84 Transactions. 
me as a gift in a generous manner by the Rev. Dr Edgar of 
Newburgh, formerly of Gretna. He was stout, and rather 
little in stature. ; 
He was a great classical scholar, and when a student in 
theology he obtained an Exchequer Bursary, in acknowledg- 
ment of which he yearly composed a Latin poem. He was 
recommended by the General Assembly in 1822 as a good Gaelic 
scholar; and I have no doubt that this language was then 
spoken by many in the south of Scotland, and would be a 
special qualification for a rural minister in this district. But his 
chief delight was in Latin versification, into which he translated 
the Book of Job and the Proverbs of Solomon. Some of his lighter 
poems in that language, entitled ‘‘ Miscellanea Metrica,” are said 
to have been fine scholarly productions. In Steven’s History of 
the High School of Edinburgh it is stated that one of the masters 
—Mr Luke Fraser—read a Latin memoir and criticism on the 
Latin compositions of the Rev. Mr Gatt for the Literary Society, 
which existed from 1807 to 1821 in Edinburgh; but although 
search has been made for the MS. it has not been discovered. 
Mr Fraser was famous as a Latin scholar, and as the members of 
this Society were mostly masters of the school and Professors of 
the University, this circumstance testifies also to the scholarship 
of Mr Gatt. He kept a diary in Latin, which I have seen, but 
it is now difficult to decipher. It records that he finished his 
translation of the Proverbs of Solomon on 4th July, 1734, and 
had made a copy of it by March of the year following, which 
copy he took with him in May to Edinburgh, when he likewise 
attended the meeting of the General Assembly of the Church, 
and submitted it to Mr Ruddiman, the greatest of Scotch 
grammarians; who, I find, was like Mr Gatt, a native of Banff- 
shire; and at that time settled in Edinburgh as a printer 
and publisher of several learned Latin works. On his return to 
Gretna from Edinburgh he makes this entry in his diary, dated 
26th May, 1735—Gloria sit Deo in excelsis, quod ego incolumis 
reversus sum a Synodo Nationals. 
He was also a Hebrew scholar, and I show you a small Jewish 
calendar or almanack, now very worn and fragile, which bears 
within it the following writing :—“ Ja. Gatt, Graitney, gifted by 
Jacob and Simon Levi, who brought the same from London.” 
It is not only, however, as a great scholar that Mr Gatt’s 
memory has been so long preserved ; but for his unaffected piety, 
