Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 5.djvu/204

264 do it, and, crying out, 'O, pray, pray! praise, praise!' was turned over, and died almost without a struggle, with his hands lift up to heaven."

The same partial hand has thus drawn his character: "My lord Warriston was a man of great learning and eloquence; of very much wisdom, and extraordinary zeal for the public cause of religion and reformation, in which he was a chief actor; but above all, he was extraordinary in piety and devotion, as to which he had scarce any equal in the age he lived in. One who was his intimate acquaintance says, he spent more time, notwithstanding the great throng of public business upon his hand, in prayer, meditation, and close observation of providences, and self-examination, than ever he knew or heard of: and as he was very diligent in making observations on the Lord's way, so he was visited with extraordinary discoveries of the Lord's mind, and very remarkable providences. He wrote a large diary, which yet remains in the hands of his relations; an invaluable treasure of Christian experiences and observations; and, as I am told by one who had the happiness to see some part of it, there is mixed in sometimes matters of fact very little known now, which would bring a great deal of light to the history of Scots affairs, in that period wherein he lived."

But his nephew Burnet, has in his usual characteristic manner, drawn a more happy picture of the stubborn statesman and hardy zealot, too vivid to be neglected: "Warristoun was my own uncle; he was a man of great application, could seldom sleep above three hours in the twenty-four: he had studied the law carefully, and had a great quickness of thought, with an extraordinary memory. He went into very high notions of lengthened devotions, in which he continued many hours a-day: he would often pray in his family two hours at a time, and had an unexhausted copiousness that way. What thought soever struck his fancy during these effusions, he looked on it as an answer of prayer, and was wholly determined by it. He looked on the covenant as the setting Christ on his throne, and so was out of measure zealous in it He had no regard to the raising himself or his family, though he had thirteen children; but prosperity was to him more than all the world. He had a readiness and vehemence of speaking that made him very considerable in public assemblies; and he had a fruitful invention; so that he was at all times furnished with expedients."

JOHNSTON, (, a poet and physician, was born in the year 1587, at Caskieben, the seat of his family, a few miles from Aberdeen. He was the fifth son of George Johnston of that ilk and of Caskieben, the chief of the family of Johnston, by Christian Forbes, daughter of William, seventh baron Forbes. He appears to have been named after his uncle the honourable William Forbes of Logic, who was killed at Paris in the year 1574. This poet, whose chief characteristic was the elegance with which he expressed his own simple feelings as a poet, in the language appropriate to the customs and feelings of a past nation, has left in his Epigrammata an address to his native spot; and, although Caskieben is a piece of very ordinary Scottish scenery, it is surprising how much he has made of it, by the mere force of his own early associations. With the minuteness of an enthusiast, he does not omit the circumstance, that the hill of Benochie, a conical elevation about eight miles distant, casts its shadow over Caskieben at the periods of the equinox. As we shall be able, by giving this epigram, to unite a specimen of the happiest original efforts of the author's genius, with circumstances personally connected with his history, we beg leave to extract it: