Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 7.djvu/73

Rh rather singular occurrence opened up a wider field to his ambition and his merits.

The celebrated Dr Pitcairne of Edinburgh, happening to be detained for a day in the village of Lawrencekirk, by the inclemency of the weather, asked the hostess of the inn where he put up, whether she could not find him some intelligent person who would partake of his dinner, and help, by his conversation, to divert the tedium of the evening. His landlady immediately suggested the schoolmaster, Mr Ruddiman. He was accordingly sent for, and in the course of the conversation which followed made so favourable an impression on the Doctor, by the extent of his acquirements, and the judiciousness of his remarks, that the latter, before they parted, invited him to come to Edinburgh, and promised him his patronage.

Mr Ruddiman gratefully closed with the proposal, and repaired to the metropolis in the beginning of the year 1700. On his arrival, his patron procured him employment in the Advocates' library as a sort of assistant librarian, though for upwards of a year he had no regular or formal engagement in that capacity. During this interval he employed himself in arranging books, copying papers, and making extracts from interesting works. In 1701, Mr Ruddiman married Barbara Scollay, the daughter of a gentleman of small estate in Orkney, and in the year following, he was formally admitted, on the 2nd of May, assistant librarian, with a salary of £8, 6s. 8d. sterling per annum. His diligence, learning, and steadiness of character, had already attracted the notice, and called forth the approbation of his employers, who, as a token of their sense of these merits, presented him with an extra allowance of fifty pounds Scots, at the end of the year succeeding that of his appointment. Mr Ruddiman now set himself seriously and earnestly to the task of improving his circumstances by literary industry and diligence, and the situation he was in eminently favoured such a design. He copied chronicles and chartularies for the Glasgow university, which gave him constant and regular employment in this way. He formed connexions with booksellers, and revised, corrected, and added to the works which they were publishing, particularly those of a learned character, and to all this he added the expedient of keeping boarders, whom he also instructed in classical learning. The first work to which he is known to have lent his assistance was Sir Robert Sibbald's "Introductio ad Historian! rerum a Romanis gestarum in ea Boreali Britannias parte quae ultra Murum Picticum est." He was next employed to revise "The Practiques of the Laws of Scotland," by Sir Robert Spottiswood, for which he received 5 sterling. Mr Ruddiman's active mind, and laudable desire of independence, suggested to him still another means of increasing his emoluments. This was to commence book auctioneer, a calling for which his habits and pursuits peculiarly qualified him, and he accordingly added it, in the year 1707, to his other avocations, but confined himself, in the exercise of it, principally to learned works and school books.

In the same year in which he commenced auctioneer, he published an edition of Wilson's "Animi Tranquillitate Dialogus." To this work he added a new preface, and subjoined a sketch of the life of Wilson, besides correcting the numerous typographical errors of Gryphius of Leyden, by whom it was first published in 1543. His extraordinary and unwearying diligence enabled Mr Huddiman to present the world in 1709, with a new edition, with notes, of another learned work. This was "Johnston! Cantici Solomonis Paraphrasis Poetica," which he dedicated, in a copy of verses, to his patron Dr Pitcairne, a compliment which the latter acknowledged by presenting the learned editor with a silver cup, inscribed with the following couplet from Horace: