. 



JOHNSTON, ALEXANDER KEITH. 



JOHNSTON, GEORGE, 



Jo 



1755 b* published the account of hii journey in the Hebrides, an 

 entertaining and an instructive work, though it iliicuins with need 

 ) solemnity subject* familiar to every inhabitant of the country, 

 though ctrang* to a townsman like Johnson. H is ' Lire* of the Poets, 

 imbwbed in 1781, an a useful and interesting contribution to English 

 biography and eritidam, and are too well known to require tpedflo 

 notice. The criticisms in this work are sometime* biasod by political, 

 religious, and eren penonal antipathic*, ai may be teen in bin uu 

 fTourmble judgment of Milton's poetry, dictated by his dislike for the 

 republican and non-conformist ; and his somewhat captious censure 

 of Gray. His judgments of the general character of a poet are how- 

 rer more frequently correct than his criticisms upon particular 

 pastaflu* and expressions. The style is on the wbole perhaps more 

 simple and better than in any other of his writings. 



A complete list of Johnson's works is prefixed to Boswell's ' Life ; ' 

 but from what has been stated, it sufficiently appears that his intellec- 

 tual effort! were desultory and unconnected, and took the form ol 

 Essays, Lives, Critical Notices, Prefaces, 4c. He bad no compre- 

 hensive or profound acquaintance with any department of human 

 knowledge ; he did not attempt any systematic investigation of any 

 considerable branch of metaphysical, ethical, political, or sesthetical 

 science. Even as a grammarian, his acquirement* were limited and 

 superficial; of physical and mathematical science he knew scarcely 

 anything. It may however be remarked that he had adopted that 

 theory of ethics which is now commonly known by the name of 

 utilitarian, as may be seen from his review of Soame Jenyns's ' Inquiry 

 into the Origin of Evil : ' Johnson here eays of this theory, that it 

 affords "a criterion of action on account of virtue and rice, for which 

 he has often contended, and which must be embraced by all who are 

 willing to know why they act or why they forbear, to give any reason 

 of their conduct to themselves or others." 



From his habit of writing for the booksellers, he had acquired a 

 power of treating the most heterogeneous subjects with scarcely any 

 preparatory knowledge; witness his papers on the construction of 

 Blackfriars Bridge, and his very ingenious argument, dictated to 

 Boswell, on a question of Scotch law. In English literature his 

 reading was extensive, particularly in the writers of the 17th and 

 18th centuries; but he seems to have known comparatively little 

 about the writers of the age of Elizabeth : his ' Lives of the Poets ' 

 begin with Cowley. He doe* not seem to have studied attentively 

 the works of any of the chief English philosophers, as Bacon, Hobbes, 

 Locke; his theological learning was but scanty; nor was he very 

 well versed in the political history or laws of his country. He had a 

 fair acquaintance with the ordinary Latin classics ; of Greek he used 

 to say that he knew but little; but it was found that Johnson's 

 ''little" was what some men of more pretensions to scholarship would 

 have accounted great. He could read French and Italian; but he 

 seems to have scarcely known anything of the modern literature of 

 foreign countries. 



Johnson's opinions were regarded by many of his contemporaries 

 with a sort of superstitious reverence. In the present generation his 

 credit had fallen lower than it deserved ; but the notices of him by 

 several of the greatest writers of the day, even when unfavourable, 

 have served to show that he could not be safely neglected by tho 

 literary student, while by the general reader many of his works 

 will continue to be read, from tho vigour of thought which they 

 display. 



(Murphy, Lift, in preface to Works ; Boswell, Life, Croker's edit. ; 

 Memoir by Walter Scott ; Esiayt by Macaulay and Carlyle. A brief 

 but elaborate character of Dr. Johnson, written by Sir James 

 Mackintosh, will be found in his Lift, voL ii p. 166.) 



JOHNSTON, ALEXANDER KEITH, was born at Kirkhill, in 

 the county of Midlothian, Scotland, December 28th, 1804, and edu- 

 cated at the High School of Edinburgh. His studies were at first 

 directed with a view to the medical profession, but a predilection for 

 the Fine Art* led to his being apprenticed to an engraver, where he 

 acquired that taste for design which characterises all hit works. 



The favourite study of his youth, geography and its allied branches, 

 soon absorbed his attention, and in order to reach the sources of 

 information, he mastered successively the French, Italian, Spanish, and 

 German language*, and thni prepared himself for founding a school of 

 geography in his native country. His first large work, the ' National 

 Atlas ' in folio, projected in 1835, was published in 1843, when lie was 

 elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and appointed 

 Geographer to the Queen for Scotland. The writings of Humboldt 

 and Hitter had so inspired him with the importance of Natural Geo- 

 graphy, a* to induce him to project an atlas on this subject, on a scale 

 hitherto unattempted, and successive visits to the Continent having 

 brought him into contact and correspondence with these and many 

 other distinguished cultivator* of science, he devoted several years to 

 the elucidation of the necessary materials, and in 1848 published his 

 celebrated ' Physical Atlas ' in folio. This work wo find characterised 

 in the ' Bulletin de la Socic'tc' de Gcographie,' Paris, 1851, as " Un des 

 plus mognifiques monument* qu'on ait encore oluvcs au genie scien- 

 tifique do notre sieclc." On it* appearance Mr. Johnston was elected 

 an honorary member of the Geaellschaft fur Erdkunde, Berlin, fellow 

 of the Geographical Society of Paris, the Geologic*! Society of London, 

 ftc. In 1850 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Edin- 



burgh, and ha* since acted on its council To iU papers he con- 

 tributed ' An Historical Notice of the Survey of Scotland.' 



