Johnston, Arthur

(1587-1641)

   He was born at Caskieben, Aberdeenshire, the son of Laird Johnston of Johnston and Caskieben, and on his mother's side a grandson of the seventh Lord Forbes. He was probably a student at King's College, Old Aberdeen - of which he became rector in 1637-and qualified as a doctor in Padua, Northern Italy, in 1610. He wrote entirely in Latin. His first volume of epigrams was published in 1619 while working in Paris, and a second at Aberdeen in 1632. In 1625 he published an elegy on the death of James I. He died at Oxford while traveling to London. His sacred poems, which had appeared in the Opera (1642), were reprinted by William Lauder in his Poetarum Scolorum musae sacrae (1739) (DNB). Johnston left more than ten works, all in Latin; the two main ones, published in 1637, are the full version of the Psalms, Psalmorum Davidis paraphrasis poetica et canticorum evangelicorum, Aberdeen, and his anthology of contemporary Latin verse by Scottish poets, Deliciae poetarum Scotorum huius aevi illustrium, Amsterdam.

   Sources: Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Biography of Arthur Johnston. Freepedia (http://en.freepedia.org/Arthur_ Johnston.html). The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The New Penguin Book of Scottish Verse. Robert Crawford and Mick Imlah, eds. Penguin Books, 2000.