REID, a surname,
being the old spelling of Red. The family of Reid of Barra,
Aberdeenshire, possesses a baronetcy of Nova Scotia, conferred in 1706
on Alexander Reid of Barra. The fifth baronet, Sir Alexander Reid,
succeeded his brother, Sir John, Capt. R.N., in 1845; married, with
issue.
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General John Reid of
Strathloch, the founder of the professorship of music in the university
of Edinburgh, adopted that surname in preference to his patronymic,
Robertson. He was the son of Alexander Robertson of Strathloch, a
property near Strathardie in Perthshire, whose forefathers for more than
three centuries were always called Barons Run, Roy, or Red, from the
first of the family having red hair. They were descended from the
youngest son of Patrick Robertson, the first of Lude. All the younger
children bore the name of Robertson. The general, however, though the
heir, chose the name of Reid. He was born Feb. 13, 1721, and educated at
the university of Edinburgh. He became a lieutenant in the earl of
Loudoun’s Highlanders, raised in 1745, and rose to the rank of general.
He had a fine taste for music, and was one of the best flute-players of
the age. In 1770 he published a set of Minuets and Marches, styled
General Reid’s Minuets, inscribed to the Right Hon. Lady Catherine
Murray. In this collection appeared the celebrated and well known air,
composed by him when major of the 42d regiment, to the words of “The
Garb of Old Gaul” written by Captain afterwards Sir Harry Erskine of
Alva, baronet. It is there entitled “The Highland, or 42d Regiment’s
March,” which it has ever since continued to be. He likewise published
Six Solos for a German Flute of Violin, with a thorough bass for the
harpsichord, in which he styles himself “a member of the Temple of
Apollo.” These are usually called Captain Reid’s Solos, he having been
only a captain when he composed them. He died at London, February 6,
1807, aged 85. In his will, dated at London, 19th April 1803, he
describes himself as “john Reid, Esq. General in his Majesty’s army and
Colonel of the 88th regiment of foot,” and states that he was “the last
representative of an old family in Perthshire, which on my death will be
extinct in the male line.” He left £52,000 in the 3 per cents, subject
to the liferent of his daughter, for the purpose of establishing a
professorship of music in the university of Edinburgh, where he was
educated, the salary not to be less than £300 per annum. He directs in
his will that annually on his birthday, the 13th of February, there
shall be a concert of music held, including a full military band, to
commence with some pieces of his own composition, to show the style of
music that prevailed about the middle of the 18th century, among the
first of which is that of ‘The Garb of Old Gaul.’ The chair of music was
founded in 1839, when nearly £80,000 became available for its endowment.
REID, THOMAS, a philosopher and Latin poet of considerable
reputation in his time, the son of James Reid, the first minister, after
the Reformation, of Banchory-Ternan, in Kincardineshire, flourished in
the seventeenth century. He studied at Marischal college, Aberdeen, and
afterwards traveled through the greater part of Europe. Having
maintained public disputations in several of the foreign universities,
he collected into a volume the theses he defended. His Latin poems are
preserved in the ‘Delitiae Poetarum Scotorum.’ On his return to Britain,
he was appointed Latin secretary to James I. of England. While on the
Continent he had purchased the best editions of all the classics which
were printed from the time of Aldus Manutius until 1615, also several
curious manuscripts, particularly a Hebrew Bible, of most beautiful
writing, supposed to have been the work of the twelfth century, all of
which he bequeathed to the Marischal college, Aberdeen, with a
considerable sum of money as a fund for a yearly salary to a librarian.
He belonged to the family from which the celebrated philosopher, Dr.
Thomas Reid, was descended.
His brother, Alexander
Reid, an eminent physician, was the first, it is said, who read physical
lectures to the Company of barber-chirurgeons at London. In 1620 he was
created doctor of physic at Oxford by royal mandate. He was afterwards
physician to Charles I., and died about 1680. He published a ‘Manual of
Anatomy,’ and other medical works.
REID, THOMAS, a distinguished moral philosopher, was born, April
26, 1710, at the manse of Strachan, Kincardineshire, a parish situated
about twenty-three miles from Aberdeen, on the north side of the
Grampian mountains. His father, the Rev. Lewis Reid, was minister of
that parish for fifty years, and his mother, the daughter of Mr. Gregory
of Kinnairdie, was sister to David, James, and Charles Gregory, the
celebrated professors. After two years spent at the parish school of
Kincardine-O’Neil, young Reid was sent to Aberdeen for his classical
education. About the age of twelve or thirteen, being intended for the
church, he was entered as a student in Marischal college, where his
instructor in philosophy, for three years, was Dr. George Turnbull, who
afterwards attracted some notice as an author, particularly by a book,
entitled ‘Principles of Moral Philosophy,’ and by a voluminous ‘Treatise
on Ancient Painting,’ published in 1741, but long ago forgotten. It does
not appear that Reid gave any early indications of future eminence,
although his industry and modesty were conspicuous from his childhood.
