ; and he was induced to decline the duke's offer.

The negotiation, however, respecting the professorship, did not proceed so smoothly as was anticipated. Mr Bruce, who at that time held the chair, had accompanied the present lord Melville as travelling companion in his tour on the continent, and having gone off without giving in his resignation, or making final arrangements, many difficulties arose, which occupied more than a year before they were completely settled, and Mr Finlayson put in possession of the chair. In the meanwhile, Sir William Murray, by his influence with the family of Dundas of Arniston, obtained for him the living of Borthwick, which, while it was in such a near neighbourhood to Edinburgh as to admit of his holding both it and the professorship, secured him in the meantime an independence in the event of the failure of the negotiation for the chair. Mr Finlayson was ordained minister of Borthwick on the Gth of April, 1787. He had, however, at the commencement of the session of that year assumed the duties of the logic class, and it may therefore be easily believed, that the labour he had to undergo in preparing for his ordination, and at the same time being obliged to write his lecture for the following day's delivery, required a very extraordinary degree of application, and great vigour of intellect; and the accuracy of his knowledge is rendered more remarkable from the fact, that many of the lectures thus hurriedly written off, served him without transcription to the end of his life.

During the succeeding summer, he added to his other labours a course of parochial visitation, which, although very common in Scotland, had in his parish been discontinued for upwards of thirty years. This practice he commenced at the suggestion of Dr Robertson, whose due appreciation of the duties of a clergyman was no less remarkable than his splendid abilities. But although he felt the faithful discharge of parochial duties to be strongly incumbent on him, the labour which he had thus to undergo was too great for his constitution, and his parents used to refer to the toils of this period of his life, as having sown the seeds of those organic diseases which ultimately proved fatal.

Abilities such as Mr Finlayson possessed, could not long remain unacknow-