Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 5.djvu/211

Rh that event, is made a conspicuous feature in the history of his useful but unobtrusive life.

His celebrity as a medical practitioner was very great, and his professional skill was fortunately associated with a singular degree of kindness and amenity of manner qualities to which the Rev. Job Orton, a man himself celebrated for piety and talent, thus bears testimony: "I left Shrewsbury and came to Kidderminster, that I might have the advice of a very able and skilful physician, Dr Johnstone, who hath always proved himself a faithful and tender friend, to whose care as a physician I, under God, owe my life, and to whose friendship am indebted for some of the greatest comforts of it."

Several of Dr Johnstone's physiological inquiries Avere published in the Philosophical Transactions, and are to be found in the 54th, 57th, and 60th volumes of that work. They were afterwards enlarged and printed separately.

JOHNSTON,, a Latin poet and classical scholar of considerable eminence in the earlier part of the 17th century. Though this individual is one of the ornaments of a very distinguished age of Scottish literature, the date of his birth is not accurately ascertained, but it must have been previous to the year 1570, as in 1587 he began to be known to the world. He styles himself "Abredonensis;" and as he was a member of the house of Crimond, he was probably born at the family seat near Aberdeen. Dr M'Crie, whose minute labours have thrown so much light on the literary history of this period, has, among other facts connected with Johnston, (which we shall here carefully recapitulate,) discovered the name of his master, from the last will of the poet, in which he affectionately leaves to that individual his white cup with the silver foot." The same instrument appoints, as one of his executors, "Mr Robert Johnston of Creimond," probably his brother, a person who appears to have been in 1635 elected provost of Aberdeen. Johnston studied at King's college in Aberdeen, whence, after the usual custom of the age, he made a studious peregrination among the continental universities, which he continued during a period of eight years. In 1587, we find him at the university of Helmstadt, whence he transmitted a manuscript copy of Buchanan's Sphaera, to be re-edited by Pincier, along with two epigrams of his own. In 1587, he was at the university of Rostock, where he enjoyed the intimacy and correspondence of the elegantly learned but fanciful Justus Lipsius. An epistle from this veteran in classical criticism to his younger associate, is preserved in the published correspondence of the former, and may interest from the paternal kindness of its spirit, and the acknowledgment it displays of the promising genius of the young Scottish poet.

"You love me, my dear Johnston, and you praise my constancy. I heartily second the former statement, but as to the latter, I am afraid I must receive it with some diffidence, for I fear I have not achieved the praiseworthy excellence in that quality which your affectionate feelings have chosen to assign to me. I am, however, not a little flattered by the circumstance that David Chytrasus (by the way, who is that man ?) is, as you say, of the same opinion with yourself in this matter, whether by mistake or otherwise. Whatever may be in this, I love indeed I do that constancy which has secured me so many friends; in the number of which, my dear Johnston, I not only ask, but command you to consider yourself as henceforth enrolled. Should God again grant to me to stand on and behold the soil of Germany, (and such an event may perhaps happen