could not have been laid open and rendered available but for that
enthusiasm with which the languages of Greece and Rome were
cultivated in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries."

It is not to be questioned that in the literature of that age, and
in all departments of it, Aberdeen stood pre-eminent. Clarendon
commemorates the "many excellent scholars and very learned
men under whom the Scotch Universities, and especially Aberdeen
flourished."
Bishop Patrick Forbes," says Burnet, "took such
care of the two Colleges in his diocese, that they became quickly
distinguished from all the rest of Scotland.

66

They were

an honour to the church, both by their lives and by their learning,
and with that excellent temper they seasoned that whole diocese,
both clergy and laity, that it continues to this very day very much
distinguished from all the rest of Scotland, both for learning,
loyalty, and peaceableness.""

That this was no unfounded boast, as regards one department of
learning, has been already shown, in enumerating the learned
divines who drew upon Aberdeen the general attention soon after
the death of their Bishop and master. In secular learning it was
no less distinguished. No one excelled Robert Gordon of Straloch
in all the accomplishments that honour the country gentleman.
Without the common desire of fame or any more sordid motive, he
devoted his life and talents to illustrate the history and literature
of his country. He was the prime assistant to Scotstarvet in his
two great undertakings, the Atlas and the collections of Scotch

1Dr. M'Crie's Life of Melville, II., p.
445. It is with hesitation that
any one who
has benefited by this work will express a
difference of opinion from its author. But,
it seems to me that Dr. M'Crie has been
led by his admiration for Andrew Melville,
to rate too highly an exercise in which he
excelled. The writing of modern Latin
poetry, however valuable as a part of gram-

matical education, has, in truth, never been
an effort of imagination or fancy; and its
products, when most successful, have never
produced the effect of genuine poetry on the

mind of the reader.

2 History of the Rebellion. Oxford, 1826, I., 145.

'Life of Bishop Bedell-Preface.

poetry. The maps of Scotland in the Great Atlas (many of them drawn by himself, and the whole "revised" by him at the earnest entreaty of Charles I.) with the topographical descriptions that accompany them, are among the most valuable contributions ever made by an individual to the physical history of his country. His son, James Gordon, Parson of Rothiemay, followed out his father's great objects with admirable skill, and, in two particulars, he merits our gratitude even more. He was one of the earliest of our countrymen to study drawing, and to apply it to plans and views of places; and, while he could wield Latin easily, he condescended to write the history of his time in excellent Scotch.

While these writers were illustratrating the history of their country in prose, a crowd of scholars were writing poetry, or, at least, pouring forth innumerable copies of elegant Latin verses. While the two Johnstons were the most distinguished of those poets of Aberdeen, John Leech, once Rector of our University," David Wedderburn, Rector of the Grammar School, and many others, wrote and published pleasing Latin verse, which stands the test of criticism. While it cannot be said that such compositions produce on the reader the higher effects of real poetry, they are not without value, if we view them as tests of the cultivation of the society among which they were produced. Arthur Johnston not only addresses elegiacs to the Bishop and his doctors, throwing a charming classical air over their abstruser learning, but puts up a petition to the Magistrates of the City, or celebrates the charms of Mistress Abernethy, or the embroideries of the Lady Lauderdale-all in choice Latin verse, quite as if the persons whom he addressed appreciated the language of the poet.3

Intelligent and educated strangers, both foreigners and the gentry of the north, were attracted to Aberdeen; and its Colleges became the place of education for a higher class of students than had hitherto been accustomed to draw their philosophy from a native

