Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 7.djvu/316

452 On the death of this valued friend, Wedderburn published six elegies, under the title of "Sub obituni viri clarissimi et carissimi D. Arcturi Jonstoni, Medici Hegii, Davidis Wedderburni Suspiria—Abredoniæ, 1641." This tract has since been reprinted by Lauder in his "Poetarum Scotorum Musæ Sacræ," Edinburgh, 1731. Two years after the publication of his "Suspiria" he published, at Aberdeen, "Meditationum Cainpestrium, seu Epigrammatum Moralium, Centuriae duae," and in the following year, 1644, appeared "Centuria tertia." Both these works are from the press of Edward Raban, and are of great rarity. It is probable that they were the last compositions of their author which were printed in his lifetime, if we except some commendatory verses to a treatise "De Arte conservando sanitatem," published at Aberdeen in 1651. Though the precise year of Wedderburn's death has escaped our researches, it may be fixed within a few years from this last date. In 1664, his brother, Alexander, gave to the world "Persius Enucleatus, sive Commentarius exactissimus et inaxime perspicuus in Persium, Poetarum omnium difficillimum, studio Davidis Wedderburni, Scoti Abredonensis—opus Posthumum; Amstelodami," 12mo. Besides the works now enumerated, Wedderburn was the author of a great number of commendatory poems and elegiac verses. His learning has been celeLmted by Vossius, who styles him "homo eruditissimus beneque promovens de stiuliis juventutis.* 1 His reputation is attested by the terms on which he lived with many of the most eminent persons of his time. His intimacy with Arthur Johnston and bishop Patrick Forbes, has been already mentioned; the well known secretary Reid was his coadjutor; and he counted among his friends Jameson the painter, William Forbes, bishop of Edinburgh, Gilbertus Jacobaeus, Duncan Liddel, baron Dun, Ramsay, Ross, and many other illustrious individuals. His poems show in every line an intimate acquaintance with the classic writers, and are filled with happy allusions to ancient history and fable. His verses, indeed, are more to be admired for their learning than for their feeling; he has nowhere succeeded in reaching the highest flights of poetry, and has frequently sunk into common-place and bathos. But it is impossible to withhold admiration from the ease and elegance of his latinity, the epigrammatic vivacity of his style, or the riches of classical lore with which he has adorned his pages.

WELCH,, a celebrated divine of the seventeenth century, was born about the year 1570. His father was a gentleman of considerable note in Nithsdale, where he possessed a pretty extensive and valuable estate called Collieston. The outset of Mr Welch's career was an extraordinary one, and presents one of the most striking and singular contrasts of conduct and disposition in one and the same person at different periods of life which can perhaps be found in the annals of biography.

This faithful and exemplary minister of the church (for he became both in an eminent degree) began the world by associating himself with a band of border thieves. While at school, he was remarkable for the unsteadiness of his habits, and for an utter disregard for the benefits of instruction and for the admonitions of his friends and preceptors. He was also in the practice of ab- senting himself, frequently and for long periods, from school, a habit in which he indulged until it finally terminated in his not only abandoning the latter entirely, but also his father's house, and betaking himself to the borders, where, as already noticed, he joined one of those numerous bands of freebooters with which those districts were then infested. Whether, however, it was that a better spirit came over the young prodigal, or that he found the life of a border marauder cither not such as he had pictured it, or in itself not agreeable to him, he soon repented of the desperate step he had taken, and resolved on re- turning to his father's house.