Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 9.djvu/413

 PREFACE,

WHILE a national Biography is so fitted to arrest the general attention, and endear itself to the patriotic feelings of those people whose great and good men it commemorates, a national SCOTTISH Biography possesses such advantages of this nature, as must always impart to it an especial For it exhibits a country the least populous in Europe, and originally the most remote and neglected, producing, in spite of these disadvantages, such a multitude of leading minds in every depart- ment of thought and action, as have advanced it into the very foremost rank of nations, and given it an imperishable name in history. The men by whom such a change has been achieved must have left a memorial of no ordinary importance.

Something more, however, than a merely intellectual and historical interest belongs, in a peculiar degree, to Scottish Biography. Those men of whom it is the record, were in most instances of humble origin and scanty resources men who were obliged not only skilfully to use, but in many cases absolutely to create the means by which they were borne onward and who yet, by their talents, their energy, and their moral worth, won their way to eminence in every department of human excel- lence. While patriotism is ennobled and purified by the study of such examples, how persuasive a lesson they contain for the ingenuous youths by whom the manhood of Scotland in a few years will be represented ! It is by such reading that they can best be taught by the example of such precursors that they will be best animated and directed. In these instances they have full proof, that however adverse their own circum- stances are, everything may be compelled to give way to indomitable resolution, unwearing industry, and steady upright integrity.

A full national Biography for Scotland, from the earliest period till 1834, was accomplished by the work, the publication of which was com- pleted during that year, under the title of " LIVES OP ILLUSTRIOUS AND DISTINGUISHED SCOTSMEN," of which the first four volumes of the pre- sent is a re-issue. But since the period of its first publication, circum- stances have occurred, through which a large addition to the original collection was urgently demanded. The close of the last, and the earlier part of the present century, have constituted an epoch in the history of the Scottish mind, such as our country, prolific though it has been of eminent men, has never previously enjoyed. But of these illustrious Scotsmen of our own day, the greater part have died since the year