If it was altogether chance, it was a very fortunate accident, which placed in the midst of a society so worthy of commemoration, a painter like George Jamiesone, the pupil of Rubens, the first, and, till Raeburn, the only great painter whom Scotland had produced. Though he was a native of Aberdeen, it is not likely that anything but the little court of the Bishop could have induced such an artist to prosecute his art in a provincial town. An academic orator in 1630, while boasting of the crowd of distinguished men, natives and strangers, either produced by the University, or brought to Aberdeen by the Bishop, was able to point to their pictures ornamenting the hall where his audience were assembled. Knowing by whom these portraits were painted, we cannot but regret that so few are preserved.2

tas, quo tot pileati patres, theologiæ, juris et
medicinæ doctores et baccalaurei de gym-
nasio nostro velut agmine facto prodierunt !"
He alludes to the strangers attracted by the
fame of the society-to the divines, Forbes,
Barron, etc.—to the physicians-" Quantus
medicorum grex! quanta claritas! . . .
Quantum uterque Jonstonus, ejusdem uteri,
ejusdem artis fratres. . . . Mathesi pro-
funda, quantum poesi et impangendis car-
minibus valeant novistis. Arthurus medicus
Regis et divinus poeta elegiæ et epigram-
matis, quibus non solum suæ ætatis homines
superat verum antiquissimos quosque æquat.
Gulielmus rei herbariæ et mathematum,
quorum professor meritissimus est, gloria
cluit. De Gulielmo certe idem usurpare
possumus... Deliciæ est humani generis,'
tanta est ejus comitas, tanta urbanitas."

、,,

The intellectual society thus gathered round the Cathedral and University would have been incomplete without a printing press, and, to meet that want, the Bishop induced Edward Raban, an Englishman who had settled as a printer at St. Andrews, to quit the older University, and establish at Aberdeen the first press which had ever crossed the Grampian line.' The chief inducement to the undertaking was, without doubt, the convenience of saving the endless dictation and writing required in teaching grammar and philosophy where there were no text-books; but the press served higher purposes also, and we not only owe to Raban's types the first editions of Arthur Johnston's Latin poetry, but to him and his successors we are indebted for a large mass of Academic literature, which must have been lost without them, and which furnishes the best materials (after the proper archives) of University history."

Dun, another physician, he describes as in great practice, and Gordon, "medicus et alchymista eximius." Andrew Strachan's "panegyricus inauguralis," spoken on the 26th July, 1630, printed by Raban at Aberdeen,

1631.

In

'Ille cum cerneret prelum esse bibliothecæ purung divinam illam et Jovis cerebro dignam artem typographicam (quæ nunquam ante saltus Caledonios et juga Grampia salutarat) huc tanquam de cœlo devocavit ; atque hac prerogativa effert se Academia nostra super alias omnes nostrates. tantis frigoribus nec prelum sudare cessat, idque haud absque operæ pretio; non solum enim excuduntur hic libri qui omnium scholarum usibus deserviunt, sed etiam ii qui, cum genium habeant, nostris scholis earumque rectoribus ornamento sunt; idque typis splendidis qui lucem illustrissimarum regionum ferre possunt.—Strachan's panegyric, P. 37.

It may be allowed to give the dates of such of these Academic prints as I have seen. The first is not from the Aberdeen press.

1620.-"Disputationes theologicæ duæ

habitæ in inclyta Aberdonensi Academia mense Februario 1620. . . . pro publica S.S. Theologiæ professione. Respondente Joanne Forbesio." Printed by Andrew Hart at Edinburgh. Prefixed is a proclamation which had been published in Universities and great towns in December, 1619, calling on all learned in this kind "ut explorationi pro cathedræ hujus aditione instituenda vel se submittant vel intersint." The first disputation is "de libero arbitrio," the second, "de sacramentis." At the end is the "Approbatio synodica, ejusdemque ad publicam S.S. theologia professionem solennis vocatio," 27th April, 1620.

1622.-"Theses philosophicæ quas adjutorio numinis adolescentes pro magisterji gradu in publico Academ. Reg. Aberd. asceterio 10 kalend. August: i. 22 Julii 1622, horis pomeridianis sustinebunt

Præside Alexandro Lunano' (the names of nine candidates, one of whom, Alexander Wischart. does not appear in the list printed at p. 507.) " Aberdoniis excud.

The first book printed in Aberdeen bears the date of 1622, being just a century after John Vaus crossed to Paris to have his gram