Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 9.djvu/285

Rh In this manner passed the useful life of John Struthers to its close, while every year added to the esteem of his fellow-citizens, who regarded him not only as an excellent poet, but an able historian and general writer an estima- tion in which society at large has fully coincided. He died in Glasgow, on the 30th July, 1853, in the seventy-eighth year of his age.

TENNANT,, LL.D., Professor of Oriental Languages in St. Mary's College, St. Andrews. This most accomplished linguist and excellent poet was born in Anstruther, a royal burgh on the south-eastern coast of Fife, once a town and seaport of great commercial importance in the history of Scotland, but which has now dwindled, in the course of mercantile changes, into a place of little note. He was, however, the fellow-townsman and cotemporary of Dr. Chalmers. He was born in the year 1784. His father, who was a small merchant in Anstruther, appears to have been a man in straitened circumstances, while in early infancy the future poet and professor, without any original malformation, lost the use of both his feet, and was obliged for life to move upon crutches. Thus desperate from the beginning was his chance of attaining to excellence and distinction. But within that puny frame was lodged a spirit that could wrestle down such obstacles, and grow stronger from the conflict.

In those days it was the custom in Scotland, that whosoever was thought not fit to be anything else, was judged good enough to be a teacher, and destined accordingly; and thus it too often happened that our parochial seminaries were Bethesda pools, surrounded by the lame, the halt, and paralytic, waiting for the friendly hand of patronage to lift them into office when a vacancy occurred. It was not wonderful, therefore, that the poor lame boy was educated with the view of permanently occupying a schoolmaster's chair, instead of poussing his fortune by a life of travel and adventure. He was accordingly sent betimes to the schools of his native town, and after he had learned all that they could teach him, he was transferred in 1799 to the university of St. Andrews, with the view of finishing his education. One so fitted to be a linguist by nature, could not fail to make a rapid progress under the prelections of such instructors as Dr. Hunter and Dr. Hill. After having spent two years at the United College, St. Andrews, in the study of the classics, the state of pecuniary affairs at home did not permit him to enjoy the usual curriculum, and he was hastily recalled to Anstruther. In the meantime, however, by the study of two languages, he had acquired the key that could unlock them all, be his circumstances what they might; and of this facility he soon showed himself a ready occupant. Independently of the higher Latin and Greek writers, so seldom mastered at our universities, but with which he became as conversant as with the authors of his own tongue, he ventured upon the study of Hebrew, with no other teachers than a dictionary and grammar, and made such proficiency, that in half a year and three days he read through the whole of the Hebrew Bible. While thus employed in the study of languages at Anstruther, and laying the foundation of his future renown and success, the claims of business called him away to Glasgow in 1803-4, where he was employed as clerk to his brother, a corn-factor in that city; and on the removal of "the business to his native town a year after, he continued in the