DEMPSTER, THOMAS, was the son of Thomas Dempster, 01 Muiresk, in Aberdeenshire, where he was beet, on the 23rd of August 1579. His life is a series of strange adventures, where the literary triumphs of the wandering scholar are mingled with fierce controversy and occasional deeds of armed violence. His wild career seems to have commenced in the centre of his domestic circle, of the morality of which lie gives a startling picture, telling how one of his brothers had taken to wife his father's concubine, collected a band of ruffians with whom he surrounded and attacked that father and his attendants afterwards fled to Orkney, where he beaded a baud of freebooters who, among other violences, burned the bishop's palace, and ended hit career as a soldier in the Netherlands, where he was pnt to death at a criminal by being torn limb from limb by wild horses. Thome, Dempster commenced his classical studies at Pembroke Hall, Cam bridge, at the age of ten, and completed his education at Paris, Lou vain, and Rome. He took the degree of D.C.L., and was made regent in the college of Navarre, in the University of I'aria, at a time when according to his own account, he must have been but seventeen year )1d. The history of his various wanderings from university to uuiver ity, his literary contests, and his personal quarrels, is too long to be 'ollowed out on this occasion. Being at one time left by the principal if the college of Beauvais, in the University of Paris, as his locum senens, he caused a student of high and powerful connections to be gnominiously flogged. Several relatives took up the student's cause, end made an armed attack upon the college; but Dempster showed that he had resources equal to the occasion : be fortified his college, Acted a sort of siege, and concluded the affair by taking some of the belligerents prisoners and confining them in the college belfry. After this affair ho fled from France. At the beginning of the year 1616 he was in England, where he married Susanna Waller, a woman whose disposition appears to have been of a no less hardy and reckless character than his own. Some time afterwards, when he was passing through the streets of Paris with this woman, her remarkable beauty and the degree to which she exposed her person, brought on them the dangerous attentions of a mob of followers, and compelled them to seek refuge in an adjoining house. Afterwards, while Dempster was
teaching the belles-lettres in the University of Bologna, where he seems to have involved himself in a more than usual number of disputes, be found that his wife had eloped with either ono or more of his students. After an ineffectual attempt to overtake the fugitives, he died at Butri, near Bologna, on the 6th of September 1625, the victim apparently of overwronglA energies and a broken spirit. Demp steels works are more celebrated for their profuse miscellaneous learn ing than their critical accuracy. They are very numerous. Dr. Irving, in his ' Lives of Scottish Writers,' gives a list of fifty, stating that the list is as complete as he has been able to make it. His Antiqui. tatum Romanarum Corpus Absolutissimum; an edition, or rather an enlargement. of the work by Rosinus, bearing that title, published in 1613, is well known. There are many editions of' it, and it forms, both in the substance and illustrations, the foundation of Kennet's and other popular books on Roman antiquities. His 'Do Etruria Ilegali,' left in manuscript, was magnificently edited in 1723-4, in two volumes, folio, by Sir Thomas Coko. His Historic Ecclesiastica Oentie Scotorum' was published at Bologna in 1627, and was reprinted for the Bannatyne Club in 1829. It is simply a biographical dictionary of Scottish authors, and as such has been often referred to in this work. In many instances its information may be depended on, but whoever consults the work must bring with him some previous critical knowledge of the subject, as tho author is very prone to exaggerate the literary achievements of his countrymen. He not only makes out to be Scotsmen persons whose birth-place is the subject of doubt —for example, Joannes de Sacrobosco, Erigena, &c., but also includes such names as Eglesham, Fust, St. Fiacre, St. Novatua, Pelagius, and Rabanus Maurus, wbo are well known not to have been natives of Scotland.