Page:Imperialdictiona02eadi Brandeis.pdf/1096

JAM suffered much from neglect and dilapidation, and from the circumstance that the best parts of the collection in it had been the private property of previous professors, and had been removed by their executors. Jameson preserved and arranged the objects which he found there, and added to them his own collection, which was very extensive and valuable. By his representations he induced the government to allot a small annual grant for the maintenance of the museum; and by his care and skill he brought it to the admirable condition in which he left it. In 1808 he founded the Wernerian Natural History Society of Edinburgh; in 1819 (along with Sir David Brewster) the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal and in 1826 the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, of which he continued to be the editor until his death. He was a fellow of almost every learned society in Europe. In 1805 he published a "Mineralogical Description of the County of Dumbarton." This was intended to be the first volume of a mineralogical description of Scotland; but want of leisure prevented his carrying out the undertaking. His principal other works were "A Treatise on the External Characters of Minerals," 1805; "A System of Mineralogy," 1804-8, 2nd edition, 1816; "Elements of Geognosy," 1809; "A Manual of Minerals and Mountain Rocks," 1821; "Elements of Mineralogy," 1837; several articles in the Encyclopædia Britannica and Edinburgh Encyclopædia; and a long series of papers in the Transactions of the Wernerian Society, and in scientific journals. He possessed to an extraordinary degree the power of gaining the esteem and regard of his pupils, and of exciting their interest in natural science. His character as a professor cannot be better described than in the words of his illustrious pupil and successor, Edward Forbes:—"A large share of the best naturalists of the day received their first instruction in the science that was afterwards to prove their fountain of honour from Professor Jameson. Not even his own famous master, the eloquent and illustrious Werner, could equal him in this genesis of investigators. . . . Valuable as were his writings—each, when estimated with regard to the position of science at the time of its issue, a step in advance—his pupils were even more valuable. The greatest praise of a great professor is that which proclaims that he has founded a school. And where else in the British empire, except here, has there been for the last half century a school of natural history?" Jameson, of swarthy complexion and small but well-knit frame, possessed great strength and energy, which well fitted him for the active life of an observer of nature, and which he retained to an advanced age. His mental vigour remained to the last. His fellow-citizens showed their respect for his remains by a public funeral, which was attended by the senate and students of the university, the members of nine learned societies, and the corporation of the city of Edinburgh. His bust in marble by Steele was placed in the university museum. A memoir of his life, with a detailed account of his works and system of teaching, written by his nephew, Mr. Laurence Jameson, appeared in the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal for 1854.—W. J. M. R.  JAMET,, a French author, born at Louvières on the 15th February, 1701; died about 1770. He was employed officially in the administration of his province, and afterwards in the French East India Company. Returning to Paris, he again entered the employ of government, and was sent to the Bastile on account of some pamphlets written against the court. His own works were principally on metaphysical subjects, but he also brought out new editions of Montaigne and Rabelais.—P. E. D.  JAMI. See.  JAMIESON,, the well-known author of the "Scottish Dictionary," was born in Glasgow on 3rd March, 1759. His father was minister of the Antiburgher congregation in Havannah, now Duke Street; and his mother was a near relation of the Bruces of Kennet. He does not seem to have been in any way very precocious; but his early education was injudiciously hastened, for he entered college in his ninth year, and the divinity hall in his fourteenth, studying four sessions at the one and six at the other seminary. During the recesses of his theological curriculum he attended also the university of Edinburgh. At the age of twenty, in 1779, he was licensed to preach the gospel, and was speedily called by congregations in Dundee, Perth, and Forfar. The synod decided that he should be ordained in Forfar, though his own mind was averse to the place. His ordination took place in August, 1780, and he was translated to Edinburgh in May, 1797. The comparative