At college, however, he excelled the other students in mathematics, for
which he soon showed a decided predilection. He continued longer than
usual at the university, in consequence of having been appointed to the
office of librarian, which had been endowed by his ancestor, the subject
of the previous notice. During this period he formed an intimacy with
John Stewart, afterwards professor of mathematics in Marischal college,
and author of a Commentary of Newton’s Quadrature of Curves. IN 1736 he
resigned the librarianship, and accompanied Mr. Stewart on an excursion
to England, when they visited London, Oxford, and Cambridge. His uncle,
Dr. David Gregory, procured him a ready access to Martin Folkes, the
philosopher and antiquary, at whose house he met many eminent men in
literature and science. At Cambridge he saw the vain and erudite Dr.
Bentley, and enjoyed repeated conversations with Sanderson, the blind
mathematician, who presented a phenomenon in the history of the human
mind, to which Dr. Reid has more than once referred in his philosophical
speculations.
In 1737 he was preferred,
by the King’s college, Aberdeen, to the living of New Machar, in the
same county; but so great was the aversion of the people to the law of
patronage, that his settlement not only met with most violent
opposition, but he himself was exposed to personal danger. His unwearied
attention, however, to the duties of his office, with the mildness and
forbearance of his temper, soon overcame all prejudices, and in a few
years afterwards, when called to a different situation, he was followed
by the tears and benedictions of the very same people who would formerly
have rejected him.
During his residence at
New Machar, the greater part of his time was spent in intense study,
more particularly in a careful examination of the laws of external
perception, and of the other principles which form the groundwork of
human knowledge. His chief relaxations were gardening and botany, to
both of which pursuits he retained his attachment in old age. In 1740 he
married his cousin, Elizabeth, daughter of Dr. George Reid, physician in
London.
In 1748 he communicated
to the Transactions of the Royal Society ‘An Essay on Quantity,
occasioned by reading a Treatise, in which Simple and Compound Ratios
are applied to Virtue and Merit.’ In 1752 he was elected professor of
moral philosophy in King’s college, Old Aberdeen. Soon after his removal
there, in conjunction with his friend, Dr. John Gregory, he projected a
literary Society, which subsisted for many years, meeting once a-week
for the discussion of philosophical subjects, and it numbered among its
members the illustrious names of Reid, Gregory, Campbell, Beattie, and
Gerard. IN 1764 he published his celebrated ‘Inquiry into the Human
Mind, on the Principles of Common Sense,’ one of the most original and
profound works which appeared about that period. As its professed object
was the refutation of Mr. Hume’s skeptical theory, with the view of
avoiding any misconstruction of the historian’s meaning, he submitted,
through Dr. Blair, some detached parts of the work to Mr. Hume for his
perusal. With these the latter was so much pleased, that he at once
addressed a letter to the author, expressing his satisfaction at the
perspicuous and philosophical manner in which he had replied to his
reasonings. Soon after the publication of the ‘Inquiry,’ he received the
degree of D.D. from the university of Aberdeen. A short time previous,
the university of Glasgow had invited him to the chair of moral
philosophy, then vacant by the resignation of Dr. Adam Smith, the
superior advantages of which professorship induced him to accept of it,
and, accordingly, he entered upon its duties in 1764. In the class-room,
Dr. Reid was careful to divest his lectures of all metaphysical and
merely scholastic terms and theories, teaching moral science on the
sound principles of inductive philosophy, as inculcated by Bacon.
Although there was nothing attractive in his elocution or mode of
instruction, his style was so simple and perspicuous, his character so
full of gravity and authority, and his students felt such an interest in
the doctrines which he taught, that he was uniformly heard with the most
respectful attention.
