In August 1801 he read before the Royal Society of Edinburgh an interesting paper, ‘Minutes of the Life and Character of Joseph Black,’ afterwards published in their ‘Transactions’ for 1805 (vol. v. pt. ii. p. 101, &c.). At this time he was in easy circumstances. In addition to the Chesterfield life annuity, his professorial salary, and the profits of his books, he is represented as enjoying a government pension of 400l. (cf. Public Characters of 1779–1800, p. 434, and Annual Biography and Obituary for 1817, p. 251). Scott and Lord Cockburn have given graphic descriptions of Ferguson in old age, with silver locks, blue eyes, ruddy cheeks, and firm gait, and wearing a costume much resembling that of the Flemish peasant of his time. According to Lord Cockburn he was ‘domestically kind,’ but ‘fiery as gunpowder;’ and Principal Lee hints that the inflexibility of his disposition stood in the way of advancement proposed for him in England. In his latest years his vitality was supported by the deep interest which he took in the great war; and Scott says that ‘the news of Waterloo acted on the aged patriot as a Nunc Dimittis.’ He was in full possession of his faculties when he died at St. Andrews on 22 Feb. 1816. His last words addressed from his deathbed to his daughters were, ‘There is another world’ (Edinburgh Review). He was buried in the grounds of the old cathedral of St. Andrews, and the elaborate inscription on the monument over his remains was written by Sir Walter Scott. In 1817 was published his ‘Biographical Sketch or Memoir of Lieutenant-colonel Patrick Ferguson [q. v.], originally intended for the “British Encyclopædia,”’ i.e. the ‘Encyclopædia Britannica,’ from which its length excluded it.
[Biographical Sketch by John Small, librarian to the university of Edinburgh, 1864; Principal Lee's Memoir, in supplement to the 4th, 5th, and 6th editions of the Encyclopædia Britannica; General Stewart of Garth's Sketches of the Characters, Manners, &c., of the Highlands of Scotland, 1822; Autobiography of Dr. Alexander Carlyle, 1860; Lord Cockburn's Memorials of his Time, 1860; Sir Walter Scott's Miscellaneous Works, vol. xix.; Lockhart's Life of Scott, ed. 1845; J. H. Burton's Life and Correspondence of David Hume, 1846; Colonel A. Ferguson's The Hon. Henry Erskine, Lord Advocate for Scotland, 1882; Sir A. Grant's Story of the University of Edinburgh, 1884; Ersch and Grüber's Encyclopädie, and Quérard's France Littéraire, sub nomine; authorities cited.]
FERGUSON, Sir ADAM (1771–1855), keeper of the regalia in Scotland, eldest son of Professor Adam Ferguson [q. v.], was born in 1771. At Edinburgh University he was one of the companions of Sir Walter Scott, who says that he combined the ‘lightest and most airy temper with the best and kindest disposition’ (‘Autobiography’ in Lockhart, Life of Scott). He was also one of the nineteen original members of the society, ‘called by way of excellence the Club,’ among the members of which, from the accident of a Newhaven fisherman mistaking him for a brother of the craft, he obtained the cognomen of Linton (see anecdote, ib.) It was in company with Ferguson that Scott in 1793 first visited the scenes in Perthshire on the highland border which he afterwards described in his poems and romances. About 1800 Ferguson entered the army; he became captain of the 101st regiment in February 1808, and afterwards he served in the Peninsular campaign under Wellington. Scott was in the habit of relating with special pride that the ‘Lady of the Lake’ having reached Ferguson in the lines of Torres Vedras he read to his company, while lying on the ground exposed to the enemy's artillery, the description of the battle in canto vi. In a letter to Scott in 1811 Ferguson expressed the resolve, should it be his fate to survive the campaign, to try his hand ‘on a snug little farm’ somewhere in Scott's neighbourhood. He was taken prisoner during Wellington's retreat from Burgos in 1812, and was not released till the peace of 1814. On 8 Oct. 1816 he went on half-pay. In 1817 he accompanied Scott in an excursion in the Lennox, and in the following year he and his sisters took up their residence in the mansion-house of Toftfield, which Scott had recently purchased, and on which, at the ladies' request, he bestowed the name of Huntly Burn. In the autumn of this year Ferguson, chiefly through the exertions of Scott, was appointed keeper of the regalia of Scotland, which then had recently been discovered. About this time Sir David Wilkie executed for Scott the picture in which Scott and his family are represented as a group of peasants and Ferguson as a gamekeeper or poacher. In 1819 Ferguson, in the capacity of secretary, accompanied Scott's friend, the Duke of Buccleuch, then in declining health, to Lisbon. In 1821 he married the widow of George Lyon of London, and daughter of John Stewart of Stenton, Perthshire (see humorous letter of Scott on the ceremony). On the occasion of the visit of George IV to Edinburgh he received the honour of knighthood 29 Aug. 1822. He died 1 Jan. 1855. Ferguson was famed as a narrator of Scotch anecdotes.
[Lockhart's Life of Scott; Gent. Mag. new ser. (1855) xliii. 195.]