quiet of his first charge in Forfar, gave him leisure for those studies on which his fame now chiefly depends. His first publication was "Socinianism Unmasked," in 1788-89, and originated in the excitement spread through the country by the thinly-veiled Unitarian opinions of Dr. M'Gill of Ayr. At this time he received the degree of D.D. from Princeton college in America; the first diploma of the kind which had been given to a minister of the Scottish secession. In 1789 appeared his "Sermons on the Heart," discourses filled with scripture illustration, and not without the traces of skilful analysis, but rather heavy in their plain and practical delineations. His next work was published in 1794, "Vindication of the Doctrine of Scripture and of the Primitive Faith concerning the Deity of Christ," in reply to Dr. Priestley's History of Early Opinions, in two vols., octavo. This was a bold adventure on the part of a seceding minister in an obscure country town; but it was no failure. In spite of all the disadvantages under which the author laboured, the work is a great one. Its industry, sobriety, learning, research, and argument, make it a noble monument of individual study and intrepidity, and a worthy specimen of Scottish polemical theology. Yet it never attained the popularity to which it was justly entitled. In 1798, and after his removal to Edinburgh, he published "Remarks on Rowland Hill's Journal," a tract which exposes the exaggerated picture which the English preacher had drawn of religious life, opinions, and usages in Scotland. In 1802 Dr. Jamieson published in two octavo volumes, the "Use of Sacred History," an instructive and creditable commentary on the Old Testament histories and biographies, though neither very striking nor profound in its remarks. Its style, however, is more lively than that of his other works; and in many pages there are picturesque and beautiful paragraphs. In 1808 appeared the "Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language." The first idea of the work rose out of a casual conversation with Professor Thorkelin of Copenhagen, in the house of Mr. Dempster of Dunnichen. The Danish professor had been collecting Scottish words in Angus and Sutherland, and wished the minister of Forfar to assist him. Dr. Jamieson commenced in a humble way to note down some peculiar Scottish terms, and his lists and inquiries issued after many patient and laborious years, in the "Scottish Dictionary," in two quartos. The work was popular at once, and took the rank of an authority. It is a marvellous example of what one can achieve when his mind is kindled into enthusiasm in any sphere of intellectual labour; and the four hundred works consulted by Dr. Jamieson are more remote than those in common use, more difficult to decipher and glean from, and demanded a closer application in the study of them, than the more familiar and easy authors compared and cited by Dr. Johnson in his English Dictionary. The "Scottish Dictionary" is rich in humour and antiquarian lore; abounds in happy illustrations of ancient customs now fast passing away; preserves for future generations a key to the pages of Gawain Douglas, Sir David Lyndsay, Dunbar, Ramsay, and Burns; and rescued from oblivion an old and expressive tongue, which is not as many imagine a corrupt and vulgar dialect of English, but claims an antiquity equal to it, and a relation as close to a common Teutonic or Gothic origin. Two volumes of "Supplement" were added in 1825, of equal size with the original. In 1811 Dr. Jamieson published a quarto on the "Ancient Culdees," in which his usual sagacity, his love of Scottish antiquities, and his powers of calm and unwearied research are fully exhibited. In 1814 appeared his "Hennes Scythicus, or the radical affinities of the Greek and Latin languages to the Gothic," &c. This volume seems to have been suggested by the investigations connected with the "Scottish Dictionary;" and when it is remembered that the author was an insulated labourer, that Sanscrit was yet unsealed, and comparative philology a science all but unknown, the "Hermes Scythicus" must be regarded, in spite of some erroneous theories, as a happy anticipation of some of those results which are now universally acknowledged, as to the close relationship or virtual identity of the Indo-Germanic or Aryan languages. When George IV. instituted the Literary Society, Dr. Jamieson was placed at the head of the list, and received a pension of a hundred guineas. The society was dissolved on the death of the king; but Earl Spencer generously offered to continue the pension, an offer which was courteously declined. Earl Grey, however, in 1833 placed his name on the civil list for an equal sum. It may be added that Dr. Jamieson edited Barbour's 