In 1781, while his health
and faculties were yet entire, though he was at this period upwards of
seventy years of age, he withdrew from his public labours, in order to
devote himself wholly to philosophical investigation. In 1785 he
published his ‘Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man;’ and in 1788,
those on ‘The Active Powers,’ which are generally published together,
under the title of ‘Essays on the Powers of the Human Mind.’ These
works, with his ‘Inquiry,’ the ‘Essay on Quantity,’ already mentioned,
and a short but masterly analysis of Aristotle’s Logic, which forms an
Appendix to the third volume of lord Kames’ ‘Sketches,’ published in
1773, comprehend the whole of Dr. Reid’s published writings. At
different times he read some essays before a Philosophical Society, of
which he was a member, among which were ‘An Examination of Dr.
Priestley’s Opinions concerning Matter and Mind,’ ‘Observations on the
Utopia of Sir Thomas More,’ and ‘Physiological Reflections on Muscular
Motion.’ He outlived his wife and a numerous family of children, save
one daughter, married to Patrick Carmichael, M.D. During the summer of
1796 he was prevailed upon by Dr. Gregory to pass a few weeks at
Edinburgh. He returned to Glasgow in his usual health and spirits; but
about the end of September of that year he was seized with his last
illness. After a severe struggle, attended with repeated attacks of
palsy, he died on the 7th of October following, at the advanced age of
eighty-six. His portrait is subjoined:
[portrait of Thomas Reid]
His works were collected
by Mr. Dugald Stewart, and published in four volumes in 1803, with his
Life prefixed, on which all the biographical accounts of Dr. Reid are
founded. A French translation of this great philosopher’s writings, by
Jouffroy, with an Introductory Essay and Notes by Royard-Collard,
appeared at Paris in 1828.
REID, JOHN, M.D., an eminent anatomist and physiologist, the
sixth child of Henry Reid, a farmer and cattle-dealer, was born at
Bathgate, Linlithgowshire, April 9th, 1809. He received his rudimentary
education at the village school, and at the age of fourteen entered the
university of Edinburgh, where for the first two or three years he
chiefly studied Latin, Greek, and mathematics. He was originally
intended for the church, but, preferring the medical profession, he
devoted himself, for five years, with ardour to the requisite studies,
and in 1830 took his degree of M.D. For a year he acted as clerk or
assistant physician in the clinical department of the Edinburgh
Infirmary, and in the autumn of 1831 he proceeded to Paris, for the
purpose of improving himself in its medical schools. While in the French
capital, as he himself tells us, his habit was to go to one of the
hospitals for three hours in the morning before breakfast; after
breakfast to the dissecting rooms for three or four hours more, and then
he attended a lecture or two. The following year he returned to
Edinburgh, and with three other medical men was sent to Dumfries, where
the cholera was then raging, to assist the physicians of the district
during the prevalence there of that fearful scourge. He subsequently
became a partner in the school of anatomy in Old Surgeon’s Hall,
Edinburgh, and for three years discharged the duties of demonstrator,
with high reputation to himself and to the great advantage of the
numerous students who attended there. In 1836 he was appointed lecturer
on physiology in the Edinburgh Extra-Academical Medical School, and, two
years after, practical pathologist to the Royal Infirmary of that city,
of which institution in the ensuing year he became the superintendent.
At this time he was
engaged in some of those interesting physiological researches which
caused his name to be held in high estimation by his professional
brethren. An abridgment or abstract of his great ‘Experimental
Investigations into the Functions of the Eight pair of Nerves, or the
Glossopharyngeal, Pneumogastric, and Spinal Accessory,’ made at this
period, was intimated to the British Scientific Association at the
meetings of 1847 and 1848, and published in detail in the ‘Edinburgh
Medical and Surgical Journal’ for January 1848, and April 1849. In March
1841 he was appointed Chandos professor of anatomy and medicine in the
university of St. Andrews, and besides the regular lectures which
belonged to the chair, he delivered also a course on comparative anatomy
and general physiology. Having directed his inquiries to the natural
history of the marine animals on the coast of Fife, he communicated the
results in several papers to the ‘Annals and Magazine of Natural
History,’ In 1848 he published in one volume his ‘Physiological,
Anatomical, and Pathological Researches,’ being the papers and essays,
twenty-eight in all, which he had for thirteen years contributed to
various scientific journals.
Dr. Reid had long been
afflicted with cancer in the tongue. In the year mentioned an operation
was performed, and in consequence his health rallied so greatly that
hopes were entertained of his ultimate recovery; but the insidious
disease had made progress in his neck and throat, which caused his
death, on 30th July 1849, at the early age of 41. In his latter years he
gave evidence of having come under the power and influence of religion,
and died a true Christian. By his wife, a lady of the name of Ann Blyth,
he had two daughters, one of them a posthumous child. His Life, by
George Wilson, M.D., was published in 1851. |