form of government, and subscribed the "Generall Demands" propounded to the commissioners, appointed by the tables, to enforce the subscription of the covenant in Aberdeen. The day before their arrival, he thundered from the pulpit against their proceedings, and exhorted his hearers to resist their threats. He appears also to have been in correspondence with Laud. In March, 1639, the covenanting forces approached Aberdeen, and the chiefs of the episcopal party fled. Ross was unable to quit the town from a sickness, from which he seems never to have recovered: he died on 11th August, 1639. His only publication appears to be the following, which is extant in Bishop Forbes's Funerals (p. 149 to 178) : "A Consolatorie Sermon, preached upon the Death of the R, R, Father in God, Patrick Forbes, late Bishop of Aberdene. By Alexander Rosse, Doctour of Divinitie, and Minister of the Evangell in Aberdene, in Saynct Nicholas Churche there, anno 1635, the xv of April]."
ROSS, Alexander, a poet of some eminence, was born in the parish of Kincardine O'Xeil, Aberdeenshire, on the 13th April, 1699. His father was Andrew Ross, a farmer, in easy circumstances. Ross received the first elements of his education at the parochial school, under a teacher of considerable local celebrity; and after four years' study of the Latin language, succeeded in gaining a bursary at the competition in Marischal college, in November 1714. Having gone through the usual curriculum of the university, he received the decree of master of arts in 1718; and shortly after was engaged as a tutor to the r^Tiily of Sir William Forbes of Craigievar and Fintray; a gentleman who appears to have possessed considerable taste and learning. How long the poet remained in this situation has not been ascertained; but he seems to have earned the good opinion of his patron, who recommended him to study divinity, with the assurance that his interest should not be wanting to procure a comfortable settlement in the church. Favourable as this offer was, from a gentleman who had no fewer than fourteen patronages in his gift, Ross declined it, on a ground which evinces extraordinary modesty, "that he could never entertain such an opinion of his own goodness or capacity as to think himself worthy of the office of a clergyman." On leaving the family of Sir William Forbes, Ross for some time taught, apparently as an assistant, the parochial school of Aboyne in his native county, and afterwards that of Laurencekirk, in Kincardineshire. While in this last situation he became acquainted with the father of Dr Beattie; a man who, in our poet's opinion, "only wanted education to have made him, perhaps, as much distinguished in the literary world as his son. He knew something of natural philosophy, and particularly of astronomy, and used to amuse himself in calculating eclipses. He was likewise a poetical genius, and showed our author some rhymes of considerable merit"[1] In 1726, Ross married Jane Cattanach, the daughter of a farmer in Aberdeenshire, and descended by the mother from the ancient family of Duguid of Auchinhove. In 1732, by the influence of his friend, Mr Garden of Troup, he was appointed schoolmaster of Lochlee. in Angus; and the rest of his life was spent in the discharge of the duties of this humble office. There are, perhaps, few pieces of scenery in Scotland of a more wild and poetical character than that in which Ross's lot was cast Lochlee is a thinly peopled parish, lying in the very centre of the Grampians, at the head of the valley of the North Esk. The population is almost entirely confined to one solitary glen, the green Ill-Ills and smoking cottages of which are singularly refreshing to the eye of the traveller, after the weary extent of bleak moor and mountain which hem in the spot on all sides. On a mound in the centre, stands the ruin of an
- ↑ Life of Ross, by his grandson, the Rev. Alexander Thomson of Lentrathen prefixed to an edition of the " Fortunate Shepherdess," printed at Dundee, 1812.
