Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 5.djvu/207

Rh burn,—a piece strikingly depictive of the author's affectionate feelings, and probably detailing the effects of excessive study and anxiety:

Benson mentions, that Johnston was a litigant in the court of session in Edinburgh, at the period of his return to Britain; and probably the issue of his suit may account for a rather unceremonious attack in the Parerga, on advocates and agents, unblushingly addressed "Ad duos rabulas forenses, Advocatum et Procuratorem," of whom, without any respect for the college of Justice, the author says,

On approaching the period when Johnston published his translation of the Psalms of David, we cannot help being struck with the circumstances under which he appears to have formed the design. Dr Eaglesham had, in the year 1620, published a criticism of considerable length, for the purpose of proving that the public voice had erred in the merit it allowed to Buchanan's version of the Psalms, and modestly displaying a translation of the 104th psalm, of his own workmanship, between which and the psalms of Buchanan he challenged a comparison. Dr William Barclay penned a critical answer to this challenge, and Johnston made a fierce stroke at the offender, in a satirical article in the Parerga, which he calls "Consilium Collegii Medici Parisiensis de Mania Hypermori Medicastri," commencing

Johnston, however, did not consider himself incapacitated to perform a work in which another had failed, and he probably, at that period, formed the resolution of writing a version of the psalms, which he afterwards produced, under