Western Worthies: A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West of Scotland CelebritiesJeans, J. Stephen (James Stephen)
History
Western Worthies: A Gallery of Biographical and Critical Sketches of West of Scotland Celebrities
Jeans, J. Stephen (James Stephen)
Scotland -- Biography
Dr. Eadie first brought himself into prominent notice as an author by
the publication of a manual of Cruden, intended for popular use, about
the year 1841. This abridged concordance has had an enormous sale among
all classes, both at home and abroad. Up to the year 1850 it had gone
through no fewer than fourteen different editions, and we believe that
the latest edition issued is either the twenty-first or the
twenty-third. The preface to Dr. Eadie's "Cruden" was furnished by Dr.
King, and is a masterly performance of its kind. It is worth while
noticing that no other copy of "Cruden" is used or recognised by the
Tract Society, who have at different times issued it on their own
account. In 1848 Dr. Eadie published his Biblical Cyclopaedia, of which
in 1868 twenty-four thousand copies had been sold, being upwards of one
thousand every year. Of the merits of this work we need not here speak,
as to all of our readers it must be known more or less familiarly. It is
essentially what it professes to be--a dictionary of history,
antiquities, geography, natural history, sacred analysis, biography, and
Biblical literature generally, illustrative of the Old and New
Testaments. He has also compiled from Henry and Scott a Bible which has
gone through many editions, and has commanded a sale of not fewer than
60,000 or 70,000 copies. First published in folio form, it had been sold
within seven years to the tune of 36,000 copies, and thousands of
working men were enabled from the cheapness with which it was issued,
to possess themselves of this Bible who might otherwise never have had a
Family Bible in their houses. The first edition was issued in 1851, and
in Sept., 1858, another and still larger edition was put through the
press. Dr. Eadie published in 1856 a work entitled "An Analytical
Concordance of the Holy Scriptures, or the Bible presented under
distinct and classified heads and topics," published by Richard Griffin
& Co., London. In 1862 he published an "Ecclesiastical Cyclopaedia of
antiquities, architecture, controversies, denominations, doctrines,
governments, heresies, history, liturgies, rights, monastic orders, and
modern Judaism." As the biographer of the well-known and esteemed Dr.
Kitto, Dr. Eadie has also achieved a considerable reputation. Collected
from papers furnished by Dr. Kitto's personal friends, this biography is
perhaps one of the best and most interesting in the English literature,
and it deservedly met with a very large circulation. In a surprisingly
short space of time it went through several editions, and even at the
present day it is referred to and quoted as an authority on
ecclesiastical matters of a particular kind. Dr. Kitto was one of the
best Biblical scholars of his day. Like Dr. Eadie himself, he was
possessed of an extraordinary memory, and highly cultivated lingual
powers; and after he returned from the East he was frequently employed
to do literary work for Mr. Charles Knight, for whom also Dr. Eadie
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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