Robert Macfarlane (schoolmaster)

Robert Macfarlan (also Macfarlane) (1734–1804) was a Scottish schoolmaster, known as a writer, journalist and translator.

Macfarlan was educated at the University of Edinburgh, where he proceeded M.A. He settled in London, and for some years kept a successful school at Walthamstow, Essex. It was at Shern Lodge, also called Shernhall House, and he ran it from about 1770 to about 1795, when he left Walthamstow. His pupils included Robert Plumer Ward.

At one time Macfarlane was editor of the Morning Chronicle and London Packet. He reported, from memory, some of the major speeches in parliament during Lord North's administration, in particular from those delivered in the debates on the American War of Independence. In 1792 he was employed by the Highland Society of Scotland as a teacher of Scottish Gaelic.

On the evening of 8 August 1804, during the Brentford election, Macfarlan was killed by an accidental fall under a carriage, at Hammersmith.

Marfarlan was engaged by Thomas Evans the publisher, of Paternoster Row, to write a History of the Reign of George III, the first volume of which was issued in 1770. Evans then fell out with him, and employed another writer to continue the work, the second volume of which appeared in 1782, and the third in 1794. Reconciled to Evans, Macfarlan wrote in 1796 a fourth volume, which was severely handled by the critics. Macfarlan defended himself in an Appendix, or the Criticks Criticized, London, 1797. His account of the king's mental state was frank, by the public standards of the time.

Macfarlan translated the poems of Ossian into Latin verse, publishing in 1769 the first book of Temora. At the time of his death he had in the press a major Ossian edition. It was later issued by the Highland Society of London as The Poems of Ossian in Gaelic, 3 vols. London, 1807. With a literal translation into Latin, there were: a dissertation on the authenticity of the poems by Sir John Sinclair; and a translation from the Italian of Melchiore Cesarotti's Dissertation on the Controversy respecting Ossian, with notes, by John McArthur. Macfarlan published in 1795 A New Alphabetical Vocabulary, Gailic and English.

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