Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 4.djvu/317

Rh the unsuccessful litigant, previously alluded to, though dictated by personal and party spleen, has certainly been sufficient somewhat to tinge the judicial integrity of lord Harcarse; but those who had good reason to know his qualities have maintained, that " both in his public and private capacity, he was spoken of by all parties with honour, as a person of great knowledge and probity;" it would indeed be hard to decide how far the boasted virtues of any age might stand the test of the opinion of some more advanced and pure stage of society, did we not admit that in a corrupt period, the person who is less vicious than his contemporaries is a man of virtue and probity; hence one who was a profound observer of human nature, an accurate calculator of historical evidence, and intimately acquainted with the state of the times, has pronounced Harcarse to have been "a learned and upright judge." Some unknown poet has penned a tribute to his memory, of which, as it displays more elegance of versification and propriety of sentiment than are generally to be discovered in such productions, we beg to extract a portion.

HOLYBUSH,, a celebrated mathematician and astronomer, better known by the Latin terms, de Sacrobosco, or de Sacrobusto, occasionally also receiving the vernacular appellations of Holywood and Hallifax, and by one writer barbarously named Sacerbuschius. The period when this eminent man flourished is not known with any thing approaching even to the usual certainty in such cases, and it is matter of doubt whether he existed in the 13th or 14th century. Nor is his birth-place less dubious; as in many other instances during the same period, England, Scotland, and Ireland have contended for the honour the two former with almost equal success, the last with apparently no more claim than the absence of certain evidence of his belonging to any other particular nation. When a man has acquired a fame apart from his own country, and in any pursuit not particularly characteristic of, or connected with his native land, the establishment of a certainty of the exact spot of his birth is of little consequence, and when easily ascertained, the fact is only useful for the purpose of pointing out the particular branch of biography (as that subject is generally divided) to which the individual belongs, and thus preventing omission and confusion. Entertain-