Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 9.djvu/284

548 laneous literature, as the sole means of supporting existence, be, after all, a lawful profession."

It was not, however, merely to poetry that Struthers confined his intellectual exertions. Looking sharply at men and things, he knew much of the prose of life; while his course of reading, which he had never intermitted from boyhood, and' which extended over an ample range of Scottish theology, history, and general literature, fitted him for writing upon the most important subjects of the day. He felt it also the more necessary to be a prose writer and public instructor, in consequence of the innovations that were taking place in society, under which all old time-honoured institutions were decried as the mere ignorance of childhood, compared with that great millennium of improvement, of which the French revolution was the commencement. On this account he had sturdily opposed the strikes of his fellow-workmen, and the levelling democratic principles of the class of society to which he belonged, although he stood alone in the contest. While these were at the wildest, he published, in 1816, an "Essay on the State of the Labouring Poor, with some hints for its improvement." The plan he recommended was that of the ten-acre-farm, which has so often been reiterated since that period; and such were the merits of the production, which was published anonymously, that more than one writer of eminence had the credit of the authorship. Another pamphlet, which he afterwards published, with the title of "Tekel," was written during the heat of the Voluntary controversy, and intended to represent what he conceived to be the ruinous effects of the Voluntary principle upon religion in general. He was now to become more closely connected with authorship as a profession than ever, in consequence of being employed as a literary reader and corrector of the press, first at the printing-office of Khull, Blackie, and Co., Glasgow, and afterwards in that of Mr. Fullarton. During this period, which lasted thirteen years, besides the task of correcting proofs and making or mending paragraphs, he furnished notes for a new edition of Wodrow's "History of the Church of Scotland." He also wrote a history of Scotland from the Union (1707) to 1827, the year in which it was published, in two volumes, and was afterwards employed in preparing a third, continuing the narrative until after the Disruption, so that it might be a complete history of the Scottish Church ; when, just as it was all but completed, death put a period to his labours. He was also, for sixteen or eighteen months, occupied with Scottish biography, and most of the lives which he wrote on this occasion, were ultimately transferred to Chambers' "Lives of Eminent Scotsmen."

In 1833, an important change occurred in the tranquil career of Mr. Struthers, by his being appointed to the charge of that valuable collection, well known in Glasgow as the Stirling Library Here his salary as librarian was only fifty pounds a-year; but his wants were few and simple, and the opportunities of the situation for study were such as would have outweighed with him more lucrative offers. In this office he remained nearly fifteen years, and returning in his old days to his first love, he resumed his poem entitled "Dychrnont," commenced in early life, which he completed and published in 1836. These literary exertions were combined with biographical sketches, which appeared in the "Christian Instructor," several tracts on the ecclesiastical politics of the period, and essays on general subjects, of which only a few were printed. In 1850, a collection of his poetical works was published in two volumes, by Mr. Fullarton, to which the author added a highly interesting autobiography.