Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 9.djvu/75

Rh Scottish Language," prefixed to the Dictionary. The Dictionary itself was published in 1808-1809, to which a Supplement, in two other quarto volumes, was added in 1825. As the first portion of the work was soon out of print, he published an abridgment of it in 1818, in one volume octavo. All this was an immense amount of labour for a single mind, and the literary world was astonished at his long-continued, unshrinking perseverance, as well as the successful termination that requited it. But still he never considered it completed, and continued his additions and improvements to the last; so that, at his death, two large volumes in manuscript had accumulated, nearly ready for the press. And besides all this, his antiquarian industry was employed upon other tasks of a kindred nature. In 1811 he published "An Historical account of the Ancient Culdees of lona, and of their settlement in England, Scotland, and Ireland." In 1814 appeared his "Hermes Scythicus, or the Radical Affinities of the Greek and Latin languages to the Gothic." In 1817 he contributed to the Edinburgh Philosophical Transactions a paper "On the origin of Cremation, or Burning of the Dead." In the year following he unexpectedly appeared in a "Grammar of Rhetoric and Polite Literature." He also edited two important national productions which, on account of their obsolete language, were fast hastening into general forgetfuluess. These were, the "Wallace" of Blind Harry, and the "Bruce" of Barbour.

This list of Jamieson's publications, of a strictly scholastic nature, may startle some who recollect that, all the while, he was minister of an Antiburgher congregation; and that, too, in the heart of Edinburgh. How were his clerical duties fulfilled, and his people satisfied! But while he was delighting the literary world by his valuable productions, and winning the foremost place in Scottish antiquarianism, he was not regardless of theology as his proper sphere. In 1811 he published a sermon, entitled "The Beneficent Woman;" in 1818, a sermon on "The Death of the Princess Charlotte;" and in 1819, "Three Sermons concerning Brotherly Love." His close attention to his pastoral duties had also endeared him to his congregation, while they were proud of the high reputation of their minister, which was thrown with a reflected lustre upon themselves. An event also occurred in their religious body that highly gratified his Christian feelings of brotherly affection and unity, as well as the enlarged and liberal aspirations of his intellectual character. This was the union of the Burgher and Antiburgher divisions of the Secession Church, who, after having kept apart until there were no longer grounds for separation, at length agreed to reunite, and be at one. This consummation he had long earnestly sought; and besides using every effort to procure it, he preached and published two sermons recommendatory of the union, which was accomplished in 1820. Ten years after this gratifying event, Dr. Jamieson, whose age had now passed the three score years and ten, and had entered the last decade of the series whose "strength is but labour and sorrow," resigned his charge of Nicolson Street congregation, and withdrew into private life. And in his old age he was soon alone, for his numerous family, of fourteen children, had gone successively to the grave before him, many of them when they had reached the season of manhood, and one of them, Robert Jamieson, when he had become one of the most distinguished lawyers in Scotland. Last of all his wife died, also, only a year before his own death, and while his final illness was creeping upon him. But it was then, when nothing more remained for him, that he felt the immeasurable superiority of religion, and the comfort