Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 9.djvu/107

Rh the second-hand productions of this new school disappeared as rapidly as they rose; for unless the imitator has a large portion of the genius of his original, his copy can be little better than a wretched caricature. A few writers, however, there were who survived this general annihilation, for in them the imitative principle was supported by strong native talent. Among these we may quote, as the foremost, Miss Ferrier and John Gait; and, perhaps, immediately after them, Sir Thomas Dick Lauder, the last eminent writer of that school of novelists by whom our national dialect was arrested from the oblivion into which it was hastening.

Sir Thomas Dick Lauder was the eldest son of Sir Andrew Lauder, Bart., of Fountainhall, Haddingtonshire, and was born in 1784. The family was originally of Norman extraction, its founder, De Lavedre, having come from England with Malcolm Canmore, when the latter drove Macbeth from the Scottish throne; and from him descended a race who took part in all the subsequent wars of Scottish independence, and fought gallantly under the banners of Wallace, Bruce, and the Douglasses. It was natural that these family recollections should influence the early studies of Sir Thomas, and inspire him with that love of chivalry and antiquarian research which he afterwards turned to such good account. At an early period he entered the army, and was an officer in the 79th Regiment (Cameron Highlanders). Here he continued only a short period; and, on quitting the army, he took up his residence in Morayshire, where he married Miss Gumming, only child and heiress of George Gumming, Esq. of Relugas, a beautiful property on the banks of Findhorn. From this time till the close of life, he was fully occupied with the civil appointments he held, and with the pursuits of science and literature, in which he sustained a high reputation to the end.

The first efforts of Sir Thomas in authorship, so far as can be ascertained, were in the departments of natural science; and his diligence in these studies is well attested by his numerous contributions to the scientific journals of the day, and especially to the "Annals of Philosophy," edited by the late Thomas Thomson, professor of chemistry in the university of Glasgow. To this magazine we find him, in 1815, and the three following years, contributing papers on the following subjects, from which the nature of his researches can best be understood: "Account of a Toad found in the trunk of a Beech;" "Account of the Worm with which the Stickleback is infested;" "Account of the Aluminous Chalybeate Spring which has lately appeared on the property of Sir Andrew Lauder Dick, Bart., at Fountainhall, in East Lothian." (To this he subsequently added a register of its diurnal alternations contrasted with the barometer, during nineteen months, a daily list of which had been made by his father, who was also a lover of natural science.) "An Account of the Earthquake in Scotland;" "Account of Different Currents of Wind observed at the same time." But the most important of his philosophical investigations, upon which he had spent much study, and made more than one exploratory journey to the wilds of Lochaber, was contained in his paper "On the Parallel Roads of Glenroy," which he read before the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1818. These singular roads, it was generally supposed, had been constructed either by the ancient Celtic kings of Scotland when their royal abode was the Castle of Inverlochy, or by the Fingalian "car-borne" chiefs who had flourished at a still earlier period. Sir Thomas, however, attempted to show, by a careful induction, that these stupendous pathways, instead of being constructed by kings, heroes,