John Jamieson (1) (1759–1838)

A HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF THE ANCIENT CULDEES OF LONA

EDITORIAL NOTE TO POPULAR EDITION

IN İssuing a popular edition of this important and standard work,
it may be well to recapitualate a few particulars regarding its
distinguished author, who may be termed the national philologist
of Scotland. The son of a Glasgow minister, he was born in
1759, and, in due course, educated at the university of that city,
where he especially distinguished himself in linguistic and
philological studies. At the age of tventy-two, he was licensed to
ministry, and became pastor of a church at Porfar, where he
gained the thorough esteem and confidence of a full congregation
through the faithful and able discharge of his clerical labours and
duties. For sixteen years he continued his pastoral duties at
Forfar, during which period he married the daughter of a
neighbouring proprietot, who gladdened the course of his long
life, and died only a year before his own decease.

During the period of his pastorate at Forfar, Mr. Jamieson
became the author of no fewer than six publications, some of
which excited much interest at the time. But none of them have
lived in the same sense that some of his later works have done.
Neither are any of his earlier productions of such a kind as one
would expect to come from an enthusiastic, word-sifting antiquary.
Among others of this period we find The Sorrous of
Slavery: A Poen containing a Faithful Statement of Facts regard.
ing the Slave Trade; as also Eternity: A Poem addressed to Free
T'hinkers and Philosophical Christians; there is also A Vindication
of the Doctrine of Scripture, and of the Primitive Faith concerning
the Divinity of Christ, in reply to Dr. Priestley; a work of a
different nature, and which attained to great popularity and ran
through many editions, was the one entitled Sermons on the
Ileart. By these and similar labours, Jamieson won for himself
an honourable name in the field of literature.… (plus d'informations)