Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 9.djvu/105

Rh His theological acquirements and pastoral fidelity won for him the warm attachment of his flock, and the respect and veneration of the adherents of all religious denominations. His disposition was gentle and amiable in a remarkable degree, and those who enjoyed his friendship loved him with filial affection.

LAING, .—This well-known collector of rich and rare literary productions, whose shop was a Herculaneum of the treasures of past ages, was born at Edinburgh, on the 20th of July, 1764. After having received his education at the grammar high school of the Canongate, he made choice of the trade of a printer for his future occupation, and served to it a six years' apprenticeship. This selection was an unlucky one, owing to the weakness of his eyes; and therefore, instead of following it out, he became a bookseller, for which his apprenticeship had completely qualified him. In his case, too, it was not the showy and ephemeral, but money-making books of modern literature that constituted his stock in trade, but the choicest British and foreign editions of the old classical authors of every language—works which only the learned could appreciate, in spite of the dust and dingy vellum with which they were covered, His shop for this species of unostentatious, slow-going, and precarious traffic, was first opened in the Canongate, in 1785; afterwards he removed lower down the street to Chessel's Buildings, where he remained till 1803, at which date he removed to the South Bridge, where he permanently established his emporium. During these changes, his reputation as a collector of valuable old books continued to increase, until it was established among the learned over the whole island, so that his shop became a well-known repertory for those scarce volumes which his thriving brethren in the trade did not possess, and probably had never even heard of. All this, too, was the fruit of ardent disinterested zeal, and untiring diligence in his profession. From the year 1786 he had continued to issue an almost annual succession of catalogues. He knew all the scarce works of antiquity, as to the best editions in which they had been published, the places at which they were to be found in Britain, or upon the continent, and the prices at which they were to be purchased. And he was ready to communicate this valuable information to the literary inquirers who frequented his shop for intelligence that could not well be obtained elsewhere. The labour of travel was added to that of painstaking home research and inquiry, and that, too, at a time when Edinburgh booksellers and traffickers in general limited their journeys to the coast of Fife, or even the ranges of the Pentlands. Thus, in 1793, when the French revolution was at the wildest, he visited Paris, for the purpose of making himself acquainted with such know- ledge of his vocation as his own country could not supply, and ascertaining what were the best editions of those authors that are most in request. It was no ordinary zeal that made him pursue such a task amidst the roar of the Parisian pikemen and the clank of the guillotine more especially, when every stranger there was at least "suspected of being suspected." Another similar pilgrimage he made in 1799. Learning that Christian VII., King of Denmark, had been advised to dispose of the numerous duplicates contained in the royal library at Copenhagen, and being instigated by the advice of the celebrated Niebuhr, at that time a student in the university of Edinburgh, Mr. Laing repaired to the Danish capital, and there made such arrangements upon the sale of the duplicates with the privy councillor Dr. Moldenhawer, as was satisfactory to both parties. When the peace of Amiens had introduced a breathing