He was born in
Haddington, East Lothian on 5 February 1791, the son of Robert Scott an excise officer (a distant cousin of
Sir Walter Scott) and his second wife, Catherine Dunbar of
Coldingham. He taught himself
Latin by the age of 10 and was encouraged by the local minister, Rev Dr Lorimer, to study for the ministry. On the death of his father, around 1800, the family fell into extreme poverty and his mother opened a small shop in order to survive. Hew was apprenticed to an
ironmonger around 1803 and spent evenings selling stationery door-to-door. Around 1810 he opened his own shop, selling books. Through his mother's relatives in Coldingham he appears to have met
George Dunbar who despite both poverty and disablement managed to gain a degree at
Glasgow University. He applied for
Edinburgh University and matriculated in 1813. He studied a wide range of subjects and said "had the [Napoleonic] war continued, he would have been an army surgeon rather than a minister". Part of this period would now be called "working his way through college" and twice he was employed as assistant librarian in the Edinburgh university in exchange for his university fees. In 1816 he transferred to
King's College, Aberdeen and it was there where he got his first MA. Hew probably sighed a huge sigh of relief on publication, before realising within two or three years that the work had to be updated regularly in order to retain its value. It therefore became a never-ending project. He died on 12 July 1872 in
Anstruther. His will endowed a "Scott and Dunbar Prize" at Edinburgh University: this is an annual prize for the best Greek student. ==
Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae==