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Significant Scots
William Guthrie |
GUTHRIE, WILLIAM, a
political, historical, and miscellaneous writer, was born in Forfarshire,
in the year 1708. His father was an episcopal minister at Brechin, and a
cadet of a family which has for a long time possessed considerable
influence in that part of the country. He studied at King’s college in
Aberdeen, and having taken his degrees, had resolved to retire early from
the activity and ambition of the world, to the humble pursuits of a
Scottish parochial schoolmaster; from this retreat, however, he seems to
have been early driven, by the consequences of some unpropitious affair of
the heart, hinted at but not named by his biographers, which seems to have
created, from its circumstances, so great a ferment among the respectable
connexions of the schoolmaster, that he resolved to try his fortune in the
mighty labyrinth of London. Other accounts mingle with this the
circumstance of his having been an adherent of the house of Stuart, which
is likely enough from his parentage, and of his consequently being
disabled from holding any office under the Hanoverian government—a method
of making his livelihood which his character informs us he would not have
found disagreeable could he have followed it up; at all events, we find
him in London, after the year 1730, working hard as a general literary man
for his livelihood, and laying himself out as a doer of all work in the
profession of letters. Previously to Dr Johnson’s connexion with the
Gentleman’s Magazine, which commenced about the year 1738, Guthrie had
been in the habit of collecting and arranging the parliamentary debates
for that periodical, or rather of putting such words into the mouths of
certain statesmen, as he thought they might or should have made use of,
clothing the names of the senators in allegorical terms; a system to which
a dread of the power of parliament, and the uncertainty of the privilege
of being present at debates, prompted the press at that time to have
recourse. When Johnson had been regularly employed as a writer in the
magazine, the reports, after receiving such embellishments as Guthrie
could bestow on them, were sent to him by Cave, to receive the final touch
of oratorical colouring; and sometimes afterwards the labour was performed
by Johnson alone, considerably, it may be presumed, to the fame and
appreciation of the honourable orators. Guthrie soon after this period had
managed to let it be known to government, that he was a person who could
write well, and that it might depend on circumstances whether he should
use his pen as the medium of attack or of defence. The matter was placed
on its proper footing, and Mr Guthrie received from the Pelham
administration a pension of £200 a-year. He was a man who knew better how
to maintain his ground than the ministry did, and he managed with his
pension to survive its fall. Nearly twenty years afterwards, we find him
making laudable efforts for the continuance of his allowance by the then
administration:—the following letter addressed to a minister, one of the
coolest specimens of literary commerce on record, we cannot avoid quoting.
June 3d, 1762.
"My LORD,—In the year 1745-6, Mr
Pelham, then first lord of the treasury, acquainted me, that it was his
majesty’s pleasure I should receive till better provided for, which never
has happened, 200 pounds a-year, to be paid by him and his successors in
the treasury. I was satisfied with the august name made use of, and the
appointment has been regularly and quarterly paid me ever since. I have
been equally punctual in doing the government all the services that fell
within my abilities or sphere of life, especially in those critical
situations which call for unanimity in the service of the crown. Your
lordship will possibly now suspect that I am an author by profession—you
are not deceived; and you will be less so, if you believe that I am
disposed to serve his majesty under your lordship’s future patronage and
protection, with greater zeal, if possible, than ever.
I have the honour to be, my lord,
&c.,
WILLIAM GUTHRIE"
This application, as
appears from its date, had been addressed to a member of the Bute
administration, and within a year after it was written, the author must
have had to undergo the task of renewing his appeal, and changing his
political principles. The path he had chosen out was one of danger and
difficulty; but we have the satisfaction of knowing, that the reward of
his submission to the powers that were, and of his contempt for common
political prejudices, was duly continued to the day of his death.
