Ministry
Andrew Macdonald spent a year as private tutor to the children of the Oliphants of Gask in Perthshire. Mr and Mrs Laurence Oliphant were influential Jacobites, and their daughter Carolina, Baroness Nairne, would later become celebrated for her popular Jacobite verse.
Macdonald left the Oliphants in about 1777 to become the Scottish Episcopal incumbent in the Lanarkshire city of Glasgow. Bishop Forbes having died in November 1775, Macdonald was ordained priest by Bishop William Falconer. At this time Glasgow had a thriving authorised ('qualified') Episcopal chapel, St Andrew's-by-the-Green, whilst Macdonald's small non-juror congregation assembled in a meeting-house in Stockwell Street. A book of his sermons from this period was published posthumously. Its preface states that Macdonald’s talents were held in high esteem, and his private virtues generally respected.
Macdonald was without private means, and the non-juror congregation in Glasgow was too small to support him from seat-rents. He supplemented his income with writing, and took in student lodgers. William Erskine, Lord Kinneder, (the judge and mentor of Sir Walter Scott) lodged with Macdonald during his student days, and recounted that it was Macdonald who had instilled in him a passion for English literature. Macdonald was passionately fond of poetry and music; an accomplished violinist, he became a director of a music club in Glasgow.
Read more about this topic: Andrew Macdonald (poet)
Famous quotes containing the word ministry:
“the eave-drops fall
Heard only in the trances of the blast,
Or if the secret ministry of frost
Shall hang them up in silent icicles,
Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.”
—Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834)
“The State has but one face for me: that of the police. To my eyes, all of the State’s ministries have this single face, and I cannot imagine the ministry of culture other than as the police of culture, with its prefect and commissioners.”
—Jean Dubuffet (1901–1985)