GEORGE

See also:

• GEORGE GILFILLAN (1813-1878)

GILFILLAN (1813-1878)  , Scottish author, was born on the 3oth of January 1813, at Comrie, Perthshire, where his father, the Rev . Samuel Gilfillan, the author of some theological works, was for many years minister of a Secession congregation . After an education at Glasgow . University, in March 1836 he was ordained pastor of a Secession congregation in Dundee . He published a volume of his discourses in 1839, and shortly afterwards another sermon on " Hades," which brought him under the scrutiny of his co-presbyters, and was ultimately withdrawn from circulation . Gilfillan next contributed a series of sketches of celebrated contemporary authors to the Dumfries Herald, then edited by Thomas Aird; and these, with several new ones, formed his first Gallery of Literary Portraits, which appeared in 1846, and had a wide circulation . It was quickly followed by a Second and a Third Gallery . In 1851 his most successful work, the Bards of the Bible, appeared . His aim was that it should be " a poem on the Bible "; and it was far more rhapsodical than critical . His Martyrs and Heroes of the Scottish Covenant appeared in 1832, and in 1856 he produced a partly autobiographical, partly fabulous, History of a Man . For thirty years he was engaged upon a long poem, on Night, which was published in 1867, but its theme was too vast, vague and unmanageable, and the result was a failure . He also edited an edition of the British Poets .

As a lecturer and as a preacher he

drew large crowds, but his literary reputation has not proved permanent . He died on the 13th of August 1878 . He had just finished a new life of Burns designed to accompany a new edition of the works of that poet .