Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Hegat, William
HEGAT, WILLIAM (fl. 1600), professor at Bordeaux, was a native of Glasgow. Several Hiegaits are mentioned in connection with Glasgow between 1570 and 1590 (Reg. Mag. Sig. and Reg. P. C. Scotl.) If the ascription to Hegat of the ‘Pædagogiæ’ is correct, he must have gone to France before 1563 as a very young man. Dempster, who knew him well, says that after teaching at Poitiers, Paris, Lisieux, and Dijon, he finally settled at Bordeaux. On 9 June 1581 Vinetus wrote to George Buchanan [q. v.] that there were then at Bordeaux two Scottishmen, ‘one of whom is professor of Philosophy.’ Hegat is undoubtedly meant; the other was Robert Balfour (1550?–1625?) [q. v.], who was later an intimate friend of Hegat. The ‘Gallia Victrix’ and ‘Recidivæ Athenæ’ show that Hegat made a visit to Poitiers in 1598–9. Hegat was alive as late as 1621. Dempster says he was living at the time he wrote, and describes him as ‘a man skilled in all polite literature and human sciences, whose manners were tempered with a festive gaiety.’ Vinetus more soberly calls him ‘a good, honest, learned man, who enjoys the favour of his auditors.’
Hegat wrote: 1. ‘Pædagogiæ, liber primus, et Galliarum Delphini Genethliacon, carmine,’ Paris, 1563, 4to (Tanner; Watt, Bibl. Brit.) 2. ‘Gallia Victrix,’ Poitiers, 1598, 8vo (a Latin dramatic poem in four acts, dedicated to Walter Stuart, lord Blantyre, who was a pupil of George Buchanan); the Sieur de la Valletrye addressed a sonnet to Hegat on this poem. 3. ‘Recidivæ Athenæ. Oratio Panegyrica habita Pictarii in Aula Pygarræa,’ Poitiers, 1599, 8vo. 4. ‘Ludovico et Annæ clementissimis regibus … Capitulatio sive Amnestia. Oratio habita in aula majori Acquitanica, solemnibus studiorum auspiciis ix Kal. Nov. 1616,’ Bordeaux, 1616, 8vo. 5. ‘Carthusiæ Burdigalensis Encænia. Et religiosis Adventoria,’ Bordeaux, 1621, 8vo (partly prose and partly verse; it is addressed to Francis de Sourdis, archbishop of Bourges). 6. A poem prefixed to the poetical works of the Sieur de la Valletrye, Paris, 1602. 7. A poem in twenty-one hexameter lines, beginning ‘Gloria quanta fuit cæli super ardua ferri,’ prefixed to Balfour's ‘Cleomedis,’ Bordeaux, 1605. 8. Two poems and an address to the reader prefixed to Balfour's ‘Commentary on Aristotle,’ 1618–20. Dempster in his usual manner gives a list of writings which are otherwise unknown: ‘Poemata Græca,’ ‘Epigrammata Latina,’ ‘Orationes eloquentissimæ,’ ‘Epithalamium Henrici Quarti et Mariæ Mediceæ Franciæ regum,’ and adds that he was said to be preparing a commentary on Ausonius.
[Dempster's Hist. Eccl. Gentis Scotorum, p. 687 (Bannatyne Club); Tanner's Bibl. Brit.-Hib. p. 388; D. Irving's Lives of Scottish Writers, i. 237; Michel's Les Écossais en France, ii. 194 sqq.; Burton's Scot Abroad; Brit. Mus. Cat.]