John William Donaldson
John William Donaldson (7 June 1811 – 10 February 1861) was an English academic and writer in
He was born in London, and was educated at
He is remembered as a pioneer of philology in the UK, though much of his work is now obsolete. The New Cratylus (1839), the book on which his fame mainly rests, was an attempt to apply to
Personal life and headmastership
Donaldson lost his fellowship in 1840 on his marriage to Eleanor Leathes Mortlock, nicknamed "Laetitia", daughter of Sir John Cheetham Mortlock, banker at Cambridge.[5][6] With Laetitia, Donaldson had two sons and two daughters. His first wife predeceased him, and he went on to marry Louisa, daughter of John Rawlins; they had three daughters. After taking pupils for a time at Winfrith in Dorset, in 1841 Donaldson was appointed headmaster of King Edward's School, Bury St Edmunds, an appointment unfortunate for the institution and for himself. He was deficient in judgement and administrative power, and the school declined under him, notwithstanding his efforts to obtain reputation by the publication of Latin and Greek grammars, which met with little acceptance beyond the sphere of his personal influence and involved him in controversy. They were probably too scientific for school use, and his conviction of the defects of standard grammars had been expressed with indiscreet candour. He was active in the cultural life of Bury St Edmunds, where he greatly improved the Athenaeum.
Book of Jashar
Donaldson resigned the headmastership in 1855 partly on account of the outcry caused by the publication of Jashar; [subtitled:] fragmenta archetypa carminum Hebraicorum; collegit, ordinavit, restituit J. G. Donaldson at the end of 1854. In this extraordinary work he endeavoured to show that fragments of a book of Jashar are to be found throughout the Old Testament scriptures up to the time of Solomon, that the book was compiled in the reign of that monarch, and that its remains constitute ‘the religious marrow of the scriptures’. The work was heavily criticized and Donaldson's religious orthodoxy was questioned. Although he defended his position in a vigorous pamphlet, he failed to convince his critics.
His Jashar (1854), written in Latin as an appeal to the learned world and especially to German theologians, was an attempt to reconstitute the lost biblical
Of his many other works, most important are:
- The Theatre of the Greeks; The History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (a translation and completion of Karl Otfried Müller's unfinished work) with P.W. Buckham
- The Odes of Pindar (his edition)
- Antigone of Sophocles (his edition)
- A Hebrew, a Greek and a Latin grammar.
References
- ^ "Donaldson, John William (DNLT830JW)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
- ^ "Donaldson Coat of Arms / Donaldson Family Crest". www.4crests.com. Retrieved 21 April 2011.
- ^ Townend, Peter (ed.) Burke's Peerage and Baronetage, 105th edition. London, U.K.: Burke's Peerage Ltd, 1970.
- ^ http://www.thepeerage.com/p20581.htm citing among others: T. G. Hake, Memoirs of eighty years (1892)
- ^ "Reverend John William Donaldson". thepeerage.com.
- ^ "Obituary. Sir John C. Mortlock". The Gentleman's Magazine. 178: 646–647. December 1845.
- public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Donaldson, John William". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 8 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 406. This article incorporates text from a publication now in the