Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 7.djvu/110

246 pears also to have composed several of his treatises, which he returned to Geneva to have printed. On his arrival, the magistrates of that city importuned him to resume his class for teaching philosophy. With this request he complied, and continued again in Geneva for two years, 1563 and 1564. In the year 1565, he opened a school for teaching civil law, of which he had the honour of being the first professor and founder in Geneva. This class he continued to teach till his death. In the year 1572, Alexander Young, his nephew, was sent to him to Geneva, with letters from the regent Marr, and George Buchanan, with the latter of whom he had been long in terms of intimacy; requesting him to return to his native country, and promising him every encouragement.

Buchanan had before repeatedly written to him, pressing his return to his native country, in a manner that sufficiently evinced the high esteem he entertained for him. The venerable old scholar, however, could not be prevailed on to leave the peaceful retreat of Geneva, for the stormy scenes which were now exhibiting in his native country; pleading, as an apology, his years and growing infirmities. The letters of Buchanan, however, were the means of awakening the ardour of Andrew Melville, (who was at that time in Geneva, and in the habit of visiting Scrimger, whose sister was married to Melville's elder brother,) and turning his attention to the state of learning in Scotland, of which, previously to this period, he does not seem to have taken any particular notice.

Though his life had not passed without some vicissitudes, the latter days of Scrimger appear to have been sufficiently easy as to circumstances. Besides the house which he possessed in the city, he had also a neat villa, which he called the Violet, about a league from the town. At this latter place he spent the most of his time, in his latter years, in the company of his wife and an only (laughter. The period of his death seems to be somewhat uncertain. Thuanus says he died at Geneva in the year 1571; but an edition of his novels in the Advocates' library, with an inscription to his friend, Edward Herrison, dated 1572, is sufficient evidence that this is a mistake. George Buchanan, however, in a letter to Christopher Plaintain, dated at Stirling in the month of November, 1573, speaks of him as certainly dead; so that his death must have happened either in the end of 1572, or the beginning of 1573.

The only work which Scrimger appears to have published, besides the account of Spira, which we have already noticed, was an edition of the Novellæ Constitutiones of Justinian, in Greek; a work which was highly prized by the first lawyers of the time. He also enriched the editions of several of the classics, published by Henry Stephens, with various readings and remarks. From his preface to the Greek text of the Novelize, it is evident that Scrimger intended to publish a Latin translation of that work, accompanied with annotations; but, from some unknown cause, that design was never accomplished. Mackenzie informs us, that, though he came with the highest recommendations from Ulrich Fugger to Stephens, who was, like Scrimger, one of Fugger's pensioners, yet, from an apprehension on the part of Stephens, that Scrimger intended to commence printer himself, there arose such a difference between them, that the republic of letters was deprived of Scrimger's notes upon Athenaeus, Strabo, Diogenes Laertius, the Basilics, Phornuthus, and Palœphatus; all of which he designed that Stephens should have printed for him. The most of these, according to Stephens, after Scrimger's death, fell into the hands of Isaac Casaubon, who published many of them as his own. Casaubon, it would appear, obtained the use of his notes on Strabo, and applied for those on Polybius, when he published his editions of these writers. In his letters to Peter Young, who was Scrimger's nephew, and through whom he appears to have obtained the