Dr Strang was thrice married, and had a numerous family, but few of his
children survived. William, the only son who lived to majority, and "a youth
of eminent piety and learning," was a regent in the university of Glasgow; but died of a hectic fever, at the age of twenty-two, before his father. He had four daughters, who survived him; all, according to Baillie, "eminent patterns of piety, prudence, and other virtues."[1]
STRANGE, (Sir) Robert, Knight, the father of the line manner of engraving in Britain, was born in the island of Pomona, in Orkney, July 14, 1721. He was lineally descended from Sir David Strange, or Strang, a younger son of the family of Strang of Balcaskie, in Fife, who had settled in Orkney at the time of the Reformation. He received a classical education at Kirk wall, under the care of Mr Murdoch Mackenzie, teacher there, and who rendered some estimnble service to his country by accurate surveys of the Orkney islands, and of the British and Irish coasts.
The subject of this memoir successively applied himself to the law and to the sea, before his talent for sketching pointed out the propriety of his making art his profession. Some sketches shown by a friend to Mv Richard Cooper, an engraver of some eminence in Edinburgh, and approved by him, led to Mr Stnnge being placed under that individual as an apprentice; and the rapid progress he made in his new profession soon showed that he had only now for the first time fallen into the line of life for which he was destined by nature. He was practising his art in Edinburgh on his own account, when, in September, 1745, the Highland army took possession of the city. Mr Strange was not only himself well-inclined to this cause, but he had formed an attachment to a Miss Lumisden,[2] who had the same predilections. These circumstances, with his local notoriety as an engraver, pointed him out as a proper person to undertake a print of the young chevalier. While employed on this work, his lodgings in Stewart's Close were daily resorted to by the chief officers and friends of the prince, together with many of the most distinguished ladies attached to his cause. The portrait, when completed, was looked upon as a wonder of art; and it is still entitled to considerable praise. It was a half length in an oval frame on a stone pedestal, on which is engraved, "Everso missus succurrere seclo." As a reward for his services, he was offered a place in the finance department of the prince's army, or, as another account states, in the troop of Life Guards; which, partly at the instigation of his mistress, who otherwise threatened to withdraw her favour from him, he accepted. He therefore served throughout the remainder of the campaign. Soon after the battle of Falkirk, while riding along the shore, the sword which he carried in his hand was bent by a ball from one of the king's vessels stationed a little way out at sea. Having surmounted all the perils of the enterprise, he had to sculk for his life in the Highlands, where he endured many hardships. On the restoration of quiet times, he ventured back to Edinburgh, and supported himself for some time by drawing portraits of the favourite Jacobite leaders, which were disposed of to the friends of the cause at a guinea each. A few, also, which he had destined for his mistress, and on that account adorned with the utmost of his skill, were sold about this period with a heavy heart to the earl of Wemyss, from whom, in better times, he vainly endeavoured to purchase them back. In 1747, he proceeded to London, but not be-
- ↑ Abridged from Wodrow's Life of Strang, in his biographical MSS. in Bibl. Acad. Glasg., fol., vol. ii. See also, Life by Baillic, above mentioned. The extracts from the latter are borrowed from Wodrow's translation, inserted in his life.
- ↑ Sister to Mr Andrew Lumisden, a Jacobite parlizan of some note, and who afterwards formed part of the household of prince Charles Stuart at Rome, of the antiquities of which city he published an account.
