Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 7.djvu/195

Rh ty-first year of his age. He provided munificently for his widow and children, and among many other eleemosynary bequests, left £1000 to the company of Stationers, to be disposed of for charitable purposes.

The author of the memoir in the Lounger, gives the following account of his character: "Endued with much natural sagacity, and an attentive observation of life, he owed his rise to that station of opulence and respect which he attained, rather to his own talents and exertion, than to any accidental occurrence of favourable or fortunate circumstances. His mind, though not deeply tinctured with learning, was not uninformed by letters. From a habit of attention to style, he had acquired a considerable portion of critical acuteness in the discernment of its beauties and defects. In one branch of writing himself excelled. I mean the epistolary, in which he not only showed the precision and clearness of business, but possessed a neatness, as well as fluency of expression, which I have known few letter-writers to surpass. Letter-writing was one of his favourite amusements; and among his correspondents were men of such eminence and talents as well repaid his endeavours to entertain them. One of these, as we have before mentioned, was the justly celebrated Dr Franklin, originally a printer like Mr Strahan, whose friendship and correspondence he continued to enjoy, notwithstanding the difference of their sentiments in political matters, which often afforded pleasantry, but never mixed anything acrimonious in their letters. * * * In his elevation he neither triumphed over the inferiority of those he had left below him, nor forgot the equality in which they had formerly stood. Of their inferiority he did not even remind them, by the ostentation of grandeur, or the parade of wealth. In his house there was none of that saucy train, none of that state or finery, with which the illiberal delight to confound and to dazzle those who may have formerly seen them in less enviable circumstances. No man was more mindful of, or more solicitous to oblige, the acquaintance or companions of his early days. The advice which his experience, or the assistance which his purse could afford, he was ready to communicate: and at his table in London, every Scotchman found an easy introduction, and every old acquaintance a cordial welcome."

STRANG, (, minister of Errol, and principal of the university of Glasgow in the early part of the seventeenth century, was born at Irvine in Ayrshire, (of which his father, Mr William Strang, was minister,) in 1584. Like many other eminent men, he had the misfortune to lose his father at a very early period, but the place of a parent was supplied to him in Mr Robert Wilkie, minister of Kilmarnock, whom his mother married soon after she became a widow. Under the care of that gentleman, he was educated at the public school of Kilmarnock, where he had as a schoolfellow Mr Zachary Boyd, renowned as a divine, as a poetical paraphrast of the Bible, and as a munificent benefactor to the university of Glasgow. That singular person always mentioned Strang as being from the earliest period remarkable for piety; together with aeuteness and its frequent concomitant, modesty. At the age of twelve his step-father sent him to study Greek and philosophy at St Leonard's college, St Andrews, then under the direction of his kinsman, principal Robert Wilkie. Nor did he disgrace the patronage of the principal: he equalled or surpassed all his contemporaries, and was made master of arts in his sixteenth year. Although still very young, he was then unanimously invited by the master of the college to become one of the regents. That office he accepted, and continued to discharge with great fidelity and effect till about the end of 1613, when he was with similar unanimity urged to become minister of the parish of Errol, in the presbytery of Perth. Thither he accordingly removed in the beginning of the following year, carrying with him the best wishes