Three years were next devoted to the production of a ' Dictionary 

 of Geography,' which was published in 1851, and again, nearly 

 re- written, in 1855. The first edition of bis great work having been 

 exhausted, a new and greatly improved issue has lately appeared, and 

 i* thus announced by the President of the Geographical Society, in his 

 annual address, 1866 : " Our associate, Mr. Alexander Keith Johnston, 

 has completed the new edition of his superb ' Physical Atlas.' The 

 publication of the first edition of this great work, ten yean since, had 

 the effect of introducing in this country almost a new era in the 

 popular study of geography, through it* attractive and instructive 

 illustration of the prominent features of science. This second edition 

 is to some extent an entirely new work, owing to the additions and 

 improvements which have been introduced .... and the addition of 

 a large general index adds materially to the utility of this extensive 

 compendium of natural geography.'' His contributions to medical 

 geography have procured for Mr. Johnston tho honorary fellowship of 

 the Epidcmiological Society of London. 



Among Mr. Johnston's minor publications are an 'Atlas of the 

 Historical Geography of Europe,' 4to ; a reduced ' Physical Atlas,' in 

 4to, 25 plates, and 112 pages of text; a series of educational works, 

 comprising Physical, General and Classical Geography, an Atlas of 

 Astronomy in conjunction with Mr. Hind ; and with Sir It L Murchi- 

 son and Professor Nicol as coadjutors, a ' Geological Map of (Europe.' 

 Most of these works have rapidly passed through several editions. 



JOHNSTON, DR. ARTHUR, was bom in Aberdeenshire in 1587. 

 At an early age he went abroad for medical education ; and the degr.-o 

 of Doctor in Medicine was conferred on him at Padua in 1610. He 

 travelled in various parts of the Continent, and resided for twenty 

 years in France, marrying twice in the course of that period. He 

 returned to his native country before 1625, and was soon afterwards 

 appointed physician to Charles I., probably through the influence of 

 Laud. After this appointment he must have resided chiefly in the 

 neighbourhood of the court. In 1641 he died at Oxford, while ou a 

 visit to a daughter married there. 



Johnston was the most extensive contributor, and is not unusually 

 called the editor, of Sir John Scot's collection of Latin poems, the 

 'Delitioc Poetarum Scotorum hujus J&vi Illustrium,' Amsterdam, 

 1637, 2 vols. 12mo ; and besides several other volumes of compositions 

 iu Latin verse, he was bold enough to measure lances with Buchanan 

 in a version of the Psalms, ' Paraphrosis Poetica Psalmorum Davidin, 

 Auctore Arturo Johnstono, Scoto,' Aberdeen, 1637, Svo. This ambi- 

 tious attempt led, many years afterwards, to a protracted controversy 

 on the merits of the rival versions. The history of the dispute is 

 related, and Johnston's works fully described and justly estimated, in 

 Dr. Irving's 'Lives of Scottish Writers,' 1839, 2 vols. Svo. It i 

 enough here to cay, that Johnston's high rank among modern writers 

 of Latin poetry is universally admitted ; and that, although in Scotland 

 his psalms have usually been estimated much below Buchanan's, the 

 justice of this sentence has been questioned by critics of authority, of 

 whom Mr. Hallam is one. 



JOHNSTON, GEORGE, a distinguished naturalist. He was born in 

 1798, and having been destined for the medical profession, be was 

 apprenticed to the celebrated Dr. Abercrombie of Edinburgh. Having 

 gone through tho usual medical training, ho graduated in Edinburgh 

 in 1819. He subsequently settled as a general practitioner at lierwick- 

 upon-Tweed. At Edinburgh he hod acquired a taste for natural 

 history, which he diligently cultivated through tho remainder of his 

 life. It is not often that a man so thoroughly and so largely employed 

 in a laborious profession has occupied so prominent a position as an 

 observer and writer as Dr. Johnston. At the time that he commenced 

 bis career at Berwick-upon-Tweed little was known of the lower forms 

 of animal life to which he so successfully devoted 1m attention. His 

 ' History of British Zoophytes,' and his ' History of British Sponges 

 and Lithpphytes,' published in 1838 and 1842, were amongst tho first 

 systematic works that were devoted to the classes of animals they 

 describe. They not only included the descriptions of a large number 

 of new species of these animals, but contained a great amount of 

 matter altogether new to the British reader. It is true the habit* of 

 ihese creatures were not such as to command the same amount of 

 attention as those described by White of Selborne, but in their 

 relation to the general study of scientific natural history they take a 

 josition second to none that have been published during tho present 

 century. From the time of his first residence in Berwick he was an 

 active contributor to the various natural history journals and the 

 Transactions of natural history societies. Thus we find him pro- 

 >aring for his great work on Zoophyte* in his ' Descriptive Catalogue 

 of the recent Zoophytes found on the Coast of Durham,' in the second 

 volume of the ' Transactions of the Natural History Society of Now- 

 castle-upon-Tyne,' also in his 'Catalogue of the Zoophytes of Berwick- 

 shire,' in the ' Proceedings of the Berwickshire Naturalists' Club.' Of 

 this club be was one of the founders, and an active member to 

 the last. 



Another clam of animals almost as little known when he first began 

 o work at them as the Zoophyta, were the Annelida. His papers on 

 British and Irish Annelide*,' with numerous notices of individual 

 'onus scattered through the page* of tbo ' Magazine of Zoology and 



