Donaldson, Walter

, born at Aberdeen in Scotland, bore some rank among the learned men of the seventeenth century. He had been in the retinue and service of David Cuningham, bishop of Aberdeen, and Peter Junius, great almoner of Scotland, when they went on an embassy from king James to the court of Denmark, and to the princes of Germany. After his return home, he went to Heidelberg, where the famous Dionysius Gothofredus taught the civil law. Donaldson, having there dictated to some young students a short course of moral philosophy, a young man of Riga in Livonia put the manuscript to the press without his consent, but he seemed not displeased, and informs us of the several editions which were made of that work in Germany, and in Great Britain, under the title “Synopsis moralis philosophise.” He was afterwards professor of natural and moral philosophy, and of the Greek tongue, in the university of Sedan, and was | principal of the college sixteen years after which he was invited to open a college at Charenton but that establishment was immediately opposed by law. Mot to remain idle while the law-suit was depending, he set himself to collect from among his papers the several parts of his “Synopsis Oeconomica,” wnich he got printed at Paris in 1620, in 8vo, and dedicated it to the prince of Wales. It was reprinted at Rostoch, 1624, in 8vo. That wherein he reduced into common places, and under certain general heads, all that lies scattered in Diogenes Laertius concerning the same thing, was printed in Greek and Latin, at Francfort, in 1612, under the title of “Synopsis Locorum communium, in qua sapientiae human imago repraesentatur,” &c. 1

1 Bayle in Gen. Dict.