, born at Aberdeen in Scotland, bore some rank among the learned men
, 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
Synopsis Locorum
communium, in qua sapientiae human imago repraesentatur,
” &c.