Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 42.djvu/26

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Ogilvie
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Ogilvie

be hanged and quartered. Three hours later he was led to the scaffold, where he had the ministrations of William Struthers and Robert Scot, the latter reiterating that it was not for his religion but for his political offence that he had been condemned. The quartering was not carried out. Father Forbes-Leith repeats the story that Ogilvie was told by 'the' minister who attended him that he had been empowered to promise him the hand of the archbishop's daughter and the richest prebend of his diocese as a dowry, provided he recanted (p. 311). This ridiculous tale is taken from a document attested at Douay on 23 Feb. 1672 by Father James Brown, S.J., rector of the college there in 1688. The date of attestation raises suspicion; moreover, as Mr. T. G. Law has pointed out, the archbishop had no unmarried daughter. It is possible that the story has grown out of the statement of the archbishop after the sentence of the court: 'I will give you both hand and heart, for I wish you to die a good Christian.'

Two portraits of Ogilvie are known: (1) a contemporary half-length, copied at Rome by Charles Weld, and engraved as the frontispiece to James Forbes's 'Life of Ogilvie;' and (2) a full-length in the 'Life' of St. John Nepomuc (1730), pl. 16, The latter approximates so closely to the conventional figures of the jesuit hagiologies, and in features bears such close resemblance to the many other Johns celebrated in the book, that it cannot be considered an authentic portrait.

[Relatio Incarcerationis et Martyrii P. Ioannia Ogilbei ... descripta ad verbum ex autographo ipsius, Douai. 1615 (reprinted at Ingolstadt and at Mainz in 1616); A True Relation of the Proceeding against John Ogilvie, a Jesuit ... Edinburgh, 1615, probably written by Archbishop Spotiswood; Register of Privy Council of Scotland, x. 1613–1616, 284–6, 286 n., 303, 304 n., 336, 374 459; Pitcairn's Criminal Trials, vol. iii. pt.i., including the deposition of Ogilvie's accomplices in Glasgow and Edinburgh; Histories of Calderwood and Spotiswood; the Historie of James the Sext (Bannatyne Club), 1825; L'Eglise Catholique en Écosse: Martyre de Jean Ogilvie de la Compagnie de Jésus ... par le P. James Forbes, Paris, 1885; An Authentic Account of the Imprisonment and Martyrdom of Father John Ogilvie, translated by C. J. Karslake, S.J., Glasgow, 1877 (a translation of the Relatio); Narratives of Scottish Catholics. by W. Forbes-Leith, Edinburgh, 1885, in which reference is made to a Latin manuscript in the Archives S.J., entitled 'Proceedings of the Trial and Mode of Death of Father John Ogilvie.' Spotiswood's True Relation and the Relatio are reprinted in James Forbes's Life (supra), and the former is also reprinted in Pitcairn.]


OGILVIE, JOHN (1733–1813), presbyterian divine and author, born in Aberdeen in 1733, was the eldest son of James Ogilvie, minister there. After graduating at the Aberdeen University he was appointed to the parish of Lumphanan in 1759, and in the same year was transferred to Midmar, where he remained until his death. In 1764 he preached before the high commissioner of the General Assembly of the Scottish Church; in 1766 he was made D.D. by Aberdeen University, and in 1775 was appointed one of the committee for the revision of the 'Scottish Translations and Paraphrases.' He married in January 1771, and had a family. He died at Aberdeen on 17 Nov. 1813.

Ogilvie was one of a contemporary group of Scottish literary clergy. He frequently appeared in the literary circles of London and Edinburgh, and was a fellow of the Edinburgh Royal Society. It was to Ogilvie, while dining with Boswell in London, that Johnson remarked, 'Let me tell you, the noblest prospect which a Scotsman ever sees is the high road which leads him to England.' At the age of sixteen he wrote the hymn, 'Begin, my soul, the exalted lay,' afterwards included in 'Poems on several Subjects;' but his most popular work as a hymn-writer is the paraphrase he contributed to the Scottish collection of 1781, 'Lo, in the last of days behold.' His poems are long, and show learning rather than poetic gifts. Churchill, in the 'Journey,' refers to them as 'a tale of rueful length,' spun out 'under dark Allegory's flimsy veil.' Johnson 'saw nothing' in the 'Day of Judgment,' but Boswell thought it had 'no inconsiderable share of merit.' His philosophical works were mainly attempts to defend the theology of his day against the deists and Hume. 'In "The Theology of Plato" he treats of topics not usually discussed by the Scottish metaphysicians' (M'Cosh, Scottish Philosophy, p. 241).

His works are: 1. 'The Day of Judgment: a Poem,' Edinburgh, 1753. 2. 'Poems on several Subjects, with Essay on Lyric Poetry,' London, 1762, an enlarged edition of which, in two vols., appeared in 1769. 3. 'Providence: an Allegorical Poem,' London, 1767. 4. 'Solitude, or the Elysium of the Poets,' 1765. 5. 'Sermons,' London, 1767. 6. 'Paradise: a Poem,' 1769. 7. 'Philosophical and Critical Observations on Composition,' 2 vols. London, 1774. 8. 'Rona: a Poem in seven books, with Map of the Hebrides,' London, 1777. 9. 'Inquiry into the Causes of Infidelity and Scepticism,' London, 1783. 10. 'The Fane of the Druids,' 1789. 11. 'The Theology of Plato compared with the Principles