1. One of the spasmodic poets, Gilfillan was an editor and commentator, with memoirs, critical dissertations in many editions of earlier British poetry.
15 Facts About George Gilfillan
1. 2.
George Gilfillan was born at Comrie, Perthshire, the eleventh of twelve children.
3.
George Gilfillan's mother, Rachel Barlas, the daughter of another Secession minister, was a notable beauty often spoken of as "The Star of the North".
4.
George Gilfillan was licensed by the Presbytery of Edinburgh as a probationer in 1835, but declined an invitation to take on his late father's congregation in Comrie.
5.
George Gilfillan was actively involved Dundee's cultural societies and a key figure in the city's literary life in the mid-Nineteenth Century.
6.
George Gilfillan 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afterwards another sermon on Hades, which brought him under the scrutiny of his co-presbyters, and was ultimately withdrawn from circulation.
7.
George Gilfillan next contributed a series of sketches of celebrated contemporary authors to the Dumfries Herald, then edited by Thomas Aird; these, with several new ones, formed his first Gallery of Literary Portraits, which appeared in 1846 and had a wide circulation.
8.
George Gilfillan's aim was that it should be a poem on the Bible and it was far more rhapsodical than critical, being in Gilfillan's words 'a Prose Poem, or Hymn, in honour of the Poetry and Poets of the inspired volume with occasional divergence into the analysis of Scripture characters, and cognate fields of literature or of speculation '.
9.
George Gilfillan died, aged 65, having just finished a new life of Burns designed to accompany a new edition of the works of that poet.
10.
George Gilfillan supported the work of Ellen Johnston, who was known as "The Factory Girl" because of her humble origins.
11.
George Gilfillan was a supporter of working-class poets, believing them to be less influenced by the works of others than better educated writers.
12.
George Gilfillan died after a very short illness on 13 August 1878 at the house of a Mr Valentine in Brechin, having travelled to that town to officiate at the wedding of a niece.
13.
George Gilfillan had given a sermon that Sunday on the subject of sudden death.
14.
George Gilfillan was buried at the cemetery in Balgay, in a funeral procession of three thousand people.
15.
However, McCrae, whose views against the concept of eternal damnation George Gilfillan had supported, had been declared to no longer be a minister by the UP Church.