new government. In 1691 he was admitted minister of the Tolbooth parish, Edinburgh, and remained there till his death, which took place in 1699. Wodrow describes him as a ‘minister of great zeal, knowledge, and learning, a most curious searcher into the natural, civil, and ecclesiastical history of Scotland,’ and as a ‘most successful and sententious preacher of the gospel;’ but, according to episcopal pamphlets of the time, he was ‘the comedian of his party,’ and his sermons were ‘the chat of the tavern’ and ‘the divertisment of the young people.’ Kirkton married Grissel, daughter of George Baillie of Jerviswood, and had three sons, and a daughter who married Dr. A. Skene, besides other children who died young. Kirkton published two separate sermons in 1698 and 1699, and wrote a ‘History of Mr. John Welsh, Minister of the Gospel at Ayr,’ with whom he was connected by marriage. He left in manuscript ‘The Secret and True History of the Church of Scotland from the Restoration to the year 1678,’ which was edited, with biographical sketch and notes, by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe, and published in 1817, Edinburgh. The manuscript was of great service to Wodrow in compiling his ‘History of the Sufferings of the Church of Scotland,’ but he tones down Kirkton's stories, some of which are coarse and scurrilous. The book contains a panegyric on the church of Scotland during the commonwealth, which later historians have characterised as a ‘romance and an enthusiastic fable.’
[Scott's Fasti; Wodrow's Hist. of the Suff. of the Church of Scotland; Scots Presby. Eloq.; Pitcairn's Assembly; m'Crie's Knox, biog. sketch by Sharpe.]
KIRKUP, SEYMOUR STOCKER (1788–1880), artist, born in London in 1788, was the eldest child of Joseph Kirkup, jeweller and diamond merchant in London. He was admitted a student of the Royal Academy in 1809, and obtained a medal in 1811 for a drawing in the antique school there. He became at this time acquainted with William Blake (1757–1827) [q.v.] (see Wemyss Reid, Life of Lord Houghton, ii. 222), and with B. R. Haydon [q.v.], with whom he subsequently kept up an interesting correspondence (see Haydon, Correspondence and Table-talk, edited by F. W. Haydon). About 1816 Kirkup began to suffer from pulmonary weakness, and; after his father's death, visited Italy. He eventually settled in that country, living some time at Rome, where, on 26 Feb. 1821, he was present at the funeral of John Keats and in 1822 at that of Shelley. He eventually settled at Florence, where he lived for many years in a house on the Arno, adjoining the Ponte Vecchio. He was a good artist, but practised painting in a ‘dilettante’ fashion. He sent to the Royal Academy in 1833 a picture of ‘Cassio,’ and in 1836 a lady's portrait. He also published a few etchings. At Florence Kirkup became a leader of a well-known literary circle. He collected a valuable library, of which a catalogue was printed in 1871, and maintained a large correspondence. Walter Savage Landor, Robert and Elizabeth Browning, Bezzi, E. J. Trelawny, Joseph Severn, and others were his intimate friends, and his name is of frequent occurrence in their biographies. He drew many portraits of his friends; one of Trelawny is in the possession of Mr. J. Temple Leader at Florence, and in the Scott collection of drawings in the Scottish National Gallery at Edinburgh there is a portrait drawn by Kirkup of John Scott, editor of the ‘Champion.’ He was a devoted and learned student of Dante, and adopted the peculiar scheme of Dantesque interpretation promulgated by his friend Gabriele Rossetti. In 1840 Kirkup, Bezzi, and Henry Wilde, an American, obtained leave to search for the portrait of Dante, painted, according to tradition, by Giotto, in the chapel of the Palazzo del Podestà at Florence. In this they were successful on 21 July 1840. Kirkup was able surreptitiously to make a drawing and a tracing before an ill-conceived restoration in 1841 destroyed the truth and value of the painting. The drawing, which was issued in chromolithography by the Arundel Society, was made from Kirkup's sketch. The latter was also engraved by P. Lasinio. Kirkup gave his tracing to Rossetti, who handed it on to his son, Dante Gabriel Rossetti [q.v.] It was sold after the latter's death. Kirkup made some of the designs for Lord Vernon's splendid edition of Dante's works.
On the restoration of the Italian kingdom, Kirkup was created for these services cavaliere of the order of S. Maurizio e Lazzaro. Apparently through a misunderstanding he assumed that this gave him a right to the rank of ‘barone,’ by which title he was known for the rest of his life. Kirkup was below middle stature, and in early life very good-looking. Latterly he displayed much eccentricity in his dress and habits, and suffered from increasing deafness. He was most of his life a devoted believer in spiritualism, and a disciple of Daniel Home [q.v.], under whose influence he parted with his library and other treasures. Kirkup had by a young Florentine lady, Regina Ronti, who died 30 Oct. 1856, aged 19, a daughter, Imogene, who married
