sermons, published in the year 1779. At the same period there were also a great number of MS. sermons and notes bearing his name. Some of these had apparently been taken from his widow by a party of soldiers who entered her house by violence, and took her son-in-law prisoner in 1682.
It may be necessary here to allude to another work connected with Mr Guthrie's name,—"The heads of some sermons preached at Fenwick in August, 1662, by Mr William Guthrie, upon Matt. xiv. 24, &c. anent the trials of the Lord's people, their support in, and deliverance from them by Jesus Christ," published in 1680, and reprinted in 1714. This work was wholly unauthorized by his representatives, being taken, not from his own MSS. but from imperfect notes or recollections of some of his hearers. His widow published an advertisement disclaiming it, a copy of which is preserved in the Advocates' Library, among the collections of the indefatigable Wodrow.
Memoirs of Mr Guthrie will be found in the Scots Worthies, and at the beginning of the work "The Christian's Great Interest." A later and more complete sketch of his life, interspersed with his letters to Sir William Muir, younger, has been written by the Rev. William Muir, the editor of the interesting genealogical little work, "The History of the House of Rowallan." From the latter, most of the materials for the present notice have been drawn.
GUTHRIE, William, a political, historical, and miscellaneous writer, was born in Forfarshire, in the year 1708. His father was an episcopal minister at Brechin, and a cadet of a family which has for a long time possessed considerable influence in that part of the country. He studied at King's college in Aberdeen, and having taken his degrees, had resolved to retire early from the activity and ambition of the world, to the humble pursuits of a Scottish parochial schoolmaster; from this retreat, however, he seems to have been early driven, by the consequences of some unpropitious affair of the heart, hinted at but not named by his biographers, which seems to have created, from its circumstances, so great a ferment among the respectable connexions of the schoolmaster, that he resolved to try his fortune in the mighty labyrinth of London. Other accounts mingle with this the circumstance of his having been an adherent of the house of Stuart, which is likely enough from his parentage, and of his consequently being disabled from holding any office under the Hanoverian government—a method of making his livelihood which his character informs us he would not have found disagreeable could he have followed it up; at all events, we find him in London, after the year 1730, working hard as a general literary man for his livelihood, and laying himself out as a doer of all work in the profession of letters. Previously to Dr Johnson's connexion with the Gentleman's Magazine, which commenced about the year 1738, Guthrie had been in the habit of collecting and arranging the parliamentary debates for that periodical, or rather of putting such words into the mouths of certain statesmen, as he thought they might or should have made use of, clothing the names of the senators in allegorical terms; a system to which a dread of the power of parliament, and the uncertainty of the privilege of being present at debates, prompted the press at that time to have recourse. When Johnson had been regularly employed as a writer in the magazine, the reports, after receiving such embellishments as Guthrie could bestow on them, were sent to him by Cave, to receive the final touch of oratorical colouring; and sometimes afterwards the labour was performed by Johnson alone, considerably, it may be presumed, to the fame and appreciation of the honourable orators. Guthrie soon after this period had managed to let it be known to government, that he was a person who could write well, and that it might depend on circumstances whether he should use his pen as the medium of attack or of defence. The matter was placed on its proper footing, and
