Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 5.djvu/297

Rh cation in Edinburgh, and passed through the university with considerable credit. After leaving college, he seems to have immediately resorted to teaching, as a means of gaining a livelihood; his early career in this profession was for some time interrupted by an accident, which must have materially affected his future course of life. While standing near a party engaged in the game of golf, on Bruntsfield Links, near Edinburgh, a ball struck him on the knee; the wound, which cannot have been very serious, festered from careless treatment, and he was compelled to submit to the amputation of his leg. In 1734, he was employed by professor Watt, then in bad health, to teach for him the class of Humanity, or Latin; and on the death of that gentleman he naturally exerted himself to procure an appointment as successor; but though he had talents to teach, he had not sufficient influence to be appointed a professor. We are, however, informed that on this occasion the professors gratuitously honoured him with "a testimonial from the heads of the university, certifying that he was a fit person to teach Humanity in any school or college whatever." After this disappointment, his ambition sunk to an application for the subordinate situation of keeper to the university library, but this also was denied him. He appears indeed to have been a person whose disposition and character produced a general dislike, which was only to a small extent balanced by his talent and high scholarship. "He was," says Chalmers, with characteristic magniloquence, "a person about five feet seven inches high, who had a sallow complexion, large rolling fiery eyes, a stentorian voice, and a sanguine temper;" and Ruddiman has left, in a pamphlet connected with the subject of our memoir, a manuscript note, observing, "I was so sensible of the weakness and folly of that man, that I shunned his company, as far as decently I could." Ruddiman's opinion, however, if early entertained, did not prevent him from forming an intimate literary connexion with its subject.

In 1738, Lauder printed a proposal to publish by subscription "A Collection of Sacred Poems," "with the assistance of professor Robert Stewart, professor John Ker, (professor of Greek in Aberdeen, and afterwards of Latin in Edinburgh), and Mr Thomas Ruddiman." The promised work was published by Ruddiman in 1739, and forms the two well known volumes called "Poetarum Scotorum Musae Sacrss." What assistance Stewart and Ker may have given to tiiis work appears not be be known; Ruddiman provided several notes, and three poems. This work was creditable both to the scholar and typographer. It contains a beautiful edition of the translation of the Psalms and the Song of Solomon, by Arthur Johnston, and similar sacred poems of merit, by Ker, Adamson, and Hog: it contains likewise a reprint of Eglisham's somewhat ludicrous attempt to excel Buchanan's best translated Psalm, the 104th, with the sarcastic "judicium" of Barclay on the respective merits of the competitors, and several minor sacred poems by Scottish authors are dispersed through the collection. The classical merit of these elegant poems, has, we believe, never been disputed by those who showed the greatest indignation at the machinations of their editor; nor is their merit less, as furnishing us with much biographical and critical information on the Latin literature of Scotland, among which may be mentioned a well written life of Arthur Johnston, and the hyperbolical