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DOIG, DAVID, LL.D.,
a learned philologist, the son of a small farmer in Forfarshire, was born
in 1719. His father died while he was yet an infant, and his mother
entered into a second marriage. His stepfather, however, behaved kindly to
him. From a defect in his sight, he did not learn to read till his twelfth
year, but such was his quickness and application that in three years he
was successful in a Latin competition for a bursary at St. Andrews. He was
at first intended for the ministry, but certain scruples regarding the
Westminster Confession of Faith deterred him from the Church. After
completing his studies at St. Andrews, where he took the degree of
bachelor of arts, he became teacher of Monifieth parish school, and
subsequently of that of Kennoway and Falkland. He was afterwards appointed
by the magistrates of Stirling rector of the grammar school. of that town.
The university of Glasgow conferred on him the degree of LL.D. on the same
day that he received from St. Andrews his diploma as M.A. Dr. Doig was an
eminent oriental scholar, being deeply versed in the history, languages,
and literature of the East. He wrote the dissertations on Mythology,
Mysteries, and Philology, for the Encyclopaedia Britannica, when that work
was under the superintendence of the Rev. Dr. George Gleig. Mr. Tytler, in
his Life of Lord Kames, gives a short memoir of Dr. Doig, who had entered
into a controversy with his lordship relative to the opinions propounded
by him in his ‘Essay on Man,’ as to the original savage state of the human
race. Two Letters which he addressed to his lordship on the subject were
published for the first time in 1792, 12mo. To the Transactions of the
Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1794, he contributed a Dissertation on the
ancient Hellenes. Dr. Doig died March 16, 1800. A mural tablet, with an
appropriate inscription in commemoration of his virtues and learning, was
raised by Mr. John Ramsay of Ochtertyre. The magistrates of Stirling also
erected a marble monument to his memory. |