The achievements of Guthrie in the
literary world, it is not easy distinctly or satisfactorily to trace. The
works which bear his name, would rank him as, perhaps, the most
miscellaneous and extensive author in the world, but he is generally
believed to have been as regardless of the preservation of his literary
fame, as of his political constancy, and to have shielded the productions
of authors less known to the world, under the sanction of his name. About
the year 1763, he published "a complete History of the English Peerage,
from the best authorities, illustrated with elegant copperplates of the
arms of the nobility, &c." The noble personages, whose ancestors appeared
in this work as the embodied models of all human perfection, were invited
to correct and revise the portions in which they felt interested before
they were committed to the press; nevertheless the work is full of
mistakes, and has all the appearance of having been touched by a hasty
though somewhat vigorous hand. Thus, the battle of Dettingen, as connected
with the history of the duke of Cumberland, is mentioned as having taken
place in June, 1744, while, in the account of the duke of Marlborough, the
period retrogrades to 1742—both being exactly the same distance of time
from the true era of the battle, which was 1743. Very nearly in the same
neighbourhood, George the II. achieves the feat of leaving Hanover on the
16th of June, and reaching Aschaffenberg on the 10th of the same month; in
a similar manner the house of peers is found addressing his majesty on the
subject of the battle of Culloden on the 29th of August, 1746, just after
the prorogation of parliament. To this work Mr Guthrie procured the
assistance of Mr Ralph Bigland. Guthrie afterwards wrote a History of
England in three large folios; it commences with the Conquest, and
terminates, rather earlier than it would appear the author had at first
intended, at the end of the Republic. This work has the merit of being
the earliest British history which
placed reliance on the fund of authentic information, to be found in the
records of parliament. But the genius of Guthrie was not to be chained to
the history of the events of one island; at divers times about the years
1764-5, appeared portions of "A General History of the World, from the
creation to the present time, by William Guthrie, esq., John Gray, esq.,
and others, eminent in this branch of literature," in twelve volumes. "No
authors," says the Critical Review, "ever pursued an original plan with
fewer deviations than the writers of this work. They connect history in
such a manner, that Europe seems one republic, though under different
heads and constitutions." Guthrie was then a principal writer in that
leading periodical, in which his works received much praise, because, to
save trouble, and as being best acquainted with the subject, the author of
the books took on himself the duties of critic, and was consequently well
satisfied with the performance. In 1767, Mr Guthrie published in parts a
History of Scotland, in ten volumes, octavo. It commences with "the
earliest period," and introduces us to an ample acquaintance with
Dornadilla, Durst, Corbred, and the numerous other long-lived monarchs,
whose names Father Innes had, some time previously, consigned to the
regions of fable. Of several of these persons he presents us with very
respectable portraits, which prove their taste in dress, and knowledge of
theatrical effect, to have been by no means contemptible. In this work the
author adheres with pertinacity to many opinions which prior authors of
celebrity considered they had exploded; like Goodall, he seems anxious to
take vengeance on those who showed the ancient Scots to have come from
Ireland, by proving the Irish to have come from Scotland, and a similar
spirit seems to have actuated him in maintaining the regiam magestatem
of Scotland, to have been the original of the regiam potestatem
of Glanvil—Nicholson and others having discovered that the Scottish code
was borrowed from the English. With all its imperfections, this book
constituted the best complete history of Scotland published during
the last century, and it is not without regret that we are compelled to
admit its superiority to any equally lengthy, detailed, and comprehensive
history of Scotland which has yet appeared. The views of policy are
frequently profound and accurate, and the knowledge of the contemporaneous
history of other nations frequently exhibited, shows that attention and
consideration might have enabled the author to have produced a standard
historical work; towards its general merits Pinkerton has addressed the
following growl of qualified praise:—"Guthrie’s History of Scotland, is
the best of the modern, but it is a mere money-job, hasty and inaccurate."
It would be a useless and tedious task to particularize the numerous works
of this justly styled "miscellaneous writer." One of the works, however,
which bear his name, has received the unqualified approbation of the
world. "Guthrie’s Historical and Geographical Grammar" is known to every
one, from the school-boy to the philosopher, as a useful and well digested
manual of information. This work had reached its twenty-first edition
before the year 1810; it was translated into French in 1801, by Messieurs
Noel and Soules, and the translation was re-edited for the fourth time in
a very splendid manner in 1807. The astronomical information was supplied
by James Gregory, and rumour bestows on Knox, the bookseller, the
reputation of having written the remaining part under the guarantee of a
name of literary authority. Besides the works already enumerated, Guthrie
translated Quintilian, Cicero De Ofiiciis, and Cicero’s Epistles to
Atticus—he likewise wrote, "The Friends, a sentimental history," in two
volumes, and "Remarks on English Tragedy." This singular individual
terminated his laborious life in March, 1770. The following tribute to his
varied qualifications is to be found on his tombstone in Mary-le-bone, -
‘Near this place lies interred the body of William Guthrie, esq., who
died, 9th March, 1770, aged sixty-two, representative of the
ancient family of Guthrie of Halkerton, in the county of Angus, North
Britain; eminent for knowledge in all branches of literature, and of the
British constitution, which his many works, historical, geographical,
classical, critical, and political, do testify; to whom this monument was
erected, by order of his brother, Henry Guthrie, esq., in the year 1777."
Guthrie was one of those
individuals who live by making themselves useful to others, and his
talents and habits dictated the most profitable occupation for his time to
be composition: he seems to have exulted in the self-imposed term of "an
author by profession;" and we find him three years before his death
complacently styling himself, in a letter to the earl of Buchan, "the
oldest author by profession in Britain:" like many who have maintained a
purer fame, and filled a higher station, his political principles were
guided by emolument, which, in his instance, seems to have assumed the
aspect of pecuniary necessity. Had not his engagements with the
booksellers prompted him to aim at uniting the various qualities of a
Hume, a Robertson, a Johnson, a Camden, and a Cowley, attention to one
particular branch of his studies might have made his name illustrious.
Johnson considered him a person of sufficient eminence to regret that his
life had not been written, and uttered to Boswell the following
sententious opinion of his merits: - "Sir, he is a man of parts. He has no
regular fund of knowledge, but by reading so long, and writing so long, he
no doubt has picked up a good deal." Boswell elsewhere states in a note –
"How much poetry he wrote, I know not, but he informed me, that he was the
author of the beautiful little piece, ‘the Eagle and Robin Red-breast,’ in
the collection of poems entitled ‘The Union,’ though it is there said to
be written by Archibald Scott, before the year 1600." |
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