John Veitch (1829-1894), Scottish poet, philosopher, and historian of the Scottish border, son of a Peninsular veteran, was born at Peebles on the lath of October 1829, and educated at Edinburgh University. He was assistant lecturer successively to Sir William Hamilton and A. Campbell Fraser (1856-60). In 1860 he was appointed to the chair of logic, metaphysics and rhetoric at St Andrews, and in 1864 to the corresponding chair at Glasgow. In philosophy an intuitionist, he dismissed the idealist arguments with some abruptness, and thereby lost much of the influence gained by the force of his personal character. He died on the 3rd of September 1894. He will be remembered chiefly for his work on Border literature and antiquities.
He published translations of Descartes' Discours de la methode (1850) and Meditationes (1852); an edition of Sir W. Hamilton's lectures with memoir (1869, in collaboration with H. L. Mansel); Tweed, and other Poems (1875); History and Poetry of the Scottish Border (1877; ed. 1893); Institutes of Logic (1885); Knowing and Being (1889); Merlin (1889); Dualism and Monism (1895); Border Essays (1896). See Memoir by his niece, Mary R. L. Bryce (1896).
