OGILVY, JOHN, an industrious author and literary speculator, was born at Edinburgh in 1600. His father was a prisoner for debt in the King's Bench, and could give him but little education. Yet the boy had a practical ingenuity, and an ever-wakeful prudence which led him over the greatest difficulties on towards success. While supporting himself by teaching dancing to the families of the English nobility, he contrived to gratify his eager avidity for learning. In 1649 his literary accomplishments had become so considerable that he became an author by profession, and began to publish a series of metrical translations of some of the ancient classics. His Virgil appeared in that same year, his Fables of Asop in 1651, his Iliad in 1660, and his Odyssey in 1665. Yet although Ogilvy had gained distinction by these publications, and although he had been appointed superintendent of the poetical part of the coronation pageantry in 1661, and master of the revels in Ireland in 1662, he continued to be the same plodding and practical man of business. After the great fire of 1666 had reduced him to beggary, he contrived in a short time to set up a printing-press; and in the capacity of cosmographer to the king, published a large atlas in several folio volumes, and a description of the roads in England from his own actual survey. His death took place in 1676.