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Significant Scots
George Dalgarno |
DALGARNO, GEORGE, [I am indebted for this
article to the Supplement to the sixth edition of the Encyclopedia
Britannica; the only source from which I am aware that the information
contained in it could have been derived.] an almost forgotten, but most
meritorious and original writer, was born in Old Aberdeen, about the year
1626. He appears to have studied at Marischal college, New Aberdeen, but
for what length of time, or with what objects, is wholly unknown. In 1657
he went to Oxford, where, according to Anthony Wood, he taught a private
grammar school with good success for about thirty years. He died of a
fever on the 28th of August, 1687, and was buried, says the
same author, "in the north body of the church of St Mary Magdalen."
Such is the scanty biography that has been preserved, of a man who lived
in friendship with the most eminent philosophers of his day, and who,
besides other original speculations, had the singular merit of
anticipating, more than a hundred and thirty years ago, some of the most
profound conclusions of the present age respecting the education of the
deaf and dumb. His work upon this subject is entitled, "Didascalocophus,
or the Deaf and Dumb Man’s Tutor," and was printed in a very small
volume at Oxford, in 1680. He states the design of it to be, to bring the
way of teaching a deaf man to read and write, as near as possible to that
of teaching young ones to speak and understand their mother tongue.
"In prosecution of this general idea," says an eminent
philosopher of the present day, who has, on more than one occasion, done
his endeavour to rescue the name of Dalgarno from oblivion, "he has
treated one short chapter, of a deaf man’s dictionary; and, in
another, of a grammar for deaf persons; both of them containing a
variety of precious hints, from which useful practical lights might be
derived by all who have any concern in the tuition of children, during the
first stage of their education." (Mr. Dugald Stewart’s Account
of a boy born blind and deaf.) Twenty years before the publication of
his Didascalocophus, Dalgarno had given to the world a very
ingenious piece, entitled, Ars Signorum, from which, says Mr
Stewart, it appears indisputable that he was the precursor of Bishop
Wilkins in his speculations respecting "a real character and a
philosophical language." Leibnitz has on various occasions, alluded
to the Ars Signorum in commendatory terms. Both of these works of
Dalgarno are now exceedingly rare.
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