Significant Scots - Walter Donaldson

DONALDSON, WALTER, was born in Aberdeen, and attained to some consideration among the learned men of the seventeenth century. He was in the retinue of bishop Cunningham of Aberdeen, and Peter Junius, grand-almoner of Scotland, when they were sent on an embassy from king James VI. to the court of Denmark and to the princes of Germany. After his return from this expedition he again went abroad, and delivered a course of lectures on moral philosophy at Heidelberg. One of his pupils having taken notes of these lectures, published them; an encroachment on his rights with which Donaldson seems not to have been much displeased, for he informs us, with apparent complacency, that several editions of the work were published both in Germany and in Great Britain, under the title of Synopsis Moralis Philosophiae. He was afterwards appointed professor of the Greek language and principal of the university of Sedan, which situation he retained for sixteen years; he was then invited to open a college at Charenton, but the proposed establishment was objected to as illegal, and appears to have gone no farther. While this matter was pending in the courts of law, Donaldson employed himself in preparing his Synopsis Economica, which he published in Paris in 8vo, in 1620, and dedicated to the prince of Wales. This work was republished at Rostock in 1624, in 8vo