a volatile and crafty statesman, and of his own vanity to be head of a party.
He had been one of the earliest friends, and, during its first days of peril, one
of the most intrepid defenders of the Reformation. Knox, who knew and loved
him well, lamented his apostasy, and with that sagacity which was peculiar to his
character, admonished him of the issue. "That man's soul is dear to me," said
Knox, "and I would not willingly see it perish ; go and tell him from me, that,
if he persists in his folly, neither that crag in which he miserably confides, nor
the carnal wit of that man whom he counts a demi-god, shall save him; but he
shall be dragged forth, and hanged in the face of the sun." He returned a
contemptuous answer dictated by Maitland; but he remembered the warning
when on the scaffold with tears, and listened with eagerness when he was told
the hope that Knox always expressed, that, though the work of grace upon his
heart was sadly obscured, it was still real, and would approve itself so at last;
of which he expressed with great humility his own sincere conviction.
KIRKWOOD, James, an eminent teacher and writer on grammar, in the latter part of the seventeenth century, was born near Dunbar. The circumstances of his education are unknown ; he was first schoolmaster of Linlithgow, and subsequently of Kelso. His school at Linlithgow was one of considerable reputation, and he would appear to have been intrusted, like many teachers of the present day, with pupils who boarded in his house. The celebrated John, second earl of Stair, was thus educated by him. The first work ascertained to have been published by him, was an " Easy Grammar" of the Latin language, which appeared at Glasgow in 1674. In 1677, he published at London an octavo fasciculus of "Sentences," for the use of learners. In the succeeding year appeared his "Compendium of Rhetoric," to which was added a small treatise on Analysis. After the Revolution, he was sent for by the parliamentary commissioners for colleges, on the motion of lord president Stair; and his advice was taken about the best Latin grammar for the Scottish schools. The lord president asked him what he thought of Despauter. He answered, "A very unfit grammar; but by some pains it might be made a good one." The lord Crossrig desiring him to be more plain on this point, he said, " My lord president, if its superfluities were rescinded, the defects supplied, the intricacies cleared, die errors rectified, and the method amended, it might pass for an excellent grammar." The lord president afterwards sent for him, and told him it was the desire of the commissioners that he should immediately reform Despauter, as he had proposed; as they knew none fitter for the task. He according published, in 1695, a revised edition of Despauter, which continued to be commonly used in schools till it was superseded by Ruddiman's Rudiments. Kirkwood was a man of wit and fancy, as well as of learning; and having fallen into an unfortunate quarrel with his patrons the magistrates, which ended in his dismission, he took .revenge by publishing a satirical pamphlet, entitled "The twenty-seven gods of Linlithgow," meaning thereby the twenty-seven members of the town-council. He appears to have afterwards been chosen schoolmaster at Kelso, where he probably died.
KNOX, John, the most eminent promoter of the Reformation in Scotland, was born at Haddington in the year 1505. His father, though himself a man of no note, was descended from the ancient house of Ranfurly in the shire of Renfrew. Of the mother of the great reformer nothing farther is known than that her name was Sinclair, a name which he frequently used in after-life, when to have subscribed his own would have exposed him to danger: thus many of his letters in times of trouble are signed "John Sinclair." Though a man of no rank in society, his father would yet seem to have been possessed of a competency beyond that of the ordinary class of the peasantry of the times, if such an inference be permitted from the circumstance of his having given his son an
