Sevenoaks Grammar School. In 1707 he _pub._ a book of poems. He is
best known, however, as the assistant of Pope in his translation of the
_Odyssey_, of which he Englished the first, fourth, nineteenth, and
twentieth books, catching the manner of his master so completely that it
is hardly possible to distinguish between their work; while thus engaged
he _pub._ (1723) a successful tragedy, _Marianne_. His latest
contributions to literature were a _Life of Milton_, and an ed. of
_Waller's Poems_ (1729).

FERGUSON, ADAM (1723-1816).--Philosopher and historian, _s._ of the
parish minister of Logierait, Perthshire, studied at St. Andrews and
Edin. Univ., in the latter of which he was successively Professor of
Mathematics, and Moral Philosophy (1764-1785). As a young man he was
chaplain to the 42nd Regiment, and was present at the Battle of Fontenoy.
In 1757 he was made Keeper of the Advocates' Library. As a Prof. of
Philosophy he was highly successful, his class being attended by many
distinguished men no longer students at the Univ. In 1778-9 he acted as
sec. to a commission sent out by Lord North to endeavour to reach an
accommodation with the American colonists. F.'s principal works are
_Essay on the History of Civil Society_ (1765), _Institutes of Moral
Philosophy_ (1769), _History of the Progress and Termination of the Roman
Republic_ (1782), and _Principles of Moral and Political Science_ (1792),
all of which have been translated into French and German. F. spent his
later years at St. Andrews, where he _d._ in 1816 at the age of 92. He
was an intimate friend of Sir Walter Scott. The French philosopher Cousin
gave F. a place above all his predecessors in the Scottish school of
philosophy.

FERGUSON, SIR SAMUEL (1810-1886).--Poet and antiquary, _b._ at Belfast,
the _s._ of parents of Scottish extraction, he was _ed._ at Trinity
Coll., Dublin, from which he received in 1865 the honorary degree of
LL.D. He practised with success as a barrister, became Q.C. in 1859, and
Deputy Keeper of the Irish Records 1867, an appointment in which he
rendered valuable service, and was knighted in 1878. He was a contributor
to _Blackwood's Magazine_, in which appeared his best known poem, _The
Forging of the Anchor_, and was one of the chief promoters of the Gaelic
revival in Irish literature. His _coll._ poems appeared under the title
of _Lays of the Western Gael_ (1865), _Congal, an epic poem_ (1872), and
his prose tales posthumous