Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 9.djvu/51

Rh constitutional cheerfulness of temperament, such as the most fortunate might have envied, was to close his eventful career. Much as he had written, the wonder had continued to the last that one so educated and circumstanced could write so well. His closing days, which at first gave no premonition of their result, found him employed in compiling a small volume of sacred poetry, while his walks in the moors, amidst the fresh heather-hells and the bleating of flocks, made him feel as if the season of decay were still distant. But his complaint, which was an affection of the liver, so rapidly increased, that after an illness of four weeks he died at his cottage of Altrive Lake, on the Yarrow, on the 21st of November, 1835, leaving a widow and five children, dependent upon the gratitude of a country whose scenes he has described, and whose worth he has eulogized so eloquently. His works, of which we have not enumerated the full amount in poetry and prose, have since been published at Glasgow, entire in eleven volumes. Thus passed away a man whose name will continue to be coeval with that of Ettrick or the Yarrow, and whom Scotland at large, as long as she cherishes the remembrance of her past national genius, will never willingly forget.

HORSBURGH, JAMES, F.R.S. This eminent hydrographer, whose charts have conferred such inestimable benefits upon our merchant princes and the welfare of our Eastern empire, was a native of Fife, that county so prolific of illustrious Scotchmen from the earliest periods of our national history. James Horsburgh was born at Elie, on the 23d September, 1762. As his parents were of humble rank, his education in early life at the village school was alternated with field-labour. Being intended, like many of those living on the coast of Fife, for a sea-faring life, his education was directed towards this destination; and at the age of sixteen, having acquired a competent knowledge of the elements of mathematics, navigation, and book-keeping, he entered his profession in the humble capacity of cabin-boy, to which he was bound apprentice for three years. During this time the different vessels in which he served were chiefly employed in the coal trade, and made short trips to Ostend, Holland, and Ham- burg. These were at length interrupted, in May, 1780, in consequence of the vessel in which he sailed being captured by a French ship off Walcheren, and himself, with his shipmates, sent to prison at Dunkirk. When his captivity, which was a brief one, had ended, he made a voyage to the West Indies, and another to Calcutta; and at this last place he found an influential friend in Mr. D. Briggs, the ship-builder, by whose recommendation he was made third mate of the Nancy. For two years he continued to be employed in the trade upon the coasts of India and the neighbouring islands, and might thus have continued to the end, with nothing more than the character of a skilful, hardy, enterprising sailor, when an event occurred by which his ambition was awakened, and his latent talents brought into full exercise. In May, 1786, he was sailing from Batavia to Ceylon, as first mate of the Atlas, and was regulating the ship's course by the charts used in the navigation of that sea, when the vessel was unexpectedly run down and wrecked upon the island of Diego Garcia. According to the map he was in an open sea, and the island was elsewhere, until the sudden crash of the timbers showed too certainly that he had followed a lying guide. The loss of this vessel was repaid a thousand-fold by the effects