Donaldson, JOHN WILLIAM, D.D.

Donaldson, JOHN WILLIAM, D.D., philologist, was born in London, 7th June 1811. A merchant's son, of Scottish ancestry, he was articled as a boy to his uncle, a solicitor; but his success in an examination at University College, London (1830), changed his plans, and next year he went up to Trinity College, Cambridge. He graduated in 1834 as second classic and senior optime, and was elected a fellow and tutor of his college. From 1841 to 1855 he was head-master of Bury St Edmunds grammar-school (he almost emptied it); thereafter he tutored at Cambridge with great success, till his death, from overwork, in London, 10th February 1861. Donaldson's New Cratylus, or Contributions towards a Knowledge of the Greek Language (1839), is a work remarkable for research, erudition, and boldness, and as being the first attempt on a large scale to familiarise Englishmen with the principles of comparative philology, established by the great scholars of Germany. In Varronianus (1844) he undertook to accomplish for Latin what in the New Cratylus he had done for Greek. Unluckily, Professor Key had here in a measure forestalled him. Jashar; Fragmenta Archetypa Carminum Hebraicorum (Berlin, 1854) sought to distinguish by critical tests the fragments of the lost Book of Jashar (q.v.), imbedded in the Hebrew Pentateuch. It is a clever, too clever, piece of rash and ingenious speculation, which not only roused much 'odium theologicum,' but was severely handled by Ewald; nor did Donaldson better his position by his Christian Orthodoxy reconciled with the Conclusion of Modern Biblical Learning (1857). The Theatre of the Greeks, though originally by Buckham, was so recast by Donaldson as to be practically his; to him, too, belongs the completion of K. O. Müller's History of Greek Literature; and his Latin and Greek grammars claim mention. Crabb Robinson, in his Diary, gives a vivid conception of Dr Donaldson's kindliness, ready wit, and great conversational powers.—His youngest brother was the Australian statesman, Sir Stuart Alexander Donaldson (1812-67).