Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 5.djvu/127

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CHRISTOPHER IRVINE.
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the essay, without an extremely minute examination, as Innes indulged in few peculiarities; but there is to be found in it a general resemblance, certainly more close than what could be caused by mere identity of period.

We are enabled to give but one other notice bearing on the life of this individual. In the portion of the life of James II., transcribed into the chevalier Ramsay's History of Turenne, there is a certificate by the superiors of the Scots college at Paris, dated 24th December, 1734, signed by "Louis Inesse, late principal, Alexander Whiteford, principal, and Thomas Inesse, sub-principal." The Louis Innes who had acted as principal, must be the brother to the historian mentioned by Wodrow.

IRVINE, CHRISTOPHER, an antiquary, philologist, and physician, lived in the seventeenth century, and was a younger son of the family of Irvine of Bonshaw in Lanarkshire. Like his relation, who rendered himself infamous in the cause of royalty by seizing Donald Cargill, Christopher Irvine was a devoted adherent of the Stuarts and of episcopacy. He was turned out of the college of Edinburgh in 1638 or 1639, in consequence of his resisting the national covenant; and by some connexion, the nature of which is not known, with the Irish troubles, which happened not long after, he lost a plentiful patrimony. Of these circumstances he himself informs us, in the address appended to one of his works, as well as of the facts, that "after his travels, the cruel saints were pleased to mortify him seventeen nights with bread and water;" and even after having recalled an act of banishment which they had formerly passed against him, subjected him to the fate of absolute starvation, with only the dubious alternative of "teaching grammar." Having adopted the latter course, we have ascertained from another source[1] that he was schoolmaster first at Leith, and afterwards at Preston. In the course of his exertions in this capacity, he was led to initiate his pupils in Scottish history; and it was out of the information collected for that purpose, along with some notes he received from Mr Alexander Home and Mr Thomas Crawford, formerly professors of humanity in Edinburgh university, that he compiled his Nomenclature of Scottish History, the work by which he is best known. Some time during the commonwealth, he appears to have resumed the profession to which he was bred, and practised first as a surgeon, and finally as a physician in Edinburgh, at the same time that he held a medical appointment in the army of general Monk, by which Scotland was then garrisoned.

We have not been able to discover any earlier publication of Christopher Irvine than a small and very rare volume, entitled Bellum Grammaticale, which appeared at Edinburgh in 1650, but of the nature of which, not having seen it, we cannot speak. His second performance was a small volume, now also very rare, having the following elaborate title: "Medicina Magnetica; or the rare and wonderful art of curing by sympathy, laid open in aphorisms, proved in conclusions, and digested into an easy method drawn from both; wherein the connexion of the causes and effects of these strange operations, are more fully discovered than heretofore. All cleared and confirmed, by pithy reasons, true experiments, and pleasant relations, preserved and published as a master-piece in this skill, by C. de Iryngio, chirurgo-medicine in the army. Printed in the year 1656." The dedication, which is dated from Edinburgh, June 3, 1656, and is signed "C. Irvine," is addressed to general Monk, as "chief captain of those forces among whom for diverse years I have served and prospered;" and speaking of the kindness of the commander toward his inferiors, he continues "This is observed by all; this hath been my experience so oft as I had need of favour and protection." We may from these passages argue, that, at the period

  1. Sibbald's Bibliotheca Scotica, MS. Adv. Lib.