Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 2.djvu/171

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JOHN CALLANDER.
465


bearers his name appears as Secretary for foreign correspondence. Along with several other donations, he presented them, in August of the same year, with the "Fragmenta," already mentioned, and with the MS. notes on Paradise Lost, in nine folio volumes. For more than forty years these annotations remained unnoticed in the society's possession, but at length a paper written, it is supposed, by the respectable biographer of the Admirable Crichton and Sir Thomas Craig, appeared in Blackwood's Magazine, in which Callander is charged with having, without acknowledgment, heen indebted for a large proportion of his materials to the labours of Patrick Hume, a Scotsman, who published a huge folio of 321 pages, on the same subject, at London, in 1695. At the suggestion of Mr David Laing, a committee Avas appointed, in 1826, to examine the MSS., and present the result to the society. From the report[1] drawn up by Mr Laing, it appears that, although there are some passages in which the analogy between Callander's remarks and those of Hume are so close that no doubt can be entertained of the one having availed himself of the notes of the other, yet that the proportion to the whole mass is so small, that it cannot be affirmed with truth the general plan or the largest portion of the materials of the work are derived from that source. On the other hand, it is candidly admitted, that no acknowledgment of his obligations to his fellow-countryman are made by Mr Callander; but unfortunately a preface, in which such obligations are generally noticed, has never been writ- ten for, or, at all events, is not attached to, the work. According to the testimony of Bishop Newton, the work by Hume contains "gold;" but it is concealed among "infinite heaps of rubbish:" to separate them was the design of the learned bishop, and our author seems to have acted precisely upon the same principle. Nor does he confine himself merely to the commentaries of Hume; he avails himself as often, and to as great an extent, of the notes of Newton, and of the other contemporary critics.

Besides the works already mentioned, Mr Callander seems to have projected several others. A specimen of a "Bibliotheca Septentrionalis " was printed in folio, in 1778, "Proposals for a History of the Ancient Music of Scotland, from the age of the venerable Ossian, to the beginning of the sixteenth century," in quarto, 1781, and a specimen of a Scoto-gothic glossary, is mentioned in a letter to the Earl of Buchan, in 1781. He also wrote "Vindiciae Miltonianae, or a refutation of the charges brought against Milton by [the infamous] William Lauder." The publication of this work was, however, rendered unnecessary, from the appearance of the well-known vindication by Dr Douglas, afterwards bishop of Salisbury. This was, perhaps, fortunate for its author; not aware of Lauder's character, he had taken it for granted that all his quotations from Milton's works were correct, but he soon found that he had defended the poet where "he stood in no need of any apology to clear his fame." It is probably hardly worth mentioning, that he also projected an edition of Sir David Lindsay's "Satyre," to be accompanied by a life of Lindsay from the pen of George Paton, which he does not seem to have accomplished.

"Mr Callander, says the editor of Paton's Letters,[2] was, for many years, particularly distinguished for his companionable qualities. He had a taste for music, and was an excellent performer on the violin. Latterly he became very retired in his habits, saw little company, and his mind was deeply affected by a religious melancholy, which entirely unfitted him for society. He died, at a good old age, upon the 14th September, 1789. By his wife, who was of the family of

  1. See Trans, of the Soc. of Scot. Antiq. vol. 3, part I. pp. 84-89.
  2. " Letters from Thomas Percy, DD. afterwards Bishop of Dromore, John Callander, of Craig forth, Esq., David Herd, and others, to George Paton." Edinburgh, 1830, 12mo, p. x.