Imagens da página
PDF
ePub

author of a much esteemed Treatise on the Law of Elections for Members of Parliament from this part of the united kingdom, with whom Mr SMELLIE lived in habits of friendly intercourse. Mr WIGHT gave a decided opinion, that it was then impossible to recover possession of the property, owing to lapse or legal prescription; and in this advice, however reluctantly, Mr SMELLIE prudently acquiesced.

OUR WILLIAM SMELLIE received the first rudiments of his education in reading and writing at a school in the village of Duddingstone, about a mile from his paternal residence in the Pleasance; and, though destined like his father to follow a mechanic or handicraft profession, he had the advantage of being initiated early into the preliminaries of a learned education, by going through a regular course of classical study at a grammar school; a practice long universal, and still much pursued, among the sons of almost every respectable citizen or inhabitant of Edinburgh; where an excellent public Latin school instituted, as well as the University, by James VI. has existed for many years under a succession of able masters, and

at which very moderate fees are exacted. This school contains four ordinary masters and a rector, all of whom teach in separate rooms. Each set of scholars continues during four years under the tuition of one of the ordinary masters; and in the usual course remains two years at the upper class or highest form which is taught by the rector, who usually examines one of the other classes once every week in succession. During the

two or three latter years of the course, besides being gradually advanced into the higher Latin classics, the boys go through a regular series of instruction in Roman antiquities, are taught comparative ancient and modern geography, and are initiated into the principles of the Greek language. It must not, however, be omitted, that this admirable system of the institutes of classical learning owes its present state of perfection to the unwearied diligence of the late most worthy, learned, and industrious Dr ALEXANDER ADAM, who was rector of this High School from 1771 to 1810; and to whom our ingenious youth and their teachers are indebted for several excellent fundamental books of education; particularly a Grammar and Dictionary of the Latin language, a System

of Roman Antiquities, an Epitomy of Ancient and Modern Geography, and an Abridgement of Classical Biography.

IN 1752, WILLIAM SMELLIE was taken by his father, when about twelve years of age, to the shop of a stay-maker, then a remarkably well employed trade, for the purpose of binding him an apprentice; but fortunately, as will appear in the sequel, both for his own literary fame and the interest of Scots literature, his father and the stay-maker differed upon the proposed terms; and the young scholar was preserved from the mortifying drudgery of scraping whalebone, and stitching coats of armour to force the female form into every shape save that of natural elegance. This plan for his establishment in life being abandoned, he was bound an apprentice for six years and a half, on the 1st of October 1752, to Messrs HAMILTON, BALFOUR, & NEIL, printers in Edinburgh, being then about twelve years of age.

Ar that period, and for a considerable time afterwards, it seems to have been very common for the eminent Edinburgh booksellers to be concerned likewise in the printing busi

ness.

Messrs HAMILTON & BALFOUR were eminent booksellers and copartners, and likewise carried on the manufacture of paper at Bogsmill, in the neighbourhood of Collington, on the Leith water, a few miles from Edinburgh. After some time their partnership was broken up, and the two concerns separated. Mr HAMILTON became the sole proprietor of the paper-mill, and was afterwards succeeded in that business by his sons. Mr BALFOUR continued the bookselling business for many years with great spirit and success; and afterwards purchased the papermill from the family of his former partner Mr HAMILTON, which business is still carried on to considerable extent by his sons; but the bookselling business was lately abandoned. At the time when Mr SMELLIE WAS bound apprentice to the printing business, Mr PATRICK NEIL was the active partner in the printing concern, which is still carried on by his surviving brother ADAM, his only son JAMES, and PATRICK, the son of the present head of the house, Mr ADAm Neil. Mr PATRICK NEIL, the junior partner of this old and respectable house, is a young man of learning and ingenuity, and has published a well written account of a Tour made

by him through some of the Orkney and Shetland islands in 1804; originally printed in several successive numbers of the Scots Magazine for 1804 and 1805, and reprinted with corrections and an appendix, in a separate volume, in 1806. Though chiefly intended to illustrate the natural history of these islands, this work contains much valuable information on a variety of other interesting topics, and does much credit to its author.

THE former custom, of booksellers entering into leading partnerships with printers, has of late years been almost entirely discontinued; and, in the present day, the printers in Edinburgh depend very materially for a valuable portion of their business on the practitioners in the law, as a very large proportion of the arguments of counsel in lawsuits before the Court of Session, or Supreme Court of Scots Civil Jurisprudence, is printed and distributed to the Judges, by which means they are enabled to study the cases deliberately at home, instead of trusting to their memories or notes for the pleadings on either side. It is said that this practice of written or printed pleadings, or arguments

« AnteriorContinuar »