Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 23.djvu/350

 GUNN, DANIEL (1774–1848), congregational minister, born at Wick in Caithness in 1774, was educated at the high school, Edinburgh, and trained for the ministry by Greville Ewing at Glasgow. After being itinerant minister in Ireland for six years he became in 1810 pastor of a small congregation at Ilfracombe. He removed in 1813 to Bishop's Hull, in 1814 to Chard, and in 1816 to Christchurch, Hampshire. Here he found a scanty congregation, partly consisting of baptists. He promptly preached a sermon which, as he afterwards said, 'converted all the sensible baptists in the place,' and his congregation soon grew till it numbered a thousand, an extraordinary fact, considering that the whole population of Christchurch and the district within five or six miles was only about 2,500. Yet his preaching was entirely unemotional; no one was allowed to preach emotional religion in his pulpit, and the laymen whom he used to despatch into the neighbouring villages were strictly enjoined to abstain from adding anything to the printed discourses with which he provided them. His Sunday school, which was attended by upwards of four hundred children, attained a very high reputation, and attracted visitors from all parts of the country, even from America. He was almost equally successful in maintaining a day school which he established, and regulated with military precision.

Ann Taylor [see ], who met him at Ilfracombe, tells of his laboriously teaching a lad how to hand a chair; he would pitilessly call back a little boy on an unmanageable pony to make him take off his hat to Mrs. Gunn if he had omitted to do so. Yet his personal influence was extraordinary. Even in the matter of subscriptions his will was law; if the collection on Sunday was not what he considered sufficient, he would put in a five-pound note, and send the plates round again. Ann Taylor's enthusiasm for 'the noble highlander' seems to have been shared by all who met him. He was three times married, and lived like a country gentleman at Burton, near Christchurch. He died at Burton on 17 June 1848, in the seventy-fifth year of his age.

[Congregationalist for February 1881; Report (dated July 1830) by Henry Althaus on the Constitution and Order of Christchurch Sunday School, reprinted from the Sunday School Teachers' Magazine; Three Scriptural Lessons, with Observations as to the Mode of Teaching adopted by the Rev. D. Gunn, and Specimens of the Lessons taught by him, 1855; Mrs. Gilbert's Autobiography, i. 250, 251, 258-60; private information.] 

GUNN, JOHN (fl. 1790), writer on music and professor, was born in Edinburgh about 1765, taught violoncello and flute in Cambridge, and was from 1789 in London for several years, making studies in languages and history in his leisure moments. He wrote at Cambridge his 'Treatise on the Origin of Stringed Instruments,' and published it with his 'Theory and Practice of Fingering the Violoncello, with Examples,' about 1789. (Forty favourite Scotch Airs adapted for Violin, Violoncello, or Flute,' followed as a supplement to that work. In 1790 Gunn translated from the Italian A. D. R. Borghese's 'New and General System of Music' (originally published in French, 1788, Paris). 'An Essay on Harmony … adapted to the Violoncello,' was brought out at Edinburgh, 1801. About this time Gunn married Ann Young, a pianist, and authoress of 'Elements of Music,' 'An Introduction to Music,' and some ingenious musical games. In 1805 Gunn read before the Highland Society a paper on the harp, which was printed by their desire in 1807 as 'An Historical Enquiry respecting the performances of the Harp in the Highlands of Scotland, from the earliest times till it was discontinued about 1734,' &c., 4to, Edinburgh. This is a valuable contribution to the history of music, and it is unfortunate that the author did not carry out his intention of writing an inquiry into the antiquity of the harp. Other works by Gunn were 'The Art of Playing the Flute,' and 'The School for the German Flute.'

[Works by Gunn and Ann Gunn; Grove's Dict. i. 641: Brown's Dict. p. 294; Baptie's Handbook, p. 89.] 

GUNN, ROBERT CAMPBELL (1808–1881), naturalist, son of an officer in the army, was born at the Cape of Good Hope, 4 April 1808, and as a child moved with his father to Bourbon (when that place was captured), the Mauritius, the West Indies, and Scotland. His first appointment was in the royal engineers' department at Barbadoes until 1829, when he emigrated to Tasmania. Here he acted as assistant-superintendent of convict prisons, and was afterwards promoted to superintendent, to which were attached the functions of police magistrate and coroner. Gunn's latent love for natural history was awakened by association with an enthusiastic colonial naturalist in 1831, William Lawrence, who died the following year. A correspondence was soon opened with Sir William Hooker and Dr. Lindley, who sent out books and scientific apparatus in exchange for the plants sent home from Tasmania. A large series of mammals, birds, reptiles, and